the bargaining process starts and ends with harrassment

I had a pretty fun day on Saturday at one of the markets in town. It is one of these places that sell touristy things, art pieces and whatnot. I met up with some American friends at the food court in the mall and we had Indian food and fruit juice smoothies, mmmmm a great combo. After lunch we went over to the market and began an ever so enjoyable afternoon of harassment and bargaining for stuff we don’t need. When you are white, they see you coming and jack the price to whatever they can get away with so you have to be careful or you will get ripped off. Carrie bought a Kikuyu mask, Kirsten bought a Lua stool and I was off learning dirty kiswahili words with a few of the vendors. These guys were hilarious, but were obviously just trying to con me into buying something. When I told them that I had ‘hakuna pesa’ (no money) they said they would trade for whatever I had. This is one of their little tricks, they don’t want my shit, they just don’t want me to leave. I showed him my hacky sack I had in my pocket and he would not give it back. They knew that I would not leave until I got it back and he just kept ignoring my requests for him to return it and kept trying to sell me some stupid box. I guess its my Canadian nature not to be overly pushy so when I finally caught on to what he was doing I had to get Carrie to come to snatch it back for me, it was hilarious. Those Americans sure are good arbitrators over international disputes, they take no shit from no one and don’t worry about manners. It was pretty funny but also very culturally revealing.

The market is really fun, I enjoy negotiating with them but you get harassed really bad when you are white, you are supposed to have lots of money. I don’t think they understand when I tell them I have less than they do (dammit OSAP). They use every trick in the book to get you to buy stuff, and its easy to get conned by their sob stories. There is a fine line that you need to be careful of in such situations though. On one hand you don’t want to get ripped off which is usually the case. Everyone tries to get the most they can out of you, especially when you are white. But on the other hand, this is their livelihood and their art, so you don’t want to insult them or take advantage of their desperation. I usually end up buying stuff based on whether or not I like the person selling it. I can even negotiate in Kiswahili now, which really helps to get a better price but doesn’t cause them to ignore the fact that I am white. The funniest part of the day was running into some Kenyan vendor wearing a Tie Domi #28, Toronto Maple Leafs touque. I wanted to grab his shirt and pull it over his head and start feeding him with upper-cuts but I don’t think he would have gotten the joke. I did stop him for a big high-five and maple leafs quiz. I always love doing that.

At the very end of the day, after I spent all the money I wanted to spend, the girls were still shopping for jewelry so I started a game of hacky sack with a bunch of the vendors who were harassing me to buy stuff. For the short 15minutes we were playing they finally stopped harassing me and we just hung out like normal people and had fun. It is weird to be a minority, to stand out amongst everyone else and to be treated unfairly based on the colour of you skin. It’s not exactly oppression, but I am still treated very differently which is a weird feeling.