Clothes Market

I just got back from Nairobi and I've decided that my favorite market in the world is in Nairobi. (my favorite city for shopping in general is Cairo, but for the market category I've got to go with Nairboi) It's this used clothes market and I love it. You can find anything you want for cheap!

I guess I've been talking up this market a little much b/c my friends here in the Sandbox are trying to figure out how they can manage to stretch a 2 hour layover to get to the market and back when the market is about an hour from the airport if there's no traffic. What I guess I didn't tell them is that it's pretty much a huge garage sale. Lots of tables and people in the this big field, no order to anything, just a big giant mess where you dig through searching for good finds.

However this garage sale is a little different than the American ones. This one consists of all the brand new clothes that companies like GAP, Old Navy and H&M, donate to all the 'poor people in Africa' for a tax writeoff...Well, either the all poor people decided that they didn't need new clothes or somehow this process has been grossly mismanaged because it all ends up for sale at the Toy Market...sort of like the mosquito nets and food supplies that the UN gives out in war zones...hmm.

Sidenote, I love going up to sellers in the market in the sandbox and joking that they give me, for free, the food supplies that WFP donates to the refugees here for free. I tell them that my country gave the money to buy that food in the first place, I point out where it says 'not for resale' and really make 'em feel bad. Then when they are actually going to give it to me, I tell them I don't want it and they should give it to someone poor, then walk away...I do all of this jokingly but they believe it. I mean, I gotta practice my Arabic somehow!!!

But I was pleasantly surprised by the market last week. They have really stepped it up a little. Each of the little tables has somehow constructed a tarp above it to keep the clothes dry when it rains AND they have managed to put rocks in between the tables so you don't have to trek through the mud, now you just have to twist your ankles a million times b/c the rocks are incredibly uneven.

I actually bought pretty much an entire new wardrobe there last week. Brand new Gap pants for $4, some Old Navy jeans for $7, a lot of cute shirts for no more than $3 each, it was great. I love shopping when things are so cheap that I can just buy everything that I see that I want and not have to worry about how much it will be, etc.

Then it's Africa, so every price is negotiable. The sellers would start out at $10 for the pants and I would say 'you give me this for free'. They would go down a little and I'd go up a little, they'd go down and I'd go back to 'you give me for free' until we met somewhere around $4. At one point I sat on top of this guys jeans table on top of his huges tack of jeans for about 30 minutes just chatting and negotiating off and on until we agreed. At one point I actually told him 'look, you are a rich man. You have too many pants, maybe 500. Every morning you come here and you take your pick. Me, I am poor. I have only 2 jeans. You give me for a good price and I will tell my friends about you.'

So I'm living up to my word...not only did I bring back some of my friends later in the week but now all of y'all know about the guy with all the jeans.