The Market

On Thursday night we went to a favorite local restaurant called Joe's Beerhouse. It is known primarily for its game and its atmosphere. The inside of the restaurant did not disappoint, it had a pond with lots of wood features that sort of reminded me of an African version of the Rainforest Cafe. I was also brave and tried various  game meats. I split the "Bushman Sosatie," which included ostrich, crocodile, zebra, kudo, and chicken. My favorite was probably the crocodile. It was very light tasting, like fish but it was chewier. The ostrich, zebra, and kudo had the same texture as steak. I was surprised though because the ostrich was the toughest of the three.

The following day we left to go up north, just for an overnight trip. We stopped at a town called Okahandja, where the best markets. The markets were little shacks that were open on both sides with many different kinds of African handicrafts in them. The stalls went on for about a soccer field's length. I got off the bus with two shirts draped over my arms. One was a PLU yellow soccer jersey and the other was a warm-up top from the Santa Clara soccer team. I was hoping to be able to use them to barter. I had only ever witnessed bartering once and that was in Mexico, when I was in elementary school.

Therefore I was kind of nervous to barter, because 1) I felt like I was causing them to lose money and 2) I had no idea what was a reasonable price for their goods. I started just walking and the man in the first stall pointed at the black Santa Clara warm-up and said, "I like this one. I will trade you." I told him I was just looking for now, but every time I picked something up all of the store clerks would say "It's a nice one!" It was rather overwhelming looking at what all was in the market, even though they mostly sold the same things. The market had a lot of African animals carved out of wood, wooden and painted bowls, carved wood salad tongs, masks, and boutiques (like tapestries). It was rather overwhelming. I was not quite sure what I even wanted.

Our professor was a self-proclaimed pro at bartering. She asked how much a bowl was from one of the vendors. The vendor gave the price of $200 and Paula just rolled her eyes and said, "I'll give you fifty." After some himming and hamming the store clerk finally gave in and Paula was just like, "Does anybody want this bowl?" Rayna took her up on the offer.

At the next stall I asked Paula for her expertise, hoping that she could give me a price range of the items I was  thinking of buying. I asked her about giraffe bookends and  a wood wall hanging that has animals carved into it. Instead, she started bartering for me. I asked her about the boutique too. I picked out one that had giraffes on it and she was like, "no, you don't want that one." She ended up settling on a price of $275 plus the Santa Clara warm-up, for the three items. Paula said it was a steal. I was pretty happy with my purchases.

Katie and I were walking back and I still had the yellow PLU jersey draped over my arm. The store owners kept coming up to me and telling me that they would take it. One man said he would trade me an elephant for it and I fell for it and went into his stall. I didn't want the elephant, but I found a wooden hippo I liked. He took a tusk from a wood elephant and scratched his price of $200 on his wrist. I told him it was too much and I told him I would give him $50 plus the jersey. We ended up settling on $70, which I am not sure if that was a good price or not. I probably could have gotten lower, but the bus was about to leave. As I looked out the window of the bus, I saw that the man had immediately put the jersey on. So I ended up paying $345 Namibian dollars for four items, which is less than $50. I think I did pretty well.

We are going back to the market when we come back from Etosha, so now is the time to tell me if anybody wants anything.

We drove another of couple of hours until we got where we were staying, which was called Out of Africa. :) We had dinner at the lodge and listened to a presentation from an American named Betsy. She is originally from Virginia and a veterinarian. She came to Africa to try and help conserve the elephants and rhinos in Africa. Betsy has now been working in Namibia for this for twenty years. It was pretty interesting. She showed us slides and talked about how they try to educate farmers to understand that elephants are not threats.

I was also going to write about going to the Cheetah Conservation Fund, but this post is getting rather long so I think I will leave it until tomorrow. It will also give me time to go through the 200 some pictures of cheetahs that I took. Until then.