Saturday morning shopping

It's 7:30am on a Saturday and I am standing in a fat, globular line for the gates to open at 8:00. The folks at the front arrived between 6:00 and 6:30, before the sun was even thinking about coming up. Most of the locals are standing in the chill wrapped in blankets and towels, holding space for their friends who arrive late. No one here pretends to be apologetic about pushing their way through, they just do it.

The cold air smells strongly of manure and faintly of blood. I can't take a deep inhalation through my nose not because of the smell, but because of my allergies. My sinuses are blocked because of the dander and animal hair floating in the air and I regret not bringing coffee. Drinks can wait, I reason. I am here to experience one of Windhoek's most anticipated sales of the year: the Nakara Leather Factory Sale. 

Nakara only holds their sale once a year and only at their factory site. They hardly advertise. Or if they do, they stick with the German and Afrikaans newspapers. Plus their website had been down for about a month prior, so you really had to pay attention to the rumors for the official sale date. I found out about the date when I was talking to heavily lip-stained individuals at a wine extravaganza the night before, an event that had advertisements on every light pole in town. 

The clock ticked closer and the crowed squished tighter, pushing toward the gate that I hoped would  open inward. I worried this leather sale might resemble a Black Friday or a wedding dress sale in the States and regretted wearing my slip on clogs. If I went down, would anyone notice? And what about the children who dotted the crowd as well? I could feel my chest get tighter as the employees on the other side rattled the chain, unlocking the gate.

Once that gate was cracked, it was all over. About fifty people sprinted forward with blanket tails flying behind them. They'd played this game before, dodging the wide eyed newbies and sliding past the little ones. I had no idea what I was looking at or where I was going, so I let the crowd carry me around the sharp left hand turn. Down a long outdoor corridor were neatly stacked waist high mounds of skins: springbok, kudu, cow, zebra. Shoppers had already started making discard piles, scrutinizing one layer of skin before tossing it aside. 

In high school, I worked at a bingo hall to earn money that went to fund the marching band I was in. Every weekend, we would don our marigold band t-shirts and stand behind the pickle counter. Pickles are like scratch tickets, except players don't scratch: they peel. The sound of perforating cardstock still gives me chills. Our customers were mostly chain-smoking women with terrible lipstick.  They'd slap down a twenty or a hundred, and we would count out the pickles. Some of them were 50 cent and 1 dollar pickles, but most of them were 25 cents. These women were fast and didn't miss anything, not a winning pickle, not if you miscounted their sacred stack of 2,500. They'd open those pickles as fast as I could sell them, leaving a sea of losers swimming around their ankles. 

It was deja vu. I watched people guard their piles, making rapid assessment of quality, one layer at a time. Only when they found their desired skin would they relinquish their territory. The scavengers would take over, making even bigger, tangled messes. By the time the weakest arrived, the only things left over were the dusty, furry haze of poorly handled material, and kins with patchy bald spots or weird patterns. I picked up a few springbok furs and tucked them under my arm, ignoring the pungent tannery chemicals that gave me contact high.

Shopping carts were only doled out to the serious buyers who could afford it. I am not sure how this was determined, but the cart guards were turning people away forcing a few to sling heavy zebra or cow hides over their shoulders instead. The guards had eyes everywhere.

The corridor eventually led into the warehouse to the smaller items. Ostrich bags of all shapes and sizes went down one wall, wallets on the other. In the center was rack after rack of leather jackets and belts. The cement floor was clean but slick from loose hair. I felt pressure begin to build behind my cheeks and my eyes burned, begging to be scratchedt 

I picked up an ostrich bag pretending to look like I knew what a decent ostrich bag should look like.  The lady next to me said it was hers and grabbed it out of my hands, giving me side eye and a curled lip. I picked up another and ran away from her, but she had turned her back to me, already forgotten. I browsed the wallets and glanced at the jackets. One man caught my eye who was doing a runway walk with a black leather jacket, testing out the zippers and sizing the pocket depth. I wondered if he knew it was a women's jacket, but it didn't matter. He looked great. I hope he bought it.

After the initial ten minutes of adrenaline, my enthusiasm for leather shopping petered out. People must have smelled my lack competition because the elbow jabs got a bit sharper and I was easily weaseled out of the fold. I turned around to an orderly row of employees who wrote out my invoice, then onto another row of people who rung up my bill. I was passed onto the baggers, funneled past security, and escorted to the one-way exit. Checking out was a bit dreamy, and as I stared at the cinder block wall, I wondered if I hallucinated the entire thing. Smells of grilled droëwors and glühwein pulled me around the corner to the exit where food vendors set up to feed the masses. The glühwein wasn't hot enough and I thought that an 8:15am beer might make my allergies worse. But I love that it was there. Namibia is good for things like that.