On Food :-)

I wrote this post a few weeks ago and it mentions what our meals consist of most days. Thank you, Mom & Aunt Deb, for asking me recently what we eat! Both times I thought, "Huh, thought I covered that..." And I did, I just never shared it. My apologies!

Monday, January 19th, we had one admission before lunch. Jasmine and I were on the lunch pass and I got to draw blood on the admission! My partner was Joseph, a national nurse I hadn't worked with yet. He helped me explain to the patient in Temne what we were about to do.

As a group of four we continued on to the confirmed ward where we spent most of our time encouraging the patients to eat. There are four women right now and 2 of the 4 are fairly sick. I spent time with the oldest trying to get her to eat some. "Eat eat small small."

Dr. Andrew got off around 2 today and around 3 we headed back to housing which is just a few miles away from the ETC. IMC has several vehicles shuttling people from housing to the office or ETC or into the local town. Dr. Andrew and I decided to walk to town (20-25 min leisurely stroll one way, not bad!) and we bought some bananas (hurray!! Fresh fruit!!) and bought some hard-boiled eggs to add to breakfast which is 3-5 pieces of white bread, toasted. We have accrued a few jars of peanut butter, jelly, Nutella, and marmite that are communal and stay in the center of the biggest table.

We eat lunch most days at the ETC-which is beans and rice or cassava leaf, rice and fish. Quite spicy, even for my palate! And also quite oily, most things are cooked in Palm oil here.
Dinner we eat at the housing compound which is either fish & rice or chicken & rice. My first night here I chose fish and it came out with the head still on, which no doubt, I should have expected! It was delicious but bony. (I didn't mess with the fish head at all!) Since then I have eaten the chicken most nights.

(February 7th)
We had a Mexican meal few days ago. Someone had found buritoes in the local gas station/grocery store. That was a wonderful change to the usual chicken or fish and rice. I am hard-core craving a fresh salad though! We have had fresh pineapples and mangoes recently--so delicious!! And a Sierra Leonean found me apples in town. Apples do not grow here, they are imported.