Lewd Food

My mother’s and aunt’s polite but unfavorable reactions to some high-end food on our part, inspire me to further explain the food situation here. It’s BAD. I’m not kidding. After a while in the village you start thinking it’s better, like, “Hmm, is this cream of spinach tonight?” but no. It’s not. That’s called lying-to-yourself adaptation.

The good thing is that the food is mostly just bland, and not actually offensive. The menu consists of: mashed up corn of sand consistency, water, and either peanut or leaf sauce. Finis! Squash, beans, and okra make their brief appearances once grown. Small bits of onion also count as vegetables, but I suspect those are all from onions I’ve brought in. When I brought carrots with my mom and Cindy, they didn’t even know what they were. Let’s got back to the okra, though.

Dumi. Alexa called it, “Dumi-a-favor-and-get-it-out-of-my-face.” It is okra slime sauce over… what? Oh yes, corn mush. It is so very reminiscent of mucus in texture and color, that it’s hard to tell if it actually also tastes like it, or if that’s another mind-trick. So we eat dumi like everything else, 10ish people crowded around a bowl. After you’ve witnessed everyone’s unsatisfactory hand-washing show (without soap (I give up.)), they dig in. The kids almost all have large globules of snot adorning their faces. You try to keep track of these so they don’t jump ship onto the hand and into the bowl. But it’s dark and there’s some pushing and lots of little hands scooping at booger sauce, right in front of you, even, since there’s no space for your personal clean spot. And of course many globules go missing, but you tell yourself you must have missed the wipe. And you swallow.

Bon apetite!

(Anyone care to review the wish list on the left?)