Food Lovers and Food Disparity

In a few posts I have mentioned the wide gap between the rich and the poor in South Africa. While some places we visit are crowded townships made from cinderblock, tin siding and tarps, there are other parts of town that are as nice as anyplace in the US. Food markets are no exception to this disparity. We see vendors that sell their few products from crates set up on street corners. They might have a few bunches of bananas, some suckers and plastic baggies filled with something that looks like Cheetos puff balls. Other stands are set up with produce or roasted corn. People buy food from these as they walk to and from work. From there there is a wide variety of grocery markets, some very small and some that aren't much different than Safeway or Albertson's. On the far end of the spectrum, however, there are some massive food markets that are so overfilled and so opulent that they seem like they might be frequented by Capitol citizens from the Hunger Games movie. The pictures are from a market called "Food Lovers." You can see that even the olive oil and water are a little over the top. After I took pictures for a while, a security guard came and told me that I was not allowed to photograph in the market. Maybe he thought I was going to set up a grocery store even more elaborate.