Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Feeding the Muzungu


There is a culture in Rwanda that you are not finished with dinner until you are too full to move. This means that every night regardless of who I am eating with it is deemed that I eat no where near enough food. And as I have previously mentioned the meal is usually starch, starch, carb, sauce, and maybe a vegetable. You should see the way Rwandans load up their plates! To have a good size meal they say they are sitting behind a volcano, because that is how they pile the food onto their plates. It should come as no surprise then that it is also a compliment in this country for someone to tell you that you have gained weight or that you are chubby (it is a sign of wealth and that you can eat well). Obviously this compliment doesn’t go over particularly well with American volunteers. The issue comes up for many volunteers in their homestays that they have ‘parents’ who insist on feeding them far more than they are able to eat. On most nights my family loads an extra helping of rice or potatoes onto my plate after I have served myself. And other volunteers have told me that they are always offered an egg after they say they are full, which makes very little sense.
            I had an interesting cultural run-in with this issue during my site visit. Since I am working at a boarding school and living in the teacher’s housing on campus the school’s kitchen provides me with all my meals – meaning someone drops them off in a baller metal canteen every night. The first night I didn’t  bother trying to open the canteen – I’m not sure why – but it came with the thermos of tea so I assumed it was more tea. In the morning when I did open it and realize it was my dinner I had to consume a large helping of cold beans and rice to make it look like I had eaten – gross. When the food was delivered the next night the female animatrice came into my house to demonstrate how to open and close my canteen – apparently they had assumed that I hadn’t been able to get it open because I had eaten such a small amount they thought I hadn’t eaten. On the second night there was a similar concern that because so little food was eaten that the Muzungu hadn’t eaten anything and thus that I hadn’t eaten in 4 days. As a result our last days plan of helping translate a grants proposal from French to English was scrapped for a 2 hour trip to the market so that I could buy some food. When I realized the reason for this change I had to awkwardly explain that I had in fact been eating and that  I just eat far less than a Rwandan. And because I had to take  a bus back the next  morning and wanted to limit my luggage sizeI didn’t actually buy anything at the market after we walked there. All in all it was an awkward experience to say the least. And afterwards my headmaster and  I got beers and brochettes which always turns into a 2 hour affair. So the whole day was essentially a wash.

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