grocery shopping...

Ok....so I am not shopping at Loblaws now....that's for sure. I'm not at the markets bartering for things, but it's definitely different.
Part of adjusting to a new country...a new culture...is realizing that things you could normally get through on automatic pilot and quite quickly are now going to take more time.
The first day I was here, we needed to get some groceries. Thinking that we wouldn't do a full shop but just grab enough to get us through the first few days, Mitch, Anna and I decided that we would meet in 20 minutes to share a taxi ride home.
First of all, Garden City (where the Uchumi grocery store is) was on heightened security because of the bombings that had taken place before we arrived. Standing in line, having my bag checked, getting patted down and going through a metal detector is not standard operating procedure for grabbing some bread, milk and eggs at home. However, here I was passing the security checkpoint and feeling strangely reassured by the whole process.
Still thinking we could grab what we needed in 20 minutes, we headed into the store. First the produce section...what looked fresh? what did I want to eat? how much would everything cost? I made a couple of selections and then, as I was heading towards the next section, someone behind a counter was calling to me. Assuming they wanted to sell me something, I smiled politely and said, "No, thank you". They continued to call me over, and I turned to continue around the store. Then it was explained to me that here, you take your produce to be weighed and have a price sticker put on it BEFORE you get to the cash register.....oh. Now I know better and have been able to pass along this bit of information to others before they are politely declining to have their produce weighed.
Well, 20 minutes later we met each other at aisle #2 and decided that maybe this was going to take a bit longer than we originally thought. It takes a while when you aren't familiar with the labeling on items, you wonder what you want to eat, how things taste and what exactly 8000 Ugandan Shillings is in Canadian Dollars...
Close to 45 minutes later, we cashed out with our purchases and headed out past the security checkpoint, the anti-riot police and the street vendors to our taxi and headed home for the best tasting pb&j Uganda had to offer.