I made my way to the Kigali Global Trade Expo 2011, which is where Kigalians go to spend way to much money on stuff from China. And Syria. President Bashir Al-Assad was staring down at me from a very large number of stalls that sold special Syrian herbal remedies for urinary tract infection and a slowed-down love life. There were some stalls that sold Iranian silver. The Rwandan stalls mostly sold stuff from Asia at twice what you would pay in New York. There was some Rwandan art stalls. Some stalls sold Masai crafts and Tanzanian trinkets.
If they can afford it, many people within Rwanda seem to be just as interested in buying Masai crafts as western tourists. When local salaries in Rwanda mean bus rides to Kenya are few and far between or non-existent, giddy and sometimes romantic excitement over rural African tribes can be just as poignant as the giddy excitement of western safari-goers. Maybe it has nothing to do with the price of a bus ride to Kenya. It could be that the Masai trend reached Rwanda via Europe, the same way the Palestinian (Jordanian?) Kafia reached Israel via Europe. I'll ask around.
I wandered the stalls with the daughter of a staff member at ASYV. As she was negotiating a price for a nice wall hanging with biblical quotes on how to live a deep, meaningful life. I was negotiating the price for a sparkly gold clutch. Which I paid $10 before realizing they cost $5 on every New York City street corner. $10 for this purse was considered insanely cheap for Rwanda, where ready-made anything is really expensive.
I walked past the Rwandan baskets and traditionally woven purses, that cost half the price, guiltily realizing I just really wanted a pretty gold clutch because I miss places with lots of pretty gold clutches on every street corner. When I return to lands of lots of pretty cheap Chinese clutches I will really want a Rwandan basket or traditionally woven purse. This is the problem with being for extended periods of time in places with decent traditional art: you don't appreciate it and end up buying stuff from Asia. Which is fine when you are in Asia.
I learned that getting dresses that are already made can cost three times the price of tailored dresses. Ready-made new dresses are a luxury for the super-chic, while tailored clothes is more, well, homely. Nicer than second-hand clothes, but nothing to write home about. Though I am. This funny reversal of fashion industry roles is due largely to the higher import taxes and transport costs on ready-to-wear imports from Kenya, Tanzania, and Dubai.
The food section of the expo was limited to sugary watery "ice cream" and very swanky mini-sandwiches that nobody could afford. In other words, there was no food section, really. Grownups buy ice cream and in a very big city Kigaliness they don't finish their ice cream. In Rwanda, outside of Kigali, I have never seen an adult who personally paid for their food not finish their food. It's very chic, isn't it? Not finishing your food? I remember looking at old oil painting from Victorian England at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, where aristocratic families of past showed left-over food in their still lives to show the world they could afford to not finish their food. In Paris they do that all the time. And in all the developing world. It's a sign of development and food security. Because nobody really needs to finish ice cream. At the expo, the two Rwandans I was with gave their leftover ice cream to kids passing by. It was a very fast hand-off, really. Not a cute display of affection for children who want ice-cream, just a hand-with-ice-cream held out until a kid grabbed it, as he was expected to.
I still can't get over how much people were willing to pay for plastic rings.
Though everyone was laughing at the Syrian herbal remedies.
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