June 13th, 2012 
Emily 
Our apartment in Nairobi is steps away from a mall, and we’ve been shopping frequently, mostly because we keep realizing that we forgot something on our last shopping trip. I get a kick out of going to the mall because it’s both so similar and so different from malls in the U.S.
Here are the quirky similarities:
- The mall is a hideously ugly, bunker-esque building, which is surrounded by a chaotic parking lot.
- There is a food court with Italian, Chinese, and Indian food.
- There is a chain coffee shop, featuring your usual assortment of people camped out with oversized coffees and laptops.
- There is a natural food store, where one can buy such staples as Tom’s of Maine toothpaste (what!) and organic whole wheat pasta.
Here are the quirky differences:
- A security guard scans your body with a metal detector wand whenever you enter the mall. Even when the metal detector beeps in angry alert, the guard waves you into the mall.
The security system outside the mall.
- The butcher, the green grocer (fruits and veggies) and the regular grocery store are three different stores
- At the grocery store, refrigerated milk comes in two strengths: whole milk and whole plus milk (that’s right, it’s whole milk with extra fat added to it!)
- The escalators only go up. You have to take the stairs to get down.
- There are no pushy sales people crowing at you from those stalls that populate the middle of the hallway in most malls. (I’m talking about those stalls that are always selling hair extensions, remote-controlled helicopters, or pillow pets.) Our mall here doesn’t have them! (And thank goodness for that, if one more person tries to sell me overpriced hand lotion while I avoid eye contact and shimmy along the very edge of the mall hallway, I will go insane.) Instead of those stalls, this mall has folding card tables where people sell cheap African handicrafts. Or eyeglasses. And they don’t harass you.
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I love hearing about these similarities and differences! I would’ve expected the vendors in Africa to be more pushy then the ones in the US. I must say the security issue would frighten me.
The security makes me nervous here too, I’m actually writing a post about it for Friday.
And I hear the vendors at the markets are pushier, we will have to find out!
I love these details. I went to a mall in Galway, Ireland once–not nearly as different as American malls, but still different enough. You can get such a different glimpse of a culture through its ordinary facilities. But the security issue seems weird.
Yeah, the security is a little bit too perfunctory for my taste. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the security guards stop someone from going in… and I watch a lot because a. my windows face the mall and b. we have multiple pairs of binoculars. Just kidding. The binoculars are really for viewing animals while on safari.
I love reading about your adventures! When you move to a new place, I am always like, WOW…there she goes again!! Enjoy!
Thanks Hilary, and thanks for reading! I hope you are doing well!
I am doing great! Almost finished with Grad school!! Yay!
Hurray, congrats!
I love this stuff. Great post. I’d love more like it!
Thanks for the feedback Linda! I am always wondering what posts people like to read and want more of and what type they aren’t interested in. I’m thinking of making a survey, but the internet here is so bad that I’m not sure I’ll be able to make it (from a technical perspective).