When my parents visited us here in Mozambique a few years ago, my mom commented that many of the items used in my kitchen are things that HER mother used years ago.  I was a little taken aback, but realized as I looked around that it is indeed true.  I’ve found it difficult to describe to people back home what my work at home is like, and I think that this is because I am concerned that it will sound like complaining!  So instead I thought it would be easier to make a list of a few of the things I make from scratch here:

Spaghetti sauce (I’ve perfected a method that gets this done a lot faster which involves throwing everything in the blender!)

Pancakes, cakes, muffins, anything baked.  There are no mixes here.

Tortillas (this job is “hired out” to a local helper as it takes hours–although when desperate enough Kevin will make them:)

Pizza crust and sauce, and of course the pizza(you can buy something they call pizza at local restaurants but it is very expensive and not as good as mine)

Pesto sauce, hummus, ranch dressing, italian dressing (any kind of dressing, any kind of sauce or dip!)

Icing (which is a real pain when you have to sift all the powdered sugar or grind up regular sugar in the blender)

Lemonade, orange juice, any kind of juice (we can buy boxed juices but they are very expensive – we almost never drink juice)

Rice pilaf, mexican rice, etc.  All “casseroles” are made without sour cream, cream cheese, or even cheese.  No cream of mushroom soup, either.  Many USA recipes can’t be made here without major expense.

Homemade soups, granola, cookies, etc.

Of course, I COULD make dried fruits, grow my own herbs which are not available here, make sesame seed oil and bake homemade breads, cinnamon rolls, etc.  So many things that are not available here can be made from scratch, and sometimes I do make those things (once I used the truck parked in the sun for 3 days as a giant solar cooker to make dried tomatoes.  It worked great!).  However, there really are other things that I ought to be doing regularly.    Sometimes it is hard to draw the line between keeping my family happy (by spending a lot of time in the kitchen) and getting some other things done.  And let me just say that housekeeping is not the love of my life!

In addition to all these things, processing incoming groceries seems to take a lot of time.  Every vegetable is washed in a bleach solution (amoebic dysentery and paratyphoid have been visited upon me despite my efforts) .  Well, just GETTING the groceries takes a lot of time (with multiple stops) but that is fodder for another post; the majority of this done by Kevin running all over creation.  All of our fresh stuff is bought at the central market (which is an adventure that many expats simply refuse to participate in!) or bought on the street from eager hawkers.

When we arrived in Mozambique, I found cooking a huge challenge.  Because of the above reasons, but also because all of the chickens I use arrive whole (dead and cleaned, at least or fresh and squacking gifts occasionally!) and must be chopped up or boiled.  Usually, I boil them and debone them, saving the broth for soups and sauces.  We hear that chicken breasts are available at one store but I haven’t taken a trip to town to find them yet.  We almost never eat beef, excepting hamburger once every couple of weeks (beef is more expensive than chicken here).  We can eat fish for about the same price as chicken, but it involves a lot more effort (they arrive in your kitchen dead, but usually with head and scales intact).

Over the years, I ‘ve developed a repertoire of curries, stews and soups that we like.  Rice and beans is our staple meal and we eat that twice a week or more.  We use dried beans and so they must be picked over and the small stones removed, soaked overnight and cooked in the pressure cooker.  We don’t use canned tomatoes or jarred garlic, and we even use fresh ginger for cooking.  All great stuff, but the hours for food prep really do add up.  Carrots must be washed and sliced up for cooking or use as raw, green beans must be washed and snapped, and there are no prewashed and chopped salad options.  Pumpkins arrive intact and you need a machete to chop them!  Coconuts must be opened with a hammer, grated up, and milk made from the meat by squeezing with water (this is used in curries).   I’ve gotten pretty good at processing large amounts of veggies  and freezing them, now that we have a deep freezer that we bought used from other expats.  However, then challenge of getting a balanced meal on the table is often too much for me and there are many nights where we eat eggs, pancakes or pasta with butter.   Now that some dried soups are available, we eat that with toast regularly.  Cheese is very expensive here, so we save that for pizza or special sandwiches.  Another challenge is making simple meatless meals, since we eat meat only a few times a week.  No lunchmeats or roasts on our table!  We could get them but they are out of our budget.  We’ve adjusted to a more vegetarian diet and find it much healthier although the occasional steak does taste really good!

School lunches?  With the only sandwich option being peanut butter and jelly, one has to get creative or the kids just don’t eat what you send.  I started making mini-pizzas and freezing them, and if we have tortillas then those can be sent with a little cheese inside.  Cold rice and beans is surprisingly popular, along with homemade muffins or cookies.  With only 30 minutes for lunch and recess, I’ve considered sending pureed homemade soups for drinking!

The big news for me is that now I have a helper at home!  I can’t name a single expat here who doesn’t have at least part-time help, and most have full-time help.  However, I’ve never had help more than three mornings a week, and since last July haven’t had anyone at all.  Why?  I felt it was money better spent somewhere else when I didn’t have regular ministry outside the home.  However, since we started fulltime language study we realized that we simply can’t get by without help.  I haven’t even mentioned all the housework that needs doing:  cement floors swept daily, washed regularly, waxed (with paste, down on hands and knees)  monthly.  Dust is a big problem here and a broom must be swept around all the walls and corners weekly, windows and screens wiped down weekly, etc. And it’s not like I’m a very fastidious housekeeper.   Clothes must all be hung up on the laundry line, taken down and folded or ironed.  I’d estimate we have about 3 hours of ironing a week, minimum (easy to say “don’t bother!, but it would be embarrassing to look rumpled and unkempt next to our neatly dressed Mozambican brothers and sisters).  Mosquito nets must be taken down and washed regularly, verandas swept, and etc.  So, you can see that being a “housewife” in Mozambique pretty much takes up most of your time!  And I have it easy compared to my sisters here, most of whom carry all their water, wash clothes by hand, and cook over a charcoal fire. They gaze with envy at my washing machine and beautiful kitchen sink with running water.

I recently heard from a missionary friend who moved back to Europe after living in a small town here for some years with a fulltime houseworker who did all of the cleaning and laundry.  She was amazed at how much time it took her to handle all that now, and it reminded me that people back in the USA also have a heavy load of housework.  I don’t want to downplay that at all, but did want to give our friends an idea of a major part of my life here. -C