Kara's market is one of the most active commercial spaces in northern Togo. Most stalls sell food and household goods — groundnuts, yam flour, dried fish, chilli, cloth — but the real spectacle is the trading that happens between sellers and buyers locked in the slow, good-natured negotiation that makes West African markets worth a morning of your time even if you are buying nothing.
The market is at its busiest early in the morning, when fresh produce arrives and before the heat becomes oppressive. You will find sections given over to cloth sellers, butchers, traditional medicines, and metalwork repairers working on the spot. The Kabyé women who sell pottery made in the villages west of town bring their work in on market days.