Citric Shortage

Most of the time we just drink water, properly boiled.  Eva drinks coffee and Girlie drinks tea even if the weather is has hot as the drink.  Other things available that we have on occasion are Soft Drinks, Milk, Juice, and drinks of the fermented variety.  Coca-Cola is the dominant provider of soft drinks and they colaborate with the local Southern Bottlers (Sobo) company which provides its own local flavors, Coco-pina and Cherry plum.  Sobo Orange Squash is a non carbonated orange flavored drink that is concentrated so it must be deluted before drinking.  While we usually pour a little bit of sobo a lot of water, Malawians usually pour a little water and a lot of Sobo.  Most soft drinks are purchased in bottles with an additional deposit if you don't bring an empty with you.  Drinks in cans are almost twice as expensive so they are not that common.  Fresh milk is available in small plastic bags, but does not keep well for more than a day.  Powdered milk is...well, powdered milk.  We've done some experimenting and it is actually good with chocolate drink mix after a couple hours in the freezer.  The fruit juice is good, but it is expensive.  It also usually has the second ingredient of milk which is a little strange, but not bad.  As for the fermented variety of drinks, Carlsberg (European Beer) has control of most of that which you would recognized as actually being beer.  Somehow they managed to work out a deal of being the only foreign company allowed to bottle in Malawi or something.  This means in most stores the only brand available is Carlsberg: Green, Brown, Special, Stout, and Kuche Kuche (Carlsbergs local brand).  The fermented beer that you would probably not recognize as beer is the local Chibuku.  It is a fermented drink made from corn flour.  It is very gritty and doesn't taste that great but it is very popular.  They also have a sweet non-alcoholic Tobwa which is similar.  I like Tobwa sometimes, but as far as Chibuku, I am conent just to say that I have tried it.  Last week, as we were trying to prepare for a party before leaving and we were unable to get any Soft drinks because apparently there was a shortage of citric acid and they stopped produciton.  We went from store to store only to find empty shelves.  Fr. Bob said he saw a truck pull into town in the morning so we rushed to see what the situation was and it was a false alarm.  Empty shelves.  We managed to get enough lower quality orange drinks and a few cases of the fermented variety so it worked out.  We cooked a big pots of meat, rice, and cabbage over trenches dug in the back yard and spent the day eating, talking, and playing games.