How to…Go Grocery Shopping in Mozambique for Dummies (or non-Mozambicans)

1. Weeks before: horde coins and small bills.
Whenever you have the chance to get change or break a big bill, do it.

2. Don’t keep a list of what you want. Chances are,
it won’t be there.

3. Hide money in various places on body, such as:
stuffed into shoes, sewn into waistband, concealed in bra, slid between toes,
wrapped around ear, jammed up left nostril, packed into bellybutton

4. Walk to market (like a farmer’s market but more
crowded) when you have 4-hour chunk of time. You’ll probably get held up to
chat with people along the way, and maybe even to eat a meal or two.

5. Once at the market: see something you want, ask
how much it costs per kilo/mound/chunk/bottle/item, in the local language if
you know how (they will be impressed, and also probably laugh - in a friendly
way)

6. Ask them to repeat themselves in Portuguese, if
you asked in the local language but didn’t understand the answer because “how
much is this?” was actually the only thing you knew how to say in the local
language

7. Amicably but persuasively suggest another price
that, if averaged with their projected price, would equal the price that you
actually want to pay

8. Repeat step 7 until an agreement is reached. If
you can’t reach one, start to walk away, and they may call you back and bring
the price down more

9. Receive your purchases, wait 10 minutes for them
to ask all their friends for change, and then proceed to the next booth

10. Walk
home with your purchases, and be prepared for people to ask you for the food
you’re carrying

(Steph’s
General Warning: markets get really slippery and muddy after it rains. Watch
where you step)

I can’t live without you…

...cookbooks. I never realized how
amazing recipes are until now. And limiting, sometimes. But overall, huge
time-savers. I thought I knew how to cook, but then I realized that I’m just
good at following directions.

I do some things backwards here - relative to the way I did
them in the US, at least. Like thinking, for example. And running. I always run
forwards here. Although if I ran backwards down a hill (like I do in the US
sometimes) the looks people give me probably wouldn’t be any stranger than the
ones I get now (“where are you running to?” not as in, “how many kilometers are
you attempting today?” more like, “where the heck could you be going that you
need to rush to and why would you be running if there’s no soccer ball in front
of you or rabid dog behind you?”

Anyway, back to backwardsness. I was actually referring to
cooking. In the US, here’s what would happen: 1) decision: what do I want to eat? 2) recipe: find one for the food I want to eat, and 3) shopping: buy the ingredients for it.

Here, the process looks more like this: 1) shopping: buy whatever food is in the
market that day, 2) recipe: look
through some recipes (we received a “You Can Make it in Mozambique” cookbook,
compiled by Peace Corps volunteers, which is amazing but slightly better suited
for sites where the people don’t grow everything they eat in their backyards.
Which is also amazing! Just takes some getting used to) then realize that there
is no recipe that combines crackers, hard boiled eggs, and bananas, and for the
recipes with at least one of those things, I’m missing at least 2/3 of the
ingredients. The cookbook helpfully suggests substitutions, but it’s like that
philosophical dilemma: if everything except for one thing is substituted, is the
product still the same thing? and 3) decision:
mix everything together and think, do I really want to eat this?

I always eat it.

“But how do you get out?”

When you reach the waiting area, use the index digit to
apply pressure to the round illuminated apparatus bearing the triangular
symbol. A beep indicates impending arrival. Enter between the parting panels
without dawdling on their track. During the ascent, eye contact and verbal
exchange may be discouraged or met with coldness. Refrain from passing gas
until your disembarkment is imminent.

Does the previous paragraph sound slightly nonsensical? If
so, mission accomplished. I’m trying to simulate what I imagine it feels like
for someone who has no electricity and whose house consists of four mud-brick
walls, a tin roof, and two rooms each the size of a medium bathroom, to try to
understand what it’s like to ride an elevator. The more I tried to explain how
you press a button and the moving box knows which floor you’re on and comes to
pick you up, and how it travels on cables up and down a hole in the middle of
the building, the more ridiculous it seemed. But my friend was still very
curious about it, and asked questions like, “how do you get off? Do you have to
jump?” after which we explained that it goes level with the floor so you can
just walk off. I didn’t even tell her yet about jumping when the elevator starts
to go down, or the reasons you shouldn’t fart when you’re in one with other
people. That will be for another day.

Something Tastes Fishy...

Dedicated to Bernard Newton

It started out like any other day. I was out of food in my
house, not a remarkably unusually situation, so I walked to the market. In stock:
potatoes, tomatoes, and dried fish. I bought some of each. Satisfied, since it
was a Sunday and I didn’t think the market would even be open, I returned home
and asked my foster family (a new family, different from my host family) how I
could cook the fish. They said, “where did you buy this?! That fish is not good
for eating. It will give you a rash.” They whisked away my dried fish and
brought out some of their dried fish, apparently superior, although it didn’t
look any different to my untrained eyeballs. They de-headed and de-scaled it
for me, and gave it to me along with instructions on how to cook it and a bit
extra to dine on the following day.

They turned out to be sardines, so salty
that I could still taste them in my throat after downing a pot of plain white rice.
Luckily my family had chosen that day to take pity on me and deliver me a bowl
of beans, as they do sometimes when they sense that my cooking is going to
result in a disaster. The next day, I gave the remaining fish back to my family
for them to enjoy. They laughed and said, “next time, buy fresh fish.”

I learn new things every day.