Grocery shopping in Gabs

Today we take a break from our Victoria falls adventure to talk about the mundane. Life in Botswana is not all about exotic adventures. But sometimes every day life can be an adventure.

So today we will talk about the Gaborone Scavenger Hunt, or what we know as grocery shopping.

Here in Gaborone we have some very nice grocery stores. But things can be a little different in unexpected ways. This happens to be a real sign in one of our favorite stores (picture to the left). In fact, we make a point to bring people to this store so we can show off this sign. It's not really a big deal because there is a pretty good restaurant, Cafe Dulce, on the second floor that overlooks the grocery store. Thom happens to be the third person from CDC to photograph this signto share with friends (that we know of).



Another difference in our Gaborone grocery stores is that it is very difficult to find plain, salted potato chips but every other flavor imagineable is fully stocked (see picture to the right) including Fruit Chutney, Biltong, Chicken and Thyme...

Selection of other items is not as extensive as we are accustomed to... the cereal aisle at the stores here turns out to be more of a "shelf", or an amazing selection of corn flakes (picture on left).

And things are not always grouped the way we are expecting to see them. For example, as best we can determine, there is a"stuff that comes in cans" aisle that includes canned green beans, canned mushrooms, canned tuna, canned spaghetti, and canned chakalaka.

There are also no guarantees that there will be a steady supply of anything. Recently we have had shortages of coke light (diet coke), streaky bacon (the bacon most similar to what we eat in America), cream cheese, and Debra's favorite milk. To be clear on what makes a milk Debra's favorite:

- It can't be from the dairy case because the concept of keeping milk refrigerated from the time it leaves the cow until the time it is drunk is more of a guideline than a rule here. That leaves the UHT (Ultra Pastuerized, Long life, stored in the pantry) milk.

- It must be fat free.

- It must have a screw top, not a flip lid. Not clear why, but it must.

So today in the store they actually had milk that met these stringent criteria. See the almost empty bottom shelf in the center of picture to the right.

In light of these random shortages we have learned that it is much less frustrating to go to the grocery and see what they have before deciding on a dinner menu instead of planning the menu and then trying to find all the ingredients. For example, at New Years, Thom wanted to make stuffed cabbage and decided that if the store had sauerkraut, then it would be feasible. The store actually had 4 cans of sauerkraut so we bought them all and then proceeded to gather up the rest of the ingredients. All went well until we stopped at the produce section on the way to check out and discovered they had no cabbage. We did find cabbage at one of the 3 other stores we stopped at next but it was a bit traumatizing. All in all, grocery shopping is quite manageable. We now know the best times for shopping to avoid the crowds, and which stores have the best bread, and that creamed cottage cheese really isn't the same thing as cream cheese even if it does come in the same package as the philadelphia cream cheese.

Things we do like about grocery shopping in Gaborone:

1. There is the equivalent of hamburger/Chicken/Tuna helper here called Mince Mate/ Chicken Mate/ Tuna Mate. They are even much lower in sodium than their American counterparts.




2. The cookie aisle has become a favorite. Cookies here are called "biscuits". Biscuits are called scones. They're not as sweet. They're not as expensive. And it's a lot of fun trying them.

3. The sausage lady. This is like going to Costco!!!