The first morning we were in Bamako we were going to go in town with a friend who has a truck. The friend was going to show us some shops that sell fridges so that we could do some comparison shopping. As often is the case here, things were running late. I was ready to go pretty early, but it was after 10 by the time we climbed into the truck. But it wouldn’t start. I sat there for awhile and the guys tried different things to make it start, but it still wouldn’t start. They decided to call a mechanic, and we should think about preparing some lunch in the mean time. The truck did get fixed in the afternoon, but a lot of shops close early, so it was decided to wait until the next day to go shopping. I felt a bit frustrated by this “wasted day”, but I tried to stay calm about it. That night we got a phone call from someone to tell us that they just learned about a used stove for sale. If we had gone shopping we would have already spent about $500 to buy a new stove. Because of the inconvenience of the truck not starting we were able to buy a used stove for $120.
So we bought the stove and then went to several shops to find a fridge. The fridge we had already picked out last May still seemed the best, so we went to that shop to look at that one again. Last May it was marked at $750. Now it was marked to $700. And then JP used his bargaining skills (this is expected here) and got it way down to $600.
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