Groceries

Grocery shopping. It's just something that becomes routine, right? Some people have a day each week that they go shopping, others just know that when the food is gone, it must be time to run to the store! Well, grocery shopping is going to be something that will take getting used to as we shift our life to South Sudan.

There is a very limited amount of food/ toiletry items that can be found in Mundri. If you want to eat only like the locals do, then you would obviously be fine purchasing your rice, beans and veggies all in town. However, if you want anything that resembles food we are used to making (pizza, chicken dinners, bacon, etc.), it all has to be purchased in Uganda and brought in with us on the plane to South Sudan. The former team in Mundri learned that it is important to have at least some food that you are used to and that helps you feel more at home.

Yesterday was our big grocery shopping day here in Kampala! Larissa took us to a store called Capitol Shoppers. She talked us through everything that you can get in Mundri, and everything that you need to purchase in Kampala. We were so glad she was with us because these are things like: you can get baking soda there, but you cannot get baking power. You can get vegetable oil in Mundri, you cannot get olive oil. You can get gross margarine, but you cannot get butter. There was so much to remember! I'm sure this will get easier with time, but this time, my head was spinning a bit! I was trying to take mental notes and didn't want to forget anything!

We will freeze all of the cheese and meat that we purchased and bring it on the plane in a cooler. We then have two other boxes of dry items that we will bring in.

One thing that has been difficult to get used to is the exchange rate here in Uganda. $1= 2,600 Ugandan Shillings.... that's a lot of math to get used to! When your groceries end up being over 1,000,000 (see pic on right of Larissa pointing to the amount), you get a little nervous! But then you do the math and realize that it's not to bad considering you are shopping for 3 months of groceries! That's right, we will shop for 3 months at a time. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of it, but just imagine Will counting out over 1,000,000 worth in bills to pay for all of these groceries... it is quite a sight! You just hope no one else is looking while you count of all of those bills! Haha. One day we will get used to all of this...:).