Remember my box of letters home 'from the front' (Nyanza, actually) ?? Looking through some of them, I found this shopping list from June 1969, which I had sent home for my mother to see .... think I was trying to impress her !
We were living at Maranda Secondary School at the time, a few miles from Bondo, west of Kisumu and only a mile or two from the lake. Shopping meant a drive of about 40 miles over an appalling road, and usually took about two hours, to allow for punctures or broken exhaust pipe or some other car disaster. So shopping was done about once every three to four weeks, and meant an all day trip, leaving about 7 a.m., and getting back after dark ... we usually met up with friends in town for lunch, and had a swim at the club !
So it would seem we bought 25 lbs white sugar (actually the gritty, 'dirty' sugar which nowadays is clean and sold here as 'golden granulated' cane sugar); 3 lbs brown sugar; 20 lbs flour; tin baking powder (no self raising flour available).
12 packets biscuits, 10 pkts cream crackers.
32 pints UHT milk, 3 lbs milk powder, 2 lbs tea, 32 shillings worth of coffee (no idea what quantity that would be ... maybe a large tin of instant Nescafe ?) and 2 lbs ground coffee.
12 tins fruit, 12 tins baked beans, 12 tins green beans, 12 tins carrots, 12 tins peas. (We could buy some fresh veg in Bondo market [3 miles away] but usually only tomatoes, onions and sukuma weki - a type of strongly flavoured kale.)
20 tins meat, (Spam, corned beef, tinned stewing beef) 6 tins soup, 2 packet soups. Meat was available in Bondo on a Friday, but often meant waiting until the butcher had finished killing the cow.
12 jellies, 6 tins jam, 6 chocolate puddings (Instant Whip type).
Bottle HP sauce, jar pickle, salt, 6 squash base (this was a concentrated squash that had to be mixed with sugar and water to make 4 bottles of ordinary squash.)
Tin of yeast; tin of cocoa; 3 large packs corn flakes.
6 x 1lb. tins Blue Band (margarine); 2 tins Kimbo (a sort of lard cooking fat).
12 Fanta lemon (fizzy pop)
36 eggs; 2 packs porridge oats, 2 packs spaghetti, 2 lbs rice (the weevils were not charged for .... nor those in the flour). 1 lb sultanas.
24 boxes matches, 12 loo rolls, 6 packs OMO, 3 cans IT (pyrethrum insect spray), 3 tubs VIM, 1 Zal (absolutely no idea now what that was), 2 Colgate tooth paste, 2 bottles shampoo, 8 bars soap.
(An email from a friend today suggests Zal might be Izal .... that hard nasty toilet paper, but I don't think so, as we already had 12 loo rolls on the list).
(Another email [I've stirred up interest here !] suggests that it IS Izal .... which apart from a nasty scratchy loo paper, 50 years ago was also a disinfectant, in a bottle .... a bit like Savlon or Dettol .... this sounds much more likely !)
1 lb Cheddar cheese, 1 round cheese (maybe Edam ??) 2 lbs butter, 2 loaves bread (I was making bread every two days), 1 lb bacon, 1 lb sausages.
Living by myself now, I am staggered at the quantity of food two of us consumed in a month, plus any visitors, plus small rations for the 'staff' (usually sugar, tea and soap). We bought all this in Kisumu Grocers, and then went on to the town market for fresh vegetables and fruit, and perhaps fresh fish. We carried a cold box with ice packs in for the butter, cheese and any fresh meat or fish we bought; even so, the meat and fish was warm by the time we got it home to the fridge (paraffin powered), so had to be eaten quickly.
Kisumu Grocers to the right of the clock tower in 1970.
Run by a lovely Asian family, the daughter of whom I met many years later on a train in Canada !!
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