Wetin en Wetin Wi Ebul Bay [What we can buy]

Post by Lara

23 November 2012

One definite adjustment we have had to make in moving to a developing country has been the difference in availability of foods, goods, and services from what we are used to back home.  In some ways, Salone offers more than Ohio did.  In other ways, our native home wins.  Here are some of those differences:

Things we don’t have to pay for:

• Wood/bamboo for building (just send a kid out to the edge of town to cut some for you, or go yourself)
• In-season fruits/vegetables: in the 3 months we have been at site, we have had the following given to us at least once: plantains, bananas, sweet potatoes, papaya, coconuts, hot pepper, pineapple, oranges, and guava.
• Exterminators/Animal Control: Just call your friend or neighbor and tell him or her that you have an unwanted animal in your house. They will come running to kill it, and kill it they will. Depending on what it is, they might eat it afterward.
• Grass-cutting, garden tilling, leaf-raking, laundering, and any other household work: your nearest neighbor will send over one or more of their children and the work will be done by the end of the day. (Note: Sierra Leoneans tend to be really confused when they send their kids over to help us and we say “no thanks”. The concept of working because you are bored or frustrated or want it done a certain way is pretty foreign here, it seems.)

Black Tumbler, or mambuii - edible seeds that taste like Sweet-Tarts

Coconut tree

Things we can buy in our town:

• Onions, eggplant, hot pepper, okra, and ground peanuts—other produce seems to come into and out of season, but these staples are always available
• Toilet paper—this is actually not the norm for a lot of volunteers, so we consider ourselves lucky.
• Cold drinks (as in refrigerated)—again, many volunteers aren’t so lucky.
• Obama diapers—Yes, friends. Diapers with Obama’s face on them. They are awesome, though I presume our reasoning for thinking this is a bit different from the reason they’re popular here.
• Dried fish, shrimp, lobster, stingray, crab, and monkey (of which we have only bought 3…we’ll let you guess which ones)
• Canned powdered milk
• Nutmeg—the whole thing, for Le 2000 (less than $0.50)
• Eggs, both raw and boiled
• American thrift store clothes, including winter wear (Why? Because 75 degrees is “cold” here)
• Carpentry
• Tailoring—defined as having an entire outfit made for you from scratch. You can also have clothes altered
• Blacksmithing—we broke a hoe last week and the blacksmith had a new one made in less than two hours

Market Day groceries

Things we can buy in Bo or Freetown (a trip which might take between 4 and 28 hours each way, depending on the weather and reliability of your vehicle):

• Canned vegetables and fruits (our favorites are mushrooms and pineapple)
• Curry Powder—incredibly versatile and great for changing the taste of the same thing you ate last night
• Mustard
• Ice cream—both soft-serve and quarts, though you don’t always get to pick the flavor
• Pizza
• Q-tips
• Toothpicks
• Food storage containers/thermoses—utterly useful since we don’t have a fridge or a microwave
• Aluminum foil
• A Welcome mat—we saw one and had to buy it because, how often do you get to buy a hand-painted welcome mat in Sierra Leone? So far once.

Things that have “run out” at least once since we came to Salone:

• White paint [you could get off-white, but the white paint was unavailable for the better part of a month, due to a problem at the factory in Freetown, apparently]
• Kerosene—ran out two weeks before the presidential election and we just couldn’t cook on our kerosene stove until it showed up again a few days after the election.
• Potatoes
• Toilet Paper—I bought the last roll in town the other day. The woman assured me she was going to Bo soon. We’ll see.

We go through a lot of paint around here

Things we can’t buy in Salone (that we know of):

• Reliable electronics—most things we have bought here have stopped working or work only while you stand on one leg and whistle
• Marshmallows
• Swiss Army knives and multi-tools—everyone who sees our multi-tool is blown away by it.
• Draught beer and fountain drinks (tap water is not for drinking, so bottled beverages are the way to go)

When marshmallows "de", they go fast