Grenada first week

On Tuesday, Heather took her first trip into St. George's, thanks to a little help from the most wonderful Josh: bearer of coveted kitchen appliances and tour guide extraordinaire. We went with the purpose of purchasing fish at the fish market. Fresh (not salted or frozen) fish mysteriously cannot be purchased at the supermarket; one must make a special trip to the market or know a fisherman to get fresh fish. As I do not yet know any fishermen, I went to the fish market. Naturally, as the day was quite warm, we strolled around town before making the fish purchase and rushing it home to refrigeration.

St. George's was an amazing adventure. It is full of tiny shops. Some shops claim, by virtue of signs outside, to be vendors of various goods, such as kitchenware or clothing or, say, appliances. Some even carry what they advertise. Some advertise that they are "variety stores." In reality, every store is a variety store. You're lucky if they actually carry the items they advertise to have. One "kitchenware" shop carried clothing but no kitchenware. Nick's donut shop occasionally has the odd donut, but mostly it's a sandwich shop. If you are shopping for any item in particular, you need to enter the shop and ask for it specifically, as you shall never find it on your own as each one is crammed full of stuff.

Many stores seem like time capsules. They carry goods that feel like leftovers from times gone by. For example, old fashioned can openers are very common here. Evidently, somewhere in the world today, there exists a factory that manufactures plastic handed versions of these pre-crank relics (a sharp hook with a handle sort of thing - I've only ever seen these babies in black and white war movies.) Darn it, for good reason, too, because they are not user friendly. It was odd not to know how such a simple tool operated, and the small, random, jagged holes I produced with it were downright comical. Where had I gone wrong? Isn't this the sort of thing every parent teaches their child? I felt like a caveperson transported to modern times: I'm supposed to get food out of that using what?

Other stores have clearly modern goods, but the shops themselves are so very antiquated that I felt nevertheless transported to another time. From the walls to the floors to the sparse furnishings, the methods of display, and "changing rooms" to the smells...you begin to understand how very basic the premise of buying and selling can be. Most stores, for example, sell the very same variety of goods in their variety stores that aren't really variety stores. They would be better suited to be called random merchandise stores. They sell things that all come from the same distributor and the same ship. So, you go from one store to the next, seeing much (but not all) the same thing, and comparing prices along the way. Each shop carries just enough different goods that you need to visit many different shops to locate what you seek, thus ensuring that each shop with get enough purchases. Because once you find the item you seek, you buy the other things you could use as well - the stuff that is found in every shop. Despite the humble nature of most of the shops themselves, and the appearance of a somewhat random presentation of goods, each shopkeep tends to their goods as a master gardener might tend to a prized patch of roses. Should a careless shopper, such as myself, so much as move an item on display such that it is rotated or just a bit askew, the shopkeep will promptly remedy the anomaly to its ideal display situation. The fabric shop, for example, had a limited supply of fabric, including small pieces folded in piles, but each bolt was neatly wound and perfectly aligned with the others around it, and each pile of smaller pieces was neatly folded and stacked.

I, as it happened, purchased a magical, crank-style can opener. A miracle of engineering. And for one third the price in Grand Anse ($29.99EC!) I also purchased a small rug for the washroom at about a quarter the price in Grand Anse. SUCCESS!