I mentioned a few things in the last post about access to daily water, and what a difference a bicycle makes. Now I want to share a few thoughts about our experience with food in Tete Province. While it would be easy to go on about "strange" food from my western point of view, the main thing I learned is the remarkable resourcefulness of the people. Most poor people of the land, according to Nedson, eat one real "meal" a day, usually in the evening. They may have a few bites of sweet potato or something in the morning, but the rest of the day is spent in working to put something together for the evening meal. This often involves selling something (anything) along the side of the road, harvesting something from their subsistence plot of land, and collecting some wood or charcoal for the evening cooking fire.
Some of the foods that might be available are corn, sorghum,melons and gourds, sesame seeds, bananas, chickens, cassava root, rice, mangoes and papayas (in season), goat, chicken, fish (if they are close enough to a river), and (gulp) mice. It was explained to us that people are very particular that the mice that one might find in one's house or in a town or village are not the ones you eat, because they tend to have a bad odor or taste. Instead, it is the mice from the field that have good taste (insert joke here).
At each congregation we have gone to, the people show their genuine appreciation and hospitality by laying a feast for us--and it is rude to refuse. The meal consistently consists of rice, chicken, tsima (sp? a boiled blob of corn meal), and a great delicacy: goat liver wrapped in intestines. Yum!
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