A Bit of Disappointment or Refined Expectations

Well as many of you know I had dreams of hundreds of manuscripts to shoot once I arrived in Nairobi. My hopes were that dealers would be lining up to have us look through our manuscripts. These dreams were egged on during my first day here when the two dealers from the Masai market brought 5 manuscripts for us to shoot. Well yesterday we went to another Masai market on the other end of town (more on that later) and the first vendor I spoke to said "oh yes, I have Ethiopian manuscripts" and went into the back room to get them. Lo and behold he did have 4 manuscripts with him... however they looked vaguely familiar. They were the SAME STINKIN' MANUSCRIPTS!!! As it seems the Masai markets have one main supplier of manuscripts (Charles, the dealer we met the first day) and they just pass around the codices until they get sold... So this has really changed our approach. The days of stacks of manuscripts that we had been told about are apparently gone, the manuscripts have gotten too rare.
Now comes a necessary change of approach. When I return on Monday from safari I am going to start contacting curio shops and book dealers (if such a thing exist here, I'm not sure) and try and locate more manuscripts. I will also be going to speak with the Ethiopian Orthodox Churches here in Nairobi to see if they have any manuscripts and if they might be interested. Hopefully this work will turn up a few more manuscripts. If it doesn't, then we know the answer to the Nairobi pilot project question: what is the state of the market in Nairobi? And that answer will be that it has dried up. As you can imagine it was a bit of a disappointing day, but offered some clarity to the project.
Back to the market experience. First we rented a car and had one of the guys my age from the church drive us. The problems began with it being a manual... imagine driving through Seattle in a manual (hard enough) but with speed bumps the size of a baby blue whale and potholes deeper than a bathtub. We were on backroads, so there were no lane dividers... everyone was just driving wherever. Now some of you who have traveled may be thinking that I just am not used to traffic outside the states. Keep in mind that I have been in a bus flipping a U-turn on a freeway in Ukraine, ridden cross country in Romania, and travelled on the wrong side of the road in both Australia and New Zealand... this was scary than any of that! We actually got high centered on one of the before mentioned speed bumps and had to get out and push it off. All the while a huge truck was honking and trying to pass us on a one lane road. I got done and felt like I needed a whole box of Nicorette gum just to calm me down. While at the market we were the target of every barker in the place. There is no wandering around and looking, you (and by you I mean big white American that sticks out badly in a crowd) are being hollered at, hand shook, back slapped, asked where you are from. They would even say sejambo to you as you walked by. This is the equivalent of "Hello to you too" as if implying that you had started the conversation and needed to start and pay exorbitant prices. It was an exhausting experience. I don't mean to complain in this blog, sorry if it sounds that way, I just wanted to share what yesterday held. I know, I know... "shut up Jeremy, you are in freaking Africa!" ;)
All that being said I am heading on safari in an hour. It should be amazing and there will be pictures to follow. Take care and I will write again when I can.
~Jeremy