Shopping

Yesterday we began our shopping orientation. We visited two grocery stores, several roadside stand type places, and two markets. The real experience is at the market: lots of people in a small, covered area, with different animals, both dead and alive! I was totally overwhelmed, but I had expected as much. 

Paying is a new thing too, since there is certain etiquette (right-hand handing, hard for this leftie). Also don’t flash your money around, which is harder than it sounds when 7000 GF is worth 1 dollar, you get a big wad o’ cash fast.

There are expatriate grocery stores, where I have found things I didn’t expect to see in Guinea. But at present we are in the capital, so we won’t have access to these things where we are in the bush, two days away. At these stores some stuff is more expensive than it would be even in the U.S., but generally still cheaper than it would be to have it shipped over, so I imagine I will just pay that much if I want something like chocolate or frozen strawberries or cheese.

When we get home from market we soak our fruits and veggies in bleach water for about 20 minutes before rinsing and drying them.

We didn’t do any bartering yet, which is what we will do in the village. Not gonna lie, I am not looking forward to that, but it will come. 

Today we went downtown in the city, that was a long day! We made lots of stops since that what they do because no one likes to go downtown more than necessary! Traffic/parking is a huge issue, as well as pickpocketing, especially for us white people.

Anyway, those are my experiences so far! Jet lag is getting better, though I still was wide awake for quite a while last night. I am going to try and run regularly while I am here, I don’t know when I will be able to do that next, and lots of people here at the compound run the perimeter fence road, so it is nice and motivating to see a lot of others!