Nothing like cleaning

Yep, today I figured “Why lie in bed for hours?” That provided a little inspiration to get up and do something. I became a domestic.

This was day three since we’ve washed the clothes, so they’re safe to take off the clothes line and fold (to be worn). For some reason I decided just taking them down and folding was not good enough. I had to iron them as well. Yep, t-shirts, golf shirts, and undergarments. Why?

Also had to move on to the living room and straighten up things on the tables. Since we’ve been here I’ve been getting too comfortable with just placing my things around, don’t want to get into the mode I was in (once upon a time) in the states, just put it in a pile and take care of it later.

Finished. Now for the most time consuming task. I decided I would fix rice and beans for dinner tonite, but the beans needed to be cleaned. Westerners don’t realize how fortunate they are with the majority of the foods coming pre-packaged. Not having to purchase food on a daily basis to prepare a simple meal is a part of life we take for granted.

Here the (primarily) women purchase the food. Some daily, some weekly; and there could be as many as ten folks who need to eat. Frozen foods? No such thing. At least not from what I’ve seen. At home I probably fix more frozen foods than anything else, with a few dashes of fresh vegetables or fruits.

Oh, I was talking about cleaning beans. First had to literally go bean by bean to be sure there were no pebbles or grass that would get into tonight’s featured dish. Then, had to rinse them twice or so, and remember, there’s no running water, only the stored buckets we refill each night. It took me about an hour or so to finish cleaning the beans and leave ’em to soak until ready to cook (hint: add a piece of ginger or two and it’ll remove the gas from the beans).

When Akilah finished a brief nap after returning from school we took a walk to a few of the libraries in the area. Don’t get it confused with what you think of as a library, these are merely stores that sell the various academic books students use in school, along with other writing and reading supplies.

Stopped past a few of them, didn’t end up purchasing the notebooks she wanted, but I did find another magazine that appears to be geared towards people of color, Divas. It actually caught my eye last month, but had to purchase this one because of Sadé on the cover. Don’t know how I will read it, its all in french, guess I’ll be using that translation dictionary quite a bit.

When I lived in NYc we had this saying we would do whenever food fell on the ground: “God made dirt, and dirt don’t hurt, put it in your mouth and let it work.” After going through the cleaning process of beans and rice, you’ll definitely begin reciting it again. The beans were bad, but the rice! Geez. Had to go through and clean the rice, if you could see the number of small bugs I had to strain out of the water. Where’s Uncle Ben? Didn’t he tell these folks how to prepare rice for sale to the public?