A note about the short story “Let Them Eat Kandolo: Amainsa 1992, Kabalenge, Zambia” from Mwanabibi Sikamo for the Michigan Quarterly Review's Spring 2024 issue “African Writing: A Partial Cartography of Provocations”: I love a good market. Not a pristine library of products boxed away from touch and smell, trolleys rolling over hospital-white floors market. Not even a friendly-farmers, loose and bottled vegetables piled onto bunting lined folding tables market. No, I like a full bodied, bursting at the seams, assault on all the senses, never know who or what you might encounter market. A cacophonous African market.

In Lusaka my favorite hunting ground is City Market, which sprung out of necessity. One seller nails together wooden offcuts from her local carpenter. She piles her merchandise on the makeshift stand; a few tomatoes, maybe some greasy, freshly made fritters. The next day she is joined by someone selling roasted cassava and groundnuts, and so it goes until you have a government-sanctioned market.

As I enter City Market my heart races. I must be on high alert to avoid bumping into other buyers or sellers. I do not want to get run over by the rushing wheelbarrow boys who hiss to warn me of their presence. I walk through the hall heaving with Salaula, breathe past the earthy dried fish and tobacco, and then I am among the sacks full of grains, roots, mushroom, and other things that were not on my list.

It was on one of these jaunts, basking in the abundance that was reminiscent of childhood trips to the village that the seed for this food memoir sprouted. How could we have so much and yet still not have enough?