My First Market Experience

Recently I had my first market experience in Dakar. I did not intend to visit, let alone buy anything from, any one of the city's markets so early in my stay here with my French still being quite wobbly, but fate?our President?a very pushy Senegalese merchant? had other ideas. It all started out very innocently with a much enjoyed pizza at a restaurant. We paid the bill, walked outside, and there on the other side of the street was our President staring at me. Well, a painting of him, that is. Amongst dozens of paintings of various African scenes lining the sidewalk was a portrait of President Obama with a bold background of the stars and stripes. I thought it was a good scene to capture with my camera. Maybe it was a good scene, but as far as ideas go, it probably ranks somewhere between "Of course the ice will hold" and "There's no way they enforce that NO U-turn sign" in the pantheon of Brad Hoff decisions. No sooner had I taken the photo than the seller came running over to me demanding in French, "Why do you take a picture but not buy something from me!?!" Instantly regretting my decision, I apologized and offered to delete the photo. No, no, it's fine - but why don't you take a look at my paintings? That's when I made my second mistake - I let my guilt overtake my better judgment. So I looked at some of his stuff, and actually found something I liked, a couple of people dancing. At least I think I liked it. It may just have been my guilty conscience or a paranoia that all the vendors were going to gang up on the nervy American with the broken French and beat him over the head with his own President. Whatever the case, at a certain point I decided I would buy this painting. Ah - but I was not a naive tourist right off the plane with a wallet-full of cash, I had been prepped. You must negotiate at the marché, you must haggle to get a good price. I had been told that whatever they offer, cut it in half. I was prepared to do so. I asked him how much and he told me for a good friend such as I, for a nice guy like me, he could offer it to me for 45,000 francs. $90. Ha! The painting was about 12"x18" and I liked it, but there was no way I was dishing out that kind of dough. Even with my strategy of cutting it in half, $45 was too much. At this point, Nicholas stepped in and tried to offer me advice. The merchant did not appreciate this. He and Nicholas began talking very quickly and forcefully to one another in French and I don't know exactly what they said, but I did catch the words "war" (clearly he did not understand that Nicholas is Swiss), "homicide", and "shallow grave" from the merchant. OK, I made the last two up, but he did keep talking about a "guerre" which made me wish I had left my stupid camera at home. Fortunately, I knew I only had 15,000 francs on me. So, I said I'm sorry, it's a beautiful painting, but I don't think I can afford it. That's when I made my third and fourth mistakes: I told him I had 15,000 francs, which was a mistake because now he was going to accept nothing less. And my fourth mistake was to tell him I had 15,000 francs because I only had 13,000. Of course, I only realized this after we had shook on the price and his assistant began packaging my painting. Remembering his frequent reference to armed conflict, I seriously considered taking off running and not stopping until I reached the US Embassy, but realized I had no idea where the Embassy is...and that I was in AFRICA, home to the last 87 Boston Marathon winners. Out of options, I sheepishly looked over to Nicholas who graciously covered the difference.

So I walked away embarrassed that I had to have my friend cover for me, but feeling fairly confident that I had gotten a decent deal. I cut the merchant's original price in 1/3 and I thought $30 was reasonable for a nice painting. Nicholas, however, was not impressed. He didn't mind covering for me, he just thought I got ripped off. "But I knocked his price down 30k - I did well!" No, he said. You probably could have gotten that for 6000 franc. I could hardly believe that the merchant would accept such a low price after init

ially asking for 45,000, but I then thought that he could have asked for anything right off the bat. And he's a pro - I'm sure he recognized my guilt and played on it to make the sale.

Oh well, I may not have gotten a great deal, but I did sidestep an international conflict, something for which our President would be proud.