To get the buffalo milk one must go to the corner diary in the morning. If you go at night it is a lot more expensive as they have paid for the storage and that requires a generator to provide back up power as the power is off so often. As they use water to make it go further it needs to be boiled before being drunk.
To get fruit and veges one goes to any number of people sitting on the street. You plck the produce you like the look of and the tell him how much you wnat – your options are 200gm, ½ kilo or a whole kilo. They then hold up the old school balance scales and weigh your produce against a weight. If it doesn't weight enough you add say another apple. You then pay the set amount which seems to involve what one INF’er called skin tax – tax for not being Nepali. Therefore our didi (homehelp) does most of the shopping to get the best deals.
I had to go clothes shopping today. To do this you walk into a shop and pick a fabric that you like for your top, pick a fabric for your pants and another for your shawl. However, you sit down on a stool and they bring the fabric to you – very fast. Before you know it you have 20 or so different fabrics in front of you as you try to work out which colour combinations you like. You then take your material to a taylor who measures you up and makes your clothes. An top, pants and shawl costs about $40 all up.
To get a cell phone you have to fill out a form which includes adding a passport photo of you, signing it with your name and thumb prints and drawing a map of your house as there are no street names or numbers here, just names of major intersections and major roads – therefore drawing a map is the same as saying I live at 44 Pembroke St, Invercargill!
Some shops you barter at and others you don’t. You soon learn which is which but also having Nepaliu language skills brings the price down a lot.
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