Day 14: Rabat Market Visit

Outside view of the wholesale fruit and vegetable market in Rabat.   Another early morning to get there as the market opens.   The market typically opens around 5am each day and is nearly shut down by 10am. 

Leilah is an Enumerator for the Ministry of Agriculture.  Enumerators are employees who go to the market each day to collect pricing information from the fruit and vegetable buyers and sellers.  They typically try to get around 5 or 6 prices for each type of fruit and vegetable so that they can capture the minimum, maximum, and average prices for all produce products.    This information is entered manualy each day so that it can be reported on later on the website.   I loved talking with her.  She has worked for the Ministry for about 20 years, speaks English, and has kids about the same age as my own.    She joked about being a 'super women' and I believed it after spending a morning with her.





Group picture with the Enumerators in the Rabat market. 

Starting to white board the overall pricing process that we had observed the last two days in Casablanca and Rabat.

After work, Mohammed offered to walk our Ministry of Agriculture team through the Rabat Souks to show us how to bargain with vendors.   It was much easier shopping with him and he definitely helped us to get good deals.   Doing a little early Christmas shopping here......

  

Andrew and Mohammed did a great job of bargaining for Moroccan handmade jackets while Rahul looked on.    I think that Andrew's wife and daughter will be very happy with his purchases.  :-)

Thursday was another early morning as we traveled to the Rabat wholesale fruit and vegetable market to get there when it opened.   The Rabat market is much smaller than the Casablanca office that we visited yesterday.  Whereas the Casablanca market has about 20 'squares' inside of their market, the Rabat market had three squares.   It was much less crowded and easier to talk one on one with buyers, sellers, enumerators (Minister of Agriculture employees who manually gather pricing information each day), etc.   I especially enjoyed our visit to the Rabat market because two of the enumerators were women and were very nice to talk to.    We walked around the market and talked for about two hours and I really got to know them personally as well.   They were telling me about how they get a lot of respect in their jobs because they are women.

We were not able to take pictures inside of the Rabat market but it was very similar to the Casablanca wholesale market.... just on a much smaller scale.   The hustle and bustle was very similar as the Casablanca market and I continued to be amazed at the size, color, variety of the fruits and vegetables.  I only wish that I had the same selection at my grocery store back home....

We also visited the meat market in Rabat as we did yesterday in Casablanca.  They were very eager to walk us through the entire process from the time that the cows are lead into the market until the meat is shipped out.   I was not sure that I could stomach this after the limited amount that I had seen yesterday in Casablanca.   I ended up waiting outside with Rahul while the others walked through and witnessed the entire process.   Andrew took video and said that it was fascinating.  I will have to take his word for it......   :-)

We spent the afternoon in the office documenting the overall pricing process that we had observed the last two days.   We are also starting to work on getting some of the raw data, interview notes, etc. in our final deliverable template.

After work, we made a quick stop at the Rabat Souks.   Mohammed had offered to take us there and show us how to bargain with the vendors.  We had a lot of fun and were able to get some gifts for friends and family.