A small stall can carry a whole household’s hopes without displaying any of them.

What a person sells tells you almost nothing about what the selling is for. Behind a table of fruit or phone cases there may be school fees, a sick relative, a plan running a decade out, none of it on view. The transaction shows the goods and hides the stakes.

Where you can, buy from the small seller rather than only from the easy source. Be unhurried when you are the customer, since ten slow minutes at a stall are not the same as ten minutes elsewhere. And take the price seriously as somebody’s actual living.