On particularly hot days, you always stay dressed up, in public. Especially women wear a lot of layers of clothes. And a hot day is no excuse to wear much less. It doesn't matter how hot the sun is, if you have a slip on (extra modesty for foreign-made clothes), if there is a breeze... Really, if you're in public, you stay fully dressed and just sweat it out.
Without question, you eat whatever is on your plate. Everything. You may or may not know what it is or like the taste of it, but if it's on your plate, it better get eaten. Most of the time, eating at someone's house is a big deal (often they want to honor and welcome the visitor in their home). So the food they serve, may not be what they usually eat, it might be a special meal. Most families cannot afford to eat meat everyday. And when meat is eaten, the quantity usually isn't very large. So if your piece is mostly or all gristle, you eat it. I've been able to occasionally trade pieces with people sitting next to me, but it's discrete and with Noé or one of our international staff like Justin. However the other day, at Honoré's house, my piece of meat (served by myself!), was part of the liver... Of either goat or cow (I'm not sure which animal it was, since my piece wasn't meat!). I knew it was liver as soon as I tried to rip a piece off with my fingers, by how it easily fell apart. Noé was too far to give this "special" piece to and the others around me wouldn't have understood. So I ate it. Somehow...
The very next afternoon, I was cooking food at Shanga Irene's house with Festo's wife Grace. Mid afternoon Grace and I stopped to have lunch. It was a very normal meal - beans, banana plantains, avocado. And then Grace plopped two pieces of goat meat on our plate. It looked soft, smooth, without bones... That's not too typical for the meat here. It was liver again. So, I ate it. Eating it two days in a row didn't make me like it any more than I had before. And I'm convinced that's why I felt a bit queasy the two days after we cooked together... Too much liver in my system!
A few hours later, Grace jokingly offered me some of the fried blood of the goat. I hesitated and thankfully did not (have to) eat it. She told me she doesn't like it, but will occasionally eat it. Blood? Ish. If I can help it, I'll avoid that one...
Another thing I've learned is that being tan is not appreciated in Congo, except by other Americans. Sitting outside doing laundry in the sun, is unbelievable to most Congolese. Since the sun is so hot, why in the world would someone sit in it? Showing someone tan lines or how dark my arms have become since November is really seen as silly. Why would you want to be like that? Men and (especially) women often use creams to bleach their skin (the market is full of skin lightening products, like soaps and lotions). **That is another topic that I should expound on separately, because it's one of the things I really think is terrible, not to mention extremely unhealthy!**
And recently I've felt like I should protect myself from potential skin damage (hopefully it's not too late), so I've been putting on sunscreen. SPF 50, nearly every morning - because sometimes a 20 minute ride to or from school on the back of a motorcycle can be enough to get burned. My skin isn't usually very sensitive to the sun, but combining my anti-malarial and living on the Equator - I'm just as sensitive as some of my fair-skinned sisters! :)
No comments:
Post a Comment