A shopping diary

We miss Wal-Mart. There, we said it, and we’re just as surprised at the feeling as everyone else. And so, in the spirit of capitalism, stimulus, and getting the world economy moving again, we thought that we would devote an entry to the Yapese shopping experience. For starters, can anyone explain this? It looks rectangular to us.

Nearly all of our shopping here has been for food, although with our house nearly ready for move-in we’ve started to collect household goods when we see them here or there. “Here or there” is really an accurate characterization, because shopping for anything in Yap can be quite a challenge.

The first difficulty is the food itself. Micronesia is a former U.S. Territory, but Yap is much closer to Japan and the Far East than it is to North America. The more invasive aspects of American culture are present, of course – it’s not too hard to find Coke or Doritos if you want some junk food – but there are also lots of items that would be harder to find in a grocery store in the U.S.

KC actually likes these Mung beans, which are apparently quite healthy. The giant tube of ground pork is less healthy, but rivals anything we’ve seen at Costco in terms of pure bulk.

When you’re on an island in the middle of the Pacific, it can be tough to find fresh food. Local produce is available in the grocery stores, although some of it remains a mystery to us. We think this giant vegetable on KC’s shoulder is a kind of squash, but we haven’t gotten up the courage to buy one yet.

The big brown thing is taro, a root crop and a staple throughout the Pacific. KC, always the adventurous eater, is starting to acquire a taste for it. Matt can’t get past the way it looks on a plate.

Fresh fish is also fairly easy to find. The Yap Fishing Authority has a commercial boat that brings in tuna, wahoo, and other large pelagic fish every couple of weeks. Unfortunately, the restaurants keep close tabs on the boat’s arrival and buy out the stock within a couple hours of its arrival. When we tried a couple of weeks ago, the only thing that they had left was a 30-pound tuna. We weren’t sure why this hadn’t been snapped up already, but we did know that there was no way that we had room for it in our freezer. Also, what the heck do you do with a 30-pound fish? Do you roast it on a spit? Build a firepit? Or do you make like Tom Hanks in “Castaway” and just dig right in? We’ll figure it out at some point, but in the meantime we’re certainly accepting advice from any seafood chefs who might be in our reading audience.

Canned meat, of course, is huge here. The back aisle of the grocery store directly underneath

our apartment looks like a well-stocked fallout shelter (take that, North Korea!); its vast and varied selection includes no fewer than six different types of canned mackerel.

The canned

meat selection takes up most of an aisle, and includes a prominent display of Spam. When the ship comes in, the more popular canned meats really fly off the shelf. We often find ourselves hanging out by the canned meat, unintentionally gawking at shoppers stacking their carts with ten, twenty, thirty cans of corned beef hash, or sardines, or Dave Barry’s perennial favorite, “Potted Meat Food Product.” Ok, we haven’t actually seen Potted Meat Food Product here, but we’re sure there’s a market for it if anyone wants to start up an export business.

The shopping experience is also different. It’s not unusual to see women shopping in native traditional dress (i.e., no shoes, no shirt, no big deal). Retail stock is dictated by what comes in on the boat; the island’s ongoing shortage of frozen french fries was alleviated just this week. We bought a five pound bag to celebrate, and we’re seriously considering investing in another. Our biggest concern is that any deterioration in Franco-Micronesian diplomatic relations could endanger the future supply of this precious commodity.

It’s important to pay close attention to price tags as well. Back in the U.S., Matt’s mom has been known to drive across town to save 50 cents on a gallon of milk. She’d have a field day here, where the already-high prices often vary from store to store by more than 100%:

A note on the house – it has passed inspection and is apparently ready to go, but the housing officer responsible for the transition didn’t come into work on Thursday or Friday. The secretary in Matt’s office did her best to persuade him not to play hooky, but to no avail. We hope to move in next week. We also think that we may be approaching the end of the long wait for our stuff – it is scheduled to arrive in Guam on March 30, and hopefully will be transferred to the boat headed to Yap on April 1. Ironically, we expect the care packages that we sent from Denver to arrive on the same boat. As we mentioned in an earlier posting, we mailed these packages parcel post from Denver, expecting them to arrive in about 11 days. As it turns out, however, parcel post to Yap is transported by surface and is delivered once a month. We’re keeping our fingers crossed that our packages will be on the April Fool’s Day boat, which is scheduled to arrive a full 60 days after we dropped our essentials in the mail. We’ve made do without them – in fact, we’ve tried to look at it as a baby step toward shedding our acquisitive tendencies – but, truth be told we’re getting tired of sharing a toothbrush, and it will be nice to have a stereo with better sound than our laptop speakers. Have a nice week!