Shopping in Arusha

Habari zenu, (how is everyone)

This weekend we went back to Arusha for the second time to conquer the crafts market. We went with the two Canadian girls, counting on the advice of shopping experts. We arrived in Arusha at around noon, and walked immediately to Mt. Meru Crafts and Curios Market. The market consists of friendly shop sellers and others who are the spawn of Satan. The market consists of seven or eight rows of twenty or so huts on both sides. Walking down a row is like plunging into the depths of Satan's playground where ferocious demons grab and pry at your soul. Every time you walk two feet, another two set of hands grab you and the person says (in an almost desperate tone) "karibuni" and "look is free." Even though they say it is free to look, the second your eyes linger on an item for more than 2 seconds, they start to pick it up and ask if they can wrap it for you. Getting into the store is the easy part, but trying to leave without buying something is like trying to politely ask a lion not to eat you. Even if you did want to purchase something, an extreme amount of haggling is required in order to get a good price. When you ask how much something is, we learned to assume that the starting price that they gave was at least two or three times the price they would be willing to sell for. Andy was a God among men when it came to haggling. He figured out the ultimate strategy. Merely walk in, name a price and just threaten to leave until they cave. This strategy was effective because many of the shops had similar/identical items and each shop owner was desperate to sell something. For example, a bad ass mask that we bought for our door was originally listed as 75,000 shilling and we ended up paying 25,000. Between the constant apologizing for not entering someone's shop, promising to come back later, and non-stop bargaining, after two hours of shopping we were exhausted. After lunch, the girls decided, to our dismay, that they wanted to return to the market for a little more shopping. We were pretty much broke at this point and barely had enough money to get home. But alas, we shopped and haggled for another hour and managed to get a cool African chess set and table for about $35. We had a great time, but we are definitely done shopping for a couple of weeks.
We are leaving for our safari this Friday and are really excited. We are going to meet with the tour guide tomorrow to figure out what we should bring. That's it for now but we will have some cool pictures to show you when we get back from our safari next week.
Kwaheri,
Andy and Ryan