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Milk and Honey at the Roadside: Experiencing Ukraine Through Its Markets
From pavement sellers to a kaleidoscope of colour
Traders with expressionless faces stood behind stalls of fruit piled in alternating colours: red speckles of pomegranate seeds, darker cherries, vivid oranges and paler persimmons. Men chopped through carcasses while others sat beside limp chicken corpses. A woman in black gave off the illusion, from a distance, of a hooded grim reaper as she arranged a display of pears.
Kyiv’s famous Besarabsky market had so few customers I felt conspicuous. I avoided looking too closely in case I gave off the wrong signals. No one was buying anything.
The market is a national heritage monument, named after the old region of Bessarabia (now mostly within Moldova). A sign proclaimed the market’s centenary in 2012. But how did it sustain itself with barely any customers?
The people I was visiting had laughed when I told them I’d visit Besarabsky Market. ‘Ukrainians don’t go there. It’s really expensive, and just for tourists.’
