Conference

A few months ago our team had a spiritual retreat. This was unique in that the entire team participated including local staff. In the past, retreats have been held in another country with a variety of teams getting together and thus local staff were unable to attend due to the cost. This time it was decided to have it on our compound and include everyone. The theme was Transforming to God's Culture. As a result there was lots of discussion about what things in each person's culture were good, bad, or neutral based on Biblical principles. One of the things I enjoyed was hearing the perspective of the local staff. In our orientation training we were told to expect differences but its much more interesting to hear someone talk about their personal culture and thought processes. During this time I also got some hands on experience in dealing with these differences. On the first day of the conference I got a call from one of my friends at another organization who was travelling through the capital on her way home She was assisting a mother and daughter in getting home as they had just been to a nearby country for surgery. The problem was that although all 3 were booked onto the same flight, the mother/daughter got bumped off while my friend was still supposed to fly out. There was no way my friend wanted to leave this woman in an unfamiliar city on her own so could they stay with us overnight and be assisted to the airport for the next flight out? Having her over was a very interesting experience. Although she was familiar with many things from her time in the big city, I still ran into some cultural/lifestyle issues. One thing that was really helpful for me was to mentally put myself in her lifestyle to understand why she did things. Its amazing how differently we do things subconsciously and don't think about why we do what we do. For instance, the woman was not bothered at all by all the food crumbs her child dropped while wandering around the house eating her meal. From my perspective this would be odd and alot of work to clean up the mess. Looking at it from her perspective, they eat meals outside so kids wandering around and dropping food is no big deal. The cultural differences then made more sense to me and I was better able to adapt to how she does things and not be annoyed by the things that didn't seem right in my mind.

Electricity

Electricity is something I didn't have much of when I was living in the bush. Then I had a setup of a solar panel, inverter, and a large battery. This was enough to power my laptop, flashlight, e-reader, and a bit of evening electricty from the lightbulb in my tukel. Life in the big city has much more electricity but still has its limits. City power exists but is horribly unreliable and we can go for months without it so we mainly depend on our generator. This means life tends to run on a schedule. The workday starts when the generator goes on, and ends when the generator goes off. It also means that suppertime revolves around when we have power since we use the electricity to cook. We still do have a gas stove/oven combo but since gas is expensive and electricity is "free" this cuts down on some of the costs of living here.

Running a fridge/freezer also is pretty good out here if you keep it full which isn't too hard as it also makes for good storage of foods that we don't want to go bad. Flour here comes with extra protein and freezing it for a few days will prevent the protein from reproducing. Rats also can be a nusance so anything that they would like that isn't in glass or tin containers ends up in the fridge since its rat proof. Veggies out here don't last long so I chop them up weekly and throw them into the freezer to use throughout the week (bonus is that later I just have to grab a bit of different foods to make dinner). Water bottles added to the freezer when things get low means ice water for the really hot days.

Although electricity availability can get annoying, we have settled into a routine and its not a huge bother. Probably the biggest difference from north america is that our schedule is based on the generator running and we always know where our flashlights are at any given time (and they always have charged batteries). I'm reminded of how much I've adapted to life without electricity when local people visit and they are asking why I don't have any fan or lights on when the generator is running. Unless its dark, 1/2 the time I just forget to turn things on and with natural light, why bother?

Inflation

Note: this is a blog post I wrote about over a month ago when the prices were spiralling upward. Things have settled down and are somewhere in between the prices listed below but I've been gone for a bit and with fluctuations I'm not sure the current prices. 

Life here is getting more expensive all the time. Although there has been a blackmarket exchange rate for as long as I can remember, the difference between the bank rate and the black market rate has widened drastically in the last few months. As a result the price of goods is rising quickly. Here are a few examples. All prices are in USD and are in the exchange that we can get at the bank.

Item	cost in November	cost in May
small bucket of potatoes (fills a plastic grocery bag)	$7	$14
green pepper	$0.28 for a medium one	$0.28 for a very small one
carrots	$0.28 for one	same
onions	$1.41 for medium pile	$2.82 for medium pile
garlic	$0.28 for one	$0.42 for one
meat - mince	$8.47 for 1kg	$20 for 1kg
flour	$3.38 for 2kg	$7.34 for 2kg
20L of drinking water	$3.39	$7.34
1 egg	$0.28	$0.56

For us its frustrating to see the costs rise but not nearly as frustrating as for the local people who are already are living day to day and have to pay the price that things are going at for the day. For us, I tend to buy a weeks worth of food at a time and can afford to wait a day or two if the prices are high in hopes that the next day the price is less. Many others don't have that option.

One thing we never really bought much of is water since we have a filter and it has given us more than we need when we first arrived here. recently it has gotten slower and thus we have been buying water periodially since we drink more than the filter gives out. Last week those prices doubled and I'm not willing to pay that much for drinking water so instead I've been boiling it to kill bacteria and running it through a cloth to prevent guinea worm. This doesn't cost me anything but some time since the generator runs on its schedule regardless of my water needs and we use electric hotplates to cook. I've chatted with our local staff about doing this to save money but for them there still are expenses because they have to buy charcoal so they can boil the water which reduces any savings (if there is any savings after buying the charcoal).

Gasoline is the one thing that hasn't changed its price since we got here. Its still $1.69 per liter since there are gov't price controls on it. One might think this is a good thing but with price controls come shortages and finding fuel now is very difficult. At one station a few weeks ago I counted 40 cars lined up before the line disappeared around the corner. There were also a mass of motorcycles bunched together at the station and more scattered throughout the line. The only other gas station that was open had similar lineups. The rest were closed down because there was no fuel. Now I don't see as many lineups however the vast majority of gas stations have tarps over the pumps or the area roped off signalling they don't have fuel.

Life here is one big economics lesson that brings many questions and struggles. One thing we don't want to do is use the black market as its illegal but it also leaves other questions on how we can function in this environment in a stewardly way and how can we help others who are struggling with the rising costs. Do I barter for a good price (potatoes for example were going for $20 but I was able to get them for $14 one day) or do I let it go and pay more for the item knowing that those selling the products are most likely in a more difficult situation. On one level I want to let it go because I know it will help them for the short term however if I pay more for the item than its worth I am encouraging the idea that they can charge certain people more which can be damaging in the long term.