Never Take a 5 pound Bag of Prepackaged Flour for Granted

I went shopping yesterday in the market in a town about 1 ½ hours from our house. We were on our way to hang out with our teammates – the deafening quiet of our semi-empty houses was getting to both of us and we needed some fellowship. As is our custom in Faranah, Jim and I split up. He went looking for sandals, bike parts and eggs (what a combination, I know) and I was off in search of medicine, treats for my sick patients, and flour. I took off with my backpack full of money and my plastic bucket for flour.

I scored easily on the treats – cracker type cookies for my smaller patients and suckers for the older ones (in my defense, their teeth are already rotten so I am not really making it worse and I am promoting goodwill!). I stuffed them in my backpack and continued on. I struck out on all of the meds – no one had children’s ibuprofen, or cough syrup, or the blood pressure medicine I was looking for. The lack of medicine was a real bummer because I have been seeing some really sick kids and have been powering through the fever and cough meds and am now out. But I digress….

I knew I would be successful on the flour item so took off for the flour/sugar guy. I found him sleeping on a bench. I woke him up, greeted him and asked about his family and life and business, etc, and then asked for 20 kilos of flour – 10 for my teammate, Dawn, and 10 for me. He slowly got up off the bench and moved over to the 50 kilo bag that sat open on the porch. He situated himself, arranged the 2 plastic bowls on the old balance scale, and stacked a 2 kilo weight and a 1 kilo weight on the one side. Slowly, with a big plastic cup, he would pull flour from the big bag and dump it into the bowl – over and over as he filled it to nearly overflowing – slowing as it grew and started to tip the 3 kilo mark. Finally it tipped the scale.

The first 10 kilos were easy – I had my plastic bucket with a nice lid that nearly perfectly fits 10 kilos. So we went through the process 4 times – in three 3 kilo sections and then a 1 kilo bowl – ten kilos. No problem. The whole time I was shooing away the flies and chatting with the people who were walking by and paying attention to make sure no one grabbed my backpack.

Each time he emptied the bowl of flour into my bucket, he tapped it and scrapped out the last teaspoon of flour that was stuck to the bottom of the bowl – he wanted to make sure I was getting what I paid for. They were amused at my language skills since I speak only a little Pular – and proceeded to talk about the few other white people they knew – who live in other villages – and their ability/lack of ability to speak the language. We completed my 10 kilos and moved on the second ten.

(On a funny side note, as I stood there, a little boy came up to me. He had his hand down by his side and kept waving his hand at me – keeping it down by his side. How friendly, I thought, as I waved back. He waved again, all the time keeping his hand down by his side. I waved back. He looked confused. We went through the process again. Finally it dawned on me what he was doing. He was asking me if I wanted my shoes shined – which, since I was wearing Teva-like sandals, I declined. I can only imagine what he was thinking if he walked away……)

The second 10 kilos of flour were slightly more complicated as I no longer had a neat little bucket to fill. So, we measured out 3 kilos and then needed to find something to put it in. He searched around and found a pink bag and dumped it in. I thought – great – and started to tie up the top. That was wrong – he wanted to give me two 5 kilo bags, thank you very much.

So I left it alone, did as I was told by removing the 2 kilo weight and watched as he slowly filled the bowl again. We dumped that into the plastic bag, and then I was allowed to tie it up. My job was then to put the 1 kilo weight back into the weight bowl so we could start over.

I was under a lot of scrutiny to see if I could perform the task. We finally completed the second 5 kilos and I tied the bag and paid him 150,000fg for the flour. Now I needed to get it back to the car. I strapped on my backpack and took off, my flour bucket in one hand and the 2 bags of flour for Dawn in the other. It was a LONG walk.

I had to stop at one more medicine place to check for the medicine (no luck) and stopped at the bread place (and by bread place I mean the wheelbarrow that sits by the side of the road that is filled with French bread) where I bought 3 short loaves of bread. Thankfully I had room in my backpack; otherwise the bread would have been wrapped in a ripped off piece of paper from an old cement bag.
Now I needed to make it back to the car.

In fairness, my bread vendor did offer to help – seeing how heavy the flour was. But, pride got in the way and I told him I could handle it. I walked down the long road to the gas station where we had parked – trying not to get run over by a motorcycle or car. My arms were burning and my fingers felt like they were going to fall off – but I kept going. I was getting closer.

By the time I arrived at the car, my arms were screaming in pain and I could no long feel my fingers. When I put the flour bags down, I looked at my hand and they were blazing red, striped with white where the bags had cut off circulation to my fingers. It took about 4 hours for my fingers to feel normal again. As I reflected on the whole process, I thought – you know, I don’t think I will ever take a bag of flour, neatly pulled off the grocery shelf and gently placed in my cart, for granted ever again!