29 June 2012
Post by Lara
Last weekend, I had planned to go to the market with our
host mother while Kevin stayed home to launder clothes. I had a small list of
things to purchase, most of which I would need to buy in a Lebanese
supermarket. Yes, Lebanese. I’m not sure
how it happened, but in Salone it somehow came to be that the supermarkets are
owned by Lebanese families, and these markets are the place to go for things
like ketchup, chocolate, Laughing Cow cheese, mustard, and peanut butter. Anyone who knows me should have guessed that
chocolate was on the shopping list, as well as mustard (if it was available),
jam, and malt vinegar. An odd list for
sure, but since our host family and the training site provide us with 3 meals
per day, the only things we were hankering for were condiments and sweets. I was
quite looking forward to my trip to the market, but then the rain came. It rained almost continuously Friday and
Saturday and we quickly learned that life tends to slow to a halt here when
it’s raining, which meant no trip to the market for us. In general, Sierra Leoneans tend to be
completely confused that we Americans are not deterred by rainy weather. Our
family has told us that getting rained on will inevitably lead to illness, and they
are dismayed that we insist on doing things like walking, attending
school/work, and sitting outside when it is raining. Did I mention that 6 months of the year are
dubbed the rainy season?
At any rate, we did not go shopping over the weekend, and my
little shopping list floated around in my head, feeling utterly unattainable and
fantastic. I was dreaming in chocolate.
To make matters worse, on Wednesday, we learned that one of the supermarkets
has a restaurant that sells soft-serve ice cream. Back in Urbana, ice cream was
at least a thrice weekly indulgence.
Here, the only frozen desserts that one sees regularly are
homemade-looking versions of freezer pops that are nearly always made with
untreated water, i.e. not an option for us Americans with “sensitive” bellies. Soft-serve sounded like something from a
dream, and I spent an embarrassingly long amount of time this week daydreaming
about it.
We planned to make the trek to the supermarket Friday when
training ended, and joined a friend of ours down at the junction (yep- we meet
our friends at junctions here) to walk into town. The walk seems to take about an hour, though
I’ve never timed it. On the way, our
good friend Pat called from Ireland and we chatted with him about the past few
weeks while giant lorries [trucks] and zippy little okadas [motorbikes] zoomed
past us at uncomfortably close distances.
The supermarket is a two-story building with air
conditioning and a restaurant attached.
We walked in and somehow landed in the candy aisle first. Snickers, Kit Kat, Cadbury, and all of their
companions sat gleaming on the shelves. We ogled for quite some time before
realizing that we should probably shop for the “boring” items first. We found mustard and a jar of blackcurrant
“extra jam” jam. I also grabbed a wheel
of Laughing Cow cheese and a pack of wafer cookies. Kevin bee-lined for the freezer and picked
out a Mars ice cream bar, then we thriftily shopped the discount candy and
chose 3 chocolate bars for less than the price of one Snickers. After we paid for our purchases, I went next
door to the restaurant and ordered an ice cream cone. We spent 48,000 Leones, which is about
$11.00.
I noticed about halfway through our trip to the market that
I wasn’t feeling the now-familiar anxiety and restlessness that comes from
rubbing up against a culture and an environment that are not my own. The plants, cars, trees, roads, and shops all
seemed much less foreign to me than they did when I arrived here, and I felt
significantly more comfortable in my surroundings than I did this time last
week. We have miles to go as far as
integrating into Sierra Leonean culture and society, but I can see that we’re
making progress, and that gives me hope that we’ll get there one day. During our walk back I received a text from
my dad that said, “Grandma wants to know if you’re happy”. I smiled and texted back, “Today I am very
happy. I just bought ice cream and
chocolate! And I’m also starting to get the hang of living here.”
Note: Kevin and I have been given African names by our host
family. I am Gbessay (BESH-ay) and Kevin is Abubakar (Ah-boo-BAH-kah). We are both named for people in our family--
my namesake is my host father’s mother, and Kevin’s is our host father’s elder brother. It’s nice having African names for several
reasons, most notably that when we tire of hearing “Pumoi!”[Mende for “white
person”] yelled at us by small children, we are able to say, “That’s not my
name. My name is ___”, and thereby slowly start chipping away at the vast number
of people in Salone who identify us solely on the basis of our skin color. Plus, most everyone here is quite tickled at
the concept of an American with an African name, so it’s a good conversation
starter.
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