The Dominica shopping experience

As our time begins to draw to a close here, I've realized that there's a lot of little things about life here that I haven't really shared on the blog. I guess I haven't done it because the things here have just become so normal for us.

Life in Dominica is best described as "random," and the stores are definitely no exception. You never know exactly what is going to be in a store, whether its what it normally carries or what it happens to have available that day. Nothing is quick or easy here, so to explain the normal shopping experience, I'll try to describe how I went about getting things together for our thanksgiving meal.

First off I went to the market to get the vegetables and fruits. In Portsmouth, its only open on Saturdays and Tuesdays, but the larger market in Roseau is open every day.

When we first got here, there were only two stores in our area: Tina's is about a 25 minute walk from my house, and her store usually has all the basics, such as eggs, flour, ground beef, butter, and cheese. The second place is James store which is right across from campus. The upstairs floor has mostly household items, anything from kitchen utensils, to school supplies, some clothing, shoes, mops and other random household items. Random very accurately describes everything in every store in Dominica, but especially James store. Half of their items I'm sure have been on the shelves since the 80s, and the other half was imported from China and has Chinese writing all over it. I'm pretty sure the place has flooded several times too, because one time when I went by all the shoes were laid out in the parking lot to dry. The next time i went back, they were all back on the shelves, but their smell was definitely not improved. The first floor has groceries and cleaning supplies. However, here as in all other stores, you have to check all expiration dates on the food to make sure its not too far past the expiration date, you have to check all flour, rice, chocolate chips (if they have them) and powdered milk for either weevols or worms. Also, I have never bought frozen meat from here because the rumor is that the freezers are turned off at night (something I do not doubt).

In the past two semesters, however, we have gotten two new stores. Picard grocery is the smallest but closest. They carry a lot of name-brand items, which are therefore more expensive, but the conditions in their store is very nice. 7-11 opened near James store, and has basically everything that Tina's has, but is a lot closer (quite wonderful).

This picture is of the inside of Picards, the nicest in our area.

This is the inside of James store, the downstairs area which sells groceries.

The outside of James store.

So, grocery shopping. For my thanksgiving shopping, on Saturday I first took the free transport from school for the hours ride to Roseau, the capital. I hit the market first to get the vegetables I needed. Then I headed for the grocery stores. There are two real grocery stores there, and so I had to go to get specialty items that i needed, such as walnuts, whipped topping, cream of mushroom soup and jello. Really special things such as French's onions for the green bean casserole are nowhere to be found on the island--I'll just make those.

So after spending half the day in Roseau, I decided to finish the rest of my shopping at home. First I take a taxi to Tina's because I have to bring back an empty crate of beer to refill it. I am able to get most things there, but she doesn't have any flour or sugar that day, so I head to 7-11. There I am able to get flour and sugar, but I'm still missing green beans. For this I have to go to the shacks, an area by campus where fruits and veggies are sold. Here I can get the oranges and a lemon (miraculously!), but no green beans. So then I head for James store (remember, this is all walking now), and finally find canned green beans. Next I head to another shack that sells apples at $3 EC each, and finally I run by Tomatoes where I used to work and pick up 4 oz. of cream cheese. And then I'm done!! I've finally gotten used to the idea that shopping here is a several hour deal, because no one store has everything, and half the time they don't have the things they usually do. You definitely have to learn to be flexible.