Mary and I make a humble apology to the people of Malawi. We have contributed to the forests of Malawi being destroyed with all the wooden carvings we bought!! Mind you, we also probably doubled the national economy too! Boy did we love all the carvings and came back with two suitcases full. Some of our favourites are the Noah's Arks filled with lovely wee creatures, or the Malawian calendars. These are 12 small elephants that stand in a row and depending on how you line them up, is the month of the year. We also came back with hippos, elephants, key chains and lots more.
We had one unfortunate dealings with an artist. We were wanting to buy about 130 small pieces to take back to the kids in school as they had been so good at supporting our fundraising. We met an artist in the market and made a deal that we would return in 5 days time to pick them up. He wanted a deposit but we refused. Unfortunately, when we returned, he hadn't finished and in fact, hadn't brought most of the pieces to the market. He asked for an extension and said he would follow us to our next location but alas, we walked away from the transaction. It is a shame because we would have been able to give him about 3-4 months salary with what we would have been buying. We found the pieces elsewhere, and probably at a better price so all ended well for us.
Matthew was very impressed with my bargaining technique in the markets. Ultimately you have to know that you are the buyer and to try and get the best price. There are plenty of artists around so you can just walk away. Matthew reckoned I got prices better than he would have.
One morning, when we were leaving CWO, there was a wood artist there. We were late for work so asked if he could come back. He did and laid out a lovely selection of stuff. Well 8 days later we were in another market (more wood, more wood, we want more wood!!), and I hear this person shout out 'Fiona'. One of those outer body experiences until Mary said, 'it's Peter, the wood guy from Balaka'. We were then able to say 'Peter, you got very good prices from us at CWO, we want the Malawi prices now' and those are what he gave us. A good laugh!!
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