Day 3 - the monotony sets in

I haven’t actually eaten yet today. While I’m very aware that I need to eat regularly, there is absolutely no incentive to chow down on yet another bowl of rice. I’ve always been a slow eater, but last night it took about an hour to eat my meal of chickpeas and rice. Even though I was hungry, there was nothing appealing about my dinner, so I was easily distracted by anything and everything going on around me.
Sunday was not so bad...we had a big combined meal happening for lunch, so I had rice, with a bean mix and green mush on the side – made by one of our African families, so I figured it would count as part of the experience. While it did taste pretty good, I unfortunately had a mild allergic reaction to something in it, and spent the good part of an hour wanting to scratch out the insides of my throat. However, instead of doing that I headed up to the supermarket to by my staples for the week. The first thing I smelt as I walked in the doors was banana. I’m not normally a huge fan of bananas, but the smell was overpowering, so naturally I spent the next half hour convincing myself that I didn’t really want a banana at all...I only thought I did because I knew I couldn’t have one!
I headed home and cooked up my ration of rice for the next day – it seems like a lot of rice, but then again, I figure it’s all I get - so maybe it will be easier to get through than I think.
It’s not.
There is no way I want to eat that much rice in one day. Maybe the trade off of one days rice ration for an orange will be worth it after all! After Sunday’s dinner of plain rice, and Mondays breakfast and lunch of plain rice, I was ready to give something else a go, so I cooked up some chick peas, mashed them up, and had them...with rice.
I’m lucky though...at least I get to drink as much water as I like each day, and it comes from a tap or a fridge, not a well in the ground. At least I can microwave my leftovers to have them for the next meal, rather than gathering wood and cooking them over a fire. At least I can take a panadol to mask the ache in my head that is a result of withdrawals from the normal sugars and preservatives and crap I feed myself every day. At least I’m doing this by choice, to experience what life is like for millions of people in the world, and not because this lifestyle has been forced up on me.
So despite the monotony of the food (already!) and the ache in my head, I’m very aware of how lucky I am to be in this position.