Market Research

I bought two Polo-brand collared shirts last weekend at Lilongwe’s main market. They cost me 200 Kwacha, or $1.30. A steal.

After my purchase, I came back—back down the hot, crowded, smelling-of-smoke market corridors, back over the bridge, back through rush hour traffic, back past the wood-craft hustlers, back back back back back—to the hostel, where I boasted my Deal of The Century. Joseph, one of the Golden Peacock employees, was floored when I told him that new versions of my latest wardrobe additions would cost 16,000 Kwacha back home.

To him, the fact that someone would spend that kind of money on shirts—that purchases like that were even happening on Earth, anywhere—was about as believable as someone telling me before my trip to the sprawling shanty-town market that I would find two Polos that fit me there.

The market is interesting in that way: you never know what you are going to get or see. I don’t love it just for the deals; I love it for its super-stimulating aliveness, for its shacks and its grass-thatched overhangs and its whatever-elses counting as storefronts, for its hellomyfriendhellomyfriends, heybossyoucomelooks and Igiveyougoodprices, for the ability to buy pretty much anything I can possibly think of, for its largeness.


The main market in Lilongwe.


But there is a side to the market invisible to meandering tourists. This other market boisterously and angrily emerges once I start asking questions.

Where are the toilets? How much money do you make? How many vendors will be forced out when the rainy-season-inflated river swallows the market’s outskirts?

There aren’t any. Not much. Too many.

It wasn’t always like this, I am told. In April, the government moved all the vendors that used to crowd the streets of Old Town to this main market. The government wanted to move all the vendors off the streets in February, but fearing a significant loss in profits, the vendors convinced the government to delay enforcement until the maize harvest. That way, they would have food to live on even if they weren’t making money in the market.

Had we been here two months ago, our walks to the minibus stop or to the grocery store wouldn’t be so uneventful—the vendors would have tried to sell us a hundred different things every time we walked by. But save for the newspaper sellers, the cell phone SIM card vendors, the wood carvers and the occasional vendor sneaking back onto prohibited territory, all the vendors have moved across the river into a centralized location. And they’re not happy about it.


A boy standing on the outskirts of the market, near the river.


The government enforced this policy to restore order to Old Town. Before, crime was high and the city blighted, or so say policy makers. I’m not really sure how I feel about the policy, as I arrived in Lilongwe after it was enacted. But it’s something that genuinely interests me. So I decided to start some research looking into the market relocation a little further—my own little project to keep me busy on the weekends. I talked with James, one of the wood-craft vendors for about two hours. He gave me the basic history of the relocation and offered his own opinions and what he thought the average Malawian thinks. I’ve also talked with a dozen other vendors in the main market. One of the men I met there gave me a tour of the proposed location for a second market. I feel like a bona fide expert in the subject now.

Most people I’ve talked to tend to think that moving all the vendors off the streets was a good idea. The city is much less crowded and significantly safer, they say. But most are upset about they way the government went about enforcing the policy. The market isn’t big enough to fit all the vendors, sanitation is nonexistent and most everyone is making less money. The proposed location for the new market will have a bus/minibus stop, sanitation and some actual buildings, but vendors almost uniformly think that it is too far away. “How will they make any money if it is a 25-minute walk from Old Town?” they ask.


The proposed location of a new market.


Without more information I certainly can’t fault the government for its actions, and I’m not 100-percent convinced that assigning blame is even constructive. But I’m looking into it a little further, because I think it is a representative microcosm of a lot of the social and economic problems facing Malawi, one of the poorest nations on Earth. Call it market research.


This billboard (owned by Clear Channel) has a picture of the Malawian president and says, "Fight Corruption. Develop Malawi."