Dinner with Arlindo and Joaqina and Emerson in his new house

Arlindo invited Peter and I over for dinner at his new house yesterday. (Arlindo is the medical student-minister-teacher-new father who I wrote about in an earlier posting) This is the house that we both gave him money so he could build it. It consists of two rooms and a bathroom, about 200 ft sq total. Cinder blocks, concrete floor, plumbing, lights, bathroom. It is basically an upgraded shed, in the corner of a lot on which sits a three story apartment building. He lives there with his wife, Joaqina, son Emerson, and currently his niece, Palmira is sleeping on a mattress on the floor.



Interestingly, they do have a maid, even though they had to borrow and beg money to complete the house, and there are only the three of them.

They splurged on sodas and beer for us, and we sat and chatted, playing with the baby while Joaquina and Palmira cooked dinner. They washed and shredded Kale into a big pile on a woven platter. They cracked open coconuts and used a little stool outfitted with a scraper to scrape out the white meet inside, and then proceeded to start cooking a curry with Kale, coconut and tangerine. It looked great, but it turned out to be for tomorrows dinner. Tonight we had chicken, salad, and rice. The rice was from Joaquin’s family machamba- they grow rice outside of town.

For desert: yogurt with cashews and tangerine.