How to...

I have been longing for becoming a real Saharawi and I assume that there are many more of you out there. So I have written down some guidelines including food and hygiene you ought to know before embarking on your potential refugee career.
Become a Saharawi:
It is not the easiest plan in the world to become like someone else, especially when the life here in so many ways diametrically opposes what I would do in Norway. But there are some ground rules:
1. Don't rush!
2. Make tea at least three times a day.
3. Know how to greet other people.
4. Don't try to get a tan. Try to look as white as possible. If you live in the desert and get exposed by the sun, put on some white cream in your face even if you look more blue then white.

Make food:
Food has always been something I enjoy, but never a thing I prioritized in hectic daily life. Therefore I usually eat food in Norway that is either prepared by someone else or takes less than 30 minutes to make. Here, on the other hand, a wife could spend almost the entire day in the kitchen despite the fact we only eat two big meals a day. It is strange working in the kitchen, especially in the dark, with your cellphone as the only source with light (Thank God for IKEA lamps). Like a child without words, I stumbeled through every cooking step and got a decent meal at the end. Here they use a pressure cooker for all their meals. It is an airtright pot in which food can be cooked quickly under steam pressure. By using the pressure cooker we simply have to wait for the food to cook and spend time doing other things. Which suits me well since I am not very patient. While waiting I could get more water from the rusty container or feed the goats with leftovers and cardboards.

While chopping up onion I learned something I desperately longed for: how to chop onions without crying. So for all you onion-criers out there, put a piece of onion or onion peel on the top of you head. Its supposed to do the trick.

Get sick:
While in Norway we eat from clean plates, the Saharawi style is to rinse their cutlery and plates in cold (probably dirty) water mixed with detergent, before you use them. Bad hygiene is therefore the easiest way to get sick. If you have a child in the house, you can also assume that the cloth you use to dry off your now spankingly clean plates, has already been used to wipe the kid's nose.