Kristen here…
A little over a month ago I had the chance to go shopping in
Eldoret with some of my Kenyan girlfriends.
One of the other missionaries and I had decided that the dirty,
overcrowded, busy town of Eldoret probably had more to offer than what meets
the eye. Our Kenyan friends like to go
to “town,” as they call it, frequently to go shopping. As far as I could tell there were no great
shopping places in Eldoret and our girlfriends offered to take us along and
show us the ropes. I was pretty sure I
was going to see a side of Eldoret that I didn’t know existed and I was starving
for some girl time and a chance to get away from the hospital so I was all in!
We met in Eldoret and set off to do some shopping. I didn’t really have anything I needed, but I
was excited just to explore with some trusted friends and tour guides. Soon we turned off the main road and walked
down an alley that was lined with little shops selling all kinds of goods. This alley gave way to another and then
another. Soon we were winding ourselves
through the bowels of Eldoret that had previously been completely unexplored by
me. There were shops (little 5 feet by
10 feet alcoves in the walls) that sold anything from shoes to dresses, to
kitchen ware and hair products. You
could probably find literally ANYTHING if you were willing to look hard
enough. The walls are lined with goods
to sell from floor to ceiling, piles upon piles. Shop owners would stand outside their stores
and try to entice you to enter and see what they were selling. These are not places that “mzungu” or
foreigners frequent very often so you can imagine the attention we were drawing…including
several marriage proposals. Everything
is on the bargain system here too. Our
friends told us if we wanted to buy anything to tell them and they would do the
bargaining for us. Kenyans are able to
get a much better price than we are.
This actually made it even more fun.
I knew I wasn’t going to get ripped off and watching these three ladies
in action bargaining away in their own culture with the shop owners was hilarious. Those poor shop owners didn’t stand a chance!
As we wound our way through the stalls we stopped at various
places that our friends knew and seemed to particularly like. One thing that seemed to be sold in abundance
at the shops we were visiting was jeans.
Men can wear jeans anywhere and in the city it is also becoming more and
more acceptable for women to wear jeans as well. There were both used and new jeans for sale
in almost every store. We took a few
pairs down from the walls they were hanging on and looked them over. How in the world do you ever try these on to
know if they will fit? I looked around, definitely
no area to change in these small, closet like shops.
I turned to one of my Kenyan friends and asked her how she
knew the jeans would fit. This is where
the real lessons of the day began.
Apparently you have to place the jeans up to your waist to see if the
length is right. If that seem ok, then
you button the top button at the waist of the jeans and pull the waist of the
jeans around your neck. If the waist
just fits around your neck so that you can just touch the ends of the waist
together at the back of your neck the jeans fit. Who knew?
I didn’t buy any jeans that day (being so short nothing passed the first
part of the test for me), but I later went home and tried the “measure the
waist around your neck trick” with some jeans I had brought with me from home
and the trick seems to work. Now we just
need to test the theory. Try this with
some of your own jeans at home and let me know if it works for you too. I am really curious to find out.
Anyway, the day was a blast!
It was so fun to have that girl time. To wander, shop, talk and just
enjoy some time with friends was exactly what I needed. At one point when people were heckling us two
mzungu while we were shopping one of our Kenyan friends turned to us and said, “I
forget that we are not the same color and all of these people keep feeling the
need to remind us.” So interesting and
so great to be breaking those boundaries with a few close friends.
