I am a foreigner living in Egypt. Lately I've noticed a disturbing trend. One by one, we have seen shortages of basic goods. Over the past 6 months, cooking oil, flour, bread, and sugar has periodically disappeared from the grocery stores. Eventually these items have re-appeared, but at much higher prices, and with a limited quantity per customer.
I was watching what happened in Venezuela and I can easily see the same happening here. It's already starting and I don't know how everyone is so blind to it!!
I am convinced that eventually someone is going to post something on Facebook and start a panic, and the supermarkets will be empty in a matter of hours.
So, I started trying to build up my pantry. If sh*t happens, I am not going to be able to leave immediately back to my country, so my goal is to have 4 months of staples in the house.
My mission is greatly complicated because it is already a crime to hoard food. I can buy maybe 3 of everything, like 3 oil and bags of flour, but if I try to get more in one trip I can get in trouble. I've started taking my housekeeper with me for shopping day, and we load up two carts like we are not together.
People have been jailed for hoarding. Also, the presence of food in the home is a bit dangerous, if things get really bad, these items can easily be robbed from us.
Last week we went to two big markets and we got a lot of stuff. But when I got home and we put it all away, I realized its only enough for a few weeks at most. I did not want the neighbours or security to see us bring the food into the home, so we did it piece by piece whenever we went out.
I have discussed this with some of my friends, foreigners and locals. When I say I am expecting a critical food shortage, the initial reaction is laughing and mocking me. But every single person has come back days later and said something to the effect of 'i doubt it will ever happen, but I think you're right about having some food in the house'.
We get our drinking water in large bottles from a big bottling company. I usually take two large bottles a week. I have increased the order to 5 per week. The delivery man looked at me a bit strange last time he delivered. I had no empties to give him. I decided next week we are not letting him inside and from now on all visitors are not coming in the kitchen.
We have focused on cleaning supplies like household soap, personal hygiene items like shampoo, dog food, kitchen staples in cans, flour and shelf stable milk. Next week we're getting tuna, canned soup, and other protein type goods.
This is my first post on Reddit and I'm going to keep it updated as things play out. I think my prepping is different than most on this sub reddit, because we are already under restrictions in terms of what we can hoard/collect/amass.
Submitted January 01, 2017 at 05:28AM by blondeincairo http://ift.tt/2hCOJm8
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