I would scare people back home with what I eat now. Hygiene levels, quality of food, fear of strange disease have all decreased the longer I stay in Malawi. For instance;
I have picked weevils out of my beans and ate them anyway. I have cut the "Contaminated" parts off of a loaf of bread that a mouse had used for a nightly burrow and eaten it anyway for lack of other food. Cutting off mold from potatoes and other foods is also a common practice. But anyway, enough horror.
There is a greater desperation level when it comes to eating. For instance;
Often times people warn you about choking on chicken bones in the States, but here, we eat them. With Gusto. We crunch, suck and scrape every last edible morsel.
Looking back at our early African days, I could weep for all the protein we wasted, left attacthed to our chicken, cow, goat, fish and pig bones. Not so now. I eat heartily of whatever I'm given, unashamedly crunch my bones and pick the ground up shards out of my molars with my fingers.
You become very desperate for good food.
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