Potassium Pomegranate

Today two monumental things happened:

1. I took a shower where I actually got wet all over at the same time. (Hey, after a month here, it's the little things.)

2. We got water disinfectant so that we will be able to eat fresh vegetables.

The diet here is unvarying. The food is quite good, but every meal is the same: rice, fried potatoes, peas and meat in sauce. So at this point in our trip, we're all really craving crunchy foods and fresh produce. We're pretty much salad junkies at home, and it's been a rough adjustment. Ron has even been threatening to eat a tomato. For those of you fortunate enough to know Ron, that's like Bill Clinton posing for a glamour shot with Monica Lewinsky. They have lots of veggies here, but our delicate mzungu systems can't handle it and they go all haywire and stop working, or work too much - you get the idea. Anyway, so we look longingly at the produce and know it is out of our reach.

You can imagine how pleased we were to talk to some other expats and find out that there is a tablet called potassium permanganate (or "potassium pomegranate" as Ron calls it) that you can drop in water and soak the vegetables in and it kills all the bacteria. So today we talked to the formidable Joseph, who does all of our cooking here, and asked him for fresh vegetables at mealtimes. Just soak and serve, we say. Easy. We will eat them plain, we tell him. We just need vegetables.

This perplexed Joseph. The idea of people willingly eating, even craving, raw vegetables was on par with Brad wanting Jen back. He politely agreed to do it, but not without serious misgivings on our mental state.

And so. We are going to get, within the next couple mealtimes, a plate of tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, onions, green peppers, and lettuce (this one really threw poor Joseph for a loop as this is known locally as "goat food").

Ahh. Life is good.