The Market

Maria suggested that we should get clothes made here – tailors are relatively cheap, and that way we could pick the fabric and dress pattern of our choice. The cloth is cut into 6 meter increments, is about 10,000 tanzanian shillings (around 7-8 USD) and it’s best to find a partner to share the fabric with = two dresses of the same fabric. Brennan and I headed to the market, a twenty-minute walk from the project house in Upanga. I half-expected to find a large mainly-empty warehouse, similar to some of the markets in Thailand, with individual stalls for vendors, and customers haggling their way down to 1/3 of the asking price.

Instead, it was a sensory overload – cars speeding through the dusty, bumpy roads at a moment’s notice, scattering walkers and loungers momentarily; shards of glass and plastic buried into the sometimes-dry-sometimes-wet ground; people unloading packages with their leathered hands; women and men carrying heaps of kg’s precariously on their heads. Brennan and I hopped from stall to stall, looking for a pattern we both liked.

In India, many market vendors are very aggressive, shouting “Madam, Madam,” after you in order to get you to purchase whatever trinket they might be selling. They will put on an offended face when you suggest a price they deem too low, but may very well end up accepting that price eventually, with a toothy grin.

It was harder to bargain here for some reason. Vendors shooed us away when our price was too low, saying it was a fixed price. Perhaps it was because we didn’t know Swahili, or maybe just because it was semi-fixed. But that seems to be the case for most things: they don’t haggle, they either like your price or they don’t.

We then went to the tailor, and gave her a dress to work with. When we got the dresses back, they were a little on the large side, but rather interesting (and followed the pattern to the T + used our measurements). Must note to mimic pattern exactly for future reference.