by Helen
First day in Kenya was quite eventful. On Monday we started out the day by moving rooms that have windows facing the garden rather than the road. So from Monday and on, I get to hear birds rather than car crashes. Definitely a nice change. We then proceeded to go to a very nice mall so we could get cell phones, ATM access and do other housekeeping stuff in preparation of the rest of the group arriving later that night. I was a little confused at the beginning because it was a very nice mall that made me feel like I was in the Middle East or even Europe. There were some interesting moments though – for example, there was a huge fake elephant in front of one of the stores but it had an armed security guard in front of it. We asked if we could take pictures, but he said no. He also didn’t smile. As a classmate on the trip exclaimed , “What a waste of an elephant!” We agreed that we should offer marketing services to the store manager so he could better utilize his resources for marketing his company. Then we went outside and saw that there were kids jumping on this huge trampoline and I took a picture of that, which apparently was also a security risk. Who knew! We also weren’t allowed to join in the fun because we were too “adult.”
Later that day, we went to the market. This was one of the most overwhelming experiences I’ve had in a long time. The aggressiveness of the people trying to sell me anything I wanted and didn’t want was amazing. The most interesting thing to me was that the vendors were willing to give you free stuff in order to entice you to buy. I totally fell for that one, however, the deal I made on the gift that I bought was so good that he vendor tried to take the free necklace away from me because she realized that she gave me something valuable. I realized that too though and we settled on a fair price of 300 shillings – my tour guide tells me it was worth about 1500 shillings. (Conversion rate is $1= 75 shillings). Through lots of enticing and yelling “hey sister” and bargaining on a piece of newspaper, I was thoroughly exhausted and overwhelmed. At some point, one vendor tricked me into giving him my hair scrunchy as an exchange for anything I wanted of his offerings, but as it turned out, this was just a ploy to start talking to me and getting me to buy stuff. The hardest part about all of this was my inability to walk through the market and look at the goods and even further, total inability to be left alone even if I wasn’t looking at anything. I constantly got followed, my hand got grabbed, the vendors would come up and say “remember me?”, etc. I was glad that I got out of there spending approximately $40. I thought it could have been much worse.
Later that night we relaxed over a couple of Tuskers and ate at the hotel restaurant where I could hardly keep my eyes open. I went to bed at 8:30pm and slept through until 5am.
Next Entry – company visits to Kenya Airways and Unilever, as well as my rant on pricing by Unilever.
First day in Kenya was quite eventful. On Monday we started out the day by moving rooms that have windows facing the garden rather than the road. So from Monday and on, I get to hear birds rather than car crashes. Definitely a nice change. We then proceeded to go to a very nice mall so we could get cell phones, ATM access and do other housekeeping stuff in preparation of the rest of the group arriving later that night. I was a little confused at the beginning because it was a very nice mall that made me feel like I was in the Middle East or even Europe. There were some interesting moments though – for example, there was a huge fake elephant in front of one of the stores but it had an armed security guard in front of it. We asked if we could take pictures, but he said no. He also didn’t smile. As a classmate on the trip exclaimed , “What a waste of an elephant!” We agreed that we should offer marketing services to the store manager so he could better utilize his resources for marketing his company. Then we went outside and saw that there were kids jumping on this huge trampoline and I took a picture of that, which apparently was also a security risk. Who knew! We also weren’t allowed to join in the fun because we were too “adult.”
Later that day, we went to the market. This was one of the most overwhelming experiences I’ve had in a long time. The aggressiveness of the people trying to sell me anything I wanted and didn’t want was amazing. The most interesting thing to me was that the vendors were willing to give you free stuff in order to entice you to buy. I totally fell for that one, however, the deal I made on the gift that I bought was so good that he vendor tried to take the free necklace away from me because she realized that she gave me something valuable. I realized that too though and we settled on a fair price of 300 shillings – my tour guide tells me it was worth about 1500 shillings. (Conversion rate is $1= 75 shillings). Through lots of enticing and yelling “hey sister” and bargaining on a piece of newspaper, I was thoroughly exhausted and overwhelmed. At some point, one vendor tricked me into giving him my hair scrunchy as an exchange for anything I wanted of his offerings, but as it turned out, this was just a ploy to start talking to me and getting me to buy stuff. The hardest part about all of this was my inability to walk through the market and look at the goods and even further, total inability to be left alone even if I wasn’t looking at anything. I constantly got followed, my hand got grabbed, the vendors would come up and say “remember me?”, etc. I was glad that I got out of there spending approximately $40. I thought it could have been much worse.
Later that night we relaxed over a couple of Tuskers and ate at the hotel restaurant where I could hardly keep my eyes open. I went to bed at 8:30pm and slept through until 5am.
Next Entry – company visits to Kenya Airways and Unilever, as well as my rant on pricing by Unilever.
sounds a bit like the experience i've been having with my mba tour in india. looking forward to future posts :)
Posted by: Paragon2Pieces | March 17, 2010 at 00:51
seems you had a very busy day. :) That is also what i heard of Kenya. They are very strict there. Btw, is Kenya a 3rd World Country?
Posted by: renaissance costume | March 18, 2010 at 10:02