Shopping for food in Kinshasa

Grocery shopping in Kinshasa is a pain. After two and a half months, we’ve finally figured out where to go to get the best prices on food and the best day and time to make the trip but even still, at the end of a shopping trip I feel fried and need a couple hours to recover.

When we first arrived here, we were shocked at the high prices they were charging at the supermarket – $10 for a box of cereal, $12 for a small frozen chicken, $8 for a package of extra-scratchy toilet paper. Of course, these prices were all at the expensive grocery store in town where most expats shop and they don’t care how much it costs, they’re getting a box of Honey Nut Cheerios. After getting to know some other people who’ve been around Kinshasa for a while, we learned where to find the best deals on food.

First off, there’s no such thing as one-stop shopping. No single store in town has everything that you want at decent prices and keeps convenient hours of operation.
Some stores only carry a few things but have good prices, other stores have a huge selection but you have to pay through the nose for everything they stock. Some stores are open on Sundays (which is the best shopping day because there’s no traffic), others are not, and one store that’s owed by two Jewish brothers isn’t open on Saturdays.

I decided to do a transcript of our usual Saturday morning grocery shopping excursion. Some Saturdays we go to more stores and spend more money, some Saturdays it’s less. This Saturday was on the cheaper side.

7:45am – leave the apartment and get to the far side of town before traffic gets crazy. Trying to get around Kinshasa any time past 10:30am on Saturday is a nightmare.

8:00 – arrive at a store owned by some Portuguese guys. This store is a little hard to find but they have good prices and a decent selection of groceries. They don’t have meat or deli counters. It’s a good place to get flour, powdered milk, rice, etc. in bulk. Here’s what we got, with the prices in US dollars:

1 can of chopped tomatoes – $0.96
Jar of strawberry jelly – $5.50
1 liter of orange juice – $2.04 (it comes in these giant juice boxes, which is pretty cool)
package of vanilla sandwich cookies – $3.83
package of travel packs of facial tissue – $1.42
2 cans of tomato paste – $1.20 each
Package of curry powder – $1.32
Can of peas – $1.67
Large bag of baking soda – $2.23

Total was $21.37. Here they only take cash, so we paid with a $50 in order to get some change. We gave a tip of 300 francs (about $0.50) to the guy in front of the store who guarded our car.

8:25am – arrive at Express, a more expensive grocery store that has fantastic bread. We got a loaf of sliced sandwich bread and five rolls that were still warm from the oven, plus a few other things.

.1 kg of swiss cheese – $3
2 packages of cookies – $2.68 each
1 cup of Dannon yogurt – $1.62 (my wife uses this to make homemade yogurt)
5 rolls – $1.34
Loaf of bread – $1.27

The total was $12.59, and this store takes debit cards so we used that to pay for our groceries. We parked in a secured lot, so there was no need to tip anyone for guarding our car.

8:45 - it's off to the marche for vegetables. Marche is French for market, aka the big village market where the locals shop. This is a good 15 minute drive and though we’re getting better at finding our way there, it’s still a bit of an adventure.

I should add that we were stopped by the police en route. It was our first time getting stopped in a few weeks. I had stopped a little too far past the imaginary line at an intersection, so an officer came over to see if he could squeeze some cash out of me. We again employed the dumb American approach, and it worked like a charm. He didn’t know enough English to tell us what we had done wrong, let alone ask us for a bribe or sufficiently scare us into trying to bribe him. We kept saying “I don’t understand what you’re saying” over and over. Toward the end of the conversation, he was practically laughing at the absurdity of it all and he waved us on.

The marche is the best place to get vegetables in Kinshasa, bar none. It's kind of like going to a county fair, only there's no funnel cakes or corn dogs for sale, and the smells are way more intense. The prices and selection are better than what you’d find in any store in town. On the downside, you have to deal with the chaos of the market which can be overwhelming. As you approach the marche, men jump around wildly in the street in front of your car, doing their best to convince you to park in a spot they see so they can say they found you a spot and will then guard your car. Of course, when you start to pull in, six other guys gather around the car and say that they saw the spot first and they’ll guard your car instead. It’s best to just point out the guy who initially found us the spot and leave the car-guarding duties to him. As soon as you get out, a few kids gather around with old cardboard boxes or laundry baskets and offer to serve as grocery carts, carrying your purchases around for you for a little bit of money.

Once you make your way into the market, there are dozens and dozens of stands, all selling vegetables, fruits, spices, eggs, meat, live animals (chickens, goats, and insects - for consumption, mind you), and there’s an entire section of people selling odds and ends like auto parts, plumbing supplies, used clothing, brooms, etc. At the vegetable stands, the prices are written on pieces of cardboard but of course, everything is open to negotiation. We’re pretty much the only white people in the market which means they jack up the prices when they see us coming. My wife is a good negotiator so we can get a discount, though not as much as we could get if we were Congolese. Even without the discount, though, the prices are better than at the grocery stores and the vegetables seem to be of better quality. Here’s a list of what we picked up:

30 eggs – $6.14
1 mango – $0.35 cents
1 kilo of onions – $1.75
4 potatoes – $1.40
Baby food-sized jar of curry – $1.40
Pineapple – $3.15
Celery, green peppers, cabbage – $1.22
An unopened bottle of contact lens cleaner – $1.75

The total at the marche was $15.41, and you better believe it’s all straight cash, homey.

That bottle of contact lens cleaner was the find of the day. A woman was selling all kinds of beauty products and cleaning supplies and I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the contact lens cleaner. I haven’t noticed it in any stores in Kinshasa, and I don’t think she knew what it was used for so she didn’t know what to ask. I wonder if most people around here even know what contact lenses are.

Going to the marche isn’t too bad as long as you can stay focused on what you need, you’re willing to haggle over prices, and you can ignore all the other people coming up to you and asking you to buy beans or worms or whatever from their stand.

On the way out, we paid the guy who found us our spot and watched our car 500 francs (a little over a dollar). He was a big help in getting traffic and people to move out of the way so we could back out. It’s like the circus there with the amount of people and cars and trucks all over the place.

9:45am – we arrive back at home, and see the traffic on the roads is already piling up. We done good.

On Sunday after church, we made two quick stops at some other stores to get meat and cheese.

Kinmart has good meat but crazy expensive prices on everything else. We bought a half-kilo of beef for $7.29 to use in a curry that my wife made that night. Kinmart has the distinction of having some of the worst guards of all the supermarkets we’ve been to. They sit in chairs by the door, don’t tell you when the lot is full, and are usually no help when it comes to trying to navigate your way around their miniscule parking lot. Yet on Sunday, the guard who was there was super-helpful and squeezed us into a spot right by the door and held up traffic so we could get out. We tipped him 500 francs (a little over a dollar) for his help.

Then it was on to one final store, Regal, to get the last few things we needed. Regal has a good selection of food, good prices, and the best cheese in the city. We go here or the Portugese place mentioned above for most of our groceries.

1.5 liters of Canada dry - $6.10 (crazy, I know, but I’ve been jonesing for ginger ale lately)
300 grams of mozzarella cheese - $4.91
Approximately two sticks of butter - $1.78

The total was $12.79, and here they accept debit cards.

The grand total for the week was $69.45, which is a little on the low side for us. We didn’t buy much meat this week or any big staples like flour, sugar, or oatmeal. From week to week, though, the shopping experience is about the same when it comes to the stores we visit and the people we encounter.

On an unrelated note, I finally uploaded a few pictures to the old blog entries for our new apartment (you can see our apartment building and the trash river it’s next to) and our camping trip.