Sunday, January 20, 2013

Food at Waterford KaMhlaba

One of the biggest things people worry about coming to a boarding school is the food. I assure you, the food's not bad here. It's just that it's the same food every single day.

First of all - rice and chicken EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. I have avoided this by being vegetarian, but that just means that the chicken is replaced with a mushy little goulash, usually with zucchini, squash, carrots, mushrooms, and onions, all in some sort of ketchup sauce. It's not bad - once. Twice, it's pretty bad, and seeing as how we've been here a week, I'm no longer a fan of the veggie mush.

But for the record - it's not bad.

Apparently Sunday is ice cream day, which is kind of fun. I think bacon day is a big thing, but I don't eat the bacon, so I can't keep track of what day it is. The thing with the bacon here is that it's more like thinly sliced ham than bacon, and people think I'm absolutely insane when I describe crunchy American bacon.

Oh, and fun little story. The other day, there was a pan of mashed potatoes, and I was SO EXCITED. After a week of non-stop rice, potatoes were a nice break.

They weren't potatoes.

It was pap, which has a different name in every country you go to, but that's the one I keep hearing. People translate it as millet, but that doesn't really help me in understanding what it is. Regardless, it's really, really gross. I have been trying really hard to eat all the food, or at least try a decent portion of it (I ate multiple bowls of sour milk last night - apparently it's a delicacy, and contrary to popular belief amongst the other IB1s, it's SO GOOD!). But this pap stuff? No. I can't eat it. It's just this weird rubbery texture and no taste.

Then I accidentally got it again at another meal. Don't even ask how it happened, I should have known, but I was not a happy camper. They had some good beans at that meal though, so I guess I was a happy camper, because the beans were the best thing I'd had since getting here.

MORAL OF THE STORY: WK food is a lot of rice and chicken. Go vegetarian.

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