{"id":1436,"date":"2010-01-09T16:09:41","date_gmt":"2010-01-09T06:09:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/bart-allen\/?p=1436"},"modified":"2010-11-12T20:22:26","modified_gmt":"2010-11-12T10:22:26","slug":"life-in-png-getting-groceries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/bart-allen\/2010\/01\/09\/life-in-png-getting-groceries\/","title":{"rendered":"Life in PNG – Getting Groceries"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Husband’s work is never done!\u00a0 And now that includes getting groceries.<\/p>\n

Here in PNG, the shopping is most often done by the missionary men.\u00a0 There are a few reasons for that.\u00a0 1) A shopping trip can take up a good chunk of the day\u00a0 2) Often several of the men will go to town together to share the cost of transportation\u00a0 3) Because you can’t find everything you need at one (or even 5 stores), it makes for a lot of running around.\u00a0 With the whole family in tow, the time would be multiplied.\u00a0 4) It’s really not a good idea for a lady or sometimes even a group of ladies to go to town alone.<\/p>\n

So, what all does grocery shopping entail?\u00a0 Just in case some of you didn’t know, there is no Wal-Mart here (or anything like it).\u00a0 One trick to shopping here is this – if you see something that you can’t usually find, grab it up because you may not see it again for several weeks or even months.\u00a0 We can get a lot of things here – more than we expected.\u00a0 We’ve found peanut butter\/chocolate oreos, almond flavoring, some yummy ice cream and even curry sauces.\u00a0 We’ve also found that there is no shortage of cooking oil here!<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The oil aisle at one of the grocery stores<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To give you a little bit of an idea what things are like here, we thought you might be interested in seeing some of the groceries we can get and how much they cost.<\/p>\n

\"DSCN0637\"<\/a>
Groceries<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\n

loaf of bread – $1.80
\nbunch of carrots – $0.40
\ncucumber – $0.16
\nsmall jar of peanut butter – $2.48
\n8 oz. brick of butter – $2.64
\nbag of powdered sugar – $4.20
\n1 liter (that’s just over a quart) of milk – $2.32
\ncanned grean beans – $3.00
\ntub of ice cream – $10.12
\nsmall jar of mustard – $4.60
\nbottle of ketchup – $3.14
\ndozen eggs – $4.24
\nbox of corn flakes – $5.20 (all other cereal is much more expensive)
\nsmall jar of salsa – $4.44
\npackage of ramen noodles – $0.32<\/p>\n

Going to the market to get produce is another experience.\u00a0 For the most part the produce is very reasonable.\u00a0 We do not barter about the price.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The main market in town<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Another<\/a>
Another part of the market<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The carrots here are delicious!\u00a0 We also usually get green beans (the kind we like are almost 2 feet long), broccoli, fresh pineapple and several kinds of sweet pototoes.\u00a0 Because of a cholera epidemic here (and because of all the bugs that like to hide in the veggies), we have to soak all of our produce in bleach water before using them.<\/p>\n

We also have banana and papaya trees and pineapple bushes growing very near our house so we can pick those whenever they are ready.<\/p>\n

One other interesting thing about shopping is that most things come in smaller packages than we are used to.\u00a0 In the States, it is most often more economical to buy a bigger size – not so here.\u00a0 While we don’t know why for sure, there may be a few reasons.\u00a0 First of all, many people don’t have refrigerators and freezers to store things.\u00a0 Secondly, in this culture if a person has an abundance of something, he can be sure that others will come asking for it.\u00a0 So, if he doesn’t buy much to begin with, there is less of a chance that he’ll have to give it away!<\/p>\n

If you’d like to see more pictures – be sure to check out the photo section of our blog.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Husband’s work is never done!\u00a0 And now that includes getting groceries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":392,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-family","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/bart-allen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/bart-allen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/bart-allen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/bart-allen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/392"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/bart-allen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/bart-allen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1436\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/bart-allen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/bart-allen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/bart-allen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}