The Local Furniture Store

When we started planning our move to Africa, one thing we looked at was the price of furniture vs. the price of importing OUR furniture.  It was no question - even if we were to stick to the big box stores with the mass produced furniture (cheap in the US, ridiculously overpriced here), we would spend less money buying everything new - and get it sooner!- than if we shipped our own items over.   The cherry on top of the whole equation is the chance to put money into the local economy.  We crunched the numbers and decided that other than an air shipment of necessities (cough - Splenda - cough), we would get what we needed here.

Today was D-Day for major furniture purchases.  We're getting ready to move into our forever-for-a-while home, and we need something to sleep on!  Early on, we decided to buy our furniture from local craftsmen if we could.  What they make is of very good quality, even though it seems somewhat strange to a person from the United States to buy furniture off the side of the road.  In fact, the table I bought today is better quality than the one we bought in the United States.

But I'm getting ahead of myself...

The main place I usually drive by that has roadside crafstmen is called Kalingalinga.

Okay, that isn't such an illustrative picture.  But you get the idea.  You don't see people hanging out the minibus windows just anywhere!

Kalingalinga borders two pretty good neighborhoods where expats live, so while things are definitely cheap compared to what we would pay for handmade items in the US, they are priced accordingly for location.

Malinga thought we should try a compound further out, so we drove to through Garden and Emmasdale until we reached someone he had heard of.  He didn't tell them we were coming ahead of time, so they were quite surprised to see us drive up.  Malinga told me that they don't get very many white people buying things out there.  He said that this way we would catch them off guard and get better prices.

Malinga knows all these tricks!

And one more aside before I continue on - I feel safer in a Zambian compound (which is like a township) than I do in many poor areas of the US.  We were told this is one of the safest places in Africa, and it is true.

So - we decided on this furniture store.  I mean, Manda Hill mall has a furniture store that is merely OK furniture.  This is Supa furniture!  SUPA!  Way better.

That is Malinga in the picture laughing with two of the managers.

And speaking of managers - have you ever seen the movie Coming to America?  Remember the barbershop?  Right, my favorite scenes take place in that barbershop.  "A man has the right to change his name to vatever he vants to change it to.  And if a man vants to be called Muhammed Ali,   gdamit this is a free country, you should respect his vishes and call the man Muhammed Ali!"

Okay, well this furniture store was filled with "managers" that sat around having those kinds of discussions in Nyanja.  Truly.  And as we were bargaining, they were all a part of the bargaining.  It was certainly an interesting experience.  And, dare I say it?  It was fun.  Probably because I don't have to do it every day.  But it was fun.

So, we went to look at what was available, since we have a time deadline and we have some critical items we need right away.  To get to the bunk beds, we had to walk through the skeletons of chairs they hadn't yet finished.

Here's another view (we walked through more than once, because they wanted me to demonstrate EXACTLY what colors, etc, we wanted).

Then we had to walk through some very precariously balanced stock to look at the table.

The table, by the way, is absolutely marvelous crafstmanship.  Truly.  World Market would do very well to visit Lusaka compounds for some of their furniture orders.

We ended up spending much less (about 1/4 of the cost) than we would have for the table alone at one of the box stores in the malls and got furniture of amazing quality that we will be very proud to have in our house forever.  

I love that idea, too, that we will always have Zambia with us - even when we go back to the United States.