Gastronomie, or "How a Hotplate Can Save a Nation"

"I know some of us don't have teeth, but I do, and I want pot roast. My wife's, complete with leathery bay leaves. I want carrots, I want potatoes boiled in their skins. And I want a deep, rich cabernet sauvignon to wash it all down, not apple juice from a tin. But above all, I want corn on the cob." I don't know if you've observed from my waistline over the years, but I love food. To cook it, to serve it, to eat it. Preparing food is a spiritual quest for the perfect balance of flavors, a delicate equilibrium. There's a definate feeling of vigor I get in slaving away over a steaming pot of water or a hot plate of oil. There's a certain zen-like state I find in slicing a mountain of vegetables, meat and herbs as the stainless steel knife becomes another part of my body. There's a particular sense of accomplishment I feel when the stew has reached the right consistency or the chicken is golden brown and I can sit down to eat. This was all fine and dandy when my home was down the road from a store boasting an unfathomable array of spices, a valley of assorted world cheeses and a land mass of non-wilted produce. I'm not going to say that Mozambicans are not a fan of the culinary arts. I'm not going to say that they're uninterested in dabbling in risky cooking endeavors. I'm not going to say that, because there are restaurants here with delicious food and there are women who keep asking me to show them how to make the eggplant parmesan and seaweed salad that they liked of mine so very much. But what I will say is that I can't help but think that a revolution in food experimentation is a sign of a nation developing, a nation rising from the blood of a civil war, the ashes of a collapsed infrastructure. A people that has the resources to invest in a culinary underbelly is a people that no longer simply cooks to survive, but cooks to live. Sure, we can pray for world peace along with the Miss Americas, but what we really need is to eat, drink and be merry.

Friday Night Lights

Ok, Sara. You've let your quasi-mastery of the Portuguese language get the better of you-AGAIN. On Wednesday, when Nancy invited you to a concert by a guy named Nelson Something-er-other (which you presumably thought would be a relaxing evening of listening to Brazilian grooves), she was actually inviting you to a DISCOTECH-and you said yes. Oh, heavens. "What have I gotten myself into?," I kept asking myself as I walked to Nancy's to catch our cab. Give me torrential rain for a week, give me a rat invasion in my room, give me an 3 week ear infection, but a DISCOTECH? Being proposed to everyday on the way home is easily avoidable as I can just walk away. But willingly venturing to a location in which I'll be forced to dance with strange people with no escape route? THAT, my friends, is the true challenge. Although it would be getting in the way of the old lady plans I had to knit Irene a scarf while watching a movie and retiring early, I knew how badly Nancy wanted to go. And so I walked across the way to her house, and it all felt like dejá-vù. Entering her kitchen, I met her mother baking a cake. Further down the hall, I met her father in typical dad-short shorts watching a primetime telenovela. And walking into her room, I saw Nancy still getting dressed and looking for the perfect set of dangly earrings. I couldnt help but think that this all reminded me of something...and then finally, when riding in the back of her dad's car, I realized that I was in middle school all over again ready to go to the Friday night dance. At 13, the prospect of dancing to horrid pop music for 3 hours sounded like a barrell of fun. At 23, riding in the back of her dad's car, the prospect of dancing to horrid pop music for 3 hours sounded worse than working a full day in the hot Pemba sun. And so my anxiety peaked as we drove past the lights of the bay and I calculated how many beers I could drink with still enough money to catch a cab. It is now 13:46 the next day, and if you're wondering how my first African discotech experience went, well, the Peace Corps is about trying everything once, right?

I am the Sound

I'm sweeping my porch, or "veranda" as they call it here. Although, such a term conjures peaceful images of a shady, columned patio overgrown with ivy, not the likes of my screened-in, tiled front entrance way. It's Friday, and the neighborhood is pulsing with the frenetic activity that only a weekend could bring about. Music and telenovelas blare from each and every house-except mine. I have but a measly sound system, comprised of an iPod plugged into a miniscule set of baby speakers. O, Big Lots, you've given me quite the deal at $7.50, but I fear my music is in an uphill battle against the likes of Bryan Adams, Michael Bolton and Poder Paralelo. I'm sweeping my porch, and from out here I can't tell if the woman singing in my kitchen is Joanna Newsom or Lauryn Hill. But it's ok because the dashing, shaggy-haired protagonist just rescued the damsel from the maniacal villian on Poder Paralelo and the crowd is going wild. Cheers, clapping and similar outbursts of victory fill the night air, and I can't help but think it's the closest thing I have to Sunday afternoon football.

Yo, teach!

The Peace Corps is a learning experience. Say, for instance, it teaches me how to gracefully descend from a flatbed truck without falling on my butt in the mud, or that fresh flowers put on my table by the neighborhood children make me so happy, and that listening to the music on my iPod makes me miss home. But I've also learned that if I sit still and quietly enough on the beach, a giant crab will burst out of the sand beside me, and that with enough experimentation and ingenuity, I too can knit a hat for my neighbor's baby. Oh no, the Peace Corps experience doesn't just teach us about liking floral arrangements or the habits of local crustaceans-it teaches us about ourselves. Like, that I've always been on Mozambican time, and that sitting around all day visiting with neighbors is what I've always rather have been doing. But most of all-and please allow me this moment of weakness to be cliché-it teaches me everyday that I'm stronger than I ever thought I was... Oh, and also that scrunched up notebook paper works as an adequate substitute for toilet paper.