We have several translators that work in admissions. Helga, Blessing, Joel, and Florence have kept me laughing over the last 10 weeks. Last week I walked in the admission tent and Florence asked me how I like to make my pizza. Do you mean what toppings I like? No, she wanted to know step by step how I make it. So of course I explained. I pick up the phone, dial a number, and 30 minutes later pizza shows up at the door. It made perfect sense to me, but judging from the looks they all gave me, it is not a familiar concept here. You can walk up to someone on the street selling food. Usually it's a stew with different ingredients that they serve over rice in a bowl. Pizza Hut delivery is still a strange concept.
Today was a normal day traveling out to the eye screening site to assist the eye team. I'm not sure how many people we saw today, but near the end of the line the nurse walked past a lady, turned back and told me that she had a chicken. Actually, she explained by saying that she either has a chicken with her or just clucked. As I walked up I hoped that she had a chicken with her, because even though that is strange it would be worse if SHE was clucking! She did have a chicken. A live chicken with its head sticking out of the bag. Of course we had to tell everyone and after calling on the radio (don't tell the captain we used the official radios for a chicken) our entire team came over. The women was getting very upset and a man near her called out that "she didn't want to sell the chicken" that was fine since we didn't want to buy the chicken. We all laughed for awhile and tried to explain that we wouldn't know what to do with it if we did buy it. Isaac, one of the translators tried to explain to me how to prepare the chicken, but it was gross so I won't share it. I can almost picture this woman leaving her house to go to the eye clinic and her husband calling out to her to pick up some chicken on her way home. TIA. This is Africa.
I <3 pizza!
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