With the wave of a meat ax and a smile, a young man in a bloody butcher's apron tries to entice me into buying a skinned sheep carcass. Careful not to offend, I smile and move briskly to the next stall.

This is the start of my Saturday morning shopping grocery shop at the Mir Market Bazaar in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. Two years ago, I might have complained about the long lines in American supermarkets or the paralyzing number of choices of cereal. But after two years as a State Department official in the central Asian country of Turkmenistan, bordered on the south by Iran and the west by Afghanistan, I've decided when I return to the United States, I'll stop complaining. One of life's most mundane tasks, the weekly grocery shop, has become an opportunity for all-day adventure.

The Mir Market Bazaar is a concrete-slab floor the size of a football field sheltered by a high, corrugated metal roof. Underneath, a series of gritty stalls house attendants selling fruit and vegetables. Turkmen women in long gowns with colorful headscarves manage most of the stalls.

"They have bananas!" exclaimed my seasoned American escorts. There is not a regular supply, and I follow my mentor's advice and buy a bunch. A woman in a yellow headscarf with a front row of gold teeth offers to sell them to me for 84,000 manats (about $11 at the official rate, $4 unofficial). Gold teeth are common. Originally, gold was used out of dental necessity because of the practice of holding a cube of sugar under the top lip while drinking tea, but it has become the fashion to have all gold front teeth - or at least two.

During the late summer months, the Mir was swamped with stacks of dusty yellow melons the size and shape of footballs. Piled high to form small pyramids, they could be bought for less than 50 cents each. They were the tastiest, most flavorful melons I've ever eaten. As long as they were in season, my family ate them at breakfast, lunch and dinner.

At the back of the bazaar, a man in the hot sun is selling fish from the trunk of his car - no container, no ice, just fish in a trunk. He must have driven all the way from the shores of the Caspian Sea, eight hours away. The smell is incredible. Again, I smile and hurry away.

The scene at the Mir is in strong contrast to a modern Turkish-owned supermarket, the only one of its kind in Turkmenistan. It is a recent addition to Ashgabat, the capital, and for the few who can afford it, provides Turkish imports of food and clothes. The size of the store gives the illusion of variety. Inside, whole aisle sections are stocked with a single item such as cottonseed oil or kilo bags of sugar. Here we shop for laundry detergent. The leading brand is an Iranian product called Barf. We decide to go with a competitor, Bingo.

We also find Kellogg's Rice Krispies with the "Snap" character on the box saying something in a cartoon balloon written in Arabic.

Sign of an American

For comparison shopping on livestock, I travel to Tolkuchka Bazaar north of Ashgabat, a city at the edge of the Karakum Desert. I arrive in time to watch a camel suspended in the air by a Komatsu crane. His new owner arranged to have the braying beast lowered into a giant Soviet-made dump truck. If Marco Polo were alive today, this is the market where he would come to refurbish his caravan. There is no other market like it in the world.

This is my first trip to Tolkuchka. I am easily marked as an American because of my baseball cap and camera in hand. Two young women in yellow headscarves and full-length, red velvet dresses giggle as they pass, one of them pointing not so inconspicuously at me. Foreigners must think of baseball hats as part of an American's national headdress. From the attention I drew, I felt like I was wearing a red beanie with a propeller on top and a sandwich board announcing, "I AM AN AMERICAN."

I soon forget that I am a marked man and squeeze into the crowd headed into the bazaar's front entrance. With the mass of people and small front gate, the effect is like pouring a bucket of ants into a funnel. At the first stall, I decide to buy a Yurt band even though it is the first time I have ever seen one. It is a 1-foot by 90-foot wool strap used to strengthen the round tents of Turkmen nomads against the desert winds.

Using my disastrous Russian while trying to bargain for what I've arbitrarily decided is a fair price, I notice a small, mouse-like woman standing at my elbow. With her hair up in a traditional Turkmen way, covered by a canary-yellow floral scarf, she is no taller than my chest. She can hear my failing attempts to communicate in Russian. Using formal English textbook grammar, she asks in her soft voice if she can help me.

"It would be my pleasure to assist you," she says. Her accent is slightly British and her diminutive size and childlike appearance are disarming. She introduces herself as Shemshat, a kindergarten teacher of English who comes to the bazaar, she says, to look for foreigners so she can practice her conversational English. Would I mind if she followed me around?

"No, I'd welcome it," I say, relieved to have the skills of an interpreter at my side. She keeps a calm demeanor as I use her to look for more Yurt straps and haggle over prices of Turkmen hats. I wonder what she thinks of me. Whatever she thinks, she remains unfazed by the demands of my quirky shopping spree. Her response as I complete each transaction is always the same: "Now what would you like to see?"

Literally at the end of town, set on a rocky plain, is another wholesale market, known to the locals as the "drinks market." It is the Turkmen equivalent of a Price Club; a maze of rusting 20-foot shipping containers offering many different kinds of "drinks." Pallets of Coca-Cola shrink-wrapped in plastic, Russian beer and vodka are offered for sale in bulk. I bought a bottle of Mike Tyson Vodka with his picture on the front flanked by American flags. It is distilled by an unidentified manufacturer, and the label describes it as a "drink of equality and elegance."

Bags of bills

It's not difficult to spend 1 million manats for a family's weekly grocery needs ($200 official rate, $50 unofficial). Since bill denominations range from 50 to 10,000 manats, I felt like a bagman for the Mafia carrying around shopping bags full of bills.

One store has long-life milk; another has bread and mops. The combinations are ever-changing and unpredictable. I learned that if I found something I liked, I bought it - and lots of it. I worried that I was bordering on an obsession to hoard, but shopping in Turkmenistan was that unpredictable. Also, I noticed my standards quickly changed. Things I might have easily turned my nose up at weeks before become highly prized. Turkish canned goods and Iranian salt are top quality. As for wine, Moldovan Cabernet is considered the standard; Bulgarian is even better.

If you eat out, it is best to like meat, meat, meat, meat and some rice. The best restauraunt in town served shashlik, meat cooked on a skewer, and plov, which is rice mixed with secret ingredients including fat and vegetables. The traditional Turkmen way of eating plov is with the hands. According to a Turkmen friend, the oil from your fingers gives it an entirely different flavor than if eaten using utensils. Traditional Turkmen nomads would have had few, if any, utensils. Every meal was always accompanied by bottomless cups of weak green tea - now a fad in the U.S. for its medicinal properties.

When I came home in May, I was sure that Turkmenistan had influenced me. But the first time my wife sent me to the grocery store, I grew impatient with the long lines at the checkout. I had to remind myself of the all-day quests I had made for the past two years to find food for my family in Ashgabat.

Now if I could just find some of those Turkmen melons at the Safeway.

John Kropf, a State Department lawyer who lives in Northern Virginia, is writing a book on his two years of adventures in Turkmenistan. The views contained in this story are his own, and not those of the State Department.