I was disgusted.
Our third day in Zimbabwe, we sat with new
colleagues, all American, and gabbed about our backgrounds and prior travels.
As the conversation strangely turned to a few loud men discussing their
bargaining techniques, I became less than impressed. These over-confident men bragged about their
skills lowering the dollars and cents they paid to people living farther below
the poverty line than they could ever get coming from a country like America. I
felt like I was listening to a conversation of Wall Street CEOs figuring out
how to scrape even more cream off the top.
What difference did an extra dollar or two make to them, while a dollar
could buy that vendor’s entire family dinner?
People back home ask me all the time how we shop and how we deal with "the bargaining thing." It's a hard question to answer, and I have certainly evolved. At first I approached the markets differently than
many of our new, well cultured, colleagues. Though Kurt and I were scraping by
with student loan debt and an unexpected mortgage payment that followed us to
Africa at the last second, concepts no market vendor could possibly understand, I just decided
that I would either pay what the vendor asked, or move on. No hemming and
hawing, no sly negotiation, no insulting their products. Just a yes or no. It seemed decent. And I was happy. And it
worked. The problem was, I usually never
bought anything.
After I’d been in Zim long enough, it became
clear. As my housekeeper and a number of
others have explained to me, there is a Shona price. There is a white person price. And if you open your mouth to let them hear
your accent, there is an American price.
“Americans are the most guilty, so that is why this works on them,” my
housekeeper Ziwone had laughed. Racial complications aside, she went on
to explain that it was insulting to someone when I did not bargain, but just
asked a price, said “okay,” and walked away.
“No one will accept a price that will make them go broke. Bargaining is in our culture. It is more rude to ask and walk away than to try to negotiate.” Meanwhile, I watched as I
came home with tomatoes twice the price of my neighbor’s, and one head of
cabbage when the housekeeper would have gotten two. And forget about souvenirs.
Two years later things are different. I’ve lived in a bargaining culture that has
slowly worn me down and subconsciously evolved my thinking while I have been
busy looking at chotchkies and curios. I
now have a method, which usually involves asking for the price of two other
things before I find out the price of what I really want. I know what things cost from the source, and
what the mark-up is. And I know how to unapologetically
ignore the pushy vendor that will not get out of my face. Somehow when I wasn’t
watching, I went from being the “guilty” American to being a savy shopper proud
of saving a dollar here or there. I
patted myself on the back for being thrifty while living on one income… And suddenly I realized it was
quite the same way I had done while living in the US.
I’ll admit it. When I lived in the States, I would occasionally
drive to Walmart or a different grocery store across town, all to save a dollar. Though I always preferred to support smaller
businesses and local (often more high-quality) products, there were times my wallet spoke louder than my
ideals. I was happy to find a
bargain. And it was how I made ends meet.
But recently our visiting guest, Kyle, unintentionally reminded me
about something very important that I had nearly entirely forgotten after
living in an African bargaining culture for two years. I watched as Kyle,
absolutely uninterested in buying a product, chatted with vendors about their
process and goods. I watched as he kindly
negotiated, and I remembered what it was like to be a soft skinned American wanting
to remember my privilege. And I remembered once again that a dollar does make a
huge difference to someone who has very few.
The bargaining thing is more personal; I
have to say no to someone’s face instead of to a numb Mega-Mart shelf. There is inherently more guilt
associated. But there is also more humanity. The Mega-Mart shelf is eternally more comfortable;
there is a price and you take it or leave it. But what we forget when we shop
like that is that there is still a little man or woman making the item. He/she’s
just a few more steps removed, so the potential guilt at knowing someone is
being paid pennies for their hour of work is farther away from our conscious thought. The Mega-Mart shelf may be an easier option,
but as Kyle so wonderfully reminded me, there is also something very powerful
about the human interactions and learning that come from the process of
bargaining face to face.
I’ll be honest. As with so many things, when it comes to the
bargaining thing I am still uncomfortably dancing around to find my footing on
a happy medium. It is easy to become desensitized
when you find yourself in a different geography and, over time, evolve for
better and worse away from your original values. Wanting to represent your family’s budget
smartly in contrast with wanting to give a small local vendor their fair share
can feel challenging… But the more I think about it, the challenge exists anywhere
I live… whether in America or Africa.
