Mwakete

No, I don't mean the computer game. I ... ehm ... stop! I *do* mean the computer game. "Civilization VI" to be precise, which features one type of game victory – "through religion" – where you send out missionaries and priests to convince other civilizations in the game's artificial world to believe in your word of truth.

So, here I am, in a diaconical guesthouse, being successfully converted by two young German social volunteering ladies to be theirs now. I did not introduce myself as Jesus, by the way.

In the afternoon, a local friend of them teaches us how to bake traditional wheat bread which withstands long journeys without moulding. He presents to us fancy whole-grain flour for which he first had to buy grains and then go to a mill. You cannot easily find it in shops. When mixed with water, it sticks surprisingly quickly (I am to some extent an amateur bread baking evangelist). We then bake it in a pot, wrapped in a freshly cut banana leaf and heated from both sides by charcoal. Great scent emerges! I get a full half of it, but the girls can keep the flour (they should breed a highly potential sour dough with it 🤤!).

Previous to that, I already felt my stomach rebelling slightly. Something must have been wrong with my lunch in town. Now, after baking: lack of appetite, followed by extensive surveying of my accommodation's bathroom. Oh my holy mightiness, why do I deserve a *squat* toilet now? But, finally, all the training of my past bush days pays off. My thighs are steel and will probably not fit into my freshly tailored linen pants tomorrow.

And here is where the yet untouched bread joins my game. With small sips of masala chai and chunks of this crunchy tastiness, I manage to cure my body back from shaking chills to the energy overdose required to compose these introductory lines of the Third Testament. And off I slide into the night.

Victory? No. At midnight, some greater force (in my stomach) decides that the game of lunch digestion is not yet to be finished 🤢. But the following morning I rise again like a reborn!Read more