By necessity, much of the way we "do life" has changed a lot since moving here. It is okay ... mostly good, it has stretched us and helped us become better planners.
In our Minnesota life we found ourselves in a grocery store at least twice a week. Our MN house was/is off the beaten path, removed from town. Even with a more rural location we lived just four miles from a small grocery and two gas/convenience stores and eleven miles from two HUGE grocery stores.
Stopping into Cub Foods while Britt was at swim practice or Paige was at piano was no problem. It helped to have it so accessible, then if you screwed up and forgot something, there was no consequence since you would be right back there the next day. Those stores always had exactly what you needed. I never once went to Cub Foods and found them out of yogurt or bread.
Grocery shopping in Haiti is not quite so convenient. It is not nearly as kind to a non-menu planner. The stocked items vary week to week and month to month.
When shopping for groceries and all household items, you have two choices here.
1. The open market. (Just the thought makes me tremble.) Go to one person for carrots, another for watermelon, walk to a different area for bananas, go negotiate with a different lady for some tomatoes. Pay everyone separately, with cash, haggle over price with each of them. You get the picture. It is not convenient, fast, or easy.
2. The grocery store in Port au Prince. Two hours from LaDigue.
It's all good though. We have figured out how to do a little at the open market and be more organized so the grocery store only needs to happen once every 10 to 14 days. We have learned that if there is dog-food on the shelf you should buy it all because there are no guarantees for the future.
Sunday we ran into a little hiccup in our far range planning. I think we lost track of our supply situation when I went to Minnesota.
We hosted a Bible Study for five other missionaries. Everyone was having a nice time. We chatted, we did a study on waiting on the Lord for direction, and we chatted some more.
One of the ladies asked me if there was more T.P. for the guest bathroom. "Sure, let me get it," I said. She followed me to the pantry closet, where we found no toilet paper. I went to the bathroom inside our bedroom. No toilet paper. I went to Hope and Ike and Noah's bathroom. No toilet paper. I yelled down to Paige's room. None in her bathroom. Finally, many minutes later, we located 1/4 of a roll in Britt's bathroom. (This house was built to host groups, it is large with many bathrooms.)
Our discussion on waiting on the Lord seemed easy to her at that point, she was just sick of waiting on toilet paper.
It was 5pm on Sunday afternoon. In Haiti. Seven people live here. No toilet paper. There is no sending Troy to SuperAmerica to grab it quickly. The neighbors use leaves in place of toilet paper. No point running to Pastor Rony for a roll of T.P. He did not even know what Kleenex was a few months ago. (Troy gave him a lesson.)
Monday was not market day in our area. We did not have time to go to Port. So, we drove 30 minutes to a gas station where they had 14 rolls on the shelf for sale individually. We bought half of them and drove 30 minutes home.
The very basic, most inane things here take A LOT of time. If you were to ask us, "So what did you do on Saturday?" We might answer " We went grocery shopping." You would assume we did other things too, but you'd be wrong. Grocery shopping is a full day commitment.
Just running to get toilet paper takes more than an hour.