Thoughts on Food

It came to my attention during a recent phone call from my father that I have yet to describe my diet in Cameroon. I can be described briefly in four words: Carbs. So many carbs. During the rainy season, there's a great variety of produce-corn, carrots, guava, pineapple, mango, avocado, tomato, etc.--but almost every meal is based around some kind of starch.

To illustrate, here's my diet on an average day: For breakfast, the family usually eats three baguettes with margarine or Tartina (a sort of off-brand Nutella), accompanied by hot water with Nido (powdered milk) or Matinal (hot chocolate mix). Lunch is rice and beans with some sort of vegetable--yesterday it was avocado salad with tomato and onion. Dinner is different every night, but generally consists of a starch (rice, couscous, or cassava) with a sauce containing chicken or fish.

So basically, I'm gonna be that asshole who goes to Africa and actually gains weight. At least, while I'm in homestay. Once I get to post and prepare most of my own meals, I'll try to move away from such a starch-heavy diet.

Please understand, I'm not judging people who eat this way. I just come with certain cultural and personal baggage, being from a country where gaining weight is a deadly sin and having internalized this mindset. Truthfully, I understand how people come to depend on this kind of diet: If you only had a few hundred francs to buy food, would you buy fruit to eat, risking being hungry again in a couple of hours, or would you buy bread in an attempt to keep your stomach quiet for a while?