Journal Entry 10.11.2007 - Day

It’s five in the morning and I’ve woken up on time for the day of fasting. They said be up at Waktu Jowi or 5 o’clock and here I am. But there’s nothing to do so I’m writing more stuff. Like how no matter what, I’m so paranoid of mosquitoes now that I’ve been bitten to hell and back. Every time I feel anything remotely brush against my skin, I’m whacking at it. I woke up in the middle of the night, I swear there’s like a gaggle of bloodthirsty mosquitoes inside my bed netting, waiting there throughout the day to wreak havoc upon me.
I just finished breakfast with my host mother and father and middle brother. The rest are sleeping which is what I’m about to go back and do. Breakfast was served like dinner, outside on the ground in a big communal bowl. Imagine a huge salad bowl, but a cheap tin one like you might find at Goodwill, a throw back to the 70s. For dinner that bowl is filled with rice or short grain rice or some other rice-like substance. It’s only lightly flavored with a meat broth or fish broth. My family is poorer I think than most because there is rarely meat or veggies besides bitter tomatoes or okra. I thought I hated okra, served well done and mushy, but I actually don’t think it’s so bad. Bitter tomatoes on the other hand are an acquired taste. An acquired taste that’s required here. I am acquiring it for sure, seeing how it is like with last night, the only veggie in the bowl, and they keep dropping pieces of it in my portion of the bowl, so I have to eat it. Oh well, it could be worse.
So at dinner we all squat down and by then it’s pitch black so we light the food with a flashlight or my headlamp and we all dig in. I take the rice with my fingers, peel some away and mash it against the side of the bowl and between my first three fingers. Then I bring it to my mouth like a spoon and use my thumb to sort of push the food into my mouth, sticking most of my hand into my mouth as well so as to drop the least amount of food as possible. The experts, who have done this everyday for all their lives pick up the rice and squash it into a ball using their whole hand, then eating the whole ball of rice. I try not to do this because for me, it causes an even bigger greasier mess.
Breakfast this morning was that communal bowl filled with rice porridge, liquidly and mixed with sugar and then sour milk (no exaggeration), poured on top. Sour milk is also an acquired taste. Some trainees like it, others don’t. Today it was all right, maybe because it was a little fresher than normal, or maybe because I won’t get food or water for 15 hours. Either way, the four of us finished the bowl of gesr, as it’s called. Now I’m about to drink the rest of my litre of water and have a quick nap before class where hopefully I’ll have more vivid dreams, thanks to our weekly malaria prophylaxis.