Rice and rice

Maintaining my weight in Tanzania seems to be near impossible. I expected to eat lots of fruit and nuts here, picked fresh from mango and avocado trees and peanut and cashew trees. Rice here and there. A general abundance of fresh, healthy foods, cutting back on the fat and oil intake. Not so. Most definitely not so. I eat five times each day, every day, and have a difficult time refusing food. Mama has literally pushed food onto my plate when she thinks I haven’t had enough. The diet here consists of rice, beans, potatoes, and oil, oil in everything, everything, everything. There hasn’t been one single meal I’ve found without starch or oil. Eggs for breakfast drenched in oil. Spinach and onions dripping with oil. Even bananas cooked with tomatoes and potatoes in an oily stew. I eat until I’m satisfied and mama says I’ve eaten too little. I say I’m full and she makes me eat an entire orange and half a watermelon. I’ve also been consuming at least two cups of fresh milk every day with my chai, pure, fresh, fatty and delicious cow milk from the neighbor next door. So that’s certainly not helping any but I won’t make any complaints about that. Today after school mama and Mwasi complimented me for looking a bit more mnene, a little thicker than I did last week. Thanks, mama.