The art of the haggle

Sunday afternoon, we headed to the market.  A beautiful colorful outdoor market, full of craftsmen and women and persistant sales people!  The market was located in the parking lot of a mall - worlds collide!  The mall had a Subway Sandwich shop (of course), as well as a supermarket, Spars (btw - they have ShopRite here, not the same logo, but ShopRite none-the-less).  

So let's talk about the haggle - we hear that you must haggle.  Take what they say is the price and halve it, then they will make an offer and you come back with another....mind you this discussion is in Kwacha.  As you walked by a stall, a person would come out and introduce themselves "hello, my name is Bob and I am an artist, come and look at my beautiful things."  Linda went in to haggle for a table cloth and was so bad at it, the woman actually asked her if she was "trying to bargain."  She ended up doing the bargaining for Linda (and she was the salesperson), gave her a kiss and sent her on her way!

There was just way too much math for me, first I had to figure out what the price was in dollars, then go back to kwacha and divide in half and convert again...all over my head.  I tried one bargain and ended up panicking and left.  The sales guy came over to us at lunch trying to sell us the item again - he knew we were close and thought he would circle in for the kill.  We were too involved in doing the math and splitting the bill for lunch and determining the tip to get re-involved with him.  (Ed you will be happy to know I did spend some money).

We had a nice lunch out on the patio of a cafe (I had grilled cheese - a staple for me and a Coke Lite- "when in Africa".....our hosts had hamburgers and fries).