What I Have Been Doing

I haven't been updating much this past week because I've been busy doing boring things. A week ago I finally got to have a good, long conversation with my supervisor about what I'll be doing, and we've decided that I'm going to organize a training program for the people who work at DICs (drop-in centres). Since then, I've been doing some research and writing some grants, and this will more or less continue through this week. Next week I'm supposed to go visit a bunch more of the drop-in centres.

Today when I got home I watched my kokwana cook pap. Pap is the staple food in South Africa, and is sometimes called maize porridge (pap is the Afrikaans word for it). It's incredibly dense and incredibly bland, and you use it to scoop up sauce, meat, or whatever. I mainly cook for myself so I don't eat it very much, but I have acquired a taste for it and figured out the best ways to eat it when in social situations where it's unavoidable. There is definitely good pap and bad pap, but even bad pap improves if you mash each bite in your hand for a while before eating eat.

I've only watched pap being cooked a handful of times, so I still find it mildly fascinating to watch. You start by putting a blend of the maize flour and water into boiling water, stir it for a while, let it thicken, add some more, stir, let it thicken, add more flour, beat it in repeatedly (this is the hard part!), add more diluted flour, beat it more...and eventually you have pap.

For my part, I am eating curry right now. With rice.