We Can Rebuild Him...

Kenyan food was generally quite good and tasty... but... it was also monochromatic. I'm not putting down their cuisine, but it was rather one shaded. It consisted of rice, mashed potatoes with either corn, beans, or banana mixed in, fresh vegetables (maize, cabbage, or carrots were in season), sometimes a beef stew that was heavy on potatoes, carrots, peas and a little beef, and sometimes chicken - usually boiled. They also served a heavy flat bread called Chipoti that for all intents and purposes was Naan. It was good food and filling. And it was the same. Everywhere we went. It was the same menu. Over and over and over again...

I never really understood how blessed we are as Americans until about the fifth day of rice, mashed potatoes, chicken, etc... The abundant variety of food makes my stomach sing like a canary. As a result, the sameness of the food caused me to have a little stomach quirk. I can't really explain it, but it was like my stomach went on strike. Little particles of stomach acid circled my gut with picket signs reading, "Heck No, Please No Mo'!" I ate, grudgingly, rice and chicken and I loved the fresh vegetables. Really, on a good day, I was maybe consuming half the calories that I would at home. But, at the same time, I wasn't really hungry.

This had an obvious side benefit. I felt fitter and fitter as the days stretched on. In addition to not eating as much as I normally do, I was getting beaucoupe exercise. I didn't sit behind a desk once on the entire trip. I may not have been running or going to the gym, but I also wasn't watching TV and noodling around on Facebook. And all that Vitamin D exposure from the ever present sun meant I was getting plenty of vitamins. Beyond that, I was at altitude. So my lungs, while having to work harder to keep me breathing (especially on long, hot, hills), were basically getting super charged for normal sea level air.

The end result is that I feel absolutely wonderful. Lighter, cooler, faster... I feel like I'm 29 again. I know that eventually sea level will catch up with me. Gravity sucks, after all. But I figure that if I walk, then run, fast enough I can maybe keep that feeling a little longer than usual. I intend to take all that Kenyan suffering and put it to good use.

Now if I can only figure out how to make the vegetables taste as good here as they did there.