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TIA: Home Improvement

October 13, 2010 by 22 Comments
ROOFhole

We interrupt our regularly scheduled travel and foodie and wordy reflective posts to bring you the latest installment of T.I.A.: This Is Africa, to provide a peek into the trials and tribulations of African life. Enjoy, I don’t have too many of these left! :)

Home repairs are never fun. They are costly, take a lot of time and energy, and inevitably inconvenience everyone in their wake. In Africa, it is the same. Times fifty. A light bulb burns out or a crappy switch breaks, and it takes months to fix it. Because someone has to talk to the electrician to go find out how much the part costs, and then go ask someone else for approval to buy the part, and then once approval is granted go to someone else to ask for the money, and then that person has to go ask someone else to approve the money, and then the money is approved, and someone else has to actually go cut the check but actually the account is empty at least for the month, and then that message has to get passed backwards through the chain, and before you know it you have been showering by candlelight or getting dressed by headlamp for two months… not that this has happened to me multiple times or anything.

Lights are one thing. With electricity that is the opposite of consistent, being stuck in the dark for days is no foreign concept. But when it is raining inside, that is a whole other issue.

I have mentioned that I live in a bamboo house with a thatched roof. Up until a few months ago, I was pretty impressed by the ability of our house to keep water out—in fact, the only place that leaked in the heavy cyclone-season rains was the bathroom, ironically the only room with a tin roof rather than reed. But that all changed. This year, it started (drumroll please….) RAINING IN MY ROOM. I documented this briefly as a pretty good workout excuse (wearing a raincoat inside counts), but it got worse.

A couple of hours of rain could fill a bucket…

 

Completely flood two-thirds of my room…

 

Slowly creep out through the doorway…

And into the kitchen!

And this was far away from one of the more serious incidences. No pictures of those. I was too busy trying to stuff my camera and everything I cared about into Ziplocs while floating away down the surging river that emerged from my bedroom. Okay I am maybe exaggerating. But only a tiny bit.

So, complaints were lodged, and finally, just after the rainy season ended (of course), some dudes arrived and ripped off the thatch of my roof to redo it. However, this led to years and years of dirt and rat poop falling from the false ceiling and positively coating ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING with turds and other nastiness. No joke. Lovely.

I saw a little piece of light popping through the false ceiling and nudged my way up into the little nook above my room to see what my roof looked like. Or lack of such a roof.

Yeah, that’s a nice hole. Contingency plan for rain much?!?!  Of course not.

So for a couple of days, there were some guys chilling on the roof, weaving in new reed.

Imagine my surprise when fresh from the shower, still clean, damp, and toweled, two guys jump onto my roof and start shaking down more turds and dirt. “COM LICENCA!!!” I yell. (Excuse me. As in “Excuse me, I am naked and clean here, it took a month and a half for you to even get here in the first place, so can you hold it with the poo shower for FIVE FREAKING MINUTES PLEASE?!?!”) Unsuccessful. Grab clothes, clutch towel, hightail it out of there.

Well, the good report is that the roof has been finished. The good and bad news is that there has not been rain. Good because there has been no opportunity for flood, bad in that I have no idea if it actually is fixed. (The first tree-trimming procedure that was done to “mitigate the problem” took it from mere wet annoyance to Noah-style, ruining-all-of-my-possessions type of flood.) So, I’m not getting my hopes up. But I have new sympathy for all those Americans who lament having to “redo the roof.” I now feel your pain. May I recommend bamboo?

—

Now, since the roof incident, we have had a variety of other problems of the home variety. Most recently, our sink in the bathroom stopped turning off. As in, it would just run and run… potentially draining our tank and leaving us all without any means to bathe, wash dishes/clothes, or hydrate. We informed the man responsible for our house and in true Mozambican fashion, weeks passed. We waited patiently, succeeding in turning off the faucet with an eight pound hand weight. It was really fun running back and forth to the bathroom while working out to switch the heavy weights with light ones depending on what I needed (the unused set would be on the sink).

Then while eating breakfast one morning, we heard a crash. The weight had fallen off and… our problem just got bigger.

Who needs a sink that shuts off when you have a sink with a HUGE HOLE in it?

It doesn’t get any better than this, folks.

Got any “home improvement” projects of your own?

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    Confessions of an African food blogger.

    September 14, 2010 by 33 Comments
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    I need to get a weight off of my chest. I am faking it.

    I am trying to be part of this healthy living foodie blog community, but I am living a lie. I thought I could continue the deception, but the weight of my deception is taking its toll (or maybe that’s the chocolate bars I have been eating in my sleep).

    Please brace yourself for this:

    I have never once tried or bought: almond milk, almond butter, any kind of nut butter besides peanut or cashew, chobani or oikos greek yogurt, stevia, tempeh, ezekiel or flatout products, a green monster, spaghetti squash, banana soft serve, quinoa, kabucha, Morningstar anything, Larabars, kale (raw or in chip form), carob, canned pumpkin, anything at the Whole Foods hot bar, protein powder.

    PHEW. If you have fainted and fallen off of your computer chair, OR if you are so flabbergasted that you cannot even bear to look at my blog anymore, its okay. It’s been real, thanks for stopping by. Stay classy.

    For the others to know: I started reading foodie blogs after I had already been in Africa for a year and these things above were never part of my life in LA before. If you are willing to accept me for what I am (A HUGE FAKER), I have quite a few more things to confess to you all, healthy blog world.

    • I eat some sort of white carbs at almost every meal.

    • Sometimes I add peanut butter to my OIAJ because I never manage to leave enough in the actual jar.

    • I eat food that looks like cow cud: matapa, the national dish, and it is delish.

    • I believe that licking a knife and/or wiping it on your jeans makes it clean.
    • I know that expiration dates are merely guidelines (these chips from…2005?!), and so are the words “keep refrigerated.”

    • I think that cutting off the moldy parts makes anything as good as new.
    • I claim to be anti artificial sweeteners and often judge their use, but I continue to treat myself to a diet coke or crystal light on hot days and put splenda on my kettle korn.

    • In my life, a big bowl of stovetop popcorn counts as dinner. And it is “good carbs”… right?
    • I spend 50% of my $180 a month salary on food, because I have nothing else to spend it on.
    • I have a complete inability now to say no to free food. If its there, I have to take it, and worse comes to worse I save it for later. There is nothing wrong with putting a little hamburger in a plastic bag and carrying it around in your purse.
    • Some bloggers see things that look yummy and make healthy versions on their blogs. I take those healthy versions and make them unhealthy again because I don’t have anything necessary for the healthy swaps. I call it the perfect 360.

    • Speaking of recipes, I love them but I don’t have most of the ingredients that bloggers use, so I email them to myself with the title and the word “recipe” in the subject line. Gmail automatically archives these into a folder, which I call my “recipes to try cooking when I move back to civilization and have access to a real store and kitchen folder.” There are 200 emails in there.

    It is not all my fault, though (ALERT!!!SHIFTING BLAME!!!). Trying to become a foodie while living in Africa is tough! I have learned a lot, though. Some of my most poignant African foodie lessons learned have been…

    • Flavorless cabbage, one tomato, and a whole bunch of mayonnaise and vegetable oil and chicken stock powder = salad.

    • Calorie counting is difficult when the items being consumed are “half a chicken” or “pulpy green soup made with coconut milk, peanuts, chicken stock, leaves and God knows what else” (see above).
    • Little bugs crawling through your rice/flour/oats/whatever serve as more protein. Yay!

    • White bread with ketchup and mayo on it is considered a sandwich. So is white bread with leftover pasta/French fries/samoosas (fried triangles with mystery filling)/beijias (fried bean curd patties) in it.

    • If a rat ate a chunk out of it, just cut off the clawed corner. Similarly, if rats, or the cat or dog WON´T eat it, you probably shouldn’t either.
    • Hoarding food is completely acceptable, because who knows when you might see (brown rice/cereal/raisins/recognizable product) again?

    • Some sort of bread with peanut butter can be breakfast, lunch, snack, dinner, or dessert, and often several of those all on the same day.

    • The Africa MSG philosophy, a direct quote from my friend: “Don’t ask don’t tell. If it tastes good I win.”
    • Every part of the chicken must be eaten. Tendons, skin, and most of the small bones are easy to chew. There should only be a couple big bones left on your plate after you’ve eaten and those should be licked clean. If you leave anything else, you have failed. And don’t even bother trying to eat it with a fork.
    • Similarly, I have learned how to eat a whole fish and leave a completely intact fish skeleton on my plate (plus the head. I am still not that hardcore).

    • If the package has no nutrition info on it (meaning, the vast majority of Mozambican-produced goods), that means it is probably good for you. Especially all those cookies bragging to be “very high in energy!” and “great source of glucose!” (Or both… check out these Glucose “strength and energy!!!!” cookies…)

    • Fakels (soft little white breads shaped like bagels), biscoitos (slightly sweet, scone-like thingys), cookies, bread, and rusks (british/South African tradition—highly caloric chunky biscotti/cookie mix to be dipped in tea) are all different food groups and part of a balanced diet.

    The proceeding lessons have led to the development of my incredibly pithy and poignant Mozambique food philosophy, which can be summed up in so many words as:

    • I do the best I can.

    So my confessions and my life lessons might not have been as stimulating as Glee’s “confessions” mashup, but I hoped they provided a new insight into my life.

    Got any confessions of your own?

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    “Estás a engordar,” or, body image in the Moz

    September 3, 2010 by 23 Comments
    DSC09450

    No pretty pictures of scenery or food in this post. My blog is a bit all over the place: I created it as a healthy living & travel blog, but my life is distinctively shaped by the realities that I am a Peace Corps Volunteer in Mozambique, and there are things I want to write about. Sometimes I wonder if the things I post about are what people want to read—not enough food, not enough pretty pictures, not enough X or Y, etc. But then I remember that I want this blog to reflect ME, and so it will continue being a little sporadic. Here goes. 

    The other day, I led a training for about 30 of my Mozambican coworkers. I was in front of the group for most of the time, and I wore a new dress, made from local materials. I thought it was pretty, and I felt good in it.

    “Estás a engordar.” Literally translated, “You are getting fat.”

    More on this in a moment. The next day, a colleague and friend told me point-blank that the dress made me look big, and that “all the colleagues were asking me if you are pregnant.”

    Mortifying.

    Granted, I have gained a couple pounds in the last weeks. STRESS, not eating super well, not running (I am injured)… it happens. These things come and go. And I of course notice, but want to pretend that it is all going to be okay.

    But apparently everyone thinks I am pregnant. “Should I never wear this dress again?”, I wonder.

    Let me back up. Here in Mozambique, “estás a engordar” is a complement. Literally, you could have lost a couple of pounds but look healthy and some smiling friendly neighbor might walk up and tell you how fat you look.

    After two years I still am unable to completely shrug this off. (At least I don’t cry every time anymore. Kidding.) In my culture, this is a horrible thing to THINK about someone, much less SAY, much less if they look FINE! How DARE you say this to me?!

    But then I step back. In Mozambique, “fat” means healthy. “Fat” means rich. “Fat” means happy. Thousands of people are starving. Thousands more go to sleep each night not being sure where their next meal will come from, or when it will happen.

    “Fat” means you have food to eat.

    People are poor. The average income in most rural sites is less than a dollar a day. Every spare cent is scraped together to buy food or to send the children to school. Often, it is not enough.

    “Fat” means you have money to take care of yourself and your family.

    HIV and AIDS and chronic malnutrition are all widespread in Mozambique. People get skinny, emaciated, fraca (weak). To be magra is to be sick, to be not able to take care of yourself.

    “Fat” means you are healthy.

    We shape our body image around our societies’ ideals of beauty. For us, too often this is skinny supermodels or people who seem to champion the anorexic look. (Mozambicans would flip.) It is refreshing in a way to see how many of those ideas of perfection are shaped by our cultures and that there IS NO one ideal of beauty or best body type.

    Because of my culture, I will never COMPLETELY take it as a compliment when someone tells me I am fat, but I can recognize the differences. And while we are often very careful about how we describe people for fear of offence, Mozambique is not like that. Calling someone “the fat short white girl” or “the really dark skinned tall guy” is just matter-of-fact. Okay. I can deal with this.

    Part of me enjoys the bluntness and what I see as universal acceptance of body types. Okay, if you are skinny maybe you want to get a little bigger, but if you’re a little chunky, or maybe a LOT chunky, you OWN it. You love your body, and you know you look GOOD. I love that easy confidence that Mozambican women seem to have, and envy it.

    But at that same meeting, something else significant happened. We were talking about stigma, and I asked my colleagues to draw a picture representing a time in their lives when they felt isolated, rejected, or different. And one of my (presumably female) colleagues submitted this.

    This was a complete eye-opener for me. I sit here all at once resenting Mozambicans´ attitude towards bodies (stop calling me fat!) and envying it (none of you worry, why should I!) and then it made me realize that no matter what confidence we portray, women everywhere feel judged because of their bodies. Diferente.

    I recognize now that body image issues exist in every culture, regardless of what the ideal of beauty may be. But what I have learned is that “fat” and “different” and “pretty” are just words. What matters is what is on the inside, and how you feel about yourself. And THAT shows more than anything else… whether or not everybody thinks you may be pregnant. And I have Mozambique to thank for finally helping me realize that.

    Speaking of self-image, Tina over at Faith, Fitness, Fun is doing an amazing online initiative called “30 Days of Self Love and Reflection” which aims to, according to Tina, ”help us all learn to love ourselves more and to uplift one another in the process. To begin to realize our true beauty and value. To battle the inner dialogue that strives to bring us down.” If anyone is reading my blog who hasn´t gotten into this yet (highly doubtful!!! Or probably impossible…) please check it out, it is a really amazing thing.

    Being here and experiencing moments like the one  mentioned here give me reason to reflect on how I feel about myself and to recognize how those inner feelings affect every area of my life. I hope we can all take a moment today, whether through the 30 DSLR or on your own, to find something you love about yourself, whatever your society may say.

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    Can you hear me now?… Technical Difficulties!

    August 16, 2010 by 3 Comments

    For anyone out there who may be wondering why I have not updated my blog in two and a half weeks… it is because I have not had internet since then. Something went horribly wrong with our network here, and I actually went sixteen days (gasp!) without touching the internet. That may be a new record, even for Africa! Anyways, it is a big bummer because I miss P&P—there is a ton of stuff I would like to be posting—but I recognize that This Is Africa and that if I don’t have web access for prolonged periods of time, that is life and I will be back in the states in a matter of months, so I am trying not to let it bother me. Who needs internet to plan international travel, pay credit card bills, try to arrange a Vietnam visa, or apply to graduate school? I sure don´t…  Anyways, supposedly it will be back up this week so until then… I am trying to revel in my disconnection from the world. I am SURE I will miss it someday : )

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    T.I.A.: Disconnected

    July 20, 2010 by 5 Comments
    DISCONNECTED

    A lot of times we talk about how we need to “unplug.” Hours upon hours of the day spent sitting at a computer, or staring at a TV, or yapping on the phone, or tap tapping away on our iPhones when we just checked it two seconds ago. Africa has taught me a lot about “unplugging” and the value of getting home after work and not touching a communications device for the rest of the night. Sure, I watch a lot of movies and pirated copies of TV shows, but it’s never excessive, and usually isn’t in place of doing something more meaningful, like I often felt in the States. (I can sit at my computer for 6 hours at night and the amount of work I got done could have been accomplished in about forty minutes if I wasn’t on gmail, gchat, facebook, twitter, and God knows what else at the same time, and then the other five hours could have been spent sleeping or actually spending face time with people I care about).

    Feeling a bit disconnected here is nice, in a lot of ways, a lot of the time. But sometimes… it’s not. Friday night, our phones kind of stopped working (the cell service went out). Okay, this happens, not a big deal, I don’t need to talk to anyone urgently. But then they stayed out. And stayed out. I received my first call on Monday afternoon—72 hours later. It still isn’t working enough for me to MAKE a call. So there’s the one thing.

    And then there’s the internet. Our internet got turned off at home, so I didn’t check my email for a couple days—this is normal for me, and I kind of like it, minus the pileup that I get on Mondays. (Half of it is crap anyways that I should just unsubscribe from.) But upon arriving at the office yesterday morning, I find out that it isn’t just our home internet, but a fiber optic cable that runs underwater was cut, leaving a large portion of the south of the country (including us… obviously) without landline phone service or any internet until they fix it. This happened a few months ago in the North and it took a few WEEKS to get communications back.

    How am I updating this? My boss has a Vodacom modem which is still working, at least for now, and able to access the internet. So I asked to borrow it for just a few minutes so I could email my family and tell them I am not dead, and I figured I should throw something up here. I have a bunch of posts ready to go out buuuuut… seeing as I am without cell phone, and internet for anywhere from a matter of days to a matter of weeks (months? Just kidding. I hope), it might be a while until you hear from me. I will just be sitting in my hut hoping for a quick fix—which is unheard of in Mozambique. Once I am re-included in civilization I will be sure to blog about wine tasting, climbing a mountain, a foodie tour of Cape Town, recent baking adventures, Christmas in July, and my insane secret talent that only requires scissors and a piece of paper.

    So who needs computers? I’m going to the beach. Até lá!

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    TIA: The Ants Come Marching In

    January 16, 2010 by Leave a Comment
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    Great things come in small packages.

    But sometimes the biggest, most overwhelmingly huge and frustrating problems come in the tiniest little bodies that you just want to murder in the most violent manner possible until your house is littered with the dead.

    I’m talking about the ants.

    Living in a bamboo house with a thatched roof means making peace with all of God’s creatures who make themselves at home. Since moving in, Sarah and I have enjoyed the company of rats, birds, mosquitoes, cats (or other unidentified cat-sized animals in the roof…) cockroaches, spiders, moths, snakes, a tarantula, and bugs that fall from the sky (roof) onto our heads. All of these have maybe given me a scare (the snake on my apron), grossed me out (roaches cuddling up in bed with me), or left me looking like a scarred leper (mosquitoes). But none of these have succeeded in ruffling me like the ants.

    Whoever said they come marching one by one was sorely downplaying the gravity of the situation. Add a handful of zeroes after the one and now we’ll be speaking with veracity.

    They moved in sometime during the fall months—well, the spring here (September, October), right about the time I started getting towards the end of my rope. It was innocent enough at first. Some in the food I accidentally left out, or making the occasional other appearance in the kitchen.

    But then the troop surge came.

    I can’t remember an exact moment, but something changed and all of a sudden our house was flooded with ants. They were everywhere. Including, but not limited to:
    • My loofa sponge
    • The sinks
    • The animals’ food and water
    • My makeup bag
    • My roommate’s bed
    • Inside our water filters
    • My precious jar of nutella
    • All over the shower head (so if you turned on the shower when you were already in it, your first shower would be a fresh dose of ant bodies)
    • All throughout our stacks of clean clothes
    • My underwear “drawer”
    • Inside a sealed box of Pop-Tarts I got in a package (found their way into the box, then chewed their way through the foil packages. Splitting each precious tart open revealed a series of tunnels left where the miscreants had devoured their way through the heavenly cinnamon brown sugar filling… I felt my heart break in my chest. I ate several bites anyway. Hey, I think all the ants had left by then… I hope.)
    • Anything damp. Apparently they aren’t just looking for food, they are looking for water. In any and all forms.

    I don’t know what it was about these ants that got us so pissed off. Well actually, I do. The rats, they come out at night and we don’t really see them. The roaches try to keep to themselves, but when they crawl out of our sink while we are washing dishes and scare us half to death, they get squished. Etc. But the ants… literally nothing can be done. And believe me, we have tried everything. From bug spray so lethal that I am quite convinced I feel my own brain cells dying a poisonous death whenever we spray it, to ant traps that did nothing, to having to dry every single dish we ever washed in fear of leaving out something with drops of water on it (and then the damp drying cloth turning black with ant bodies before the evening was out), to cinnamon (apparently ants hate it? Lies), to bleach… each massacre just brought them back stronger than ever. The breaking point was when they finally, after a protracted effort on our part, got into our water filters. All three of them. Which led to me drinking our sink water unfiltered (which tasted more or less healthy…) and then getting sick. I could hear them laughing.

    So it seemed like there was nothing else to do really than to make peace with them. Or as much peace as possible when finding them crawling through the refrigerator half an hour after I had cleaned it and nearly erupting in a fit of rage. Nothing like bathing yourself with a sponge filled of ants… or washing your dishes with a scrubber that they’ve probably been nesting in… or lifting up a cup of precious hot chocolate to take the first sip and realize the several dark spots you mistook for non-dissolved cocoa powder are really tiny little ants, floating there innocently in what was your supposed to be your indulgent cup of creamy goodness. Like it or not, there is no escaping them.

    Part of me has to admire their evolutionary prowess: fifty of the little buggers can fit onto my thumbnail, and yet still they are the only thing we cannot seem to kill off. But the other part of me questions how they remain so prolific despite obvious stupidity (they love water, so when we refill the dog’s water bowl, they climb in for a drink, and fall in and die. Literally, ten minutes after we fill it, the thing will be black with dead ant bodies. And yet they continue trying!!! How do these species survive??? Oh look, mommy and daddy and thirteen thousand of my closest friends just went for a swim and drowned themselves, guess I should join them too!)

    The season was just supposed to be a month or two. But due to lack of rain (or so they say… I am dubious of the truth of this claim) they are still around. Let me remind you, it is February. (Tomorrow). It rained for the first time in nearly two months this weekend. Still the ants remain. But we will see if they go away. Something tells me no.

    I wish I could say that I have accepted the ant’s omnipresence, but that isn’t entirely accurate. Although instead of erupting into primal screams of rage (it has happened), I guess we could learn a few things from these ants. They are small. They might get stepped on, eaten, drowned. Perhaps some of their insect compadres don’t take them seriously, assuming they are too small to do anything. But yet despite this, they overcome. Defying all odds, the smallest creature has triumphed over Goliath, joining forces to work hard and never give up, succeeding in conquering the house of man in the true picture of resilience for the victory of all ant-kind.

    Okay maybe that is a stretch.

    But still, while they stick around, part of me wonders if there’s a life lesson I can learn from these little creatures. Use them for inspiration and metaphor instead of wasting way too much of my life trying to kill them when I know it will make no difference. But hey, no one can eat my Pop-Tarts and get away with it.

    It’s been a rocky relationship. But until we finally break up for good, there will be more tiny tales to tell. And until then, may the squishing continue. At least it’s kind of therapeutic…


    don’t you feel squeaky clean showering with this???!!

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