(This is part of a storytelling experiment called WELCOME TO YOUR QUARTER-CAREER GAP YEAR)
“THIRTY DOLLARS FOR AN ORANGE !?!” you say, aghast and standing in the produce section of an Antiguan supermarket five minutes from Victor and Fawnie’s house.
In your hand is the item in question: a orange – at lease you think it is – with a strange yellow-greenish color and bruised like someone used it like a fastball.
Fawnie, who had doubled over in laughter at your exclamation, catches her breath.
“Yep,” she says, shaking her head. “That’s what I’m sayin’. You should see the price on the grapes, or the apples, or the bananas…good lawd…the bananas!”
You put the orange down and start walking through the produce area. Grapes, apples, bananas – all like she said: woefully overpriced (after converting it from East Caribbean dollars to US dollars, of course) and looking like someone took the old, bruised runts at the bottom the fruit piles in America and shipped them over here.
“It’s just the way the import-export system works,” Fawnie continues, looking at a caved-in melon. “Even though they grow many of these fruits here in Antigua, our best stuff gets sent to other countries, and the worst stuff from other countries comes here.”
“Yep,” says Victor, walking by and heading for the bakery section. “I don’t even bother.”
“Oh come on, how do the politicians – how does anybody even allow that?”
Fawnie has a few explanations and so does Victor, but clearly, this is an issue that they’ve come to accept.
“We just get our stuff at the booths on the side of the street.”
She’s referring to the the roadside fruit stands that pop up here and there wherever you drive in the area between the grocery store and their home. People pick the bananas, mangoes, and other fruits from their own trees and offer it for sale. And it's always at a better price and quality than the stores.
On your way back home from the store, the talk about food transitions into a talk about the economy.
“The economy is like crazy bad,” Fawnie says. “High unemployment galore. It’s because we're a tourism-dependent economy. Tourism is like 60 to 70 percent of the GDP and it's been way down since 2008.”
You knew that tourism was a massive industry here, but didn't realize it was that big.
“Money’s so bad that even the government has problems paying their workers. At the hospital where I might do some work – they stopped paying their workers for multiple weeks. These are healthcare workers! We need our healthcare workers!"
You hope so.
You certainly hope so.
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