The only thing that is not back to normal is eating- I'm still having a crazy hard time with food. Anytime I eat anything, or even drink anything that is not water, I know sucky times are on their way. So right now I'm pretty much living off of two fist fulls of food a day, and that seems to be (sort of) cutting it.
I've also decided to go vegetarian- not that big of a deal for me, I was veg all through high school and vegan in most of middle school. I have several reasons for going back to this lifestyle- first and foremost, if I'm only eating a lil' baby bit, I dang well want to get the most nutrition out of those calories. I personally can accomplish this easier when vegetarian. I'm also pretty paranoid eating anything out of Africa, but as man cannot live by imported doritos alone I figure I can cut down on my parasite risks by cutting out the meat. Additionally, I've been reading a lot on how a plant-based diet can help bring down cancer, and while I'm not entirely sure I buy into it I'm dead serious about getting my 20+ years of living time, so I figure I'll give it a try.
(It should also be noted that when your boyfriend says he's got beef, I'd like to tell him that I'm a vegetarian and I'm not freakin' scared of him without it being a lie. So there's that.)
So I'm once again a fully fledged, menu-planning, sprout-growing, meat-abstaining vegetarian. Yay.
Like everything else in a third world country, maintaining a vegetarian (or any!) diet is hard. I've been back in country for five days now, and the thing I miss most so far, other than my new Germany friends, of course, you guys are awesome and I love you, is the grocery store. O! Commissary, with thine aisles of delectable treasures! May your bounty never run dry!
Getting food here remains to be expensive and a general pain. No news there.
But yesterday.....yesterday, we found broccoli.
You guys, I freaking love broccoli. I'd write a short poem about how much I love it, but I feel like after that bit about the commissary it would be overkill. So suffice it to say...I really really love it.
As I've mentioned before, broccoli here runs super expensive. The last time I think we had it was on my birthday, because it tends to sell for between eight and ten dollars a stalk. Multiply that by a family of seven and it adds up fast. But this broccoli was a mere six dollars, so we decided to splurge.
I'm not going to lie to you guys, it was delicious. I had a massive helping. B decided she was not feeling the greenery, so I greedily scooted her serving onto my plate.
That's about the point when I noticed the worm.
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| I love you, so there will be no worm pictures. Instead, here is my face of abject horror/hiding in my shirt picture. Unrelated note, I can't stop wearing my ugly comfy clothes and it's making me feel like a huge hypocrite but they're just so comfy? |
Still being on the parasites will kill you/worms are nastay freak out train, I had a little baby melt down with some swearing and out loud wondering if this continent is trying to kill me, etc. Admittedly cursing at the dinner table in front of the impressionable little babies is not a cool move, but I did apologize and in my defense I still think it was dramatically less cussing than the situation actually merited.
So: to sum up, ate some broccoli, it was delicious, found a lil' baby worm, had a lil' baby freak out, calmed down.
And that's when we noticed the rest of the worms.
The broccoli, for lack of a better word, was infested. At this point my darling father nobly launched into a speech about how in parts of this very continent, worms like these were a delicacy! Many a time had he eaten such worms before!
He also went on to purposefully eat some worms, theoretically in an attempt to normalize the situation and convince the rest of the family (we were all freaking out at this point) to please not abandon him in Africa like we're always threatening to do. In reality I think he just did it because he's a boy and boys like to do things to make girls squirm, regardless of age.
However, I missed most of this because by then I'd realized just how much of the broccoli I had eaten and was projectile vomiting up the entirety of the food I'd consumed today. I've said it before and I'll say it again, generally I'm a pretty graceful lady-puker. I could probably give lessons at this point. Tonight, however, was a holy-crap-I-hate-myself-and-also-Africa-and-also-worms-which-I-ate-so-gross-ew-ew-ew fast and furious, out through the nose upchuck. Never before have I thrown up so violently, and hopefully I never again will.
The moral of the story here, guys, is that sometimes when you think you've given up animal protein, the universe surprises you with juuuust a little bit more.
Also I replaced the lost calories with some old-fashioned FDA approved Ritter Sport, because feelings, guys.
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