First, to market – take a clothes peg for the nose if you’re squeamish about fishy smells. Fish of all shapes and sizes are laid out on concrete slabs, and men are noisily selling them. If you’re buying, glistening eyes say ‘I’m fresh’, dry and sunken, ‘I’m not very’. Egrets strut confidently about in the blood and gore - they get fishy bits for free. Buy locally grown lettuces and bananas here, as you won’t find these in the supermarkets –this is income for people who grow these at home. There’s nothing for less than SR10 usually –‘yay’ days occasionally e.g. avocados for SR5s each. It’s a tourist attraction and one day Miss Intercontinental contestants, complete with sashes, added a touch of glamour, skirting around the veggie bits in their stilettos and mini-skirts.
Then the hunt is on: SMB, Docklands, Supasave, Freshcut, Timoljees and finally little shops near home: For cheese (please oh please let me find cheese this week, any cheese – ah look there’s some, one large lonely wedge looking forlornly out through the glass of the empty cabinet, pleading ‘Please buy me’ - I don’t think so – at SR249 per kg); milk (forget about fresh, there isn’t any ever and I won’t complain if I can’t find my favourite, just as long as I can find some milk other than tins of sweetened condensed milk), but no, there’s none, not even powdered. I find something called Dairy Whitener at a little shop at the garage, but before I am forced to use this, Dudley phones and has found a shop with some boxes of long-life – quick, buy 6 boxes please; instant coffee, only one shop has a few bottles of one brand only – 200g for SR145. We’ll wait at that price; bacon – forget green or smoked, back or streaky, forget price even, if I can just find some bacon – oh lovely shop nearby, he has two packets of bacon cubes left - too bad they’re R99 per kg (do pigs know just how precious they have become?); razorblades, still none anywhere – it’s been months since I’ve seen these (perhaps I’m looking in the wrong places). Luckily we still have a few and my legs aren’t very hairy.
Last stop on the way home; Randolph’s fruit stall on Beau Vallon beach. It’s a delight; he always has bananas, paw-paws, mangos and coconuts and other times he has pineapples, grenadillas, avocados, as well as other unusual local fruits.
One can get locally grown fruit and vegetables at the market and supermarkets, but most have been imported; iceberg lettuce SR75, grapes SR120 per kg, over-waxed apples SR80 per kg.
Thoughts on days when there are happy surprises; ‘Shitake mushrooms – let’s give them a try as they are reasonably priced’; ‘yay, mince and chicken pieces today (too bad there’s no ham again)’; ‘Ah Dudley’s favourite Viennas – not in hotel quantities today, so let’s get some of those’; ‘rocket salad again at Timoljees – must be their ‘speciality’; “Yipee, it pays to empty the whole freezer and find the last vanilla icecream at the bottom – so grateful for our little shop.’
All we want is one simple ball of string to tie meat onto the rotisserie – easy to find, right? Nope, no-one sells anything other than the raffia/nylon type. Other things - to name but a few -that have run out at various times; bottled water (La Digue on a very hot day), coke, sprite, yoghurt (and one hardly ever sees plain), butter.
Be grateful - 8 years ago was far worse; the only cereal, Cornflakes, the only toothpaste, Colgate!
Desperate plight calls for desperate measures. One of the young pilot’s wives coming in was worried she wouldn’t find wine gums - her passion. So she wore a trench coat in which she had secreted 80 rolls. She drew attention, wearing a coat in this heat and was searched and made to disgorge all the sweets into the tray. She was mortified, but allowed to repack her coat with them. So now she happily sucks her soothing wine gums as she shops.
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