Wednesday June 17, Providence, Mulanje (night)

The amount of Coca-Cola you end up drinking here is really perverse. The lesser of the two reasons for this is that it is cheaper than bottled water. The greater of the reasons for compulsive Coke intake is that it is A) one of the few things that you will ever find refrigerated, and B) lacking in other nutrition, it's sugary calories have all the effect of a well-rounded multi-vitamin. To describe the amount of sugar in the average diet out here would give me diabetes for sure. Lollipops are the hot new fix, peddled at markets and mini-bus parks across the country, creating, overnight, a nation of grown men with colored plastic stick protruding from their syrupy pink and purple rimmed mouths. The intake is primarily of the crystallized, carbonated, or candied varieties since baking, and by extension pastries have not really caught on here. There is no complexity to the cuisine here at all. Ingredients are either chopped or eaten whole by themselves, at most heated and put on or near nsima or rice. It is not that Malawi lacks ingredients, there are whole worlds of possibility with the locally grown items available, what they lack is food consciousness. The makings of a solid burrito (minus, and admittedly a big minus, the Malawian equivalent of a flat-bread or tortilla) are cheaply at hand in every market in the country. They don't do sandwiches. They don't do cornbread in spite of the abundance of corn. They don't do cheese in spite of the abundance of goats. In rural areas meat is only eaten on special occasion. Most of what is grown: avocado, garlic, eggplant, pineapple, papaya, tangerines, are never eaten by their growers or vendors, or utilized in cooking. Why eat well any day of the week when they can just eat nsima with pigeon peas and survive? So much possibility is so close at hand but never reached for. Not the case with the hundreds of outstretched hands asking the uzungu for money. Learn how to feed yourselves a well rounded meal first.

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