Christmas Fairs Started Early at 3:24am in Penonomé and 4:45am No More Lines
Serious shoppers in Penonomé. By 4:45 am there were no more Christmas shopping lines, as confirmed by director Nilo Murillo. Organized, short and sweet was the plan. Get your ham and move on.
The moon was still up when people were already lining up. At 3:24 a.m. this Tuesday, December 9th, the Christmas Fairs of the Agricultural Marketing Institute (IMA) kicked off in Llano Marín, Coclé. The event moved so quickly that by 4:45 a.m. there were no lines left, according to director Nilo Murillo. From early morning, thousands flocked to buy the festive combo, which this year remains at $15 and includes a picnic ham, rice (5 lbs), oil or pineapple, sugar, and pigeon peas.
In Penonomé alone, some 7,000 people had been served before full sunrise, and the flow remained brisk: in, buy, leave. Murillo insisted that the program is designed for households, not for repeated individual purchases. “Here the boxes are per family, not per person… but we know that there are those who come two or three at a time to pick them up. It’s not ideal, but it happens,” the official said, warning that the resource is not infinite.
