Guava

 Guava everywhere!  Between our two guava trees, we have had guava at our fingertips for the last five months and are still not at our peak. Jonas' new found hobby is hurrying to find these yellow fruits in the branches above before the birds eat them.  A favorite of animal and human alike!

Most Americans are familiar with guava juice, as these fruits are delicate and stay ripe for seconds before they go bad. Guava has a distinct flavor that has grown on us greatly over the months.

Locals eat guavas skin and all.  If ever you get the chance to try them, I recommend eating one without the skin first. By the time you take out the rock hard seeds and slice off the skin, there is hardly anything left!  This is, therefore, of course how my child likes to eat it.  30 minutes to cut, 12 seconds to eat.

The skin gives guava an entirely different, stronger flavor.  Try one with the skin and it will surprise you.  The skin seems like the outside of a lemon, but it is actually quite nice to chew- not as hard as it looks.  

The best way to eat guava?  With a vegan chocolate brownie, of course!

The Cash-Based Society

It was not the bug netting or malaria concerns, boiling water, or bad roads that made us find ourselves surprisingly uncomfortable when we first arrived in Africa.  It was carrying cash.  

Like the typical Americans, we physically touched money very little throughout our lives in the US.  Instead, our bank account was a numbers game, affected by electronic paychecks and our plastic debit card. Bills went in and out through transfers we never saw except for number changes on our computer screen. But here in our country few places accept credit card, and those that do often have connection problems to actually use their machines.  As we got settled in, we found ourselves doing something absolutely foreign to us... touching paper cash.

In general the location of your money depends on your economic status.  The less you have, the more

likely you are to keep it in your bra, underwear, or somewhere else on your person. Many locals do not trust banks in our country, and instead keep all of their cash and savings on their properties.  The very privileged keep theirs in foreign banks.

As so many of our local friends say with surprised looks on their faces when discussing things like mortgages and student loans, "But how do you pay for something with plastic if you don't have money for it??"  The concept of purchasing before earning is strange.  And risky. "We only buy what we have money in hand for."

The results of having a cash-based society can be seen in a number of ways, but one of the most blaring is in home building.  People build homes in pieces.  The result is a collection of empty houses that sit in some of the most expensive neighborhoods of my city.   Leaving a house open would be impossible in our old American neighborhoods; the elements, interacting with the framing of the house would deteriorate the home before even a few years passed.  But here, these monster skeletons of concrete sit as solid ghosts throughout the city, larger than any family of twenty could need. These "empties," as we call them, sit, boastful of the expectations of potential wealth to come, and wait for the money to be made.

Here are just a few (on the gloomiest day), all in our neighborhood:

Until a fence and gate are in place, squatters live in or around some homes.  In others, many people pay a family to live in a shed on the property to keep guard.

We walk past this house every day.  A giant television satellite sits perched in an empty second story, while the family lives in a beautifully finished first floor with a perfectly manicured yard. Just don't look up and it's a picture perfect property. This is what the opposite of getting a mortgage looks like.

The Hut Life

Our three year old, Jonas, was entirely disappointed the first time we went to "the rural areas."  Knowing our gardener was from "the rural areas," Jonas expected to be visiting his home.  "The rural areas" is actually a term for any area outside of the few large cities that dot the landscape of my African country.  But to Jonas it is a confusing concept when a thousand miles looks as big as one!

The Shona people in my country live in a variety of ways, but by far most grow up in "the rural areas."  The many Shona who work in the city often place their children back in the rural areas with relatives while they work to make money in the city.  This is common because schooling that is $10 per term in the rural areas can cost hundreds, even thousands per term in the city. As a result of this lifestyle, almost all Shona have a rooted, familial connection to the rural areas, where their childhoods took place and where many city workers eventually return to in old age.  Here are some details about the Shona homes found in the rural areas of my country:

The typical rural home is either a collection of huts or cement buildings.  Each building acts in the same way a room of a house would function.  The hut that is by far the central hub of the home, though, is the kitchen.

Some rare homes enjoy the luxury of boreholes.  Most (like above) have wells or a place, such as a river, from which to carry water.

 Every drop of water is precious in this country, but especially during the dry season between April and September, when rains are almost non-existent. Here Kurt washes his hands before tea.

The Shona culture does not score high on gender equality... the men sit around the edges on benches, chairs, or stools.  The women always sit on mats on the floor.  Jonas compromises and sits on my lap as we enjoy tea in the kitchen... Here we eat white bread, tea, nyimo beans (a delicious groundnut) and a hard-boiled egg.

The kitchen has gathering space around a central fire pit.  Sometimes a cabinet may also be placed in the kitchen, as above on the left.  A large wardrobe or cabinet is often a person's most valuable possession.  The pots on the walls store a non-refrigerated, fermented dairy product called lactose.

  Here our friend Laura smiles as we squeeze in one more person.  Sizes of huts vary- this kitchen fit 40 of us in... tightly!!

 

The most common building material in the country is bricks and mortar or cement.  Buildings are almost solely made of these things.  Huts, though have floors made of a hardened, dried paste made of a cow dung and water mixture.  These floors have to be redone approximately every three years.

 

One of the most gorgeous things about visiting the rural areas is seeing the way in which every single thing has a purpose and a value.  The structure above is a chicken coop. 

Chicken coops, even on very affluent homesteads, are often made of found objects that have been welded together.

 Above and below, grates have been welded together for this chicken mansion.

Lifetimes before moving to Africa, as an NYC interior designer I studied a philosophy called Wabi Sabi.  It's a Japanese aesthetic and world view that is based on the concept that beauty and value come from items that are imperfect, incomplete and often marked from their experiences. The life of the object brings it beauty, not symmetry, cleanliness, or solidity. Never have I found better examples than in my time in Africa.

 Here a garden rake and wall grate have been welded with other metals to make a miniature coop.

 Love it.  Above and below glass bottles are used to line herb beds.

Cattle pens made from collected branches line every rural area landscape.

At Your Local Grocery Store