The world revolves around cheese, right?

When I signed up for Peace Corps, I knew that I was going to give up certain things in order to have an experience of a lifetime halfway around the world. I was ready to give up electricity, running water, the freedom to drive whenever and wherever I wanted, high speed internet and many other familiar items. So when I arrived in Namibia and found that I do have electricity and running water (for the most part, except no hot water) and many other Westernized amenities, I started to get very comfortable with having them all the time.

But the ironic thing is, is that if I were to walk into the grocery store on a random weekday, I wouldn’t find some of the foods that I would normally find in a Westernized grocery store or even an outside market for that matter. In order to buy fruits and vegetables I have to time my visit to the store juuuuuust right. Although as the weeks and months have past, I have been able to perfect my visits so that I do get fresh apples, bananas, cucumbers, carrots and other produce. One item though that is rarely on the shelves is cheese. Now remember, as a child I lived in Wisconsin (land of cheese and all things related to cheeseheads) and then I went to Vermont for college (land of Ben and Jerry’s, Cabot cheese and all other dairy yumminess). So not having cheese readily available for my consumption has been a difficult thing for me to process.

So fast forward to last night. After work, I met up with Ann (a PCV about 40k away from Opuwo), John (a PCV in Opuwo) and Johannes (a German volunteer in Opuwo) for dinner and a movie. And for dinner, plan A was going to be pizza but knowing that the OK grocery store probably wouldn’t have cheese, we needed to have a good backup plan. So when Ann and I walked into OK, we quickly bypassed the produce, bread and sweets and ran for the dairy section to check to see if any cheese was there. And much to our amazement, there was feta, cheddar and even gouda cheese!! I was in heaven! After finding out from Ann that cheese freezes really well, I stocked up and got a few packages of gouda and cheddar for my enjoyment in the coming weeks. With the Peace Corps cookbook at my disposal, I intend to cook some very delicious and cheesy dishes.