Day 2 and 3at the clinic were more very slow days! This is a common occurrence for me…it seems that the more I want to see interesting medical things, the less likely they are to happen. Oooh well. At the very end of the day yesterday two people got minor cuts and I got to clean them out and bandage them. Today at the very end a kid came by with a veeery swollen elbow that I thought at first might be dislocated but I think he had too good of a range of motion for that. (perfectly fine up to 90 degrees and painful after that…opinions???) But the doctor had left a few minutes before, so he got some pain medicine and was told to come back tomorrow.
Yesterday was difficult…I had a moment sitting at lunch eating WAY more than I wanted to where I was thinking that this was going to be a VERY long month in Mathare if I had to continually eat like this…feeling obligated to eat these huge amounts of food until I was stuffed beyond belief, and then I would feel gross until dinner, when it was time to stuff my face again. I don’t really like feeling full..or the thought of being constantly full for a month, or how huge I would get if I kept eating like that.
I came back to the clinic after lunch and Jeff (doctor) said to me “I can always tell when you have eaten, because you are so …” (and then he flopped back in his chair like he was dead) and he’s right because I would feel like blaaaaah and I’d tell him I ate so much and I hate eating so much, and he was about to blame it on me being American when I said Noooooooooo , it was because I felt bad not eating all the food placed in front of me, I don’t want to offend my host! So he told me the most brilliant thing I’ve heard all week (haha) he said “Kenyans really know how to take care of a visitor. She wants to make sure you have had enough. So just be honest with her and tell her when you have had enough” And I’m thinking “wow…DUH”
In my mind, it was “offensive” to her to not eat what she offered me…but in her mind, she needed to make sure I have had enough to eat and it was offensive not to offer more and make sure I was satisfied. So I felt much better after that…so now all I have to do is say that I am “ok” (I think the phrase “I’m full” means nothing ) and we are all happy. I get to stop eating, not take another helping or any more fruit, and Beth has given me all the food I want. Win-win. So I’m trying this new tactic and so far it’s working. I was very proud of myself for saying “that’s good!” at lunch today while she was spooning stew into my plate with no end in sight. :-P
Something interesting: I’ve seen a good amount of cooking, but nobody uses a cutting board. Fruit is cut in the hand, with knife strokes towards the palm of the hand (and all the medical people and royal rangers cringe). The spinach (a different kind than what I’m used to…large leaves like lettuce, but still dark green) was gathered into a cluster, she’d make a fist around it, and then scrape the knife along the side of her hand to shred it, then move the spinach up as she cut it.
So the spinach-cabbage-meat-onions-peppers-tomatoes stew was eaten with…ugali! The staple of east African cuisine, I’ve heard…it’s made with corn meal and water, cooked into a doughy consistency. It’s almost flavorless, and they break it into pieces and use it to scoop up the stew, basically. I was offered a fork but elected to eat it with my hands the way real Kenyans do. It was kind of funny at first and I still think I don’t do it right (I flattenedthe ugali into more of a scoop-like shape, but I think they just take a half-inch chunk of it and pick up the food next to it)but I’m ok with that for now. :-p
7 comments:
don't forget to exercise and burn off all those extra calories!!
don't forget to sign your name when you post "anonymously"!
Food is always so interesting to me. different cultures and how they do things. not just the types of food but how differently people may prepare the food. When you have nothing better to do..ha ha..you can write a cook book! The African/Italian cook book! Is it difficult for you to choose what to eat being that you can't eat everything there? love the posts keep writing. love you..Aunt NA
I haven't yet been offered anything I couldn't eat...it's all been cooked, and they (like you!) make sure the water is boiling before they make tea from it (the milk too) (which makes it so I have to wait a long time before I can drink it!!) and the fruit has all been mangoes, bananas, and watermelon, where you don't eat the skin anyways.
PS the electricity just went out and now we are cooking on a propane tank by kerosene(?) lamp. :-D
I'm so glad that you're getting ugali!
Don't worry too much about gaining weight. You can eat a lot of Kenyan food before gaining weight!
maybe yoou should have visited a few poor neighborhoods in NY first, so that you would have an idea of how things are done differently among other people, and then what you are seeing here, with the cutting of the veggies, and food wouldn't freak you out. lol; even the clothes lines are used in some areas, including Italy, I believe.
I'm not freaked out by how they were cutting the food, I was just mentioning it because it was interesting to me. They don't do that because they can't afford cutting boards; it's just the way it's done. I'm in the nicer part of the slums, and everyone here pays rent to a landlord and has electricity and indoor plumbing and the building has running water (even if there isn't a spigot in each apartment). Clotheslines also don't freak me out...I've seen them all over the place. It's just not the way I do things at home and so it's interesting to me, so I take pictures of it. I chose to live in this area because I wanted to experience this way of life, knowing what it would entail because I've seen it before, rather than staying in the very American and affluent neighborhood I spent the first couple days in.
and please sign your name when you post anonymously, who are you?
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