Buying groceries

Today most of us went in to Apia to do some grocery shopping so that we didn’t have to live on biscuits and corned beef all weekend. I have a hard time in general grocery shopping for one person, but grocery shopping for one person for one month is going to be quite a challenge for me. As a group I’m sure we’ll end up sharing some things and cooking some meals together, but since we’ll be here and there it was much easier to just be responsible for our own individual selves.

I have to admit that I have not done much food shopping since I’ve been here. There hasn’t really been a need to. There are several places you can go to buy food in Samoa. The first is the small faleoloa. These are everywhere in Samoa. In fact, one of the boys is doing his research on the economics of them. There are at least four of which I am aware in about a five minute walk from the front gate of the USP campus. The same holds true in the villages. They can be right across the street from each other. I don’t understand how they manage to stay in business. The point however is that these faleoloas hold very basic necessities: a few canned goods, biscuits, cold drinks and Vailima, candy, and cigarettes. I think some of the ones in villages further from Apia might also sell frozen chicken and bread. I really haven’t figured out how they decide what to sell in them, but most of us frequent them to buy their biscuits or “pane keke.” They make good snacks. Most of these stores are either part of a house or just a small building and there is no need to enter them at all. You walk up to the counter and pretty much point to the items that you want because they are all arranged along the wall. Basically, they are pretty small.

The next place to buy food is the supermarket. There are a few bigger ones in Apia, and by bigger I mean they are somewhat like the Samoan equivalent of a super Walmart or Target. You can buy food and clothes and some kinds of other supplies in them. The two that I’ve been in are about the size of a big drug store. There are also some smaller supermarkets that just have food and they are more the size of a smaller drug store. I went to one of those today with Mirna and Michaela. We walked through the isles and it was somewhat of a challenge to decide what to buy. They don’t have a lot of things that we take for granted back home and many of the “Western” things they do have are extremely expensive. We decided that we are going to be making lots of stir frys so we bought marinades and spices and rice. We also bought the locally popular cereal- Wheat Bix, which is also the only cereal that costs less than WS$20. Unfortunately they don’t have milk in Samoa so our options are powdered milk in a bag and milk cream that only needs to be refrigerated after it has been opened and has a shelf life of six months.

The third place to buy food is the market. It’s where you can buy all your fresh fruits and vegetables. They really don’t have many in supermarkets except for imported fruits like apples and pears, which are not sold in the market. I enjoy going to the market. It’s fun to walk through and just see table after table lined with tomatoes and papayas and squash/pumpkins and bananas and cabbage and cocoa and green beans and cooked taro with palusami. The fruit/vegetable market is always open and people even sleep there. For some reason it is one of my favorite places in Apia.

Now that I’ve talked about shopping in Samoa maybe I should say a few words about stores in Fiji. First let me just preface that by saying that I only went into two grocery stores and a few other shops so I am by no means an expert but the stores there have a very different and distinct flavor. For one thing they tend to be about five times too small for the amount of stuff they contain. Whether it’s a grocery store or a clothing store they are crammed pretty well. The aisles are narrow; things hang from the ceiling; and there really appears to be no rhyme or reason as to why things are ordered the way they are. They had a much more crowded feel than stores in Apia.

Changing topics for a minute I just want to say a few words about the public library in Samoa. Michaela and I went before we went to the store. It was nothing like libraries back in the states. Total size wise it was probably about the area of the Nederland public library but divided into two levels. Other than that, the two don’t even compare. For one thing it was hot in there. They had a few fans but we were still dripping within minutes of walking into the building. There were computers, but they were all covered for some strange reason so we had to use the card catalog. It’s been a while since I’ve had to do that. Also, as with most stores you are required to check your bags at the door when you enter because there are no security systems. We spent about an hour there because Kalia wanted to look for some books so I wandered around and looked at what they had. Most of the books appear to be from before 1995. They had a huge selection upstairs of UN documents, but again the most recent ones were pretty ancient. There was a random collection of periodicals- everything from several copies of “Seventeen” from 2000 to a 2003 copy of “The Economist” to a huge stack of “Korea and the World” journals. I think the library at USP, while in no way up to par with libraries back home, is at least a little more current on more things. They also have a room packed with books and newspapers called The Pacific Room. If I have to go back to do research that is where I will be because…it has A/C!!!!