So
mealtime is simultaneously my biggest stressor and my favorite times of the
day. It’s definitely a stressor
because the food is “strange” to me, I’m a picky eater, everyone is talking at
the same time, and it would be really easy to offend someone by not
eating/saying the right thing.
However, it is also a great time because after dinner I just sit around
and shoot the breeze with my family.
I can jut listen to them or they’ll wait patiently while I stumble
through a story.
First
of all: carbs on carbs on carbs.
It’s not unusual for a meal to include bread, potatoes, rice, and
tortillas. EVERY meal includes
tortillas, bread and black beans.
And I mean every meal – breakfast, lunch, dinner, and even afternoon
snack. I understand why people
here like bread. It’s always
clean. It’s cheap. It’s easy. However, it’s sad to see all of the nutritious fruits and
vegetables people bring to the market to sell, so that they can have money for
more bread and snack foods. I
forget the exact figure, but the malnutrition rate here is incredible, so
expect more posts on this topic.
The
fruits and vegetables here are really incredible. Even the watermelon here is really delicious and actually
has a taste. I had a mango yesterday
that was probably the most delicious thing I’ve ever had in my life. This type of mango was pretty soft and then they cut a small
bit off the top of the mango. Then
they squeeze all of the juice from the mango through the hole into their mouth,
like a juice box. It was amazing. Also, it's avocado season. Yum.
I
told my family that I was a vegetarian.
Which is more of a stretching of the truth than an outright lie. In the States I’ll occasionally eat
meat, but eat vegetarian whenever possible. However, I’m trying to know my limits and I definitely know
that I’m not ready to eat just any type of meat that they put in front of
me. My host mom is very kind and
said that she doesn’t mind me not eating meat.
She added that she and most members
of her family have diabetes, so it’s good for her to eat more vegetables anyway. When I asked her how she treats her diabetes, she said she just takes a pill with her meals. When I asked her how she got diabetes,
she said she has no idea. She
doesn’t understand how eating so much bread affects her blood sugar, since it’s
not sweet. Needless to say,
there’s a lot of work to be done here.
Also, coffee. Everyone here drinks coffee all the
time. Breakfast, lunch, dinner and
in between. They even give the
thirteen-month-old I live with coffee, at every meal. One part of Guatemalan culture that I really love is the
“cafecita”, which is a cup of coffee and a snack in the late afternoon, because
they eat dinner so late. I’m
definitely bringing that back to the States.
Although
I am really looking forward to having more independence once training is over
and being able to cook my own meals, eating with my Guatemalan host family has
offered me great insight into why the malnutrition and stunting rate is so
extraordinarily high. The water
can make you sick. The fruits and
vegetables are a pain to wash.
Families are big and need to be fed cheaply. One of the primary goals of the Healthy Schools program I am
working in is to teach nutrition, so I am chalking this up to an important
learning experience, but once I get out to site, I’m making myself a BIG,
CLEAN, SALAD!!
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