Monday, July 14, 2008

A day in the life, largely concerned with food

Well here we are at about the 1/2 way point in our sojourn so it seems like a good moment to describe what our day is generally like. I also hope to dispel a few misconceptions, mostly held by my brother, about how things would be.

We get up around 7am dress and have breakfast which is bread and usually some fried egg and fruit. Recently we also starting having a kind of pineapple juice blend which makes a nice change from water, all the time water (I generally pass on the Fanta). I guess the Burundians, and we're told Africans in general, only eat one meal a day so they don't quite know what to make of this whole 'breakfast' thing. When we mentioned one evening that we really liked the soup, we got soup the next morning for breakfast. And now whenever we have soup for dinner, it usually also shows up for breakfast the next morning. Then we walk to the market where we smush into a bus. Sometimes Jocelyn comes with us- which is nice because then she can translate the conversations going on around us. Many conversations end up involving the whole bus. If you're half sitting in someone's lap, you might as well insert yourself in their conversation too. We get off in Kamenge and walk to the clinic accompanied by the usual children's chorus. We walk the same way at about the same time every day and see pretty much the same kids but they get excited every time.

At the clinic we go around and greet everyone with a handshake. If their hands happen to be full of mud or brick dust or cement they'll offer up their forearm and we shake that instead. See there's even a formality for being dirty. Then John changes into his work shirt and I change into my work clothes. I've been wearing the same shirt and pants at the work site for 6 days now. So I fit right in with the paid Burundian labor who do pretty much the same thing. It makes it a lot easier to remember everyone's name. Guy in the pink shirt. Confise. Every day. Pink shirt, Confise. Now somehow when Claire and Jocelyn and Odette pitch in- usually wearing skirts by the way- they manage while doing exactly the same work I'm doing, to stay clean. I end up covered in red dirt and cement and now mud. They say when you have to wash your own clothes without a washing machine, you learn to keep clean. And I have noticed that the Burundians never sit down on the ground. Even when we were working on the rebar cages for the cement which is all clipping and tying wire really close to the ground they always chose to hunker on their feet rather than sit cross legged.

We work on whatever the task of the moment is- hauling cement or mud or bricks or stones or laying bricks or slinging mud or whatever until about 10:30am when it's time for a Fanta break. Also a little snack, usually bread and margarine. But it's only the voluteers and sometimes the clinic staff (us and Eric and Odette and Jonathan and Samual, etc.) who come inside for Fanta. There's a whole thing we haven't quite figured out about differences between the paid skilled labor and the rest of us. Anyway then it's back to work til lunch time around 12:30. (All times by the way are approximate. I haven't been wearing a watch and few of the others do though I have found that there is more of a concept of time than I was led to believe. Someone always knows what time it is. Just not me.)

And sometimes there's not a lot of work for us to do. When they are working on laying the corner bricks, that has to be pretty precise so the four masons do that and the rest of us wait around, ready to bring them bricks or mud. During these down times I'll try to get Jonathan or one of the others to teach me a new word or two. Since I can't really write things down I need a lot of repetition and very often I find I must be altering the words slightly as I repeat them (like playing a game of telephone with myself) so that by the time I repeat them back to Jonathan an hour later, they've evolved into entirely different words and he shakes his head at me.

For lunch we (again just the workcampers, clinic staff we) walk about 10 minutes to the FWA restaurant. Three months ago FWA opened a restaurant to give employment to women from the clinic with HIV/AIDS. It's very simple, 2 rooms with a couple of tables, a store room and a place for the pots and pans and things. The cooking is done outside over a charcoal fire. The menu is a piece of notebook paper tacked up to the wall which in a combination of Swahili and Kirunid offers: Rice and Beans 400f (about 40 cents) Rice and Beans and Cabbage 500f. There's a meat option and then a couple different combinations of rice, beans, cabbage and meat. The most expensive combo-rice, beans & meat is 1000f. There's no electricity which means there's no fridge which means there's no Fanta, so that's probably hurting their business a bit. We just bring our own water. For us they like to experiment with new food options to maybe add to the menu so though we usually have some combination of rice and beans and meat there's also some form of potato, sometimes the rice is replaced with pasta and sometimes the meat is goat meatballs in a tomato sauce instead of stewed cow in a tomato sauce. While we eat there's often lively conversation in Kirundi which eventually Odette or Claire translates the gist of for us but things must get left out because the translation is never nearly as funny as the conversation itself apparently was. Then after conjugating our way through from I am hungry, you are hungry, he is hungry, etc. to I am full, you are full, he is full etc. in Kirundi, we walk back to work for another couple hours til 3pm. Then we wash our hands and change our clothes if we have them, smush back into a bus and come home.

At home it's cold showers and clean clothes and usually a walk and some errands before its time for dinner and darkness. Dinner comes out lined up in matching matrushka pots- from a big pot of rice, down through potato option, peas & carrots, and stewed beef in a tomato sauce in the last little baby pot. Every night, pretty much exactly the same thing. Every now and then the rice is pasta shells, the peas become a local green spinachy thing or the stewed beef is meatballs. Always in a tomato sauce. Sometimes there's green soup. Oh and fruit. Always some fruit option. So for those of you who have been keeping track the answer is no, no dairy. No cheese, no milk, no actual butter. That day we were up country we did try a bit of a thick yogurty drink which Pastor Sara offered us (sorry Nurse Karen for breaking the no unpasteurized dairy rule). And we tried to buy some ice cream for our 4th of July party but a pint costs $30. Yes, 29500f the equivalent of just under $30 US dollars. So yeah, no dairy for us. Also virtually no refined sugar- aside from the Fanta which as I've said I avoid when I can without being rude. And I have to say I don't miss it nearly as much as I thought I would, probably because of the fruit. I'm not saying I won't be stuffing my face with ice cream the moment I get home right after I take a hot shower for the first time in a month (note to roommates: get ice cream. By the way did I ever tell you guys that the strawberry cheesecake ice cream in the freezer was a buy one get one free thing and please eat it because it will be all freezer burned by the time I get back? Sorry to subject the rest of you to that but I just this second remembered about that ice cream and everyone's so scrupulous about not eating other people's food I just know it would still be sitting there, not good anymore. Anyway if you're not one of my roommates, now you can invite yourself over for strawberry cheesecake ice cream.)

Then after dinner we have many quiet hours of reading and writing and studying and skyping or chatting and then bed to start the whole thing over again. Speaking of which it is way past my bed time.

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