Musings of Africa Pt. 2: You Eat What You are Given
Anyone who knows me knows me, knows I have a complex relationship with food. I love food, but only certain kinds of food. I don't eat fruit, I have a thing about textures, and at one point as an infant my mother was keeping me alive by feeding me the squished out insides of French fries because that was all I would eat (things that only first time parents would put up with 😂). So you can imagine that eating food in Africa made me nervous. So much so that I spent upwards of $50 in snacks because I was prepared to eat peanut butter crackers for breakfast, lunch, and dinner if I had to. Enter posho and beans, a traditional African meal. When I learned that this would likely be our daily lunch, I asked Courtenay's husband, Jeremiah, for clarity, ‘So it's like beans and rice?' He responded, ‘Oh you wish it was like rice.' Dread. When the time came for lunch on day one, I surveyed my plate and noted that this looked an awful lot like red beans and rice, which I eat often enough being fed by a New Orleanian mother. I proceeded to eat this like I do when we have red beans and rice for dinner- scooting around the beans for the 'gravy'. Posho I found to be like a stiff grits, which I could totally stomach. The day we got avocado slices and had rice instead of posho my heart sang. This nontraditional foodie had found her happy place even a continent away.