Eden

42

We start walking through the market, selling water, and what we do isn't especially complicated. I follow the water-seller, and Lexi trails along behind me, and every so often, when I'm told to, I stop and hand someone the wooden cup so they can drink.

How that works is that the cup is filled by dipping it into the top of the barrel behind me. There isn't a tap or anything, is what I mean. The barrel just has an open top, so no lid, and the water-seller reaches past me, and dunks the cup into the barrel behind my head, and then hands the cup, still on its string, to the customer, who drinks, and then gives it back. The water-seller does the dunking, and I'm glad of that, because I don't think I could reach on my own. Not up behind my own head. There must be some kind of a trick to doing it while wearing the backpack, I think, especially when the barrel is only half-full, because if I tried, I don't think my arm would quite reach far enough, or bend the right way. I'm not sure how it would be done. Maybe dropping the cup by its string, and then pulling it up again quickly. Maybe. Whatever the trick is, though, I don't need to know. The water-seller does the dipping for me, and I just carry the barrel around.

The water-seller does the dipping, and she also keeps hold of the coins she's given, I notice. She holds onto them quite carefully. And she also does the talking to customers, too, so all I really have to do is follow along, and smile, and carry the barrel, none of which is really that hard.

And yes, I smile even though I probably don't have to. I do, because I've had retail jobs before, and I suppose smiling is just a habit.

We walk around the market, mostly just going up and down from end to end, so we run into new people as we move. All the water sellers seem to do this, so there's a constant circling as some go off to refill their barrels and others finish filling and start selling water again.

We walk, and the water-seller sometimes calls out, "Water," I suppose in case people don't know what we have. But only very rarely. There doesn't seem as much shouting out of what people are selling as I'd have thought a marketplace in the past would have, but maybe they get sick of shouting all the time, or maybe everyone already knows what people sell.

So mostly it's just walking, and me following, and the water-seller saying hello to people, and asking, "One cup?" and being handed coins and then dipping the wooden cup in the barrel.

We do that for a while. I'm not sure how long, but perhaps half an hour.

I ask the water-seller her name, too, while we walk, and she tells me, but I can't pronounce it and I don't think I'm saying it right, so I don't actually try again after the first time, even though I know it.