Food, glorious food!

Food is a much talked about topic in Rwinkwavu, so it seems worthy of a short blog entry...

Locals joke about the sugar intake of expats (which always amuses me, given I have seen multiple people put 5 teaspoons of sugar in a single cup of tea), while expats compare notes on how long it took before they stopped eating matoku (mashed plantain - I’m still eating it).

Meals mostly consist of a combination of vegetables, beans, rice, plantain, mashed/boiled/fried potatoes, and goat a few times a week.  We were even treated to goat pizza one night last month.  While it does get a little repetitive, I actually quite like the food, especially since discovering Akabanga (a super hot sauce, a few drops of which transform a dinner, or at least give you a slight burning sensation in your mouth!)  I should perhaps note one exception - goat intestine brochettes.  I did not deal well with them, but fortunately it seemed to go relatively unnoticed.

Hospital lunches (photo attached below), taken in the fresh air by the TB ward, require taking your teeth into your own hands as the beans frequently contain stones.  The other day we found one the same size as a kidney bean!  Rwinkwavu legend has it that one member of staff ended up having to go to South Africa for dental work when a hidden stone broke his tooth...