To the AFRICAN Market

March 5th - Ever since we got here, everybody has been telling us about the African Market, a place where the locals sell their curios and such. So this morning we set out for a place called Hartbeesport. Hartbeesport is a vacation area that reminded me of The Lake of the Ozarks.  It is a large lake with beautiful homes surrounding it. Just before you get to the lake there are two shopping centers that they call the AFRICAN Market.

The first shop was quite small in comparison to the second one. In the second one (the place to shop) there were hundreds of merchants each with their 10 x 10 stall, selling curios of every kind.  The merchants were like Jerusalem, they were all over you wanting you to come into their space and take a look at  their goods. They would call us Elder & Sister because of our missionary name tags but you could tell that they had done this before.  There had to be hundreds of little separate shops throughout this place all having about the same items so you had to really look around to find the exact item you wanted.

You could go crazy buying things, but we have 18 months to look so we were not in a big hurry to start gathering curios by the lot.  We wanted a couple of things for our flat so we shopped around and found a few things and of course Jenee wanted to get something for the kids. Still, we limited ourselves this time around because we knew that before we go home we will visit this place many many times.

Of course the system is to negotiate down their prices since that are high to begin with.  Many of the Missionaries are uncomfortable or afraid to barter so I became the negotiator on most of the items purchased. Elder Smith said you could get 20 may 30 % off if you talked real hard.  WELL! that wasn't going to cut it for me so I went at it and in almost every case I got them down 50% or more on most of the items.  Jenee found some African decorated leather head bands for the granddaughters. The vendor was asking R85 or $12 each which would of totaled R1450 or about $195. After several minutes of bargaining and negotiating I ended up getting all eight for R250 or $33 about 80% off.

I helped several other missionaries negotiate on their items so all in all everybody saved.

                                           INSIDE THE "JUST AFRICA" SHOP

                                                        OUTSIDE THE SHOP

                         OUTSIDE "THE CHAMELEON MARKET" (150 MINI STALLS)

          We then went to the Jasmine Restaurant and market for lunch and a little grocery shopping
                                before returning home. This was located in the Big Windmill.