One Million Dollars for Cooking Fuel!

So, I don’t know if you have heard, but we had a visitor for a while in our kitchen at night. Not a welcome visitor, if you know what I mean. Anyway, this little guy decided it would be fun to chew our gas hose one night, which made our gas tank leak out most of the gas in it. (Grrrr) So not only did we need to replace the hose, but we need to buy a new tank of gas. Fuel tanks run about 650,000 dobras. A tank lasts for about 6 weeks, but we use so little gas, that one tank will last us about 2 months. Anyway, just when we needed more gas, people in Gabon (in West Africa – were the island gets its gas from) went on strike. So, gas was scarce. One night, Jared and I hauled our empty tank out to the street to find a taxi and go get some gas at Ubaga – Tela, a store near ADRA that had gas earlier in the day for 750,000 dobars. (100,000 more than usual - supply and demand, my friend) Anyway, for some reason, no taxi came by, but a motorcycle did. Umm, we really didn’t want to ride on a motorcycle with a big tank of gas, so we said no thanks and a few minutes later, the guy drove up with a friend in a car and said, “Get in!” So, we paid the guy 150,000 dobras to take us not very far at all (a lot of money for a ride!) and low and behold, the store was out of gas. So the guy took us somewhere else and they were out of gas too! The island was having a shortage just when we needed some! Anyway, we were brought home with the same empty can and decided to try again the next day. So the next morning, we were out walking, buying groceries, going to the bank and the bakery – bla bla bla – and ran into our friend Kristi. She could not find gas either. Later in the day, Kristi called and she had found gas but it was far from our place and since we do not have a car, Adam, Kristi’s husband, picked Jared up and took him to get some gas. Since Jared is white and since the island is low on stove fuel, Jared had to pay 850,000 dorbas for the can! So all in all, with the ride and the over priced tank, we paid 1,000,000 dobras for our cooking fuel. Sounds crazy right?! Paying a million dollars for cooking gas! But 1,000,000 dobras is equal to about 57 US dollars. So I guess its not too bad.