Another cultural wakeup call happened today. So, we were giving this presentation to the village about healthy diet habits and balanced meals. This is important, because until recently, they could only afford corn. All the time. This led to things like kwashnikor (a nasty type of malnutrition you get from eating the same thing every meal), to eye problems from vitamin A deficiency, to anemia from iron deficiency… you get the point. Anyways, people have a little bit more money now that the war is over (it’s all relative) and can afford to diversify, adding beans and the occasional chicken to their diet.

As part of the presentation, we do some sort of icebreaker. For this one, we had people go around the room introducing themselves with their name and favorite thing to eat. As an example, I started out with “My name is Jaime and I like to eat chocolate cake.” They were really confused at first, so it started pretty slowly. Once they got the hang of it, it went something like this: Pancho, corn; Martin, potatoes; Simon, corn tortillas; Tomas, corn AND potatoes; Nas, beans…. you get the idea. At first I thought, “Gee, these people aren’t very creative.” I mean, i KNOW they’ve tried cookies and ice cream and so forth at least once in their lives. I’ve seen it. But then I realized: if you live your life as hungry as most of these people have been, you don’t really care WHAT you eat, as long as it’s available. The idea of developing a “favorite food” is as alien to them as having a “favorite kind of planet.” Wow.