Street sellers

Every morning around 10:30am, my street is greeted by the nasal yell of the milk lady: "¡la leeeecheeee!" Literally, "the miiiiilk!" This little old lady prefers announcing her arrival via shouting instead of the traditional knock on the door. She walks to wherever her clients are, yells that she's there, and then sits down on the curb to wait for someone to open the door. I don't blame her - carrying two buckets full of milk up and down Cajabamba's hills every day would be tiring work, so I probably wouldn't bother knocking on doors either.

While the milk lady's particular voice and tone of shouting are indeed unique, yelling one's wares through the streets of Cajabamba is much more common than I'd prefer. Push-carts, bicycle-carts, and moto-carts selling fruit, eggs, metalware, batteries, sheets, and more frequently roll around town in the hopes of attracting clients with convenience. Many of them have even invested in a tinny megaphone that renders their shouting three times as loud. Usually I just tune these mobile sellers out, but once in a while I hear the holy grail of cart vendors: the strawberry man. Rapid-firing the word "fresa" (strawberry) into his megaphone over and over again, this one is hard to miss - luckily, since his fresas are ten times as good as any others that sometimes show up in our regular Sunday market. When I hear him shouting, I grab my wallet and rush out the door. The trouble with the megaphone system is that sometimes I hear the fresa man, but when I exit my house he's nowhere in sight - you've usually got to put in a little work for the reward of delicious berries. But after speed-walking down three blocks (in order to not look ridiculous by full-out running after fruit) as the strawberry cart rolls ahead of you, you get the satisfaction of having reached your goal, and the berries taste that much better.