As said before Accompong is relatively remote, at least for Jamaican standards. Although we do have about a dozen 'shops' in town, we usually have to do most of our shopping in Santa Cruz. The local shops average about 12 x 12 in size and tend to mostly carry Jamaican snack foods, such as beer, rum, soda, cheese chips, sweeties, etc. Some shops will also have dry goods like flour, sugar, evaporated milk, toilet paper, clothespins, powdered milk, and canned veggies. Several shops also sell the Jamaican staple, chicken, and we can even get some fish here too.
Because we live in a farming community, most produce is not hard to come by. We've had a significant amount of veggies and fruit given to us by people in the community, and we try our best to purchase/find whatever we can here. It's relatively common for someone to come to our gate asking, 'Unu need plaintain? Ripe banana?' The farm to door service is quite nice.
We also started a garden which has yet to produce, but our bok choy, scallions, and carrots look ready to harvest in another week or so. Along with this, we have plenty of trees around that have food ready to be plucked. In our yard alone we have june-plum, almond, banana, breadfruit, coconut, orange, and mango trees.
In order to support our local community, and to be connected to the land and the people here, we try to buy/get what we can here. For everything else, we go to Santa Cruz. Santa is the biggest town, and the regional hub for our parish. It's where many people from all over St. Elizabeth go to shop. It takes about 45 minutes to get there by taxi and about US$2.75 one way/person for fare. We usually hit up the outdoor market/street vendors first, get random items at the wholesale (very different from wholesales in the States), and then head to our favorite local grocery store to get most other food items we need.
Aside from food, Santa has countless other shops, hardware stores, stationery stores, furniture stores, small appliance stores, computer stores, and so on. Some of these stores can be extremely frustrating to buy from for a number of reasons. First of all, we're either provided with too much service or none at all. Many times we walk into a store and a vendor won't leave us alone to 'just look', partly due to the Jamaican higgler mentality, and partly due to the fact that we're white, which equals money/tourists to many Jamaicans. If this doesn't happen, the opposite seems to be true. You can't find someone to help you to save your life. I can't tell you how many times Matt and I are stuck waiting behind the counter for one agent to get off the phone with her boyfriend and the other one to stop talking to the guy in the back. They see us. They know we're there. They know we need help. They know we're there to spend money. They also don't care. So until we yell like the other Jamaicans do, we're not getting any service.
The second thing that can be frustrating is that many shops have most of their items behind the counter. You're not completely sure what's back there, or if what you're seeing is really what you think you're seeing, and Lord knows what the price is! The hardware store is even like this. It drives Matt crazy when he's just trying to get some nuts and bolts, and he can't just look at them up close and personal, grab what he needs, and check out like he would at Home Depot, Samson, or Ace. Back home, Matt in a hardware store is like a kid in a candy shop; here, he loathes any time he steps foot in one of these shops.
Because of the time/energy/money involved in going to Santa, we try to limit how often we go. All the same, we do enjoy getting 'out' once a week or so. We can catch some different scenery for a while, and who knows, maybe even hit up KFC for lunch.
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