Special Drink

The food here isn't that bad, really. I've been served a lot of worse things in other countries than I have been here. Most of what we have, while it might not taste good, isn't weird by my definition...monkey brains, eyeballs, etc....although there was the one goat brain experience but it wasn't like the brain was served on a platter and I didn't know it was in there until much later. That's beside the point. Most of the staple food items in the Sandbox are edible, sometimes even enjoyable to eat....but some are not.

There is a special drink during Ramadan called 'Hilu Moor' and it is not good...think worcestershire sauce with a lot of sugar served at room temp. I thought that was the most disgusting drink I would have in the Sandbox until today.

I love Hailey so much, I visit her often and we can sit and talk for hours. She always treats me like a guest even though she always says 'mi casa es su casa' in Arabic. And being treated like a guest means being served a glass of water and then being served some sort of juice or coke. I usually try to bring a 2-Liter with me when I go to poorer people's houses...that way I can be sure they don't go out and spend a precious 25 cents on buying me a coke that I don't even want, but usually Hailey makes some TANG and just adds alot of sugar so I stopped bringing a drink with me to her house. I wish she had made TANG today.

Instead we were served this. I saw her walking up with it and thought 'oh no. orange, apple, lemon, mango...what kind of powdered fruit juice mix could possibly turn that color?!?!' She sat it down and said 'do you drink this?' always a bad sign! There was no turning back, she had already brought two full glasses for us, we couldn't say we didn't drink it. In my mind I imagine that I'm a good actress, that maybe in those slow motion seconds when they're intently watching me lift something gross to my mouth I am actually faking them out and not letting them know that I am just absolutely dreading the taste of whatever is coming. I don't know if that's the case, but today I took a sip with confidence, stifled a gag, and asked what it was. She said 'oh, it's just flour, water and a little sugar. Really you take the water, mix the flour in with some sugar and a little lemon juice and then cook it for a while until it thickens'. And thicken it did.

Imagine homemade vanilla pudding without vanilla or sugar or anything else good in it. Now imagine that it's been sitting on the counter for a while and has somehow turned into a gel of sorts, that there are clumps of flour that didn't get mixed in, and you're drinking it from a cup...then there's the citrus aftertaste. Mouth watering, huh? My friend got her's down, amazingly. I happened to have a water bottle in my purse and most of mine might have ended up in there. It wasn't so much the taste as it was the texture...and the small bug that I spotted gelled in about halfway down the cup.

I don't know about anyone else but I remember when I was little if I ever said that I was hungry around bed time my mom would just say ' go drink a glass of water'. It never really filled me up but I knew she wasn't going to let me have a snack so I just did it. Well Mom, if you had just added some flour and cooked it for a while...
I love it when the women feed the goats while I'm at their house. The little kids get so excited because they like to eat the grass too...not just chew on it, they actually eat it. I guess it tastes good? I haven't been brave enough to try it, nor has it been offered to me.

Another thing that I've been served at Hailey's house, bless her, was pretty memorable. We have this bread called kisra. There is nothing comparable in the states but if you've ever had Ethiopian injeera bread it's kind of like with the sour taste only thinner. For descriptive purposes just imgaine that it was de-crusted white bread with some lemon juice sprinkled on top. Also our yoghurt here isn't the same either. In town I use processed yoghurt but out there the guy in the market makes it from goat milk every morning so it's fresh and very runny.

Anyways, so Hailey brings us this big bowl of the kisra bread drowned in yoghurt and with tons of sugar for us to eat with our hands. I don't mind eating with my hands but this was like pulling bread out of a bowl of milk. The first taste of every bite was so sweet it was like eating straight sugar, then came the texture that made me gag a lot, then the bitter yoghurt taste so bad that it made my tongue feel like I was eating chalk. Then if I could finally swallow I got the kick of the sour bread that only made me gag again. Needless to say, carrying a disposable water bottle around wherever you go has come in handy more than once!!!