Anxiety Meat

As the the previous posts mentions I am having a serious problems finding any protein sources in country. Before arriving in Africa I ate essentially no red meat at all, but I decided real fast to just deal with it, and eat the meat. So I am no meat connoisseur, but I’m pretty sure that after 5 minutes if there if that chunk of meat is still being chewed, then there’s no hope. The problem at my homestay was that my family and I shared a plate, and everything that I didn’t eat was given to the rest of the family. I couldn't’t just spit out giant wads of meat fat onto my plate. Malawians almost never eat meat because it is so expensive. So when they get it, they eat every bit of it. Seriously, I’ve never even seen so much as a chicken bone left on the plate, let alone a wad of meat fat.

I did look at my chair to see if it would work for the Heimlich if I tried, and failed, at swallowing it, but I refuse to have a eulogy that states “she died in a tragic meat fat accident”

In the end, I did the only logical thing I could do. Every Tuesday and Friday night I would sit there quietly, do my best to chew the meat, carefully keep the remaining fat, tuck it all in my cheek like a chipmunk, and sneak out under the cover of darkness to spit it in the Chim. You cannot comprehend the stress and strain this meat put me through.

(With my new culinary independence this problem has decreased considerably. However, restaurants and dining at others houses often results in a flare of my meaty induced anxiety.)