This past week has been spent getting ready
for our flight in on Wednesday.
Many of you will know that although Sarah
and I are similar in many ways, shopping is an area that we differ greatly!
Bear this in mind as you read the following…
Shopping trip number 1:
On Monday we went to Toi market. This is a
2nd hand clothes market quite close by in Nairobi. It is difficult
to describe, I tried to take a sneaky picture but it doesn’t really do it
justice.
The market it basically is rabbit warren of
stalls, with alley-ways only a few feet wide. The paths are rocky and muddy,
and it’s very easy to lose your sense of direction. The stalls varied from
immaculately arranged rows of lady’s jeans or men’s shirts, to stalls with a
mound of clothes piled 3 feet high. Some stalls had music blaring, all with
people saying “Karibu (Welcome), come and look.” A real mishmash of colours and
sounds. There must be literally a thousand stalls, with hundreds of tonnes of
clothes. I’ve never seen anything like it! You think Primark on Sauchiehall
street on a Saturday afternoon is crazy- that has nothing on Toi market!
I think Sarah was born to be in this place.
Able to spot an Urban Outfitters top at the bottom of a pile of clothes from
100 yards. Being able to negotiate 4
pretty patterned tops for 50p! She got skills! I on the other hand felt
somewhat out of my comfort zone… at least in a shopping centre there’s a coffee
shop for me to sit in for a while. My only consolation was getting a vintage
Spurs shirt for £3!
I have a funny feeling this may not be our
last visit to this place…
Shopping trip 2:
On Tuesday morning we found out that there
was not as much household stuff in Doro as we were expecting. So off we headed
to the local supermarket looking for things including: 4 picnic chairs,
buckets, basins, a water barrel, plastic drawers, electric fans, cooking pots,
crockery and cutlery, pillows, bed linen, and more. And this would be fine, but
when you have 30 different sizes of water barrel in front of you, which one do
you pick? And how do you get it all home??? So with a lot of guess work and
thankfully a delivery system we got round that one. We’ll let you know when we
realize that we’ve bought all the wrong stuff.
Shopping trip 3:
Possibly
the most stressful shopping trip of my life- The food shop! Imagine going to
Tesco but told you needed to buy all the food you would eat in the next 3
months. Then imagine that, but you’re not allowed any fresh fruit or veg, no
fresh meat, no liquids. Then imagine it where the only brands you recognize are
twice the price you’d pay at home, and you have no idea about the other brands.
2 full trolleys later, with a fair amount of prayer, and a huge amount of help
from Karissa one of our colleagues, we finally got it done! Again watch this
space as we crave for whatever we forgot to buy.
An interesting week to say the least.
Thankfully we can forget about the food shop for 3 months.
That’s all for now. Our next entry will be
from South Sudan! Thanks or the emails and prayers. Feel free to keep them
coming.
P
p.s. It’s the wee things that remind you of
home.
A Spurs shirt for £3???!! Fantastic!
ReplyDeleteSeriously though...your updates are great and we feel connected to what you guys are doing. Excited for you both as you step onto the plane on Wednesday...even though plans aren't concrete. TIA and all that!
We are praying.
Markets in the Gambia were exactly the same. And yeah, girls always seem to get the best deals. Can't take it personally Paul! Thanks for the update, we all really enjoy getting them! Mikey's still taking good care of the car, she's a bute. Prayers and thoughts!
ReplyDeletePete + Morgan
Sounds a lot like markets in Sri Lanka too. Su always got the best bargains (and the upper hand in bartering) there too.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the e-mail, info is on the noticeboard - our next meeting isn't until early Feb, but we are using the blog and information regularly.
Love and prayers
Su and Dave