February 8 - Papine & Phone

This morning we went to Papine (just up Hope Rd. toward UWI) to go to the produce market there. We've been buying fruit and vegetables at the Sovereign Center supermarket, but they aren't great, are pretty expensive, and they clearly don't carry some of the less fancy types of fruit (such at ethiopian apples) that we see people selling on the street all the time. We knew we were missing the boat somehow, so today we set out to fix it. We hailed a shared cab (a van with a very large # of people all heading in the direction of Papine--these shared cabs go back and forth from Half Way Tree to Papine all the time and cost JA$50 (US$1) per person) and piled in. Three minutes later we were standing at the head of street lined on both sides with displays of all kinds of fruits and vegetables. We strolled down to the end of the street passing stalls, goats, and kids on bicycles, and then strolled back up buying stuff as we went. The prices were quite uneven (though all cheap), obviously owing to some people giving us honest prices and others inflating the prices for us. Not knowing yet what the right prices are, we didn't quibble. (It seems a relatively just form of price discrimination, at least until we learn what we are supposed to pay for paw paw and ackees.) We came away with scallions, tomatos, scotch bonnet peppers, onions, paw paw (papaya), ackees, avocado, ethiopian apples, and probably some other stuff I'm forgetting. Yum.

Remarkable, while we were sitting here writing our blogs the phone installation people showed up and installed our phone! 11 days or so from when we applied, we are in business. You can now expect more frequent and media-rich blogs!