There are three major Westerner-oriented supermarkets in my part of town: two branches of a company called Finest, and one store run by a Middle Eastern supermarket chain called Spinney's. All three of these places cater quite explicitly to us kharijis, from their inventories to the fact that you can pay in Afghanis, dollars, or even, at least in theory, with a credit card (the two Finest outlets are the only stores I've seen in Kabul that take credit cards).* They are also interesting enough in their own right to merit a post.
*I have tried a couple of times to pay with my credit card, but nobody at these stores seems to be able to work the machine. Either that or it's just broken. But still, it's the thought that counts.
Shopping at Finest or Spinney's is something of an experience. You are likely to be able to find anything you need for your house there, from peanut butter (about $6 per jar) to Frosted Flakes (about $8 per box) to pirated English-language DVDs (about $1.40 each; only at Finest) to fancy-looking china (sorry, no price quote here). Annoyingly, the only things I can't seem to find in either place are notecards; apparently the Afghans don't study vocabulary. There is a small fruit section, a deli, and even some Western-style medicines. Some of the medicines even come from the West, such as the 144-count boxes of Costco-brand knockoff decongestant pills.
But the really strange part is the fact that the shelves in Finest and Spinney's are far more about volume than about diversity, although this is not to say that they have too limited of a selection. Rather, it is quite typical to see five or six five-deep rows of each food item in an aisle. There are usually around a hundred cans of peanut butter, which is stocked purely for the Americans in town, on the shelves of Finest at any given time. One could buy twenty jars of jelly without making a dent in the selection.
In fact, this bizarre obsession with volume of inventory carries over to just about every store in this town. The little Afghan stores on the main street near our house have entire shelves full of orange juice, mango juice, soda, etc. - perhaps 30 or 40 liters of each at any one time. And there are two or three of these stores per block. The bakeries (which are the only businesses open 24/7, even on the biggest Afghan holidays) have mounds of nan ready for sale all the time, even if it's 8:00 at night. I drove by a store the other day whose interior walls were lined with nothing but rows and rows of fire extinguishers, perhaps 50 in total.**
**As far as I can tell, Kabul has no fire department, and I don't think I've seen a fire extinguisher in a building yet (other than this store). This store's business model might need some re-tooling.
Perhaps the immensity and repetitiveness of store inventories reflects nothing more than a hedge against the inevitable delay/cancellation of shipments into Kabul, or merely the fact that space is at a premium downtown (where many small shops lack basements or storerooms). But it still strikes me as odd. The small store on Taimani Street that is wall-to-wall juice inside is never, ever, going to sell even a quarter of its juice inventory in a single day, and it may never even approach that pace of sales. Spinney's could probably put 50, rather than 200, cans of beans on its shelves, and customers wouldn't notice the difference. What's the use of having 50 fire extinguishers in a space the size of a suburban American walk-in closet?
These questions are only underscored by the deprivation of most Afghans. But perhaps I shouldn't be surprised. In Kabul, corrugated-iron shacks often sit only a block or two away from palatial, lavishly-decorated compounds. Most of the city makes little to no money, while those in positions of power take field trips with $52 million in cash in a suitcase. Why, then, am I surprised that foodstuffs seem to be found in a Poisson distribution--little to none for long stretches, and then huge clusters? It's only fitting, right?
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