Culture: Bargaining

As we’ve recently been working on furnishing our house, buying paint supplies for Joye’s World Map mural, and garden supplies for our garden, making purchases has been an everyday part of life. However, unlike the United States where a vast economy organizes all of its items into specialized stores with competitive pricing, in Mali, you simply go to the market and bargain for the price you’re willing to pay—I know what you’re thinking, this is my mom’s dream.

However, bargaining in Mali isn’t as easy as it sounds. Firstly, bargaining is done in Bambara. And yes, while a nice decently paced conversation was easy enough to keep up with considering our language skills, bargaining is not usually a nice patient conversation.

But here’s where it gets interesting… the Malian unit of currency is the West African CFA (pronounced safe-uh). Though there is probably some bartering that goes on between friends and neighbors, almost all purchases are done using coins. The problem is that the majority of  Malians are illiterate and can not read the numbers on the coins. Instead, they just memorized what the coins look like. Now, the lowest unit is a 5 CFA coin. So Malians say the Bambara word for 1 (one) when they see this coin. Therefore, instead of saying the word for 20 CFA, they say 4, as in 4 units of 5.  This means whenever someone tells you a price, you not only have to understand what they’re saying in Bambara but you also have to multiply it by 5 to get the real price! Confused yet?

Example: in market, I ask a vendor “How much is that plastic bucket?” He replies “Eighty.” In my head, I think, “80 x 5 = 400, ok 400 cfa.” Im only willing to pay 300 CFA. “Take 2o off of your price and I’ll buy it",” I say, which means I want him to take 100 CFA off. 

The final difficulty with bargaining is what we call “the Tubab factor.” (Note: Tubab is the Malian name for a white person). To most Malians, the fact that we have white skin is synonymous with wearing a billboard that says “I’m rich and want to give you all my money.” Therefore, unless people know you, you can expect for vendors to tell you that the price is between 2-5 times the amount that they would charge another Malian.  For example, when bargaining for a traditional Malian outfit, we got frustrated with a vendor who vehemently insisted that his final price was a great deal at 12,000 CFA, (down from the original 15,000 CFA after we bargained for 15 minutes) and it took us walking out of the shop saying “Im sorry, we really only wanted to spend 6,000 CFA today” before he leaned in and mumbled, “ok, fine. 6,000? you can have it." Thus, having the language skills to bargain effectively (along with a little stubbornness) is the only sure way to make sure you aren’t getting completely ripped off.

You can probably imagine how mentally exhausting this was for us at the beginning of our stay here. Who knew how well my multiplication/division skills were going to strengthen by doing the Peace Corps :) We used to try to get in and out of market as fast as possible because it was so difficult to deal with language, the pushy vendors, and the math. However, now that we’ve figured it out, market day in Kongodugu is our favorite day of the week. We wander from stall to stall, greeting our favorite vendors, gathering fruits and veggies for the week, and bargaining on a few meters of cloth or a cooking pot. Its been encouraging to see how much we’ve improved over a few months and its always rewarding to see that surprised smile creep onto vendors’ faces when they realize “Here are 2 Tubabs who know how to bargain.”