The Foreign Service Journal, November 2004

R EFLECTIONS A Tale of the Mundane Egg G AIL K ENNA O n my first day back in the U.S., while examining a clean, white egg at the supermarket, I noticed other customers giving me strange looks. How were they to know the eggs I bought in Caracas were brown and covered in feathers (and guano)? During my first few months in Venezuela I tried washing the eggs, but too many of them broke. That’s when I learned how to crack one without getting feathers in the bowl. Cracking eggs, however, wasn’t as perilous as buying them. Each Saturday, I shopped at an outdoor, informal market, situated under an overpass. Beneath the rumble of trucks, the egg man worked slowly — a long line forming in front of his table. While filling a flat of three dozen eggs, he sipped a cafecito and chatted, alternating those actions with winding string around each patron’s eggs. Then during our final year in Venezuela — thanks to government price controls and runaway inflation — eggs disappeared. Or so I thought, until a Venezuelan neighbor told me about eggs hidden for regu- lar customers. “Go to your butcher,” she said. So off I went to my local supermarket. A man in his late 40s, he wore a blood-soaked apron and chain-smoked while cutting meat. Three of his fingers were missing. “Tiene huevos?” I asked innocent- ly. (Do you have eggs?) The three younger butchers howled with laugh- ter. What a gringa! (In Spanish slang, I remembered too late, eggs refer to the male anatomy.) I quick- ly said, “Hay huevos?” (Are there eggs?) That day there weren’t any. But from then on until I left Caracas in 1995, I could count on hearing one question from the fellow with the missing fingers, followed by laughter from his young assistants. “Quiere huevos hoy?” (Do you want eggs today?) Eventually a young man at the local bakery took pity on me. Whenever I bought bread, he gave me four eggs in a plastic sack. On an embassy trip to Suriname, I bought a flat of eggs and after landing in Caracas, I had a photo taken of me, disembarking with them. The C-12 mechanic asked, “No live chickens?” In reflecting on life overseas, I’ve realized that grocery shopping in for- eign countries replicates my child- hood, when the butcher wrapped meat in paper, or the baker added an extra bun to the bag, and the milk- man placed bottles on the back porch. When people ask what I miss about life abroad, I say, “The delight of shopping for groceries.” “Are you crazy?” a friend asked. “Missing fin- gers, feathered eggs, inefficiency?” All I could say was, “Yes,” until I moved to Lima in 2002, where I found E. Wong, a chain of Chinese- Peruvian supermarkets. This supermarket chain incorpo- rates those childhood memories, along with efficiency, fairness and quality. The bagboys will not accept tips, the butchers have all fingers present, and the fish fellow would be fired if he accepted a propina (little bonus) to dress a halibut. E. Wong customers receive stickers (remem- ber green stamps?), with which I eventually purchased a set of crystal glasses. And each time I shop there, bonus points are added to my Wong card. On Mother’s Day a band plays, and should a customer shop on his or her birthday, the checkout girl will say “Happy Birthday” after seeing a message flash on her computer. All the clerks are dressed in crisp, red outfits, and every female employee’s hair is in a bun with a decorative bow. On almost every aisle someone is passing out treats: cheese, crackers, wine, even pisco sours. You name it — E. Wong will have it (or order it). Best of all, by each checkout there are tiers of eggs (brown or white), packaged by the dozen or half-dozen, in a condition I would describe as shockingly pristine. In more than one mythology, a bird is represented as laying the mundane egg on the primordial waters. In Peru’s case, E. Wong hatched a golden egg in the desert by the sea. The best face of globaliza- tion, it seems to me.  68 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 4 After postings with her State contrac- tor husband to Kuala Lumpur, Caracas, Bogota and Lima, Gail Kenna now lives in Virginia. A university pro- fessor by trade, she is working on her fourth book. The stamp is courtesy of the AAFSW Bookfair “Stamp Corner.”