Africa: The Long Wait For Customers

The first eight following photographs were shot in 1973 

Street vendors in Parakou, Benin.

The clothes vendors in this photograph were listening to the music of a small portable radio. A water peddler was walking down the road in search of his own sale.

A street vendor takes a nap while her colleague watches the store in Benin’s Cotonou.

Here, not far from the previous small business, is another one. Selling on the streets is the courageous alternative to doing nothing when unable to get employment.

And here, just across the street, as is evident in the previous shot, is a more sophisticated and alluring small business. The large words say:

     Do you want to be elegant like us? Then get shod here by Quo Vadis  
(the owners wrongly used the French word “galant” for “elegant”).

     The small yellow sign says: High Shoemaking Fashion. 

     An unfinished basket out front is waiting for last touches.

Expert barber waiting to give his next haircut in Porto Novo, Benin.

This poor kid in Niamey, Niger, may have skippd school to help his family put some food on the table.

Here, near Bertoua, Cameroon, monkeys for the pot, wearing white price tags, were being offered to passing motorists. Tails tied to heads helped buyers to conveniently carry their purchase home like a handbag.

Delicious organic tomatoes being sold in a small corner of the sprawling Kumasi market of Ghana in 1992.

Proud owner of a store specializing in the sale of kente cloth, hand woven in wooden looms in Bonwire, Ghana, and elsewhere among that country’s Ashanti.

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No usage permitted without prior authorization.