Homemade Peanut Butter

Amendoim.

Peanut butter has always been a main source of protein in my regular diet. Growing up, peanut butter and strawberry jelly on whole wheat bread was a staple in my lunchbox, as an Americorps volunteer I always packed a peanut butter and banana sandwich for lunch, and for the first three months at site here in Moz, I went through a lot of Black Cat, a South African brand, peanut butter. Crunchy, organic, smooth, Black Cat, Jif, Peter Pan, I have tried them all. But, two Fridays ago was the first time I have ever MADE peanut butter. It was not only the first time I made it myself, but also the first time I was teaching others how to make it. I, of course, didn’t let them know it was my first time and I just kept hoping that everything would go well. Luckily it did! And we just made it again this past Thursday.

I made peanut butter with one of the faith-based organizations in Chicumbane, TSHEMBEKA.

About a month ago, one of the activistas I have worked with at the hospital, Antoineta, asked me if I would be able to meet with their organization to try to help them get organized and start working again. While in the past TSHEMBEKA has done a lot in the community like home visits and helping at the hospital, currently they aren’t really working due to lack of funding. EGPAF (Elizabeth Glaser Pediatrics AIDS Foundation) pulled their funding about a year ago.  When we met a few weeks ago, we talked about income generating projects so that they could be more self-sufficient. In the past, with the help of a grant, they had a chicken raising project, but this has sinced ended. I introduced the idea that we could make peanut butter. I told them about another organization in Guija that makes their own peanut butter and sells it. I made sure they knew that it would be a long process to get a business plan going and all, but most importantly we would have to see if they even liked it or it is even marketable here in Chicumbane. In order to find out, we would have to make it ourselves. So we set a date and everyone agreed to bring some peanuts from their gardens and we would make peanut butter. The first date we set didn’t work out. But, “nao faz mal”, we set it for the following week and were able to do it that day. It is definitely a sign I have been in Mozambique a while  when changes in plans such as this no longer come so much as a surprise, but are almost expected.

Four activistas: Antoineta, Alcina, Josefa and Marta all came to make peanut butter the first time. When we arrived, we sat outside the office on straw mats and started de-shelling the peanuts we brought. I did a little talk on all of the steps to make peanut butter and why it is a good source of energy and protein. Then, we went through the following steps:

1.     De-shell the peanuts

2.     Take out any bad peanuts

3.     Roast the peanuts with sand in the bottom of the pan

Alcima roasting the peanuts. 

Antoineta taking the red shells off the peanuts.

4.     Take off the red outer covering of the peanuts

5.     Crush the peanuts

6.     Mix the peanuts in a clay bowl to a make a smooth butter-like consistency

The activistas taking the red shells off the peanuts.

Alcima, Marta and Josefa making peanut butter.

7.     Add a little bit of salt and sugar to taste

8.     Bom Apetite! Enoy.

The weather was a little dreary that day so we kept moving between being outside in the yard to the covered kitchen area depending on the rain. But, the process went well.  I didn’t have to teach any of the women how to do the steps we were doing because they were all techniques they had done hundreds of times before. They had just never done them with the end objective to make peanut butter. They not only worked hard throughout the process, but also celebrated the steps by singing songs in Changana. Upon completion, we were able to fill enough little jars for everyone to take some home. As we were filling the jars, one of the activistas was literally licking the bowl clean, she turned to me and said in Portuguese, “Colleen, we are going to develop Chicumbane with this peanut butter.” Maybe, just maybe, I thought. As we ate our lunch of peanut butter sandwiches, they brainstormed how they could sell these peanut butter sandwiches on the road to kids as they go to and fro school. We decided to meet again the following Thursday to invite more activistas to learn how to make peanut butter and to try a little experiment of sales, to see if people would actually buy the sandwiches.

On Thursday when Antoineta picked me up at my house to head to the office, she told me how her son had asked if she could go buy more of the peanut butter they had. She said how she told him she couldn’t buy it, but was going to make more with Mana Colleen. They had finished the jar she brought home in less than a week. That Thursday, twice the amount of activistas showed up to work. While we sat taking out the bad peanuts, this time Antoineta gave the talk on the steps we would be following and why we were making peanut butter. I don’t know if it was because we already knew what we were doing or what, but the process seemed to go a lot faster and smoother. And the peanut butter turned out a lot smoother too. When it was ready, we called some of the neighbors in the area to come try it. They loved it and actually started dipping some cassava we had in the peanut butter. We set up a chair on the road with some pre-made sandwiches and some of the activistas said they would sit there the rest of the day to see what kind of interest it generated. They decided they would sell a half peanut butter sandwich for 2MTS. Just for reference, $1 USD is equal to 30 MTS.  I felt like we were setting up an African version of a lemonade stand. The women were excited to see if people were interested in their new product, but I think they were most excited that if at the end of the day, there were still sandwiches left over that they would be able to eat them. 

Antoineta trying to sell some of the school kids on peanut butter.

Clean-up crew

TSHBEMKA Activistas and neighbors of the office trying peanut butter. 

Comings and Goings

Mel’s first litter has already come and gone. Those six weeks flew by; they went from looking like little rats confined to the outdoor kitchen sleeping all day to running, playing and barking all over the yard. I started giving them real food, well, real dog food being xima with either dried fish or cooked chicken insides two weeks ago. They have been growing incredibly well and even getting fat. Some of my neighbors who knew Mel’s other litters said this one, by far, had the biggest, healthiest-looking pups. However, it was also her smallest litter with only five puppies. Her others had eight and nine. I received a number of requests for puppies from my neighbors, the kids who come to color, primary and secondary school teachers, hospital colleagues, activistas and other Peace Corps Volunteers. It was hard to decide who would actually be getting the puppies. I also unfortunately lost one while I was away at trainings in Maputo and Manjacaze last week. Nelio, my neighbor, was also at the training in Manjacaze all week. Dona Rachel was taking care of Mel and the puppies. On Wednesday, she called me to let me know that in the morning all five puppies were there, but in the afternoon there were just four. There wasn’t much I could do while I was away, but when I got back, I tried to conduct my own little investigation. The one missing was actually the one Nelio had claimed to keep. He had named it Buddha because he was male and the fattest. When I asked Dona Persina, my landlady, about the missing puppy, she said that when her dog had puppies, the biggest male also went missing. She said it didn’t seem likely that a puppy would run away when they are so dependent on their mother at that age. Could there be a Chicumbane puppy thief? Another neighbor told me he saw Mel carry a dead puppy in her mouth back to my veranda and left it there. I never found it. But, this was also around the same time that Mel brought home a dead piglet. So I wonder if he confused the piglet for a puppy. Regardless, neither was pleasant. But, that’s just one of the differences between dogs in Mozambique and America. So with just four puppies to give away, I gave one to Nelio’s aunt; one to Louis, my supervisor at the hospital; one to Antoineta, an activista with TSEMBEKA, a community organization here in Chicumbane; and one to João, one of my activistas at CACHES, to give to his mom. I kept a list of all the people who requested puppies to have for the next litter.

Dogs in Mozambique do not have the longest lifespans so in order to do everything I could to support them in their new homes, I wrote up little info cards in Portuguese with everything I learned about having my first litter of puppies and what they should continue to do. I included fun facts like: Don’t give dogs raw meat because it will make them hunt down chickens and other animals (which won’t make your neighbors very happy) and to bring them to the vet in Xai-Xai at six months in order to receive proper vaccination.   I also included some flea medication I had and a piece of the towel that stayed with the litter for the first six weeks. All except one of the new puppy owners came to pick up their dogs this week so already the yard is incredibly quieter.

I kind of miss having all the little guys running around. But, with their departure, there was a new arrival in Chicumbane! I now have a site-mate!! One of my colleagues, Heather Blair, a Moz 16 volunteer was relocated to Chicumbane after her site, Chalucuane, was affected by the floods. After spending a month in Maputo, she moved to Chicumbane last Thursday. Her site was hit pretty hard by the floods. Before moving, she went to her site to salvage what she could. There was not much she could take because the water had entered her house up to two meters high. What she did recover, she spent the first few days here cleaning to remove all the mud. She has been living in my house, while her new house is still being prepared. They still have to build a new latrine, replace windows and change the locks. When her house is ready, she will live just a short ten-minute walk from my house in the same neighborhood, just across the street from Nelio’s aunt.

Heather is a Moz 16 volunteer so she just has five months left in her service here in Mozambique. She also works with the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatrics AIDS Foundation so she will be working at the hospital with me. At her old site, she worked with her counterpart to set up GAAC. GAAC stands for Grupos de Apoio e Adesao Comunitaria and they are groups of six people who live in the same neighborhood and are all HIV positive. Instead of having to go to the hospital every month to pick up anti-retrovirals, just one person from the group goes each month to pick up the ARVs. This way, each person only needs to go to the hospital every six months. Right now the hospital here in Chicumbane has 52 groups. Heather will be working with Enfermeiro Ricardo to improve our current GAAC system. I will continue to work at the hospital on the projects I have been doing: support groups in PTV and CCR, nutrition and papas palestras in CCR, organization with the files and in the database. We hope to work together on some projects as well. We will just have to keep in mind what is realistic to accomplish in five months. It is definitely a strange time in one’s service to have to pick up and totally relocate sites, but I think Heather is excited about being here in Chicumbane. She fondly goes by “Mana Hea” and the criancas are already getting used to having her around. As we have been going around introducing her at the hospital and the neighborhood, there was a little confusion about whether she was replacing me because the last time they met a new volunteer it was a substitution. But, I told them they were stuck with me until 2014.