Hello to all! I just thought I would write a quick post illuminating the types of food I ate while doing ministry in Mozambiuqe. All in all, the menu was preeettty short. The main course everyday has been shema (think grits more ground up), plain white rice, red beans, white bread, whole fish which includes the head, scales, bones and fins, and water. Anything beyond these choices was literally a delicacy.
Furthermore, the fish was only once a week, while the red beans was the only thing that I thought was good. The shema and rice which formed the staple for everymeal besides breakfast was completely bland and tasteless.
Breakfast was my favorite meal of the day as it was a plain fresh baked roll of white bread where, as part of our team money, we would buy peanut butter and sometimes jelly when we could afford it to smother on it.
One of the biggest blessings of the sweltering Mozambiquen climate was the local fruit. Fruit was everywhere! Mangos, bananas, coconuts, apricots, fresh cashews, jacas, and small apple looking fruits that I still can't pronounce the name to were in every village and on every street. So just as a disclaimer, I havn't died of scurvy, yet, and I am getting my "fruits and veggies" fairly often.
Another one of the great things about Mozambique is that Coca-Cola is everywhere! There's "salesperson" who has a camping cooler of coke on every street corner and every market tent in Dondo, and what is even better is that is way cheaper than in the states. So almost everyday I would pay the 15 mets, which is about 50 cents to get a bottle of iced Coca-Cola. It really helped with the heat exhaustion. The heat and humidity was unceasing. I would sweat all day, begin sweating after I took a bucket shower, sweat while eating breakfast at 7am in the morning and would literally go to bed sweating and sweat throughout the night. As my grandad would say "I sweated out all my poisen" while in Mozambique.
I was able to eat two eat two hamburgers while in Dondo. They were sooo gooood!!! One was during one of my "logistics days" where me and my logistics partner Emily traveled to Beira with our Squad leaders Steven and Kristin to set up long range transport out of Mozambique with a Chinese company that boasted sleeper busses. We ate our huge egg and cheese hamburgers in a resturant on the Indian Ocean beach and it only cost $4.00!! It was really pleasant day. And the other hamburger was at a place called Kedesh where, John, one of our ministyr hosts decided to treat all of us Americans to a BBQ night and I chose the hamburger over the steak lol. Overall, everything in Africa has been much cheaper than in the states.
I hope to blog more about our ministry in Mozambique soon.
Brother in Christ,
Matthew
Don't let Sarah's smile fool you. It was like stirring a pot of half wet concrete. Called shema. It looks like mashed potatos, tasted like grits. And was suuper bland
Me and my logistics partner Emily. Top picture in the middle. Our first hamburger day while in Mozambique. It was goooood. This picture was taken with our squad leaders Steven and Kristin and we fit all four of us in a "golf cart" sized taxi, flying 40 mph down the crazed streets of Beira. needless to say, I was basically hanging out the side of the "golf cart".
The hearth at John's in Kedesh. Taken during preperation day…getting ready for the day of rest. The Sabbath
Fish that looked like shad and spinach.
John of Kedesh. Extremely knowledgable of God's Word. As soon as I drove into his orphanage for the first time, it was like a cloud of tranquility surrounded me. Its hard to put into words. We observed the Sabbath with him and his boys. He is Torah Observant and believes in the saving grace of our Messiah
