On Mayonnaise

So earlier today I had one more of those "I've been in Africa for a while now" moments.

Flashback to 20 months ago when I first got to Guinea - day one of training after we spent the first night with our host families we had a "debriefing" cultural session where we all went around and told crazy stories about our first day staying with the host family. Joe, a guy from my group, started off by telling us all about his breakfast. His family had given him an unopened jar of mayonnaise, a spoon, and a piece of bread....we were all confused by this, it sounded gross, and just weird in general. (my story involved the fact that I had to use the water method in a public latrine in the market if I remember correctly...man that was a crazy week).

Anyway, a week or two later I had a conversation with one of our volunteer trainers, Ian. We were talking about food and he mentioned something about how he likes mayonnaise. I said I thought it was gross (I did, it was one of the things I liked the least foodwise before coming here). I also said that no matter how long I spent here I wouldn't get used to eating it, and wouldn't grow to like it.

Time went on, I went to my village, and I bought a small jar of mayonnaise for the occasional tuna salad day (the one instance where I used mayonnaise in my pre-Africa life - and even then only sparingly). It sat unfinished on my shelf for months, it wasn't until I started trying to replicate the potato salad I got in Boke that I started going through it, that was the beginning of the slippery slope.

Time went on, and I started arguing less and less with people about using mayo in communal food, after a while I was the one advocating for the use of more mayo...I was confused.

Flash forward now to earlier today. I hadn't really had much for lunch (half a can of luncheon meat fried with onions), but Jesse and I went into town to get bread for dinner. We came home and I pulled out the jar of mayo and a spoon - loaded the bread up with a thick layer of mayo and called it dinner. I asked Jesse if he wanted me to make him one and he said "Nah, I think I'm gonna go with a PB and J". My immediate response was to call him a weirdo....then I thought about the irony here. 20 months ago (give or take a few days) I scoffed at the idea that bread, spoon and a jar of mayo made a meal - during my first few days in Bintimodia I pretty much lived off of peanut butter and jam sandwiches because I hadn't set up my gas stove yet and nothing else in my house seemed edible without cooking. Now my first instinct is to spoon on some mayo and call it a day, even though the jam and peanut butter sit on the same shelf as the mayo. Yep, I've been in Africa for a while now.