First portrait.
Nairobi has lots of perfect, high-end malls as well as tons of makeshift roadside markets. As we still haven’t gotten our shipment from home, I’m typing this on a small wooden desk custom-made for me at a market near our (mostly empty) house.
Julius is an artist who sets up shop along a busy road not far from the city center. I saw his carved elephant from the car and circled back after dropping off my wife at work. We settled on around half his original asking price.
I sometimes feel conflicted. I’m told that haggling is expected, and that as a white person my starting price is usually double or triple. On the other hand, people like Julius have to make their money somehow. Once I bought a beautiful handmade end table on the side of the road. The guy started at 6000 Kenyan shillings, about 42 bucks. That’s a particleboard end table price at IKEA. I was in the middle of reflexively trying to get him closer to 4000 when I just decided to give him 5000, around $35. It was a really nice table, solid wood and well done. Bargaining down 1000 shillings was respectable enough. I know I’m still paying well more than someone else, there’s no way around that. It’s not like I have a lot of money, but that $10 or whatever difference will carry a lot farther for him.
With Julius, he started at over $100 (he really went for it!), I wasn’t going to pay that. But I really liked the elephant, which is now guarding our front door. We were both happy in the end.
Cool guy, very down to earth and direct. We talked a while as he cleaned it up. Practically every Kenyan I’ve met, rich or poor, has been friendly and open if you are. There’s often a moment when things shift from transactional and proper to warm and authentic if you’re not setting off their colonizer meter.
I don’t usually work this way, posing people when I’m shooting for myself, but the light was tricky and I couldn’t sort out the composition. Still getting back in the swing of things.
I guess it’s like how my first round of landscapes helped me start to process this new place, engaging more with ordinary Kenyans is helping me understand and feel connected to the people. I just try to show I want to know about them, and usually they are pretty curious about me as well.