Man's Favorite Sport (not)

Sentani Hypermarket: Your satisfaction is our pride...

Last entry was about food. In this one I’ll share a bit about what it’s like to go grocery shopping. Here in Papua you have two main sources where you can buy your food: a store, or the market. The market is going to be the best place to find fresh produce, of which there is an abundance. The bigger food stores will also have some kinds of fruits and vegetables, but those items usually look like they’ve gone there to die. Local markets are really easy to get to, though, and there’s even one about 5 minutes’ walk away from my house.

The biggest market is in the heart of Sentani. Referred to as Pasar Baru, this place is teeming with activity and is chock-full of all sorts of things from buah merah (a red something-rather that I haven’t sampled yet), to blocks of sago, to stuff I don’t even recognize yet. Of course you can get the well-known items like tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplant, etc. No lettuce in these parts of Papua, though, so you can make do with Chinese cabbage. But if you need to replenish your stock of pinang, there’s certainly plenty of that all around. Just kidding, I don’t think you don’t want betel nut.

Yeah, I used this picture last year, but forgot to take more

Pasar Baru looks fairly navigable from the front, but once you start to poke around further inside it starts to feel like you’re in a labyrinth, and since I haven’t gone through there that many times yet, it’s still easy to get lost among the many back passageways. There are some familiar landmarks I’ve started to recognize, like the meat section, with the vendors waving duster-like swatters over the dead carcasses to keep the swarms of flies from settling. When I see—or rather smell—it, I know I’m on the right track to arriving at one of the better spots to buy things like potatoes and onions and other vegetables. After that I hazard a few turns, perhaps spotting the place where guys are processing coconuts, and usually manage to find my way to the fruit section before finishing the rounds and popping out along side of the market grounds.

It’s certainly a very different experience shopping in such a place compared to Winco or Safeway. No price tags on anything—you just have to ask how much the item you want costs and practice hearing your Indonesian numbers. If you are stocking up and need to haul a bunch of groceries, there aren’t shopping carts. But you can hire a wheelbarrow driver who will accompany you around the market and make sure to keep your stuff safe. He can probably tell you where to find something you’re looking for too.

Now if you want to buy food items that don’t come under the category of fresh produce, then it’s time to go to a store. There are plenty of little shops all along the roadside, but if you’re looking for more than just instant noodles or Pocari Sweat, then you’ll want to check out the two main supermarkets in town, Hypermarket and Saga. If you can’t find what you’re looking for in one, maybe the other one has it. Or maybe what you saw last week on the shelf will take 3 months to appear again, like it did for the kind of soy milk that I like to buy.

There are always plenty of cool designs to choose for your ride.

It’s about a 15-minute drive to the “mall” in Sentani where Hypermarket is. After arriving in Papua, I was initially dependent on catching rides with other folks going that way if I wanted to do some shopping for dry-goods staples like quick oats or whole grain rice. But after a couple months here I started learning how to use the taxi system. At first I was rather intimidated about the whole idea of trying to figure out public transportation with my very limited Bahasa comprehension. But after figuring out how simple it is, I wish I would have started using it sooner!

Throughout the day there are always tons of little white mini vans driving back and forth on the main road in front of the campus. These are the taxis—angkot in other parts of Indonesia. Getting one is as easy as standing by the side of the road and putting out your hand as one approaches. As far as getting to where you want to go, that’s pretty easy since there’s only 1 main road going to Sentani and the main stores are right along it. The taxi runs more like a small bus, and so you don’t even have to tell the driver where you want to go; you simply indicate when you want to get off, and he’ll pull over right there. The price? 5,000 rupiah, or about $0.35. One of these days I need to try out going a bit further afield using the taxis, as I’ve only been as far as Sentani. You can go all the way to Jayapura if you want, but that does mean changing taxis a few times.

Dec 1 I'll be setting up the tree the Boyds left for me

Last Sunday I introduced my housemate Timothy to the bigger versions of the supermarkets in Abepura, about an hour’s drive away. Luckily for us, the campus pickup was available, so he was able to drive us there for our shopping spree. I manage to make it out to Abepura every few months or so and it’s a good opportunity to stock up on things that don’t show up in the stores here in Sentani.

Ah, yes, the fruit jam shelf on the right. A bit more variety here.

We stepped into the first supermarket and were greeted by a rocking-out version of Joy to the World playing over the speakers and a large stock of little plastic Christmas trees. Oh, that's right - Christmas is (sort of) around the corner! Tim and I combed our way through the store searching for the various things we needed. He was particularly happy with the stock at Saga, even finding some vegetarian seasoning that his family uses back home. I found some snacks that weren't loaded with MSG and also managed to get several kinds of preservative-free fruit jam. No V-Soy drink at the first store, though, and the second supermarket had the price so high I lost my appetite for it. I'll survive by making my own coconut milk with carton coconut cream and water for the meantime. It actually works pretty well, don't worry.

Overall it was about a four-hour excursion and we managed to come back with some nice treats. And having gotten the first dose of Christmas music, I was reminded that there will be plenty—plenty—more of that to come! But in the meantime, I’ve got a jar of sun-dried tomatoes from California to enjoy.

There's no lack of variety in shirt designs here