Trade off

Florence stopped Camilla as she was about to chuck her old runners in the trash after two weat and dirty days in the Okavango delta. "Wait, you can trade them in Victoria Falls!" What? Trade our dirty old stuff for souvenirs?? Me like! So on Friday after a wet visit to the falls, we went through our luggage, got out everything that possible could be of interest to people in this run-down country and went to the market in high spirits.

As we walked out the entrance to the hostel we were met by four or five guys. They jumped up from their seated positions outside the hostel and came running towards us. "That's a nice sleeping bag!" "I like your pillow!" "Can I have a t-shirt for my sister!" Camilla ended up with a massive two-feet-giraffe and I am very excited to see if she gets it home in one peace. We had to be quite frank with the guys and tell them we were not interested as we would never have made it to the market otherwise and I only ended up swapping a discoloured t-shirt for three billion Zimbabwean dollars.

The market was no different story though. Stalls upon stalls with the same souvenirs, baskets, masks, wooden salad spoons, salad bowls and carved out figures of the Big 5, and hardly any tourists. Again was my sleeping bag (or Jim's sleeping bag - really) hot currency, and I didn't make it past the first stall with it. The little lady dragged it out of the bag, looked at it, felt the thickness of it before she smiled and gave me two wowen baskets for the sleeping back and US$ 2. Three minutes before she had demanded US$ 25 for one basket. And so we continued. Worn-out flipflops bought at PEP for R34 back in January suddenly became a little wooden bowl, three t-shirts and a few dollars became a tray, and Cristina's altered Abercrombie & Fitch jeans became her own souvenir present.

In the end I had enough bowls and stuff for a lifetime, so after repacking my bag yet another time I gathered some stuff in a small bag and went for a walk around the hostel. I saw the security guard swiping the floor and quietly went up to him. I felt bad even considering asking if he wanted my old junk, but went ahead anyway, and when it didn't take him a split second to accept and grab out for the bag, I realized it was probably the right thing to do.

Tsvangirai - you have a heck of a job to do with this country. Good luck.