Top Priority: Grocery shopping

We were struck in South Africa by the experience of grocery shopping in supermarkets, and I’ll explain why.

Grocery shopping in Zanzibar is no one-stop affair.  To buy fruits and vegetables, you go to the fruit and vegetable market; to buy meat or fish, you go to the nearby meat and fish market; to buy bread, you go to a bakery or to one of the guys selling bread from a basket on the back of a bicycle; to buy baking powder, you go to the local duka (bodega); to buy rice or dried beans, you go to a duka near the market, where it is sold by weight out of big open bags; to buy tomato paste, you buy a packet from one of the guys at the market that walk around with the packets, and shouting “mia tano mia tano mia tano” (500 Tshillings).  There are a few small stands in Stone Town neighborhoods that have a very small assortment of fruits and vegetables, but unless you’re really in a rush, it’s best to go to the big market, which is—after all—only about a 5-minute walk away.

For real convenience shopping, you can simply stay at home and keep an ear out for various peddlers who announce their wares by calling out from the street.  In our neighborhood, the main peddlers are the dafu guy (who sells green coconuts from the basket on the back of his bicycle, cutting the top off of for a cool drink of coconut juice and then cutting a spoon out of the husk for you to eat the gelatinous green coconut flesh), the dagaa guy (who sells hundreds of anchovies from a basket on the back of his bicycle), and the milk guy (who sells milk out of a big container on the back of his bicycle or motor scooter).  In other parts of town, there is also a housewares guy (who sells various household tools made from wood and scrap metal, and usually travels on foot rather than on bicycle) and an ice cream guy (one of the many Azam company venders who sell ice cream treats from a standardized Azamcooler box attached to a bicycle).

In Zanzibar, there are only a few grocery stores, and these are more like specialty shops, selling high-priced luxury goods bought in small shipments.  One week, you might find tahini and a South African brand of pudding; another week you might find Thai chili paste and 3 sets of Ikea measuring cups; yet another week you might find tamaraind juice from Myanmar or Orbit gum from Syria.  If you approach grocery shopping as an opportunity for serendipity, it’s lots of fun; if you approach grocery shopping as an opportunity to check off items from a list, you’ll be disappointed.

Brady is (unusually for Zanzibar) the main cook in our household.  He is also definitely the expert grocery shopper in our family (not unusually, because men and women here share grocery responsibilities about equally—depending largely on how close to town the family lives).  Oscar and Calvin (unusually for us in the United States) can help a bit with grocery shopping and have enjoyed being able to walk down the street by themselves to buy little things like soap or soda.