Dreaming of ... Meijer?!

Jan 10, 2010
What are the prices for these items? Well, it depends on how many you buy. And it depends on whether I’m giving you the real price, the mzungu price, the “morning price” (a deal) since it’s the first sale of the day, or the morning price (higher than normal) because you made me start selling before I really wanted to be awake. In many ways, the idea of bartering seems like a good idea. Until, of course, you get to the point that you just “want to get what you need” or “want to compare prices,” at which point there is no such thing.

A few recent examples involve transportation, but the same could be used for woodcarvings, flour, a bucket, or fabric for a dress.

Prices are not set in Tanzania. Rather, everything is based on … well, I’m not sure what it’s based on. Somehow we’ve come to realize what “fair prices” are and what are not fair, but it seems often to depend on the person, the time, the color of your skin, and your ability to banter without tiring out.

We often take bajajis to get to small groups, get groceries, or anything else in daily life. We know the prices from our house to places all around town, but sometimes the drivers don’t agree. Any of the following factors tend to sway the driver’s prices, which he may or may not give in to be fair. 1. The fact that I’m a mzungu (white skin person) automatically doubles or triples the price of any item or service I might need. I might be a tourist and not know the real price, or I might have lots of money and give them a large portion of it because I’m white. Or, I might just be assumed to have lots of money, and I’m the one not being fair if I don’t pay triple what everyone else pays for the same ride.

Case in point: We often go through 3-4 bajajis before we’ll find someone who will give us the “real” price for a ride. Recently, when my brother was still here, we were trying to get to a shop down the street a ways. I knew the price should be 1500Tsh at most. The starting price from the drivers when we asked them was always 6000 or 5000 Tanzanian Shillings (Tsh) every time. A group of them adamantly agreed that 5000Tsh was the appropriate price, and we walked away. After crossing the crazy-busy streets several more times trying to get a bus or a bajaji, we caught another guys attention. He offered the “great” price of 3000Tsh for the ride we requested. Now, it seems that 1500Tsh extra should not be a big deal. And for convenience, I’m often tempted to pay it. But the fact is that they are ripping us off because of the color of our skin, and it’s not fair. If we pay twice as much as what is fair once or twice, then we’ll be paying three or four times as much the next time… and will raise the overall price for the Africans around us as well. Supply and demand… if we can pay enough in one ride to cover the day’s expenses, why cater to the locals? So as the guy insisted 3000Tsh was the proper price, and as I insisted on 1000Tsh (never tell them what you really want, always go lower for bargaining power!), I got frustrated. I was speaking broken Swahili, which sometimes gets us points towards a lower price (or so they say!!). But it was our fifth driver we’d talked to, and I just wanted to GO!!! So, using the idea I’d gotten from several other bargains I’d made before, I looked the driver in the eye (not exactly a proper thing to do as a female, whoops!) and asked, “If I were African, what would the price be?” The man could barely hold back his laughter as he grinned sheepishly and said, “I’m giving you the real price.” I asked again, “I live right over there. I know what the price should be. If I were not a mzungu, if I were African, how much would it cost to get there?” He maintained the price was real and wouldn’t budge.

We walked away, caught an extremely crowded (barely room for standing only- hold on tight!) bus for 250Tsh each, and ended up tired but almost-satisfied at our location 30 minutes later.

Later that day, I split off from my brother and his fiancé to go home a bit early. I bargained for a taxi, got the initial offer of 30000Tsh, and brought him down to 8000Tsh without much of a fight. Usually I’d pay 10000Tsh, but I wasn’t going to complain! As we drove down the roads, I contemplated asking the driver why they always start so high, and if they really expect people to pay the ridiculous prices they ask. Not knowing if he spoke English, though, I mulled it over to myself instead. I soon got my answer when the man swore I had told him a different place (there are three ‘Big Baobab Trees” around the city and you have to specify which one, which I did… very clearly). I sighed as I thought, “here we go again!” The driver grunted, groaned, hissed and moaned that 8000 was unheard of for that distance and that it would be at least 25000Tsh instead. (I thought he’d gone down too easily…) I reminded him of our earlier conversation and said I would not pay more than 10000Tsh (which is what I’d paid earlier in the day with three people going the opposite way). He moaned and spit a bit more and I asked him what he wanted me to do since I wouldn’t pay that much… get out, perhaps? He pulled over, I got out without paying (he didn’t ask, and I didn’t offer), and he turned his car around to head back to his “home base” where he hoped to find better business. I, on the other hand, walked for a while till I flagged down a bajaji. Turns out there was a Turkish embassy guy inside, which I didn’t realize at first. The bajaji driver had told the Turk that we were friends and that’s why he was stopping (in fact, we’d never met, but he wanted more mzungu business). I negotiated but, being tired, gave in to paying 10000Tsh for half the distance I had paid 10 for that morning. I got home, he got his extra few bucks, and I once again laid down on my bed to take an exhausted 4 hour afternoon nap.

Thus is the reason we choose one thing a day to do, and only on Saturdays. Life here, especially getting from place to place, is just too frustrating and exhausting to do much more than that!

Sometimes, I just miss having set prices. Buying crafts at the market can look like: bargaining at one shop, having them get mad as you walk out the door, bargaining for a similar item you don’t like as much at the next shop, then buying something else you didn’t really want simply because they threw it in for a lower price. After three weeks of vacationing in Tanzania, my brother said that he “can’t wait to go to Walmart, where there are price tags on every item.” Now, we all know that if he lived in MI, he would be dreaming about Meijer instead! But in a way, it’s good to know that I’m not the only one whose getting frustrated with the bartering system here in the Land of Tanz!