Shopping

Naka gudi gi. How is the night? 

I've had a very full 2 days here. And saw my first 4 patients (missionary kids from a neighboring country) when i got to the guesthouse after dinner upon arrival from airport. 

My first day i slept in and then we toured the grocery stores to see what was available and pick up some staples like cases of boxed UHT milk and Don Simon juice at the whole-sale store. 

Then this morning after i had a visit with a 75yr old Korean missionary lady with a cough, we went to the shopping for the month's groceries and some fabric. I got most of the things on my list but we had to drive to about 5 stores to get everything! Stores here are much smaller--picture 7-Eleven size corner stores. The ones we frequent have tons of imported foods from Lebanon, Spain, England, and the US. I'm talking foods by house brand at Costco, Target, Walmart, Dollar General, Aldi and even the French/Spanish chain Carrefour and the Spanish supermarket Alcampo. Stores are small so aisles are crowded and vary a bit on each shelf so it's like an Easter egg hunt. They can go from Life cereal to British Marmite to huge bottles of Canadian maple syrup to lemon cream sandwich cookies from the UAE to 10 kinds of Aldi salad dressing to big jars of Kirkland peanut butter to Lebanese olives!! The non-food aisles range from large refill bottles of Equate hand soap to random colors of Garnier hair dye to Spanish Ariel laundry detergent to random sized Pampers to replacement pipes for a hookah. Some items look they "fell off the truck" while others look like are stacked on pallets in cartons straight from a distributor! The stores also have crazy/familiar names like Target or Kai-Mart, Pick & Save, Safeway and "The American Store." We also shopped at the Elton gas station convenient store 'cuz they advertised a new shipment of US foods like Pop-tarts, tootsie rolls, tons of cereal, Faygo pop and microwave popcorn!

Prices are higher than in the US since the food is mostly imported but for comparison two large avocados were 60 dalasi and that is $1.40 for two. A jar of Aldi mayo is $4. But then a double Costco sized box of US cereal can be $10-12. However, they put items on sale when close to expiration date and also for the yearly "Ramadan sale" which we are having now. 

Today the heat almost did me in as we were walking from the car to the parking lot of our 5th non-AC store with my bag of canned goods.  Soooo muggy. And my AC hasn't been working in my guesthouse apartment since i arrived on Wed so i started the day out too hot. So i tanked up with an $0.81 cold Mountain dew and $0.95 ketchup-flavored cheese puffs. It gave me energy to unload and put away the groceries and after an hour of rest in the AC at the guesthouse (mine is fixed now!!) T and i went on a walk along the beach at sunset. 

I've been working on my greetings in Wolof and T makes me practice the 2 lines i know with everyone we meet. She also reminds me not to get too spoiled as there is no wi-fi, microwave, toaster or AC in the clinic compound house where i'll be living. 

Mangéé dem. I am going AKA goodbye. I should get ready for another day of errands in town like getting a SIM card!