I like markets. The hustle, the bustle, the bartering, the diversity, the opportunity: the life. Done right, they epitomize non-zero sum transactions - business where all involved profit, unlike, say, eating a cake, where the size of your slice directly impacts the amount of cake that others may feast on.

In Uganda, markets line the streets and fill the suburbs; business is everywhere - street side vendors, stores operating out of brightly painted repurposed shipping containers, corrugated iron shacks, stalls under bright umbrellas, textile markets, and supermarkets (including, more recently, international mega supermarket chains from Kenya (Nakumatt) and South Africa (Shoprite)). Drive slowly enough through the right streets, and your vehicle will be swarmed by entrepreneurs selling groundnuts (peanuts), gonja, clothing, and household goods (plastic cups, pots and pans, etc.).

Bugolobi market, a four-decade old center of commerce that began as half-a-dozen stalls roofed with papyrus leaves, is tucked in the upmarket hills of the suburb. Perhaps over one hundred and fifty stores fill the hectare of land bordered by the diamond-shaped arrangement of Airtel-red stacked shipping containers. Most stores are housed along this perimeter, with its center a vibrant fresh fruit, vegetable and meat market. Hills of matoke (starchy, green bananas that are generally served boiled, then mashed), shaded by broken cardboard boxes, form the contour lines, while the freshly skinned carcases hanging from the rafters, filling the space underneath the open corrugated-iron structure, provide the waypoints. An incredible sensory experience.

We stopped at one of these stalls, a chapatti stand manned by a teenage trio. Three boys, going into their sophomore year of high school (Senior-four, it’s called in Uganda) were spending their summer holidays at the market. Underneath a bright-red Coca Cola umbrella, they cooked chapatis, the Ugandan spin on the worldwide classic water and flour unleavened flatbread, selling them for 1000 Ush - about 35 US cents; and rolexes, an omlette with a garden variety of vegetables inside, all wrapped in a chapati, for 2000 Ush.

Hungry, we ordered some rolexes all round. Quickly, eggs were beaten in green plastic cup; peppers, carrots, and onions were chopped; some spices and salt was added; and the mix was poured onto the sizzling charcoal-heated hot plate. The eggs, which were stacked three layers high in the corner of the stall, under a second kaleidoscopically-colored umbrella, were unrefrigerated. Sold with their wax coating still protecting them, these eggs do not require refrigeration and can last for several weeks, even at room temperature. Also interesting to note, is the color of the yolk: a bleached-white shade of pale-yellow. With limited xanthophylls (yellow pigments e.g. carrots, corn, and soybeans) in their diet, most East African chickens lay eggs with yolks that miss out on that bright-orange color we have come to expect. A minute or two later, the slightly-pale omelette was done, rolled up with the chapati, wrapped in a plastic bag and placed into a recycled paper bag. Recycled, from old printed copies of Winners Betting Ltd.’ s soccer betting odds for the December 18th pan-Europe games.

Lunch in hand, we thanked the trio, paid and continued to tour the market.

We found a tailor offering custom shirts and dresses starting at seventeen-dollars, express-made in two days. Fabric could either be chosen from a limited in-store stock for another fifteen dollars, or you could bring-your-own.

Nearby, we bought airtime at a local Airtel store. One gigabyte of 3G data for a few dollars, some minutes and a new SIM card. When calculating change, the attendant hesitated, made counting motions, quietly mouthed numbers, looked to her colleagues, and finally borrowed a calculator. She may not have been confident in counting, but she did have access to a calculator.

We met Nora, a young women selling dried mushrooms and hibiscus tea from the Northern plains, promising vitality. Together with her business partner - and her business partner’s young baby boy, who lay naked on the floor, hidden behind a fluttering red curtain - they ran their self-described “social enterprise” from a humble second-story corner store. Throughout our conversation, she would intermittently turn the refrigerator on and off, cooling the already prepared tea housed in its freezer comparment.

The idea of a social enterprise is an interesting one. It lies littered on a stage with fellow words and concepts whose meanings have been questioned by disregard and overuse. Any business, by its very nature, exists to connect people in a transaction where both benefit. Sometimes that profit may lie far in the future, too far, maybe, for us to truly grasp; other times it may be hidden by our own biases; or, in its creation and division, people are forgotten and ideals are lost, but economic profit comes hand-in-hand with social profit. The question is when, where, and for whom?

And that, that comes back to the most fundamental question of anything we do: Why?