Food

Today has been a day of absolutely fantastic food. But to give you a proper appreciation of why this was so amazing, let us take a short trip into the world of food at our guesthouse:

1. Sandwiches - I am never a particular fan of sandwiches. I am certainly not a fan of sandwiches which are full off cheese, mayo or, you know, cold tinned sweetcorn. So far there has not been a single sandwich I eat, which has worked well for Pete, who is permanently hungry.
2. No you may not have dietary requirements - The guesthouse has a set menu which has no choices and is often either strangely full of sweetcorn (we think the owner may have shares in a sweetcorn factory), involves burgers containing bananas, or is something several people in the group don't eat. Because she won't "cater to individual tastes" as she has pre-bought food (for six weeks? I hope not!) and, other than Vijay being a vegetarian and Hope's dietary requirements, nobody else's food info came through.
3. 1100 calories a day - what Hope worked out we were being served everyday. We all wanted to go on a spontaneous six week diet, yes? No, not while teaching and being totally sleep deprived actually.
4. Don't be Max - after Max has asked for special food not once, but twice (no fish, and could he have his burger in a plain bun)!! He has earned a special place on her list of most hated people ever.

So, after all this, you can imagine that when Vijay forgot his lunch today and we were about to tuck into half a peanut butter sandwich and a shared bag of crisps for lunch, we were absolutely thrilled when it turned out that the African Language teachers (who seem to have decided to adopt us now that we are a fixture in the staff room) brought us lunch. We had vetkoeks (or fat cakes) which are essentially like savory donuts, which you cut open and put a cut of chicken a little bit like Austrian extrawurst except cut about half a centimeter thick and with chili inside it (if you're Vijay and are vegetaria you omit this and fill your fat cake with sugar instead). It is amazingly yummy. Apparently this is an extremely common food for the poorest of people as fat cakes are very cheap to make, they cost about 60 cents (5p) each to buy.

After school we went to an oriental mall, where people were looking to buy football shirts for the match tomorrow. So Jack, Pav, Alex and I wandered off and found a shop selling fresh samosas in batches of 12 for R34 (£2.75)... Amazing.