On convenience

Posted from the cornfields...

I have been thinking of multiple alternative monikers for the United States during my week here, and one of those is "land of convenience." I was thinking of this as I ate my dinner this evening: a sweet potato (a.k.a. yam) with cheddar cheese. It didn't even take me five minutes to prepare this dinner.

First of all, the sweet potato was easy and convenient to obtain. I got it at a large grocery store in Omaha, but even the two little grocery stores here in David City sell them. I suppose it's possible that yams are sold in Morocco, but I've never seen them, and I'm guessing they would only be sold in Rabat and Casa, both several hours away from Ifrane. The cheddar cheese nearest to Ifrane is at the Label Vie in Meknes (an hour away), and it is so rarely purchased that one must check it over for mold before buying any. Some people in rural America may have to drive to the nearest city to get "specialty" groceries like chickpea flour, tempeh, or chard, but generally, in the U.S. these days, one can find just about any grocery item one wants.

And virtually every community in the U.S. has grocery stores and "super" stores (like Super Wal-Mart) that provide "one stop shopping," something that is definitely not the norm in Morocco. To buy everything you need in one shopping trip seems almost impossible in Morocco, but to do it, you would need to go to several different vendors at the marché, to Label Vie, to Marjane, to the bakery, etc.

Another aspect of the convenience of my meal was that I barely had to wash the sweet potato because it was so clean. In Morocco, when we buy foods that were grown in the ground, they look like they were grown in the ground! Those of us who buy and eat fresh food spend a surprisingly large amount of time just cleaning it, something that isn't necessary in the U.S.

I haven't had a microwave oven since moving to Morocco, so if I somehow found a sweet potato there and wanted to eat it, I'd have to plan at least an hour ahead so I could bake it. Here, I cooked my sweet potato in three minutes.




Usually the word "convenience" comes packaged with positive connotations, and I have to say it made me happy to know that I could eat that sweet potato almost at the very moment that I decided I wanted to eat it.  But I don't appreciate the convenience even as much as I thought I would. I thought I missed having a microwave to heat up my tea when it got cold or to heat up leftovers, but the truth is that I got used to drinking cold tea and to planning ahead so I'd have time to heat up my lunch or dinner. I don't think of the fruits and vegetables as "convenient" so much as "sterile," "tasteless," and "genetically modified to the point of absurdity" (a good friend of mine made fun of me for an extended period of time because I mentioned that I won't eat cherries here because I still remember what truly fresh, ripe cherries taste like, and I don't want to ruin that memory). There's even an element of enjoyment to the process of seeking and then unexpectedly finding precious food stuffs, like oat milk or curry paste. And finally, I think convenience makes it easier for me to give in to my natural laziness, which I don't see as a good thing.

Convenience comes with a price, I think. Many of the "convenient" foods in the U.S. are packed full of unnatural chemicals and derivatives and unhealthy combinations of sweet, salty, and fatty that our bodies (including our brains) are unequipped to handle, and the consequences to our health, our environment, and our economy have been dire. I read (I think it was in a book by Michael Pollan) that the average American now spends less than 30 minutes a day preparing and cleaning up after meals. And what are we doing with all that time freed up by "convenience"? Well, T tells me that 1 in every 7 minutes spent online is now spent on Facebook, and I can't help but make a connection between those two statistics. Is the time we free up by convenient shopping, convenient cooking, and convenient travelling being well-spent?

Of course I don't like things to be "inconvenient," but at the same time, I think inconvenience presents opportunities for discovery, reflection, and growth. If I move back to the U.S., I don't want to lose those opportunities.