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Tuesday, March 1, 2011

The 4-G's Grilled Cheese

I've had a fairly miserable couple of days. I busted up my toe while on the assembly line of brick making, which has sidelined me from my self-proclaimed "X-tremem February" where I've tried to be apart of, if not leading, evertying manly and physically strenous in Ngora. That same day my little piggy was attacked, I decided to go shirtless; two hours of equatorial sun against shoulders that haven't seen the daylight in 6 months...flawless victory for the sun. Pain for me. Things I should have packed: Solercaine, steel toed chacos.

With the combination of mandatory rest (as decreed from a yelling counterpart nurse, a raging suburned back, and a whiny swollen toe), no power for 7 days, and a library full of already read, quoted, and summarized books on my library...things were getting a bit desperate. After failing yet again to make a proper lom for the compltion of a new style hammock, and cursing back to my house after accidentally kicking a rock with my stupid toe, despair was being penciled in for the word of the day.

After a bit of sulking, even more pised in how under-whelming the short story "curious Case of Benjamin Button" is, I realized it was my time for the 5 o-clock snack. I go into my kitchen (stomping grumpily), and silently complain abotu another triple decker p-nut butter and honey sandwhich. I look around with no conviction of expectations of anything, but sitting beside the month old egg, I spot it. Cleverly coded in Hindu or some other Non-Amurr'kin tongue was a can portraying an image of CHEESE. I can't stress both how much cheese I eat in America and also how rare it is here. It's a LOT, and it's REALLY rare.

I guess I can.

Anyway, I open the can, using for the first time my Target can opener bought specifically for Africa (thanks "packing list"). I spill...I strenously knife out (same knife I've used every day for my PB & Honey sammies...yet to have been cleaned) all 4 thousand shillings worth of the 3-days-shy-of-a-year-old-cheese.

10 minutes later, literally humming "taps" because it was the first thing that came to mind and I'm impestuous, I placed down the charred to perfection grilled cheese on a never before used plate, gurgling with molten Egyptian or Chinese or Iranian Cheese brimming every edge of the Clearly unprepared bread slices designated as captors.

11 minutes later, I realized how happy I was. how glad I waited 7 months for my first grilled cheese, and proud to of found my newest defense mechanism against an otherwise crappy day.

And how good cheese is.

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