Two major recent discoveries have eased our constant dull ache for some western luxuries. In one of the small dusty dark shops nearby we found chocolate digestives. Now this probably doesn’t sound like much but we have not had so much as a teaspoon of anything sweet for so long that this small box of deliciousness made us giddy with excitement. We tried not to think about the crazy price as we lusted after the biscuity goodness waiting for us. And not even the fact that the chocolate hadn’t seen a solid state in months deterred our enjoyment of every delicious gooey mouthful. We are now rationing ourselves to two biscuits each a day for fear the shop will run out of their modest supply – which must surely have been a mistake in their ordering in the first place.
The second is much less wholesome but just as satisfying. There are two duty free shops about a minute’s walk from our house – right on the border and we quickly found out that we are allowed to buy whatever we want from them – without question. Their stock is hardly extensive nor are the prices all that remarkable – which makes me wonder who their customer base is. That said, we made the retail discovery of the century – a litre bottle of great gin that they sell for the equivalent of only three euro. Well it would be downright rude not to buy it we decided and augmented our purchase with some cans of tonic which were also on offer. Well it’s really for the quinine we reasoned with ourselves. They use it to fight malaria so we’ll just have gin and tonics as a prophylactic. It simply makes good medical sense.
So now we round off our repetitive daily meal of rice with the occasional G ‘n’ T and the less occasional chocolate digestive. Who’d have thought such simple pleasures could ever create a little bit of heaven for us here, in the very north of the middle of nowhere.
Conortje 