Just a note - We are currently traveling around kwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. Tomorrow, we're spending a night in a rural Zulu village, so almost certainly won't have internet for the day. Then we head to the Drakensberg Mountains before another day in Durban and off to Cape Town. I'm posting 2 entries tonight, but no promises about future entries until Aug 13.
-zac
Before I left for Livingstone, I was really skeptical of the sports and coaching project African Impact offered in Zambia. I just couldn’t understand why time and money was spent on such a frivolous thing when the country was so poor. However, after my time in Zambia, I really believe this aspect of African Impact’s work there is among the organization’s best contributions to Livingstone.
When Leah and I arrived, several coaching volunteers were working hard to start up the program in Livingstone. Though often frustrated that a sports program didn’t really exist upon their arrival (as they had been told by African Impact), these great volunteers worked hard to start up football (soccer) and netball (like basketball without dribbling) teams in the community schools. The power of sport in these impoverished areas is amazing as kids looked so forward to football matches with rival schools. These organized sports experience would not have happened without the hard work of AI volunteers.
In our final week there, the organization began partnering with a group called SCORE, whose mission was to train football and netball coaches within Livingstone to start their own clubs. This partnership was one of those "feed a man a fish/teach a man to fish" scenarios because AI volunteers could have spent time coaching their own youth teams, but instead devoted afternoons to training coaches who will live in Zambia and contribute positively to their own community. I really hope this partnership grows and continues.
I have no great segue into curio markets, so let’s just talk about those lovely markets huh?
Coming to Africa, my only experience in a "market" was along the Riviera Maya in Mexico. Quite honestly, I’d prefer to shop in places where everything has a barcode and price tag. Leah, though, really enjoys the bartering over goods and is a star at it. While other volunteers were hesitant to visit the curio market in Livingstone, Leah anxiously awaited her turn to shop.
Just walking near the market, one is bombarded with phrases like "How are you my friend?" and "Come browse my shop. Looking is free. You choose what you like." For many weak-willed shoppers, these invitations will result in them buying the first curio they see. For Leah and I though, we muscled past this heckling and only visited shops with attractive merchandise.
When you finally choose an item or two you’d like, the seller will generally quote you a ridiculously high price to start off the negotiating. It’s important to let the seller open the bidding, though, because you can never come down from your first offer. Next, it’s the buyer’s turn to open with a similarly ridiculous low bid. The negotiation continues for a bit as sellers come down and buyers go up in price. If successfully negotiated, the buyer should end up paying a bit less than half of the sellers’ original asking price. Sometimes you have to get tough in negotiations and put an object down, walk away, or insist the seller add other curios for his high price. Only once in our entire shopping time did we encounter a seller who wouldn’t do fair business with us in which both the seller and buyer end up with a happy deal.
Usually in the course of the negotiations, the seller will try to tell some sort of sad story about his family and the poverty they endure. Without a doubt, some of these stories are true. However, one must also remember the seller is a shop owner in the tourist town of Livingstone. Most of them have quite nice clothes and business is almost always booming. I’d suggest most of the curio shop owners are nearing middle class, at least by Zambia standards. These sad stories, though, usually affect many buyers encouraging the shopkeepers to elaborate upon the truth in order to rip off an unsuspecting customer.
Leah is an expert at the aforementioned negotiating and not falling for the sob stories in the shops. She helped me perfect our good cop/bad cop routine, and she seemed to always get the best deal possible. Perhaps my favorite story took place at the overly visited (and thus overly priced) curio at Victoria Falls. Both Leah and I were tired and sick of being heckled in the shops. I did spot one item I looked, though, and made the mistake of popping my head into a shop. Apparently desperate for a sale, the shopkeeper told me to name my price. I said $5, and, after some feeble attempts on his part to raise the price, he agreed to this low figure prompting laughter from his counterparts at neighboring shops. Probably for the first time in Zambia, we did not get ripped off!
Negotiating over prices is a fun part of African culture. Some of our friends even bargained over shot prices at the bar! I’m looking forward to coming back home to the land of price tags, too. Just don’t be surprised when I start negotiating over the cost of my next purchase at Wal-Mart!
Peace,
Zac
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