Kampala Shopping

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The huge area around Old Taxi Park is the most pitoresque part of Kampala, especially during the day-lights. There are great number of molls and small shops together with green and fruit market. Every centimeter of a ground is used for a trade, even the pavements. The whole area is overcrowded by both, people and cars, struggling for own piece of turf. It looks chaotic and crazy.

What to buy: Here locals can buy everything they need, food, cloths or home needs. Since am in the clothing business, was in particularly interested to check for the cloths. What to say about, poor fabrics, bad styling and law quality of production, that is all I could see around.
The next what amazed me are great number of shops selling cell phones. All this shops are held by Indians who sell second hand phones which costs a fortune. Most of the cell phones are very old types but still, the price is much too high.

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There are some wild looking fruit for sale at Nakasero market. What I do recognise that might be worth buying that you might not find elsewhere would be vanilla and cocoa.

There are also a few persistent young scallies hanging around trying to sell you weed, that can be the only drawback about Nakasero market.

What to buy: Fruit, veg and grasshoppers (ssenene).

I think its called the Owino market. This market is a maze of booths that go on and on. You can get everything from fake Sony/Sonny/Soney radios, homemade irons, and used clothes from US/Europe. This is a good place to also buy cheap arts and crafts and eat the local food. This market surrounds the taxi stand, where you can see more than a hundred matatus waiting for customers. It will take you atleast an hour to walk through the market.

Everything is cheap to begin with, and you can bring it down by atleast 20 percent. Please take care to be respectful and cheerful when you negotiate the price. Ugandans are friendly to begin with, and will give you a good price if they like you.

What to buy: I bought some bottle-openers at one of the crafts shop. The Ugandan bottle opener looks like a smoking pipe with a nail embedded in it, and is a cool souvenier. The crafts shops meant for tourists were charging me between USh 10000 to USh 15000 for a bottle-opener made of ebony wood.

Being on a tight budget, I just wanted one made of normal wood. Unfortunately none of the regular grocery stores or supermarkets carried them any longer. I could find one here for USh 3000, which came down to USh 2000 after a little bit of bargaining. Its tough to pinpoint the location of the store because the whole place is a maze of shops.

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Its a shopping complex, and the last time I went, they were building a multi-storeyed parking lot. From Ipods to barbeques, Garden City is a city within a city. I went there with a friend to buy an mp3 player. We got a 1GB player (no name brand, but looked really cool) for almost USD 100. The food court serves Lebanese, Italian, Indian, and many other cuisines.

Another upscale supermarket store is Shoprite Checkers in Lugogo, on the Jinja road.

What to buy: Mostly upscale stuff, or things you would not find in a normal street-side store.

What to pay: Slightly more than normal.

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The National Theatre is an outdoor area of shops located in a semi-circle. There are approximately 40 of them. Each shop is a little different, owned by local people.

Crafts are not always from Kampala, or even Uganda.

Soapstone is almost always from Kenya.

Malachite items almost always comes from Congo.

What to buy: The ethnic group that is in the Kampala area is particularly well known for its drums, and in fact their drums are so well known

What to pay: Merchants are willing to bargain. Try to see how low you can get them to go.