It's no secret around here that I had an ongoing problem with the food we were served in Mozambique when we were there in January. Throughout the month there were about three core dishes that we rotated through: beans & rice, greens & rice, and fish & rice. If you had it for lunch, you had it for dinner and unlike the leftover Thai take-out that I love so much back home, this stuff is no better the second time around.
I ate these carb heavy meals without complaint until the day I realized there was literally gritty sand present in my food! How could this be?! My investigation led me to learn that the Mozambique natives who washed the dishes used sand to scrub out the large pots. The story was that they couldn't afford scratch pads or sponges, so they would resourcefully take a handful of dirt from the ground in front of them and use it to remove sticky food.
Upon learning this, I wanted to round up some money to buy a year's supply of green Brillo pads or something. No one should just accept rocks in their lunch. We could fix this!
I went on a very amateur hunger strike and was raising a ruckus among the American group because, to me, this was an outrage! The only plus side I could imagine was the possibility we'd end up with pearls in our stomachs.
Before I approached the kitchen crew with a promise of real sponges so they could scrub things to my satisfaction, I was reminded that as I travel to far-away countries, it's not my job to "improve" the culture. One of the reasons I was excited about this trip was because I wanted to experience life the way people of other nations really live it. In this case, real life includes ingesting sand. In fact, the people from Mozambique were always asking for a second helping, so they obviously didn't have a problem with the sandy greens & rice like I did.
I once heard someone say that other cultures are not a failed attempt at being American. My personal agenda for these people regarding their diets and their way of life needs to take a backseat. I'm here to learn from them and not to push my "better" ways on people who are perfectly happy with the way things are done. This is a tough pill to swallow–it's right on par with swallowing sandy greens!
