Food (period)

We're on day three of 10-12 hour daytime power cuts. I'm not fed up with the no-power so much as I'm over being hungry, devoid of the strength/nourishment food provides because I can't cook anything. It's rough not having a working gas stove, really a basic necessity here, I think. At this point, our electric stove is probably only 25 percent useful. The consecutive day outages make me feel like I'm on a hunger strike I didn't sign up for.

I dream of salad bars, Chili's, Chipotle and, most recently, Apollo Burger (or, day I say, Al's Big Burger). Oh, to have calories in my stomach! Yes, I know there are people just outside my housing compound who are living on rice and beans or practically nothing. I know there are people right here, people I see as I walk outside, who are much hungrier I am. I know this. But it doesn't change the fact that I have a full-time teaching job to do and doing it with minimum nourishment is just not really working out for me. I feel like I can force myself to push through the extreme frustrations of a horrible Internet connection (or none at all). I can deal with the sauna that is my office when we are on generator at school and can’t use the air conditioner. I can get a grip on my workload that is seriously intense and slightly overwhelming right now. But the thing is, when running on a shortage of calories, these aspects of my life are just that much more challenging, when they were trying to begin with.

I am not complaining. These days I’m simply tired, weak, dizzy, unfocused, frazzled, slow. And I’m sharing why. I don’t have anywhere near an appropriate diet needed to overcome these things. Coming here, we all believed I would finally learn to cook because I’d be on my own and living where that’s predominantly the only food choice. (No fast food fixes and any real restaurant is at least 30 minutes away.) It’s March, and I’ve been here almost five and a half months. I have never cooked meat. Not once. Don’t get me wrong, I am a pasta-cooking queen now. Al dente is my special. And, of course, there’s always heating up a frozen chapati (kind of like naan) on the stove. Yet even chapatis have taken a back seat, since they don’t stay frozen in my freezer (thanks, power cuts) and when they’re not totally frozen they don’t cook right. Oh, to have chapati and cheese today. Yum. But I digress. I want to cook so badly here. I know that when I get back to the States, I will be a cooking machine. That’s because I may. I'll be allowed to. With elements refusing to let me cook here, it has only increased my desire to spend time in the kitchen. I bought some chicken breasts two days ago and must cook them today or else they’ll go bad for sure. I finally said “I’ve had it” and bought some meat to cook. Not the first time; the other meat purchases just never made it to pass because they spoiled before I had power available at time when I could cook them. Waste of money, waste of excitement, waste of food.

To be honest, I’m having trouble focusing on finishing this post. Kind of dizzy and should go eat an apple. Or two. Or five. I do have the option of going over to Jen and Heather’s next door to use their gas stove. I’ll try to take them up on that offer today. (Those chicken breasts will not go to waste!) It’s just not the same though, and it’s not all that convenient. I also have the wonderful help of our two house ladies, Esther and Jacki. Unfortunately, their work schedules at our home are on the days we are “scheduled” for daytime power outages. We practically never have power when they are here, so even they can’t cook for us. (One week, however, they did manage to coordinate the use of the oven at another house on the compound that uses a generator. They did it all on their own, and they made pizza for us. They are awesome.)

So I guess I’m looking forward to eating fruit. Lots and lots of fruit this week, as I will give Esther a shopping list on Tuesday for nanasi (pineapple), ndizi (banana) and tikiti maji (watermelon). What else is there to eat when you have no way to cook and everything spoils so fast? Fruit it is, but even that fare can only take me so far.

Laura