Market

I realized my language skills truly have progressed when I was at the Market this weekend. Suzie and  I were buying quite a lot of food so that we could cook an American meal for our families. I hadn’t been to the market in a while but its incredibly how different a grasp of the language can make things. Only one particularly grouchy vendor tried to rip us off and we were able to talk her down. For the most part the opposite happened, once a vendor realized we were Americans who could speak Kinyarwanda and we explained we were Peace Corps volunteers there was a tendency to under charge us. I paid 100 RWF for a bundle of 5 small white onions (the standard price) and the sales woman gave me a second one for free and thanked us. We are planning to cook breakfast for dinner because we don’t want to rock the boat too hard. Rwandans are notoriously stubborn and literally any change is usually unwelcome. Granted there are a limited number of foods available here but instead of getting creative people choose to cook them in the same 10 combinations over and over again. For example I made guacamole for my family once and they had to be begged to even try it, despite the fact that they mash avocados into their rice all the time. So we are making scrambled eggs with vegetables in them, French toast and hashbrowns. This shouldn’t scare them too much since omelets are a standard here as are French fries  but I’m still anticipating that they will be highly disappointed. Wish us luck!