Food, Redux

    

Food  here in St. Marc seems plentiful. On nearly every street corner and all through the blocks in between here in the market district, people have kettles simmering and you smell things cooking.  Chickens run everywhere, so I guess it is quite fresh.  I have seen larger chicken legs for sale at the butchers' in the market, but what I have eaten that has been prepared for me here has always been very athletic, streetside chicken, I am pretty sure. I am basing this on the conditioning that the muscles have obviously had; none of your flabby, indolent chickens such as I am used to back home.  The exception to this is the rotisserie chicken at Foun's.  That chicken falls apart in your mouth. 

   I've been having a little difficulty managing in the marketplace. The supermarket is all fixed prices, so no problem there, but the market has just been a quagmire for me.  My son Isaac has advised me that one of my problems is 'cutting to the chase.' (He is a movie director.)  They sense my desperation.  Isaac says, "Mom, you don't go right to the thing you want. They know that you must need it, and mean to buy it, and of course they're going to raise the price."  Add this to the fact that I am obviously a foreigner and that word got around that I paid triple for a grapefruit the day before, you can see that it has been getting harder and harder for me to go in there and come out with anything unless I wanted to pay the equivalent of $2.00 for a tomato.

   Last week I sent two little girls to get me six eggs and I was so pleased with the results that I was getting ready to send them again this weekend, and Elizabeth, the school secretary, said the school would really rather one of the adults go.  So I gave Elizabeth my list, bless her!, and 100 gourdes.  This is $2.50.  She and Sister Marie, the principal, checked my list over, and Elizabeth wasn't sure she could buy the things on my list for 100 gourdes. But Sister Marie thought she could.  The picture you see at the top of this post is a still life of all the things Elizabeth bought for me last Saturday with 100 gourdes. She bought much more than I expected.

   I have a shopping postscript to add to this.  On Monday I was out for a walk and passed through the market on the way back to the school. It was 5 o'clock and most of the people were packing to go home and enjoy Carnaval, but there was a woman still sitting by her produce. She had stacks of 4 grapefruits, called a chadèk in créole.  She nodded to me and I paused.  Elizabeth had told me once, never pay more than 5 gourdes for a grapefruit. One Haitian dollar.  I put up both index fingers. "One dollar? For one?"  She nodded and smiled.  I could not believe it!  My first grapefruit at a normal market price; what an accomplishment!  And now the power has JUST gone out and I want to try to post this before going to bed.