Shopping

There is a new grocery store in Mbabane.  I can't remember if the space it takes up now was a vacant lot or some nondescript looking warehouse the last time I was here, but it is new, and it is amazing.  I have no idea what the actual population of Mbabane is (wikipedia suggests it is around 95,000, but there is no citation for this).  We have...let me count...five or six stoplights (here they are called robot and I will never not be delighted to tell somebody to take a right at the second robot while giving them directions somewhere).  The "central business district" takes up all of five city blocks.  There is a marketplace next to the taxi rank where you can get bananas, avocados, paw-paw, pineapple, melons, and cashews, and there are several smaller spaza shops where you can buy things like bread, boxed milk, sweets, and mealie meal.  And now there are four very large grocery stores bounded by six robots and five blocks and adjoining the market women and the spaza shops.

We have one of each.  ShopRite, Pick'N'Pay, Spar, and now, oh goodness, a Super Spar.  You can walk to any of one of them from any other one within five minutes.  All of them are busy most of the time, although some of them are more airy shopping experiences than others.  This may seem strange, but the thing I can't help thinking about from the new Super Spar is not the outstanding cheese selection (that means there is something besides gouda), or the little coffee shop in the corner, or the sneaking suspicion that maybe, if it is a very good day and I am very lucky, I may be able to find bagels there at some point, but the fact that the grocery carts have little...baby seaty things on them.  What's the word for those?  Car seats?  But on a grocery cart.  You know.  The place where you would stick your baby while you shop.  

I can't remember if we have those in the US or not, I've never paid much attention. But in Swaziland strollers and baby seats are not standard equipment.  When the baby is very, very small she doesn't go out much, and when she gets a bit bigger, you carry her on your back using a towel or a blanket or a lahiya, depending on the weather.  I don't think I saw anybody using the baby-carty-thingies, but I was so struck by the fact that they existed.  ShopRite and regular Spar are full of women carrying their children on their backs, in a very normal and practical way.  Pick'n'Pay has less of this, but you get the sense its because the very small children are with their aunties or caregivers, while the ones who can walk are (almost) as likely to be following around their (English speaking) dads as they are to be holding their mom's hands.  Only Super Spar, the new, fancy grocery store with the cheese selection and the espresso counter, offers customers a row of baby-equipped carts as they walk in the door.

I don't know why I fixate on these little baby chairs, but I have a sense that they are a visual marker of globalization, class, wealth, and aspiration happening around me.  Do you shop at ShopRite or Super Spar?  Who do you want your child to be?