Bus Passengers and Inflation

The woman on the bus or the man who drives the bus, knows very little about finance terms like the Consumer Price Index or inflation. All they know is that food prices have gone up, which means they have to chop something from grocery lists.

Luxury food items. I don’t know when last I bought broken cashew nuts. Broken? Yes, they are cheaper than whole nuts because they are crushed. Eating pickerel, my favourite fish after salmon is nothing but a memory. I got used to eating pickerel when I worked in the North. They have many lakes so it was cheap. I cut it out from the grocery list because it costs an arm and a leg at the grocery store.

I didn’t know peaches were a luxury item for me, until I couldn’t afford them last summer. Peaches! My people in Africa will not believe it, because we used to climb peach trees and eat as we picked. We threw out worm-infested ones.

Fast forward to Canada. How does the woman on the bus and the man who drives the bus manage if they have school-going kids? Where do they chop the budget? It’s tough because kids are at the eating stage and parents love that. There’s great concern when a child loses appetite. Food substitutes are cheaper, but are they as healthy as original fruit and vegetables?

Nonqaba waka Msimang

Blogger Without Borders