The Food

The Food

The food at the base is pretty much Americanized.  For instance, this morning I had some strawberry yogurt out of a sealed plastic container, a couple links of sausage, two pancakes with Eggo syrup and butter, and a hard boiled egg.  I washed it down with orange Tropicana juice. 

Most meals are generally similar although, on occasion, we are introduced to Haitian food.  Last night’s dinner included BBQ ribs.  The sauce was sweet and really good although the meat itself had a barnyard flavor to it.  I’m guessing that was why the sauce was there.  I can’t say I’ve ever had that kind of flavor before, but the sauce was great so I had two.  A couple of days ago we had what we think was pork chops.  They looked like porkchops, had the bone of a porkchop, but had the consistency of a shoe and that unique barnyard flavor.  No sauce this time; I only managed a chewy, very long chewy bite of those.  I wonder if Elmer enjoyed the rest, especially not knowing his destiny in life.  No one seemed to know what it was so it was declared ‘mystery meat’.

Another staple here is rice and beans for lunch…every lunch…every day.  It comes out in a huge iron bowl, one for rice, one for a topping of some sort.  Today it was some kind of black bean topping, no visible beans but that color and thick.  Yesterday was a kind of watery stew on the beans.  It had the mystery meat from the night before secretively cut up in; at least I’m sure it did.  Day before that it was a watery vegetable sauce with a light dusting of chopped mystery meat.  Now that topping might have been chicken because there was quite a few what looked and crunched like chicken bones; it’s really hard to tell.  I’m amazed at what a Haitian considers a normal serving for lunch.  A sizeable plate is stacked six or seven inches high with rice; all the way to the edges of the plate, mind you; and then the topping is put on with a large ladel.  Those plates that are actually shallow bowls hold even more.  I’m used to, maybe, a spoonful of rice …. But these guys eat it by the pile and have no leftovers.  It is a real treat for them and they do enjoy it.

I brought a water bottle along but haven’t used it.  We get one regular plastic water bottle, like aqua fina or whatever, and that lasts a long time by refilling it with the cooler bottles.  In the field the crew brings a large water cooler with bagged water in it.  Each plastic bag holds about 8 ounces of water.  When you want a drink, you take a bag, bite a hole in it and suck out the water.  Great idea, but then the plastic bags get tossed on the ground and adds even more to the trash problem.

Speaking of trash, all the trash generated at the base is carted out to a firepit outside the block fence and piled in a hole.  Then it is burned and, after a couple of weeks, covered over and a new hole dug.  The hole seems to collect all sorts of refuse from all around so it is really just the community landfill until it gets filled.  I guess it gets a little off the street, though one can’t tell.