The Proposal

6/6

This morning we had our first experience taking the blue buses (the form of public transportation here).  They technically seat 12 but they cram about 20 people in them.  It’s very comfortable.  Also, there are no marked bus stops, they just beep and yell out the window at you while driving by and you have to flag them down.  The fare, well that’s somewhat unclear as well.  All we know is that it should never be more than 5,000 Kwacha, which is a little more than $1.  Luckily, for our first ride we had a fellow volunteer, John, with us.  He pretty much did everything for us, from stopping the bus to telling us how to pay and when to get off.  We realized that the reason we weren’t hassled by anyone was clearly because we were with a 6’5” man. 

After going into the office today we decided that it was the perfect time to go grocery shopping.  Remember, peanut butter gets old really fast when it’s about all you have to eat.  While we were walking to the grocery store (which took us a grand 45 minutes) we received our first marriage proposals! How exciting!!

Two old men came up to us as we were walking around the corner of the street.  One of the men literally grabbed my hand and arm and said “Ohhh you be my wife? Ya.”  In the mean time Chrissy was being talked to by another old timer.  He actually came up to her and said “Hug me.”  Yuck.  I was so shocked I didn’t know what to do so I just started laughing (now we had forgotten to wear our wedding rings, that was a mistake).  Chrissy abandoned her man (he was old enough to be my father, people) and came to my rescue as I was being walked down the road, the old guy’s arm around me and his hand gripping mine like a vise. Pleasant huh?  He kept saying “You can be my wife, is that ok?”  I of course said no sorry, I can’t.  He then grabbed Chrissy’s hand, who was now standing next to me, and asked her to marry him.  He turned from one of us to the other asking if we would be his wife.  We both told him sorry, and that we had boyfriends at home that we were marrying.  He then persisted and asked why we could not have two boyfriends, and we proceeded to explain that we only wanted one boyfriend.  Now how often do you think you would have to explain that to someone?  I kept laughing as I said this, nervous because he still wouldn’t let go of us.  He continued, “How do you think that makes me feel?”  We explained that we couldn’t , and he said “No, you are my wife.”  Gotta give him an ounce of credit for persistence. IF we didn’t really, really, really not wanna marry him, we might’ve said yes just to shut him up. Chrissy and I finally lost the guy and kept walking.  Just so you know, this apparently happens quite often here – looks like we will be getting used to this type of encounter, ugghh.  Not the type of flattery I was looking for…

After this encounter, we continued on to buy our food.   I think we were in the “shoprite” for a little too long.  But we got veggies, potatoes, rice, pasta, cooking oil, spices, and cornmeal to make the traditional food nshima.  The woman in the store who helped us to find the cornmeal then came up to us and asked, “do you even know how to make nshima?” with a suspicious expression on her face.  We think it might be considered an insult if you cook nshima wrong in this culture.  Of course we have no idea how, but we will soon learn! 

For our first meal we made rice and veggies.  It only took us an hour and a half to cook this – for the first 30 minutes we didn’t realize that the stove require some special attention in order to get it working. There’s a switch in the cabinet that you need the flip to get it to work well. Then, none of the burners will work unless you turn on the back left burner, but the front right and left burners are the only one’s that get hot. So, you need to turn on three burners just to use two. It makes no sense but we’re going to roll with it. We made way too much rice by accident and overcooked everything because we’re so paranoid of getting sick. However, I have to say, it was still pretty good. Maybe that’s just because we’re used to imitation cheerios and peanut butter.

Now we’re just really full. It feels bad. But we watched The Bourne Identity! That made it all better. Note to self: cook less tomorrow.