Art Market

I was in Blantyre for the first time on Friday and I just got a quick tour of possibilities and places I might need to know where they are. For example bus station and Country Office and Post Office. The other absolute necessities were a shopping centre and art market. These are somewhat opposites.. or well absolute opposites. The first one is little Europe in Africa and the other one is so Africa that when you finally get out of there, you're exhausted. I mean seriously dead-tired, but owner of several items, which you really didnt know before that you needed. The art market is on one sidewalk in town centre and most often the guys sell their own handicrafts. Beautiful and colourful, specially the paintings, but also the rest. Whenever an azungu (white person) is nearby, they start fighting for your attention to THEIR production, everyone claiming that they haven't had any business today and that they need to feed the family and they won't charge you azungu price, but a Malawian price. Yeah, right. So when a price for a painting starts from 3000 kwacha, which they swear to God is Malawian price, it is possible to get it for 800 in the end. But that requires a lot of energy. They seem to enjoy it though. I think they would be rather dissapointed if you agreed with the first price given. The problem is that as I'm new here, I can't answer to a question like.. what is your highest price for this or that.. How should I know.... but i'm learning slowly but surely. So before realizing, I was a happy owner of this and that and to be honest, i don't really regret. I promissed myself I won't go there for some time now and I succeeded on Sunday. I was in town again and of course art market is opened, but i walked around it, but it didn't help as I was caught by salespeople in all other streets. Heeeelp. I think i will make a sign: I will not by anything today! Lets see if it helps.
Yesterday i was in town with my room-mate Pricsilla and it was geat, we got some work done and then we walked back from Lunzu to here, about 8 km. Up and down, up and down. Beautiful. We saw the extremely fast sunset as it was just in front of us and were talking about many things, bought a papaya and tried to respond or not respond to all the people greeting us and shouting azungu-azungu-azungu... Yeah, from kids it is ok to hear, but from adults I would expect a bit of a different behaviour.. After all, the school here in the bush has existed for 5 years, so 5 years of Azungus passing by the small villages alongthe road... But still, it was nice and the road is so much nicer when you walk than when you use a car. So I try to get back to my walking rhythm and discover more small places.