Shopping in Town

Hello! Mwaramutse! Although, if you’re reading this in the afternoon it would be Mwiriwe!

Saturday is sort of becoming our day to go into town and do a little shopping. Since we're "renting" the car we're using right now, I'm not driving it and Mark takes me in once a week and we pick up stuff that we can’t get at the dukas (small stores) near our house. So, we went in to town and we took Melissa, the single gal working here now, with us. We pretty much just went into a hardware store, the “China” store (although we noted that not everything comes from China – it is operated by Chinese, though), a few tourist stores , the post office and Nakumatt. We picked up a door mat for our front door at a handcraft store that is made of sisal. It will help tremendously to keep the dirt out of the house – we’ll still take our shoes off at the front door, though. We also bought something else which I have attached a picture of. You guess what it is!



















One thing we’ve been looking for is picture postcards but the only ones we’ve found we didn't like. We were told that the post office sells post cards so we went in there and sure enough, they do sell them but they were very expensive! Melissa bought some stamps and we left. Just outside the post office the hawkers showed up to sell us cards with banana leaf designs. They worked out to be less expensive even with postage than the postcards so we decided to buy some. OoLaLa! The commotion that caused! I think we ended up with at least 5 (maybe 7) people around us all trying to sell us cards or pictures or maps – all at the same time. One guy showed me his stack and I liked some of his designs and another guy showed me his and he had some different ones so I decided to buy 20 – 10 from the one guy and 10 from the other. Well, another guy had shown up and he had some different ones I liked so I bought 10 from him as well. Melissa also bought 10 or so from one of them. She also bought some cards with small batiks glued on them. They were a little more expensive but maybe sometime I’ll get some of them as well. Doing business with several people at once can be very exhausting! I wonder if that is what the stock exchange is like.

We ate lunch in town in a restaurant called “Fine Dining”. When we sat down, the gal came to the table and asked us what we wanted to eat. We asked if we could see a menu and she looked a little dismayed. It took 10-15 minutes for them to find a menu for us. We’re not sure if people don’t usually order from a menu or if they were trying to find an English one. We all ordered a chicken meal – mine with mushroom sauce, Mark and Melissa with curry. A few minutes later she came back with the menu and said they were all out of curry sauce. Mark ordered the mushroom sauce and Melissa ordered a “Mexican Pizza”. I think it took an hour for our food to come – seriously. We noticed that most of the others in the restaurant were just drinking sodas and eating pizza or other simple things. Maybe they don’t usually serve meals at lunch time? Who knows. When it finally came it wasn’t too bad but it wasn’t fantastic either. I was hungry so it tasted good. I forgot to ask Melissa what her pizza had on it. I did notice corn. She ate it all so it must have been okay.

That evening I mixed up a batch of chocolate chip cookies because I wanted to take some to Charlotte’s house the next day. We got the first sheet in the oven, set the timer and sat down to watch the next Star Wars (we’ve been working through all 6). The timer went off and I went to check the cookies but they were only half done. Then I realized the oven was off – bummer. We had run out of gas. By now it was Saturday evening and we knew that the store wouldn’t be open this late. So I covered up the dough and put it in the fridge.

To be continued....