Shopping in Ukarumpa

Well, there's not a whole lot of choice in terms of shops in Ukarumpa. If you want computer related items, you go to the computer department, for fresh fruit and vegies, you go to the market (3 times a week and early in the morning) and for about everything else, you go to "The Store". The Store sells food as well as a variety of other things such as plates, wool, bath mats, stationery, cleaning products and toiletries.

A lot of products are brought in from Australia and the USA, but there are also locally produced PNG products and some cheap Indonesian and Malaysian products. There are even apples in The Store occasionally which are imported from Australia. They cost about 60c each.

Of course sometimes they are out of stock, like recently when there was no onions in the store for a few weeks, and the past couple times I’ve been there, there’s not been any eggs.

One day I went to The Store and wanted to buy macaroni and some other type of pasta, and I walked down the aisle that has the pasta and all I saw was Black and Gold pasta spirals. I thought, "Is that all they've got? Just spirals? I guess I'll have to wait and get macaroni another time." Then it dawned on me that I had just completely overlooked a whole section of pasta that was an American brand. There was all sorts of different types of pasta in the American brand, so I was able to get macaroni (elbows). It is funny how I am so used to familiar brands that I just did not see what was right there in front of me in a different brand!