10 October 2008

Living Healthfully

I don’t mean not smoking, drinking in moderation, or sleeping enough, though those are all legitimate subjects for such a title. No, I mean figuring out how to live in a new place: cook for yourself, adjust to the local microbes, local customs and lack of familiar stress relief. It’s a challenge. One that I was definitely looking forward to before I came here. I remember thinking how cool it would be to successfully turn whatever food is available to you into nutritious meals… buy/harvest it, get it back to your place of food preparation, get the bad parts out of it (rocks, bugs, rotten spot, peels, whatever), use unfamiliar cooking tools and turn out something both delicious and healthful. I can boast that I can do that now, and it is awesome, as expected. Boy, it took me a while to get there though! At first it was training, and then living with a host family (excellent experience though it is, it does not afford much opportunity to cook…) keeping me from figuring it out. And then there’s the whole adjusting to the local scene: microbes specifically… the microbes thing is pretty darn tricky if you are in a situation where you can’t cook for yourself. Then you must trust to whoever is cooking for you to take the necessary precautions to shelter your poor, weak GI tract. And while the cooking standard of said host family was good, it wasn’t quite good enough to keep me in health. I spent the vast majority of those 3 and-a-bit months with my host family sick. What with that and Ramadan, I had definitely lost weight—enough that my tutor noticed when he returned after his 2 month summer vacation. What did I have to lose you ask? Not much… Those who know me well know that I am one of those people who worry about losing weight more that gaining. It’s the result of a fast metabolism and an athletic history—it’s just difficult to keep enough weight on to feel good. Which is why it is so amazingly awesome to have been in good health for an entire month (!!!) and cooking good food and eating it and enjoying it and Hamdullah (Thanks be to God) gaining back that weight!
The other thing is learning how to deal with stress in a new situation. All, well not all, but most of the stress relief techniques used in the United States have either been modified by necessity or are simply not available here. Example: my faith—it’s hard to be a practicing follower of Christ when there is no community of fellow followers within 200 km. I have still only been to a church service once since I’ve been here, and had two Bible studies with other people of vaguely similar religious persuasion. That’s 3 in 7 months. Inchallah (God willing) I will be going to church in Azrou with an older volunteer one of the last weekends of October, but that’s not a trivial distance either: it takes 5 hours of blessed travels conditions to get me there, and if travel goes slowly en route, it might take all day. Aside—I’m not trying to complain here, I’m just trying to paint an accurate picture. Or music: I have lots of music to listen to (THANK GOD… no, seriously) but I, for some reason that I frankly fail to understand, did not bring my guitar with me. I don’t know what exactly inspired me to do that, especially after how much I missed having a guitar with me when I was in Tanzania, but I decided it wasn’t worth it (what were you THINKING, Jeannie???). I did, however, buy a fiddle. So, I’m learning how to play the fiddle, which is plenty fun, but… how many of you musicians can understand: having a new instrument to fiddle with (whoops, that’s a pun!!) is just not the same as noodling around on an instrument you know, you own, you can bend to your mood.
The point being, there have been some adjustments. I have adopted new stress relief activities—yoga anyone?—and learned about the depths of other ones.