I’ll Take Two, Please
December 29, 2001
Turns out, I can’t say “two.” At least, not in a way that Ivorians understand me. Anytime I ask for two of something, even if I hold up two fingers, they question me over and over again trying to figure out how many I want (you would think my two fingers stuck up in the air would be a clue…).
Yesterday I was at the boutique with my mental list – two cans of milk, two sugar cubes, a can of Nesquik, and a can of tomato paste. I ended up with two cans of milk, after some discussion about how many I wanted, but I also came home with five sugar cubes. Not sure how that happened.
Boutiques are where you buy day-to-day groceries that aren’t available at the open air markets (marche). At the marche, you buy fruits, vegetables, spices, and meat. You can also get non-food items like buckets and baskets, shoes and clothing, machetes and wild game traps, hardware and car parts. Everything else you need is found in a boutique. And boutiques are found on nearly every corner in every town or village. This is the closest thing you will find to a supermarket unless you are in a very large city.
You can tell it’s a boutique because they have all used the same architect – wooden shacks painted a dark sky blue, with coca-cola and beer signs on the door. Every single boutique I’ve ever seen fits that description. Some of them you can walk into; others have a doorway or window blocked by rebar. Never do you choose your own items, which are stored behind a counter (or behind the rebar). You tell the guy who works there what you want. He gets it for you.
Outside boutiques there is always a “tanti” (French for aunt) selling oranges or bananas or Ivorian donuts. I think it’s obligatory. Before you can open your boutique, you have to find a tanti to sit out front and sell something.
Boutiques carry everything: toilet paper, batteries, cigarettes, bread, canned milk, powdered milk, coffee, mayonnaise, tissues, tomato paste, gum, candy, pencils, pens, soap, detergent, bug spray, sugar, flour, salt, sardines, school notebooks, yeast, rice, oil, gasoline, yogurt, feminine, bullion cubes, eggs, lighters, matches, candles, cookies, peanuts, water, margarine, razors, baby food, stickers, vinegar, bread, bleach, cream cheese, and the worst chocolate bars I’ve ever tasted …
The funny thing is, even though each of these boutiques is privately owned, they all carry nearly the same items and the same brands. There is no attempt to differentiate. And the prices are exactly the same at all the boutiques - no sales, no specials, no frequent shopper cards.
So why would you choose to go to one boutique over another? I go to the one that’s closest to my house. But maybe your friend owns a boutique so you go there. Or maybe the closest boutique to you is run by Malians, and you don’t like Malians, so you go to the next boutique, which is run by a man from Burkina Faso. You don’t like Burkinabes either, but he’s married to an Ivorian, so it’s not so bad (don’t think I’m making that up).
The other interesting thing about boutiques is the small quantities of stuff you can purchase. Want one cigarette, a tablespoon of oil, or one roll of toilet paper? It’s yours. How about one load’s worth of detergent? A cup of gasoline? A teaspoon of cream cheese? No problem. Everyone goes to the boutique every day and buys one days’ worth of supplies – enough oil for today, enough sugar for today, enough rice to get you through to tomorrow. This I can understand for people who sell things in the market, and only have a small amount of money every day. But even people who are paid monthly (school teachers and government workers) go to the boutique every day for tiny amounts of supplies.
I mean, it’s not like the tablespoon of oil you get out of the 50 gallon drum tomorrow is going to be somehow fresher than if you had bought two tablespoons today, is it?
Today when I go to the boutique, what’s on my list? Two cokes… How many? Uh… make that three cokes, please.