Food and Cooking 1/30/2012

 A couple of people have asked about what I eat and how I cook, so here’s the story:

The first answer is NOT SADZA!  Sadza is a staple dish here made from maize.  It’s about the consistency of very stiff mashed potatoes, but not as mealy, and it has no particular flavor.  It can be eaten plain or served with veges and/or meat.  Most Zimbabweans eat mounds of the stuff three meals a day.  They eat it with their fingers, rolling it into mouth-sized balls and then using it to scoop up whatever else is on their plate.  I had some at the school cafeteria once, and was relieved to learn the next time I went that they also serve rice, which is much more to my liking.  I carry my own silverware to the cafeteria, because if I ask for a spoon, it often takes five minutes to get one.  

At the office, there is a small microwave, so I often take leftovers from home and reheat them there.  Occasionally the electricity is out and I end up saving the leftovers and getting food at the cafeteria.  Sadza or rice with one side (meat, greens, cabbage, fava beans) is $2 and with two sides is $3.

The photo above is  a handy appliance in my apartment that’s like a small oven/broiler with two burners on top.  I put the mug next to it so you can judge the size.  The oven and grill (broiler) both work sometimes, as does the left burner.  The right burner, thank God, works consistently.  I have the bare bones of utensils: three enamel surfaced pots that look to be of 1950’s vintage.  Two of them have one of their two little side handles remaining, the third has neither.  One of the tops is missing its handle, so I have to insert a knife if a little gap at the side to take it off once I’ve begun to cook in it.  I also have plates, basic silverware, mugs, cups and three very dull, very thin-bladed knives.   The silverware doubles as my only cooking utensils.  The main problem that I have is that things stick very easily to the enamel surfaces, and I’ve been unable to find anything like a tuffy pad or those 3M green pads to help with scrubbing.  Basically, I soak and use my fingernails.  This impacts what I cook a great deal, because I avoid any form of cooking that might cause something to stick.

Food prices in markets are not expensive, in comparison to the US, for the basics.  A bunch of greens, a head of cabbage, 8 very small bananas, two small mangoes or 5-6 medium tomatoes, small onions or small potatoes can be had for $1 each.  Eggs can be bought in a flat (36) for $4, or individually for 15 cents.  Rice and flour are inexpensive.  Almost everything else is very expensive.  A can of tomatoes or corn or baked bean costs $1.50.  Margarine is $4 for a ½ lb., and butter is $6.50 for a half pound.  Cheese is a luxury item—about $16/lb. for basic cheddar.  I got a small box of something that’s between muesli and granola, and that cost $8.50.  Beef and pork run $5-6/kg, and chicken is more like $7/kg.  I can get milk and large cartons of yogurt.  I’ve got bread, PB and jelly.   I also bought a simple can opener, which cost $18.50.  I can also buy fruits and vegetables at one of the local markets.  See picture below.

I’ve been making delightful stews with a little bit of meat, potatoes, carrots, onions and some kind of sauce (not as thick as gravy, because of the pan sticking).  I can vary it by changing seasonings and by omitting potatoes and either mixing it with or serving it over rice.  I’ve had green beans, butternut squash, which my oven has eventually favored me with baking, and a green I really like called tsunga.   I can often make toast in the morning if my oven is working.  I brought some packets of instant oatmeal from home, so I can have those occasionally.  They’re available but very expensive in the store, and I can’t imagine cleaning regular oatmeal off my pots.  I do eggs that are hard or soft-boiled, depending upon the vagaries of my stovetop.  Last Saturday I had more time, so I scrambled an egg with a little ham (a splurge-- $3.50 for three ounces) and some onion.  It tasted wonderful, but I’m not sure it’s an experiment I’ll repeat often, because even using a lot of butter in the pan and watching it carefully so it didn’t stick, the pan was very hard to clean.

Photo of a bay in the women's ward at Bonda Mission Hospital

When I recreated a post I lost about my first day at Africa University, I didn’t include one of the photos from the original blog because I had lost it, I thought permanently.  I’ve found it again and wanted to show it to you.  This is half of one of the bays in the women’s ward of the hospital at Bonda Mission.  

Visits to Zimbabwean Schools 1/27/2012

Today I visited three schools around Mutare, accompanying a colleague who was there to check on progress and pay tuition for several students supported by her friends in Germany.  The first school was Mt. Cheremba, a rural high school.  The head master told us enrollment is well over 200.  The first year has more than 80 students in a single classroom, and by the fourth year the 40 some students fit into a double car garage with the big door removed to let the light in.  The student we were there to visit came from another less demanding school and is struggling here.  She is described as “below average” and “passive.”  Her parents have both died.  She lives with a “grandmother” who is not her biological relative and is assisted to some degree by another grandmother who is hers biologically.  This is a very poor school with few materials.  It is in ZANU-PF dominated land, not very friendly to white folks.  My colleague suggested I not try to take photos.  The teachers at this and all other public schools are officially on strike for better pay.  All but one of the teachers signed in on this morning, however, and I only saw one leave after that.  The teachers said they are paid about $250/month.  Teachers in the cities can earn more like $350/month because families are charged extra fees on top of tuition, but the rural people struggle with basic tuition costs ($30/semester plus a uniform at this school), so there is no supplemental income for the teachers.

Then we went to St. James, and Anglican school nearby.  Here the class sizes are consistently in the 40’s through grade school and high school.  The student we were visiting has a family living 55 km. away.  She could not get into the school closest to her, Hartzell High School at the Old Mutare Mission, because her test scores were not quite high enough for that very competitive school.  Her current arrangement is that she buses to St. James at the beginning of the week.  Her family pays a woman who lives nearby $4 a month for a bed for her.  She lives in a hut with another girl and three boys who all go to school at St. James.  They bring their own food and have a place to cook.  She collaborates with the other girl for cooking.  At the end of the school week she buses home to have the weekend with her family and replenish her food supply for the next week.  This girl, 14, wants to become a lawyer.  Her test scores are very high, as are her current marks.

Finally we went to Hartzell School at the Old Mutare Mission, within sight of the campus of Africa University.  Here there were five sponsored students, four in elementary school and one in Early Childhood Development (ECD).  I learned that that is like our kindergarten, and was made compulsory as a starting point for school two years ago.  As a result, there are many 6-year-olds and some 7-year-olds in this class because it is their first year in school.  I took photos.  These are for the Early Childhood Mental Health people following my blog.  Think about these the next time you complain about not having supplies!

Classrooms at Hartzell School

ECD classroom

Some of the ECD children

The gross motor skills center

The music and movement center

the building center

On Saturday, a colleague took me along with her to St. Augustine’s orphanage, another run by Anglican nuns.  It currently houses 17 boys ranging in age from 4 to 17.  The purpose of our trip was to take Christmas presents from children in Belgium, which had been sent in November, but held up in customs until now.  I was told that it took three trips to customs by various people to get the gifts released.

The boys were very excited about the presents.  Most of them contained some sort of colored pencils or a small set of water colors, a small notepad, a couple of matchbox trucks or cars, a small hand puppet or stuffed animal, and maybe a few pieces of candy.   Most of the boys seemed very pleased. 

I was given a tour of the orphanage.  Bedrooms are along two long, dark corridors, and are kept locked during the day.  The boys have very few personal possessions.  They have a play room with an overstuffed couch and chair, but nothing to play with.  They have a TV that isn’t working.  Their meals are cooked over a wood-burning oven in large cast iron pots, and served in a dining room large enough to seat all of them.  I was shown their chicken project.  They have a rooster and a dozen hens, but only one hen is laying, so they get about 6 eggs a week from this.  They also have a pig project.  They have two adult pigs and six piglets that probably weigh 30 lb. apiece.  They hope to raise those piglets to maturity, when their sale would net $200 or so per head for the orphanage.  However, they have already sold four for prices more like $40 per head due to the orphanage needing the money immediately. 

 

On Sunday I went to a beautiful area called Bvumba, which is a few miles outside of Mutare.  It is near the border with Mozambique, and the views were spectacular, but the kind of wide vistas that never look good in photographs.  I saw a zebra feeding by the roadside on the way!  We stopped at a resort near the end of the road called Leopard Rock.  It’s supposed to have the highest golf course in Africa, and one of the best.  We walked around there and saw quite a few samango monkeys, a species found only in a small area near Mutare.  Then we had tea at the resort and drove home.  All you golfers, don't you wish you were here?

I’ve now had one class meeting with each of my public health classes.  There are lots of challenges: finding a room with an LCD setup, given that the expection is that I will have Powerpoint presentations for each class period, providing students with materials (text books are not used) when the internet isn‘t working more often than it is, finding out about faculty meetings and other activities I’m expected for at the very last minute.  On Friday I made contact with the faculty member for the Child and Family Psychology program I’d communicated with before I came, and he’s invited me to co-teach the course in Trauma.  Unlike the students in the MPH program, who are full-time students, the students for this masters’ program all have full-time jobs.  Many of them live in Harare and commute here (about 3 hours) for their classes, which are held on Saturdays and an occasional Friday.  We’ll begin that class 1/28. 

I don’t know when I’ll get this posted.  I just heard the generators come on, which means the electricity is off again.  It’s funny, I don’t bother to turn on the lights during the day, and my notepad continues to run on batteries when the electricity goes off, so unless I’m teaching, I don’t really notice anymore when the electricity goes off.  It happens much more at the university than at my apartment.

At the End of One Week of Classes

Classes have now officially been in session for a week, and about half of them have met.  I've actually had two hours of instructional time with my undergraduate class, and an organizational meeting with the graduate students. 

Much of this week was spent hearing research presentations for undergraduate nursing students who are going out "on attachment" (like a practicum) for the semester and are expected to do a discriptive study to present at the end of the semester.  The quality of these projects varies widely, with some students being pretty on top of things and others not showing the ability to formulate a need and a question.  I worked hard with my undergraduates to get them to participate in class, and all but three did!  The style of teaching here is predominantly what I call "lecture and regurgitation", which is not something I'm fond of doing or think is particularly effective.

I have a student to supervise in her descriptive study for the nursing program.  Her topic is right up my alley-- factors influencing women's decisions about whether to deliver in a medically assisted facility or at home.  The Shona custom is that a woman goes to her in-laws home, even if it is far away, to deliver her first infant and present it to them for approval.  There are some interesting traditional beliefs around childbearing, including that nonproductive labor is a sign that the woman has been unfaithful to her husband.  Fewer than half the deliveries in Zimbabwe occur in medically assisted facilities.  (And no, Geri, they don't have midwifes come to their homes.) This contributes to a very high neonatal mortality rate--24/1000, and maternal mortality rate-- 790/100,000.

I have to stop to work with that student now.  More another time!  

First Day at AU

I lost this post and haven't had the time to redo it until now.  Here it is, finally!

My first day at AU, I had the opportunity to go to a rural hospital, orphanage and school at a place called Bonda Mission.  One of the people I was with, Petra, had gone to check on the arrangements for at "attachment" (something like a practicum or internship) for a student there, and while she was conducting her business the other two of us were shown the hospital.  Its capacity is 164, but the women's ward, which I went into, had about 1/3 of the beds filled.  It was organized into four big bays, each with six beds, and then a separate room for one intensive care patient and another with two beds for infectious disease patients. I saw nothing more complex than a pole for an IV drip (unused) in the women's unit.

Next we went to an orphanage nearby, which is run by some Anglican nuns.  It houses 26 children, ranging in age from 5-19.  We sat and talked in a traditional building, which is made with thick walls of mud bricks, similar to adobe and has a thatched roof.  It was a hot, humid day, and these structures are surprisingly cool.  In rural areas, this is the form of building that almost everyone lives in.  Here's a photo of one, a smaller building that is used as a guest house:

 The children sleep in dormatories, which have a common room with a television and a couple of couches and sleeping rooms that have either 2 cots or 2 bunk beds.  Each child has a single shelf for clothing, and they're not at all full.  Here's a photo of one of those rooms:

In addition to having many orphanages, there are many families in which grandparents or extended family members are caring for children because of the devastating effects of HIV/AIDS.

The children were in school, so we didn't see them there, but went on to the elementary school nearby.  There we saw several buildings, each with 2-3 classrooms.  The one we walked into had about forty children in it.  The yard/garden was impressively tended, and later we saw all the children on break from their classes weeding it.  We were there to see about one particular boy, whose fees are being paid by the church of one of my colleagues.  They were in arrears and wanted to settle the fees so he could remain in school.  I learned that fees are $20 per term (2 terms a year), and books and school uniform cost another $30-35 per year.  These prices are prohibitive for many families, so there are many children who do not go to school.  This is a public school, so anyone can go there, but they must have the fees paid.  Here is a photo of one of the classrooms:

The highlands in this part of Zimbabwe, near the Mozambique border, are lush during this, the rainy season.  I'm adding one more photo of the scenery on the way back from Bonda Mission:

Getting Organized at AU

I've been having some difficulty with my blog, and have done one long posting that is currently at maggiefreese.blogspot.com.  If I get enough time and internet access (a much bigger issue) I'll transfer it over.  In the meantime, you can look at it there and know that in the future I intend to use this blog, maggie-freese.blogspot.com. 

Today is theoretically the second day of classes.  I know some of you know that I was fretting that I didn't know how long the class periods were, so couldn't do a syllabus for either of my courses.  It turns out that classes aren't scheduled in an invariant block of time.  This is because there are some visiting faculty who come for short periods of time.  So, for example, I've already been told that I can't use my usual times, or any other time, to meet with my graduate class during the 3rd week.  A faculty member who will visit for that week will be doing six-eight hour days with the second-year students in the public health graduate program that week.  Each group (e.g. first year MPH students, third year undergraduates in reproductive health management) is assigned a classroom, and each elects a class representative to negotiate their time with all the faculty they have this semester.  (Only it's not quite that simple because there aren't as many classrooms as programs, so sometimes their space is assigned to another group and another room must be found for them, scheduled on an ad hoc basis.)  The requirement for a 3-credit class is that I meet with students for 45 hours over the course of the semester, during times to be negotiated with students, through their representative, around their other priorities.

I scheduled a first meeting with the students in each of my classes for yesterday.  One grad student showed up, and all indications are that the class is sitting out until at least tomorrow so as not to start without some of their members present, who aren't back from vacation yet.  I'm going to try to meet with my undergraduates in a couple of hours, and we'll see how that goes.

In the meantime, I'm beginning to negotiate my living arrangements.  I was assigned a flat in Mutare in an apartment complex owned by AU and used primarily for staff and their families.  Initially it had some problems--no hot water, no light in the bathroom, broken windows with holes large enough for monkeys to come in and help themselves to my things if they so choose.  I'm slowly getting through the list of what needs to be fixed to make it habitable, and in the meantime thanking God for the electric tea kettle that has been my only source of hot water this past week.  I've learned to take the bus the 10 miles to the campus, though for the most part I ride with a lecturer from health sciences.  I'm doing most laundry by hand, but have just received permission to take clothing to the campus laundry where, for a fee of $2-$4, they'll do it for me.  The university has also agreed to send someone to clean my apartment weekly and change linens, for which the univeristy is responsible.

I kind of like being in the city.  It's easier for me to get food, and there's an internet cafe nearby that I can use for $1 an hour when I become too frustrated with the uncertainty of internet access on campus.  I have a small balcony (about 4 x 5') outside my third story apartment, and I can sit out there in the mornings and evenings to eat and watch the people and wildlife.  There are many interesting birds, and one morning I saw a troop of seven monkeys cross the road in front of me.  I've been welcomed into a Presbyterian church that has services in English.  Last Sunday the pastor did a Wesleyan covenant service to start the new year, so I felt right at home.  Last night I started participating in a weekly home group/Bible study with some people from that church.

So, over all, things are going well at this point.  I'm reading a lot about reproductive health care in Africa from sources that were not available to me in the US, and am learning a lot.

Remember that I'm still available on email at Maggie8337@cox.net.  I especially encourage you to write me with questions you may have about this experience, which I can then address in future blog posts.