Sunday 26 August 2012

Ihangane

'That's just the way it is.'
Always said with  a shrug of the shoulder and head slightly tilted right ...
 
With the youngest two down for a nap, Prince doing some school work and Serge seizing the moment for a Sunday afternoon nap, I decided to make a quick trip to town to grab some ingredients for make your own pizzas for dinner. I had woke up earlier in the day with a faint sinus headache and so I knew that getting out would get me some air and hopefully clear my head.

I decided go to the new 'mall' and check out a health food store that supposedly had pecans and Nakumatt our supermarket.

I did find pecans for the first time in Rwanda a few weeks ago in a local shop and bought some up. I wanted to see about bulk. Well,they did have bulk... but for 43,000 RWF per KILO!!! That's $69.91 USD per kilo!!! SERIOUSLY????
 
I headed to Nakumatt, our supermarket.
 
With no kids in tow, I decided to take advantage of browsing a little. I checked out the books as I was looking for something for Isabella and Beni for the flight back to Canada later this year. It's a few months away but my time is always so limited for 'browsing' so I took advantage of it. I did find some great sticker books.
 
I grabbed pizza ingredients and headed to the cashier.
 
As she was ringing up my meat I noticed that both came up higher than the prices on the packages. I do give credit to her that she noticed and called her supervisor over. That supervisor went to see her supervisor. I waited... and waited.
 
Finally she came back and just said that the meat counter computers were not updated and that the higher prices... much higher I might add.... were the correct ones. I made the attempt to argue my point of being the customer, that the prices posted should be the ones to be paid... all in vain. Of course.
 
Ihangane 
 
That's just the way it is.
 
I have lived here full time for almost 7 years. You would think that I would get used to this, have a thicker skin, whatever for this sort of thing ... and I do most days. But some days, like today, I don't.
 
Thinking I'll just go make some cookies with Isabella.

2 comments:

Ken said...

I was buying Christmas dinner stuff for 30 people and when I got to the counter my bag of bacon bits (which I was super happy to find) was three times what the price on the bag said (and it was already expensive). I argued that they should honour the price they posted (even to the manager) to no avail. I was tired and grumpy and fed up so I looked the guy right in the eye and said, "Fine...there are other grocery stores." and walked away from all my purchases (which I hadn't paid for yet). I've never lost it like that since (or before) but wow did it feel good. =)

messhua said...

Same thing happened to me two weeks ago at same supermarket. Tin of tuna charged Rwf 5800 instead of Rwf 1600!!! I walked away!!!