Dingleberries on the way to the shop

The Peace Corps has three principal goals that volunteers strive to accomplish during our service abroad.  Peace Corps Goal 2, for example: “Helping promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served.”

                And to be honest with you, I think goal two is one of the most important things that Peace Corps does abroad. 

                I guess maybe it’s not one of the most important things, but it’s something we do absolutely every day.  Every day, myself and my fellow volunteers in Lesotho deal with people asking us for money because we’re white.  Asian American volunteers have to explain that they aren’t Chinese; they’re from Korea or the Philippines. 

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to explain to a Mosotho person that California and New York are completely different, far apart places.

                It can be frustrating to be grouped into the “typical, rich white American” person category, even months after I’ve supposedly been integrating into my village.  I don’t want my national counterparts to see me as that white girl.  I want them to understand and accept what it means to be an American.  I want them to call me by my name, not by “whitey”! 

   

                But however frustrating, goal two is also one of the most entertaining parts of the Peace Corps.  Especially when it comes to language barriers. 

    

Maphoka is my host sister and my best friend in Lesotho.  She’s 19-years old and goes to school at Mahloenyeng High School, which is about a five minute walk from my house.  She’s about 95 pounds and absolutely beautiful, with a shaved head and big, full lips.

Maphoka is hilarious.  She has a really dry sense of humor, which is even funnier when she speaks English, for some reason.  And whenever something really funny happens, she’ll fall down dramatically and pound her fists on the ground from laughing so hard.

                When I first met Maphoka, she was very shy.  My first few weeks in village, I tried my hardest to be outgoing and bubbly and friendly to everyone I came across.  I’d knock on my host family’s door at least three times a day just to “chat” and awkwardly hang around their house, getting to know them.  Maphoka would always linger quietly in the kitchen, cooking something for her mom or sweeping up the back corners of the room.  I tried several times to joke around with her or ask her questions about school, but she was always hesitant to talk to me.  And whenever we did talk, her eyes would carefully scan the ground instead of meeting my own.

                I knew I could break her.

                Every day, I’d ask her one thing she did at school and one thing she learned.  It was like pulling teeth at first, but eventually she started opening up.  She started gossiping to me about her bitchy friends or the boy she was crushing on.  We finally got to the point where she’d meander over to my hut when she was bored and pretend like she needed to ask me something important, only to hang around and chat for a few hours.

                Now, I don’t go anywhere in my village without her.  Whenever either of us needs to go to the shop, the other walks along just for the company.  I think some of my best conversations with Maphoka happen during these walks.

                Last week, on our way to the shop, I had an uncomfortable wedgie.  I’m sure you’ve been in the same situation in public.  You need to pick the wedgie, but you can’t just reach back and yank it out.  You have to back into a corner so no one can see what your hand is doing behind your back.

                Well unfortunately, I found myself in such a situation last week, and we were walking down the middle of a road in the middle of nowhere.  So I did what any other self-respecting girl would do.  I took a few quick steps ahead of Maphoka and used her as a human blockade while I hastily took care of my wedgie.

                This brought us to the cordial conversation of wedgies and how they can make your butt itch.  I explained to Maphoka that along with wedgies, there are several factors that can contribute to an irritated bottom, one of which being forgetting to thoroughly wipe after you do your business.   

                Which then brought us to the topic of dingleberries.

                As graphically as possible, I explained to Maphoka what a dingleberry was.  I even used some berries hanging in a nearby tree as a reference.  I also had to explain the difference between dingleberries and skidmarks (an essential fact to know). 

                Along the route to the shop, we both took turns falling into the ditch from laughing so hard.  Maphoka completely and immediately understood what a dingleberry was (I was so proud!) and she even taught me the word in Sesotho. 

                Maphoka was very pleased to have acquired two new English vocabulary words.  She told me that the word “berry” sounds very pleasant in English, and she thought that dingleberry could be used as a term of endearment for her friends. 

She typed it in her phone so she wouldn’t forget to call her friends dingleberries at school the next day.  

still cooking

                I love to eat.  If I actually ate everything that I really wanted to, I’d be morbidly obese.  Wouldn’t we all?  It always seems like the best tasting stuff is the worst for you.

                Since I love to eat, I also love to cook.  In fact, I used to write regularly in a cooking blog.  Before I left for the Peace Corps, I spent the summer in Buenos Aires, with nothing to do all day but go sight-seeing and cook delicious food.  It was a self-indulgent two months before leaving for the middle of nowhere, Africa.

Since last July, I’ve regrettably stopped writing in that blog.  I think one of the most important parts of a food blog is seeing pictures of the food you’re going to cook, and the internet connection in Africa is less than capable of loading pictures on to a blog.  I tried once, and the “loading” bar said that it would be an hour and a half before any picture showed up.  Not worth it.  Sorry to all of my Mustgo Food readers (that’s you, Mom and Grandma!)

But I’m still cooking.  It’s been quite the adventure to figure out how to use a Dutch oven, and how to bake my own bread, and how to use what’s in season in my village instead of driving down the road to the supermarket.  The only “staples” that are always available in my local shop are: flour, sugar, onions, tomatoes, eggs (hit or miss—if I go to the shop early enough, they’re still there), white rice, chicken stock cubes, peanut butter (hallelujah!) and ketchup. 

Luckily, I live only about a 45-minute taxi ride outside of the capital city, Maseru, so I’ve got access to a lot of “good food” that other volunteers miss out on.  When I’m in town, I usually stock up on cheese, soy milk and cereal, granola, lots of vegetables, whole wheat pasta, instant sauces, and canned chicken.  You’d be surprised as to what kinds of food can be left out of a refrigerator and still eaten a few days later.  Cheese lasts for about a week and milk for three to four days.  I haven’t gone so far as to buy yogurt and eat it after a few days.  I’m not that daring.  

When we first arrived in Lesotho, the Peace Corps provided us with a volunteer-compiled cookbook called “Where There Is No Chef”.  I’ve made it my goal to cook through the entire cookbook during these two years of service.  I’ve found a few great “homemade” recipes that I would have never imagined to use before Peace Corps.  For example—tortilla chips!  I make them all the time.  They are so much better homemade than store bought. 

I’ve also become quite the baker.  I love baking my own bread.  I learned from my host family during training how to measure out the perfect ratios of flour to sugar to salt (using my palm, of course), blend it together, sprinkle in a bit of yeast and water, and let it rise in the sun for a few hours.  Nothing beats the smell and the warmth that freshly baked bread brings to my tiny hut in the middle of winter.

Besides enjoying cooking as it is, I also cook a lot because I’m not the biggest fan of the food in Lesotho.  The staple meal (and it is indeed a staple meal; they eat it for every meal) is called papa and moroho.  Papa is thick maize meal, so thick that you break it in chunks and eat it with your fingers.  Moroho is chopped spinach (or, really, any green leaves that grow in the yard), fried in lots of oil and doused in salt.  Sometimes, onions are thrown into the mix.  It’s not unbearably bad, but it’s not healthy for you, either.  And eating papa and moroho every day, all day is exasperating.

Many people here ask me about our staple food in America.  It’s hard to answer, because I don’t think we have a staple food like papa and moroho.  We eat everything.  Maybe some would say that fast food in general is America’s Staple Food.  But that’s hard to explain to a Basotho who has never been to a drive-thru.

I usually answer by explaining that America has lots of different people, so we eat lots of different foods.  We eat Chinese food, Mexican food, Italian food… even that answer goes over their heads.  They expect us to have one “go-to” food.  I was talking to a friend the other day about how we eat different things because we like variety; we get bored with the “papa and moroho”-type meals day after day.  He said that he would like all kinds of food too, if he had the money to do so. 

Today it’s cold and windy, and I’ve been in bed all morning reading Anthony Bourdain’s “A Cook’s Tour (maybe that’s why I was inspired to write about food J).  I’m planning on checking off Frijoles Borrachos from the cookbook.  I think I might have to make some warm tortillas on the side, too.

Flour Tortillas

2 cups flour (not self-raising)

1 ½ tbsp. sugar

½ tsp. salt

2 tbsp. butter

Hot water

Mix all ingredients, using just enough water to stick together.  Knead; should be play-dough consistency.  Divide into small balls and let sit 20 minutes.  Roll each ball into a circle on a floured board.  Cook on an ungreased skillet until lightly flecked with brown spots.

For tortilla chips: cut the tortillas into slices and fry in a little bit of oil until golden.  While still hot, sprinkle with salt.