Why are you still here?
Why isn’t this stupid job done yet?
There isn’t any power, why do we have to sit and wait for it to return.
Why can’t you just come tomorrow instead?! Why won’t you let me leave my house,
damnit!? Why are you eating all my food? Why must I cook for you too? Why must you continually ask me to add more salt
to an already over-salted dish? Why, why, WHY!
I’ve got cabin fever, and I’m about two kilopascals away
from cracking. I’ve spent the last four
days stuck within the confines of my house, unable to leave because there are
two guys cutting and welding metal rebar on my front porch with the end goal of
setting me up with a nice new set of security grates for my windows and
doors. They started on Friday. That was also the first day Mozambican
Culture gave me a little smack to the face before removing some of the contents
of my wallet. No, I didn’t get robbed;
at least I don’t think I did (how ironic/cliché would that be though…the guys
installing the security device end up ripping you off). Turns out, if you hire someone to do work for
you, and they are there during a meal, you need to provide them with food. Usually, this wouldn’t be an issue, but it
caught me totally off guard. Not only do
I not have much in my pantry (I just moved in!), but I have no idea how to cook
what I do have.
Fortunately for me, my amazing site-mate Anna taught me how to whip up a quick batch of fried rice the day
before, so when the guys told me they were hungry and needed to feed them, I
went to work. I didn’t have some of the
things I needed, so I decided to make a curry fried rice instead by substituting
curry powder for soy sauce and ginger. Turned out to be half decent, and I
think they liked it. They took seconds,
so I’m counting that one as a victory.
If only the next day had gone as well.
I should have taken it as a sign when Taje, my neighbor and
colleague, stopped by early in the moring on day two to say something about the
power. I usually don’t understand what
he’s saying to me, so I just nodded, slapped his hand and did the Mozambican
handshake-thumb snap, smiled and repeated “Sim, sim!” Turns out, he was trying to tell me that
there wasn’t any power, but the guys who were working on my grates were still
going to come. Around 7:00 or 7:30, they
showed up on their motorcycle dressed and ready to work. They said something along the lines of,
“Yeah, don’t worry, this happens in Montepuez a lot. Either the power will come back on in five
minutes, or it won’t come back on until tomorrow. Or maybe it’ll come on in an hour or
two. Doesn’t matter, we have nothing
better to do so we are going to hang around your house and wait. Also, you need to feed us again.”
So we waited. And we
waited. And then we waited some
more. We sat around all morning, waiting
for the power to return. First we waited
outside. Then we moved inside to my
couches. Then one of the guys took a nap
on my couch which the other tried to decipher dated copies of the New
Yorker. He told me he didn’t understand
what anything said, but he liked the ads.
It was grueling, and it was hot.
On the bright side though, this gave me a great opportunity to practice
my Portuguese, and while we were sitting there waiting for what felt like an
infinite number of house, we conversed as best we could.
When lunch time rolled around, I got to work. I decided to be a bit adventurous that day
and experiment with beans. This was actually gonna be my first time making
beans. Ever. I had soaked them the night before, with the
bright idea to try and follow a recipe I found in one of the various cook
books/notepads laying around my house.
It sounded good to me, and I had most of the ingredients, so it seemed like
a win-win situation. Not quite. I didn’t think that the finished product was
actually that bad, but the Mozambicans were not happy. “The beans need to be cooked more.” One
said. “It needs more salt.” Said the
other. “Why did you cook it together with
the rice?” they both asked. Because
that’s what the recipe said to do dude, that’s why. I wasn’t actually terrible, but they aren’t
huge fans of spicy, and I guess they didn’t have a taste for cumin. Either way, they told me that they wanted to
teach me to make beans like a Mozambican, so I decided this sounded awesome and
told them I was down like a bean-cooking clown.
They didn’t get it. So instead I
told them that this sounded like an amazing opportunity to gain a cultural
culinary perspective from two members of the community that I will be spending
the next two year of my life living with.
They didn’t understand that either.
So, I just told them yeah, let’s do it.
That worked.
We finished eating around 2pm, and they decided that after
nearly seven hours of waiting, they were gonna call it a day. Then they left. Then, at 2:02pm, the power came back on. Figures.
Didn’t matter though. It seemed
that I would finally have some time to leave my godforsaken house and run some
errands, so I was happy. I desperately
needed to go to the market and restock on supplies.
I finished up washing the dishes and then got my bag ready
to head up to meet Anna for some shopping.
About five minutes into my walk, it started to rain. Hard rain.
I ducked under a random tin-roofed veranda for a little, hoping to wait
out the storm. I’d already waited 7
hours today, what was a little more. It
never stopped raining. I would have just
sucked it up and walked anyway, but I wasn’t even half a klick into my 4km trek
to the market. After about 25 minutes, I
ran home to seek shelter in the dirty, metal shard scattered confines of my
home.
The next day the guys showed up bright and early to start
working again. Nothing too eventful on Day
3, but Anna decided to join us for lunch.
We didn’t end up doing the bean thing as I forgot to soak them. No problem, because the pasta I drowned in
olive oil suited them just fine.
Day 4 came and went with a bang. Well, it was more like there was banging all
throughout the day. Banging on Metal
bars, banging on pots and pans, banging our forks and knives on the table as we
eagerly waited for our food to be served…
I was excited to learn about Mozambican bean-cooking. It was interesting, but not as unique as I
was hoping it to be. Pretty standard
stuff, except they didn’t want to soak the beans at all. Instead, we started cooking them at 8am, and
just let them boil for three or four hours.
We mixed in tomatoes, onions, peppers, and garlic before adding a ton of
salt. Rice was put in towards the end,
and then a one point, one of the guys asked for a plastic bag that he then put
into the pot, spreading it out over the bean-rice amalgamation. Still not sure what it was supposed to do,
but when he was sticking the thing in there, he told me it was to “Tampar.” Meh. Too
bad tampar didn’t mean make things taste better, because even with the
approximately 1 kilogram of salt that we added, the dish came out pretty bland.
My beans were better.
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