Courtney's adventures in travel, healthy food, and lifestyle. . .
Hi everyone,
if you are wondering where the post went that appeared in your google readers a few hours ago… hell if I know. I published a post about three hours ago–it even emailed and showed up in reader–only to come back from lunch to find out that my African internet, in a whole new sneak attack, ate my post. Reduced it to a draft, and then ate it. So no, you’re not crazy. I am trying to find it and rescue it.
African internet or complete lack thereof: 1; Courtney: 0.
Question of the day: What is this the name of this animal?
Extra credit question: What was it doing flying (literally) around my house, terrorizing my cat and dog and then taking up semi-permanent residence in my bathroom?
These are the questions that need answers.
No internet since Thursday morning (yes, it is Monday) so hopefully I can get those other World Cup posts up this week… if Simon doesn´t come back again. Yes, this guy´s name is Simon. For now.
That is all.
…Sliced bread. Seriously.
I have another thing to add to the list of things that I will never again in my life take for granted: sliced bread. I love carbs of all kinds. Bread, rolls, English muffins, pita bread, tortillas, challah, pasta, sweet breads, bagels, sandwich thins, anything you can mention. When it comes down to it, probably the thing that I MOST wish I could get in Africa are whole-wheat carbs (bread, tortillas, pasta, anything). Problem is that they don´t exist. If I was a food blogger, people would be banning my blog for the sheer quantities of white bread and white rice and white pasta being consumed. Hey, its that or nothing for me, peeps! Good thing being told that “you are getting fat” is a high compliment in Africa.
The only bread available here is white (SUPER-REFINED flour!!! Hooray!!! No exaggeration… the sugar and flour actually brag that they are “super refined”), and it comes in rolls that, at best, are soft and fluffy and enjoyable to eat, and at worst, flavorless bricks. When you make a sandwich with it, either the sheer amount of white carbiness drowns out your fillings OR, you have a huge sandwich that is falling apart as you eat it. The beauty of the ubitiquous white bread roll, however, is that you can buy it anywhere and it costs mere cents—man may not be able to live on bread alone but trust me when I say that Peace Corps Volunteers can. Sometimes (though very rarely in my town) you can also find another type of white bread called a forma, which resembles something of a loaf, although you have to cut it yourself and given the softness and weakness of the bread, usually results in either 2-inch thick slices OR a crumbly mess. There was one café in town that made brown bread rolls, but it closed about a month after our arrival. Pity. This is the status of carbohydrates in Mozambique.
But sometimes, just sometimes, heaven’s gate opens and you can find the Holy Grail: SLICED BREAD. Even the brown variety.
normal mozambique egg sandwich. oh and this would be one of the more delicious examples out there.
A real egg sandwich!
It is pretty amazing to miss these things so much that I am actually writing a blog post about bread, but that should show you how important certain things become when you can´t have them anymore. You can´t always get what you wah-annt….
I have bought sliced bread approximately three times in Mozambique, throughout my 19 months here. Twice has been at Taurus, our expat supermarket which occasionally imports these AMAZING goodies from South Africa which promptly sell and then are never seen again, a mystery I fail to understand (people here buy it, South Africa is still making it, where is the supply and demand problem here? BUY MORE BROWN SLICED BREAD! But then again if stuff started making sense around here, then life would lose its luster).
The other time, I found brown bread (made in Swaziland) for sale at a deli in Maputo and brought two loaves up with me, guarding them much more tenaciously than I guarded my purse and backpack. Hey, bread squishes easily.
"omg i have bread i can make a sandwich with really random stuff on it! yay for me!"
This is seriously the most exciting thing ever, you have no idea.
When I have brown bread, it is like Christmas. Oh, the creations you can make! FRENCH TOAST! EGG AND AVOCADO SANDWICHES! CROQUE MONSEIUR! ANYTHING YOUR CARB-LOVING HEART DESIRES! Don’t remind me that this “wheat” bread is literally made with the same aforementioned super-refined white flour with some wheat flakes (or so they say) mixed in for a little brown color. I found this out not too long ago and part of me died inside. I feel healthier, okay?!?!!!
french toast! If I can´t have pancakes, give me this.
french toast bites, syrup and PB, fruit, book. Die happy.
Sadly, the last rationed freezer loaf of bread is about to disappear. How many more months will I again go without sliced bread? Be still my empty heart (and freezer).
"grilled french toast banana sandwich" or the closest i could come up with.
Next trip to the supermarket, I want you all to go wander the bread aisle. Pause for a good long moment.Take it in. Take in that entire aisle of heaven; from honey wheat to multigrain to pumpernickel to classic white Wonder. More breads that you even knew existed, all sliced, and ready to go home with you. Take it all in. Smell that bready deliciousness. And think of me. And know how truly blessed you are.
I will never look at a loaf of bread the same way again.
Many of us will come up with quite an impressive array of excuses for why we shouldn’t work out. “It’s cold and rainy outside.” “I don’t feel very good.” “I need to get some more rest this morning.” And so it goes. We hit snooze, pull up the covers and promise to recommit next time. Hey, there’s always tomorrow.
I am really lucky that, as a general rule, I like exercising and working out. I love the endorphins and the healthy feeling being active gives me, and just knowing that I rarely ever regret a workout but almost always regret skipping one, is usually enough to get me out of bed in the morning six times per week to sweat. (That and knowing that I will be a grumpy mess most times, if I don´t). But sometimes, even the strongest of motivations just isn’t enough.
Yesterday morning, I intended to go out for an attempted two-hour run. Unfortunately, my body rejected the proposal. It had been over a week since I had taken a day off of intense exercise and my body wanted rest, so rest I did. But I went to sleep committed to a fabulous redeeming run early this morning. Promised myself I would be out the door before 5:30, run til 7, and then shower and eat breakfast just in time to head out the door for work. No problem.
I got out of bed at 5:15 and it was still pitch black outside, but I didn’t think anything of it. The sun usually doesn’t rise until 5:30, I told myself as I put on my running clothes and hooked up the iPod. Yes, 5:30 if it’s the summer (which it isn’t) and if it isn’t about to erupt in a thunderstorm (it was). The rolling thunder sounded pretty ominous, and the lightening flashing in the sky didn’t help. But, it wasn’t raining… yet. The sun was still doing its best to rise, so at 5:35 I headed out on a wing and a prayer.
It was a pretty beautiful and peaceful run at first, in a weird way. I kept the iPod off, which is darn near impossible for me, just to take in everything: the glassy beach to my right, the blinking of lightening in the sky to my left, the tranquility of the dark, streetlighted sandy road, the slivers of sunrise trying to cut into the still-night sky. I was feeling good and at one with nature for about ten minutes. And then of course, the rain came.
I won’t write in details about the ten minutes on the way BACK—suffice it to say that my ears hurt from the thunder, my eyes were shut because I couldn’t see because of the pelting rain, and my dri-fit clothes were anything but. Plus the constant nagging thought, “is this a cyclone” didn’t help much either. Tranquil feeling: completely washed away. I sprinted back into my compound with my tail between my legs. 20-minute jog, okay, not the awesome workout I expected. But its only 6AM, so plenty of time for a workout DVD. Yeah!
After I get inside, I strip off my sopping wet shirt and muddy tennis shoes and go hook up the computer. As soon as I load my DVD, the house goes black. Power is out. Not only can I not see ANYTHING, but my computer lacked the charge to fuel a workout in the dark even if I had wanted to. I was contemplating my situation when I realized that the rain sound was coming from much closer. Oh no. I had forgotten.
Due to the pouring outside, it was full-on raining inside my room. I do not say this lightly. My room had been leaking for a while and when I reported it, the branches of the big tree over my roof were cut down, assuming that would alleviate the problem. Instead it made it worse… much worse. The last rain, I left a bucket inside and after a couple hours I had four inches of nasty rainwater in there. And this time was even worse.
I grabbed my headlamp in the dark and, still shivering from the rain outside, put on my coat to guard myself from the rain inside as I attempted to salvage as many personal possessions as I could from the steadily growing lake inside my room. Does this count as cardio? Probably not.
Ten minutes later with most of my crucial possessions out of the wet zone (which now took up two-thirds of my bedroom), it was back to the matter at hand: a workout. The power was still out and I was fumbling around for my yoga mat. I can at least do some abs, right? Well, the yoga mat was in the splash zone and covered with muddy rainwater. Forget that.
I guess I could walk the really long way to work to at least get a little exercise… oh, I actually can’t because the umbrella I have is tiny and doesn’t even cover my not-waterproof backpack, in which I have to carry my CARE-owned computer through 45 minutes in the rain. Scratch that too.
Where else in the world will I have an intense desire to work out and no way to do it?!
Dismayed, I lie in bed. The shivers from my run remain, so I cocoon myself in a blanket and try to think warmer, happier thoughts. Wow, coffee or tea sounds really good right now. I get up… but then realize that that too is impossible. Without power, the electric kettle to boil water is completely useless. And in addition, my gas tank emptied without warning the previous day, leaving me no means to cook or heat absolutely anything for an indefinite amount of time. So, no coffee or tea happening either.
There in the dark, I giggle. The next time in the distant future when I wake up on a cold morning in America, and I try to use a little rain or snow as a reason for NOT getting out of my warm, comfy bed, grabbing good coffee from my automatic coffee maker, stepping outside momentarily into my heated, comfortable car, to drive to the temperature-controlled gym where I can engage in any number of aerobic activities at nearly any hour of the day with a pretty strong guarantee that there will be electricity and no flooding, I am going to remember this morning and get my butt up.
But today, I pull the damp blanket up around me and close my eyes. Today, I’m staying in bed.
Hey, there’s always tomorrow.
see the movement? that's because it as pouring. and yes, that is the color of the rain falling in my room. TIA.
WARNING: DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU ARE VEGETARIAN 
POTENTIALLY DISTURBING IMAGES OF NASTY COW FLESH! Okay, y’all have been warned.
I heard through the grapevine lately that I missed meat. This made me laugh because not once in my Peace Corps experience have I missed meat specifically. Sure, I might miss certain types (lean ground beef, turkey bacon, honeybaked ham, etc…) but meat itself has never been a rarity for me. There are many PCVs out there for whom meat is a luxury, so I do consider myself blessed to pretty consistently have chicken, beef, or goat in my diet. I have even participated in the killing of a chicken. There’s one for the Bucket List.
One of my favorite things to buy when traveling is what I call “meat on a stick.” This is a technical term. People kill a couple animals, set up shop with some skewers and their little stove and roast strips of meat and sell them for around 5 meticais (less than 20 cents). On the way to Mabote, there is a place where you can get gazella (don’t think actual gazelle… more like a rodent creature the size of a small bulldog or something). Is there anything better than watching a 20-pound animal get completely skinned and gutted and then roasted, and then sticking it right into the lunch you brought with you? Definitely not. I will miss this.
the gazelle really made my homemade hummus/guac/pita lunch. plus it was the only thing I didn't have to make!
Despite the greatness that is meat on a stick, there are times here that I am ready to swear off of meat all together. And that is when I experience the Meat Market.
In general, meat is killed when it’s needed. You want a chicken for dinner tonight, you tell the restaurant, they go kill one and cook it. Pretty simple, and much more humane and healthier than the feedlot animals that we consume back in the States. These animals lead their chickeney or goaty or cow-y (okay that one doesn’t work) lives, and then become dinner. But it is the part in between “alive” and “dinner” that makes me want to go Vegan and never look back.
Meat is sometimes frozen and sold that way, but often an animal is slaughtered and then hung up in still-bleeding chunks on the side of the road to be devoured by flies as the man hawking his carcass tries to find a buyer. Kind of fun, in a way. “Do I hear 500 meticais for the cow head? You can still feel the pulse!!!”
Can I nominate this dude for that Discovery Channel show about dirty jobs?
That you can kind of ignore. But I have been lucky to get to share a house with some cow pieces for about a week. And when I say cow pieces, I literally mean cow pieces. Imagine having to step over this while making your oatmeal in the morning:
ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!
Very few things can suppress my appetite, but that is up there.
My personal “favorite” up-close-and-where’s-the-ecoli? Experience came a couple weeks ago on a drive home from a rural town, where meat is supposedly cheaper. Cashing in on this deal, several coworkers decided to partake at the local butcher shop, which advertised its wares superbly:
buy the bloody hunk and get the hoof FOR FREE!!!!
The meat was then left in the backseat of our hot car, in the sun, to, um, roast for about three hours before even embarking on the three-hour journey home.
Passengers included an entire cow head and a liver the size of the (open) cooler it was in.
yup. horns and all.
there are no words to describe the nastiness of this car ride.
I should probably mention now that I was in the backseat with this meat. Funny until up around hour 5 when even the colleagues were admitting that it was definitely rancid by now and I, ever the culturally insensitive crazy white girl, had a capulana (African cloth) wrapped nearly completely around my head in attempt to completely block my sense of smell (and consequently most of my ability to breathe). It was a survival tactic. Add in two more hours of bumpy roads I was about to pass out, which probably would have been a better alternative looking back. But eventually, I got home, washed the dead cow carcass off of myself, and went on with my normal life. TIA.
As a Peace Corps Volunteer/broke foreign traveler in Africa, your life will benefit incredibly if you master the art of hitchhiking. No matter what, nothing is certain, and you NEED to be safe and trust your instincts. But a few simple tips will get you far.
First, familiarize yourself with the hand signals. The most important signal that potential hitchers need to know: “I need a ride!”
NO.
The thumbs-up does not work over here. It just means “Hey, what uppppp? You good? Yeah me too. Tchau.” Instead, hold out your hand towards the road, and wave it up and down:
hold hand out, wave up and down by flexing at the wrist.
Now, the driver will respond. If they are a jerk, they just drive right by, or maybe they slow down and stare at you, and then decide against picking you up and speed right up again. A flash of the headlights acknowledges your request/your plight. Otherwise, you might see one of these hand signals:
The point down. May bob up and down (like you were tapping an imaginary table) for emphasis.
The “point down” means that the driver is staying in town, or not going very far. As most hitchhikers are trying to go the distance, they are letting you know that this will not be possible.
Now draw circles in the air with the extended finger. Just like that. Good.
The “finger circle” means the driver is turning around. It could be in 30 seconds or in 30 miles, but regardless, they will be turning around and they will NOT be picking you up.
No space for you. Wah wah.
The “fist/hand slap” (making a fist with one hand and slapping it into the other open palm is not offensive as it seems it could be. It means full up, aka no room for you, sorry.
Assessing rides: this needs to be done with some seriousness. You can be picky at first and once it gets into a high-pressure situation you can loosen your standards.
Big rig example. "Live life with gas." Admit it, the 5-year-old in you/23-year-old in me giggles.
There´s something fun about watching the road in the wrong direction.
WHERE TO WAIT: trying to hitch a ride in town in order to head out of town is often fruitless. The best way is to walk to the outskirts of town (in the direction that you are hoping to travel, of course) where most of the cars that will be passing you are heading far outside of the town. Bonus points for looking clean and put together, and/or completely desperate. If you are a Peace Corps Volunteer, the second should not be too hard.
BE PREPARED: Most people travel early! To have the best luck (and probably the most comfort in traveling), you should too. Always have a backup plan! Know when and where the public transportation goes, and have a cutoff time (i.e., if we don´t get a ride in 4 hours, we will still have an opportunity to get on a minibus, etc.). Always have water, toilet paper, and a book. And snacks. If you are in a country where a different language is spoken, know the word for “ride.” Boleia will get you far in Mozambique… hopefully!
BE SMART: The phrases “Listen to your gut” and “If you don´t feel comfortable with a certain situation, get out of it” come to mind. Sure, if you find yourself in a situation where you have to choose between sleeping on the side of the road in a ditch or getting in a car with someone who looks creepy but is going to your destination, the lines get a little blurred. But don´t be an idiot. I am always smart when I hitchhike. I solemnly swear that I have never bounced around in the back of a pickup truck driving 150 km per hour down a completely potholed road and arrived at a destination in 1 hour and 45 minutes that should have taken 4-plus hours; nor have I ever scrambled my way up into a huge semi-truck where I was perched on a pile of metal tubing hanging on for my life on a rainy inter-provincial journey. These things absolutely never happened.
HAVE FUN: You are hitchhiking. Chances are, you´re not in America. You´re seeing a new place. And hopefully traveling for free, maybe making some new friends along the way. And when all else fails, entertain yourselves by taking dorky pictures so you can look back and wonder, “WTH was I thinking?!?!”
Happy hitching!
my roomie and i keeping it real. al fresco travel. nice.
who needs first class when you can have a big rig?
Just chillin.
This is the life.
This picture is better suited for MySpace. Those were the days...
When stuck on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere, there is only one solution: lawn bowling with coconuts!
plays well in small spaces.
PEACE.
Hi, I’m Courtney, a California girl with a passion for food, for healthy living, and for travel. This blog was created to chronicle my adventures in food, fitness, and fun, all over the world. I just finished up with two years in the Peace Corps in Mozambique, Africa and am currently eating and running my way through San Francisco while working for a tech startup company.
I’ve spent the last few days surrounded by entirely too many cookies. It’s funny, I feel like I have a limitless sweet tooth, but when I get to the point that eating another cookie sounds disgusting, I know I probably passed my limit. Well, it’s been a weekend of holiday parties and more than … [Read More...]
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