Maasai Market…

Tuesday morning we showered with a couple of mosquitoes at the YMCA and then headed down the road to the Maasai Market. Every Tuesday the Maasai vendors, mainly female, travel to Nairobi from upcountry to sell their wares. As you turn the main corner near the police station there is a large hill with three levels of footpaths. Hundreds of vendors are set up, some have tables, most have their wares on sheets on the ground. There is no sidewalk as you turn the corner and you have to constantly watch for the out of control matatus and cars. The market was PACKED with people, shoppers, vendors, children, women with small babies walked the aisles begging for change. Soda and street food vendors lined the streets around the market. There were young men sniffing glue, old men preaching the gospel up down the tight aisles of the hill and crazy men being hauled away by the police. The market was indeed a great place to people watch.

As soon as we reached the second table a man offered to be our guide at the market. Now I am naturally skeptical, as he explained they work as a community. He would take us through the market an every time we saw something that was a “maybe” one of his partners would carry it with us. At the end of the day we would sit down and negotiate the prices of the things we wanted to keep with him. 10% of the money would go to the community and the rest would go back to the individual vendor.

We warily accompanied him, but the vendors seemed happy and open to see him. He clearly had vendors that he favored in pointing us towards their booths, but on the whole, we had free reign of the market, which featured everything under the sun. Most prominent were the bright beadwork that the Maasai are famous for and many gifts made of limestone and soapstone. After about 3 or 4 hours of shopping we headed across the street to sit down and begin the process of haggling. Now Marcus doesn’t particularly like to shop and he certainly doesn’t like to bargain so I knew this was going to be a test of his patience. Haggling over the price was, of course, my favorite part of the day and our guide was a worthy opponent. He brilliantly steered me to haggle the smaller items first, leaving the dresses until the end (I’m sure if we had started with the dresses I would have left behind half of the smaller items.). His job is to get the highest price for the goods, and mine is to get the best deal, certainly not paying more that what the products are worth. So for another hour and half we argued, laughed at each other’s initial offers and bandied the prices back and forth. Occasionally he would ask one of his partners questions I figured were “which vendor did this come from? What is the bottom line price for this.”

Our guide made the tactical mistake a couple of times of asking Marcus what he thought. Marcus replied, “ as far as I’m concerned we can leave all of it. If you can’t give me what I’ll pay for it there is nothing to discuss. I can take a picture of the stuff I would have bought and be happy with that.”

Well, now.

He turned back to me, “you are the bargainer.”

In the end, I think our guide got the better end of the stick and I went over my self-imposed budget, but thoroughly enjoyed the experience. After we settled on prices, the guide gathered up the items we agreed upon, and walked with us into the city center to the ATM. There was a beautiful Tiger Eye necklace that had caught my eye, but ultimately was too expensive considering how much stuff we had purchased that day. The guide and I haggled for a while over the necklace before we headed to the ATM and then I ultimately let it go. The Guide however really liked my light weatherproof jacket and had commented on it repeatedly throughout the day, so in a last ditch effort he sold me the necklace, which had an initial starting price of 18,000 shillings and was probably worth about 8,000 shillings, for my jacket and 3,000 shillings. Which I think probably evened out the playing field for the day.