The first thing they tell you when you say something like, “I’m going to the middle of Africa,” is Don’t drink the water.
This is obvious, mostly, and there’s a whole host of good reasons why—last time I was here, there was a cholera outbreak linked to drinking water. Then there’s a whole category of Fruits, don’t eat them; see Don’t Drink the Water. The reason being that fruits, unless you peel them yourself, are very like to have been rinsed in the water…so you’ll get all the same nasty stuff, from a passing stomach bug to cholera I suppose, by, say, eating the sliced tomatoes that glimmer so enticingly next to your overcooked goat kebab.
But then you start to realize how many other things are exposed to water, and that seems just fine. We wash our juice glasses, along with the rest of our dishes, in tap water… and then we fill the glass with water we’ve boiled. I was my hands with tap water…and then I eat frites with my fingers. I coat everything I touch during a meal in the very water that’s such a threat. And there’s not always a lot of time between washing the glass and drinking the juice… This is a mystery to me.
I really wish this meant I could eat the tomatoes. But I fell into that trap last time, and it didn’t end well.
I have to say, that before I left people said things to me like “Don’t eat fruit! Don’t eat vegetables! Etc, etc” and at first, I didn’t. But long-term, it’s really just impractical.
I ate even tomatoes. I just washed them with soap. The bigger problem with fruit/veggies is that they’re fertilized with (potentially diseased) poop. I didn’t get sick, aside from having unrelated whooping cough, and I was a lot more food-satisfied.
Anyway, that’s my two cents 😉
Never on purpose, but I drank tap water many a times (in India and Cambodia though) and I certainly never shied away from fruit and veggies. At some point you just give up. So far so good…. though I did play in dirt as a kid a whole lot. I think that’s where my good health comes from. Go play in dirt, Jina, then eat whatever your little heart desires.
Oh, and happy Valentine’s day (snarl, mumble mumble, growl)