the old man that I scheduled for a prostate removal today had high blood pressure. it had come down with medicines, but was still slightly elevated so we started talking to him about eating a healthy, nutritious diet to improve his nutrition and blood pressure before his operation. the conversation went a little like this:
us: "you should eat less salt in your rice and beans and make his sauce separate with less salt. you should eat fish and meat, just not seasoned with to much salt."
patient: "we can't eat fish or meat except maybe once a week"
us: "he needs to eat vegetables."
patient: "we don't have any, just beans"
us: "You don't have cabbage or spinach or any other vegetable?! Can't you find them in the market?"
patient: "No, not in our market. We just have beans."
us: "What about kuli kuli [balls made of peanuts after the oil has been removed]?"
patient: "yes, we have kuli kuli."
us: "ok, eat that too and take these multivitamins."
Can you imagine eating only rice and beans and millet...every meal, every day??? They are farmers and beans is what they grow, so that is what they eat. Seems kind of ironic to be giving him medicine for high blood pressure when he can't even find vegetables or fruit to eat. Counting my blessings.
2 comments:
it makes me ashamed of complaining and you posted this on g-pa Mayers' 100th birthday isn't that hard to believe? prayers sent your way and is there any way to help them farm better and get a different diet? just asking...
we do have some fellow missionaries and organizations working to find ways to improve the farming here and find new methods and more nutritional crops. there are promising developments...it just takes a lot of time, effort, and education to teach new ways
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