At about 9:15 one morning in 2019, customers were queueing at Rebecca Fridah Ichimo’s matooke stall in Bweyogerere, Wakiso District. Matooke—green cooking bananas—is a staple food in Uganda. The visiting Daily Monitor reporter wrote that the number of people waiting made both the pace of Ichimo’s business and her relationship with regular customers immediately visible.
Ichimo had started trading after spending eighteen months unable to find work following graduation. Her first stock was sixty bunches worth 600,000 Ugandan shillings, supplied on credit by a friend. She sold them in four days for 720,000 shillings. She then noticed that not every customer could afford a whole bunch. Some wanted loose banana “fingers,” so she expanded into bagged fingers and began selling quantities for as little as 1,000 shillings. By the time of the report she ordered a truckload each week and could handle fifty bags of fingers alongside fifty bunches.
This queue recorded more than the popularity of one vendor. Customers able to purchase a full bunch and customers buying only enough fingers for a meal waited at the same stall. Prices changed with size and season, while pending orders moved when fresh stock arrived. At the head of the line, a farm commodity measured in bunches was divided into the smaller units that household budgets could actually absorb.