When we arrived in our house, the kitchen was stocked with the basics – sugar, coffee (a must have!), jam, eggs, spices, oil, margarine, and powdered milk. Yup, that’s right – Nido – Nestle’s good ‘ole powdered milk.
I grew up on powdered milk at boarding school in the Ivory Coast. I hated the stuff. Every morning the cafeteria fixed a giant vat of it and every morning it was unique – some days thick, some days thin, some days sour, some days warm, some days cold. Funny thing is that I can’t think of any days when it was good.
Heidi had powdered milk as a child as well, but her mom mixed it with whole milk. A clever way to save some money when you have to feed 4 hungry kids. Here, however, the reason for powdered milk is simply because there are no dairy farms. Cows are raised mostly for meat here and not milk.
We’ve been surviving on the powdered milk though – it isn’t that tough. I get my daily allowance by mixing it with my coffee. Makes it a lot more bearable. Also, when I went to Accra a couple weeks ago I bought some real milk and brought it back for Heidi and Trey.