The Juba Diet

Readers on the Continent:  You can be among the select few to get a sneak preview of the next big diet-bestseller.   The Juba Diet, a revolutionary, combination of diverse food and hard work never seen before on the mass market.

[PS: this is part satire, and part reflection on my day-to-day. I fully realize this isn't the reality of Juba for most, but it was mine. Please don't think me naively insensitive]

1) Eat a varied diet: 

Ethiopian and Pizza: YES.

The food we eat reflects how international we are, as well as creative reworking of whatever staples we have on hand. We dine on pasta, rice,  Ethiopian, African stews including meat or smoked fish, okra, local greens shat I’m becoming quite fond of.  I’ve made American-style breakfasty things a couple times (taking brunch and brinner international), introduced the house to hummus and guacamole. Potato dishes.  Sauteeed cabbage with carrots and onions (I’ve noticed that almost all dishes somehow start with frying onions).  We get food donations from Italy, including  A LOT of cans of Tuna in olive oil, and I have found out how many things can be made with it.  The same goes for eggplant and zucchini that won’t stop growing in our garden.

Breakfast usually consists of half to a third of the staple bread around here, these loafs that resemble a crescent roll and are the delicious combination of crisp on the outside and soft on the inside, plus a dab each of groundnut/peanut butter and jelly, which is usually my new favorite of orange or apricot marmalade, and a Juba-sized banana, also eaten with groundnut butter.  And coffee, which, like in Cairo, is either instant or espresso, which is made in the silver contraption here.  I am not entirel ysure I can go back easily to American drip coffee.

2) Accept goodwill in the form of food: 

Heap of rice, sukuma, and Mama Vicky's
heart successfully conquered. 

During my first few days at the school, Mama Vicky, the school cook, keeper of the keys, nurse, translator, and everything else that might be needed, started feeding me at the midmorning break what she givesto the teachers, and I’ve been eating it ever since, at first out of solidarity, now because eating it seems to make Mama Vicky happy, and most  of all, it is delicious. . . Rice with local spinach from our garden, (increasingly often) beans with the aforementioned bread loaves that function as both utensil and side, a tomato-based soup with chunks of meat, which, as the teachers like, usually comes attached to a piece of bone, also with bread, and sometimes just super-sweet tea, South Sudanese style and bread.     Almost every day. Increasingly, at the request of the teachers, it’s been beans, and I may need to cut back because the beans are good, but not every day.

[As a side note, I now understand why the Arabic word for peanuts/groundnuts (that I learned after a few days of asking around in Cairo) is fool sudani (Sudanese Beans).   They’re one of the staple crops here.  And, appropriately, I’ve learned that the South Sudanese call normal beans, the staple breakfast here as well as in Egypt (though made a little differently) fool masri (Egyptian beans).]


We also get offerings from the many who pass through. . . Bananas from the mission in Maridi, cucumbers from the neighboring priest’s community, sausages and cheeses from those coming from Italy. Everything is at least worth trying, and most of it is worth going back for seconds.

3) Drink lots of water: 

the Juba diet is many bottles (refilled from our jugs) of water. . . on hot days, I try to have as many as I can reasonably drink.  In the words of a good friend from my DC days, I hydrate to dominate.

4) Engage in a variety of upper and lower body exercises: 

Having a field day. 

I walk to and from the school a few times a day, often with bulky heavy objects that need to go from one place to another.  I play messenger sometimes throughout the compound.  I work my forearms by writing on chalkcboards  When teaching, I pace the classroom constantly, I actively demonstrate the meanings of as many words as possible, to try to weave a tight-knit web of association in the student’s brain.   I play with the students. . . I lift jugs full of water onto the cooler. Many times daily, I am frequently bending or kneeling down to put things away. I help to  clean almost daily.

4) Be busy all the time:

Lunchbox for the watchmen.
Text: "Living relaxedly, homio life."
Inspiring nonsense. courtesy of China

 The other key component of the Juba diet is staying very, very busy.  Beyond teaching and working with the students, from around 7:15 when I wake up to 10:30-11 when I go to bed, there are dishes to wash, places to clean, people to track down the old-fashioned way, and anything else that’s required.  I have also become responsible for preparing tea and food every evening for our 3  nightwatchmen, which is like suddenly having three picky children . . with guns. . . to feed.  This has taught me that I can be an improvisational, recipe-less cook, but not a very good one. It leaves very little downtime other than a little TV in the evenings with the sisters (Al Jazeera news and Nigerian movies (apparently they’re calling it Nollywood), and reading before bed.

This is a diet that is half about enjoying good food, so as you might guess, it’s not the most effective way to shed pounds (or kilos). . . last time I checkd out of curiosity there had definitely been change from Geneva. But the Juba diet is not about weight loss.  I am healthy, happy, experiencing so much, and trying my best to give this country my best in the short time I’m here.

I invite you all to read my probably-not-forthcoming book, come volunteer in South Sudan and let the Juba diet transform your life.