malawi: SUGAR CANE!!

when i arrived here over a month and a half ago...almost...WOW, it's crazy that i have been here for that long...time really is going by super fast!... back to what i was saying...when i first got here i noticed i saw adults and children of all ages "chewing on trees" i would see them in the city walking down the streets and in the surrounding villages...so i decided to ask one of the preschool school supervisor's "why do people chew on trees here?" he shot me a bewildered look and said he didn't understand what i was talking about..so at that time i dropped the conversation in fear of maybe i was over stepping his custom line...since then i have developed a very unique bond with the preschool supervisor's that i cherish deeply...i spend the whole week with them and we have all become very close...we are serious when we need to be and laugh out loud with each other every chance we get..so now i feel i can ask them anything and they understand i mean nothing by what i'm asking...i'm just curious...and like any other traveler that travels to a new continent, i hope to be enlightened from my time here...so some time had past since i first asked a supervisor and decided i would ask him again and i did... "why do people chew on trees here and pointed over my shoulder to a guy that was chewing on a tree" he looked at me and then you would have thought someone was holding him down and there were twenty people tickling him...he couldn't stop laughing at me...his reaction was outlandish and the only thing i could think to do was laugh too...then he walked over to me and said "have you ever heard of sugar cane?" i replied "yeah, but i have never seen it before"...then he explained to me that they are not eating the tree "sugar cane" they were just chewing on the inside and it was SUGAR CANE...

sugar cane, you can buy it from any market and it only cost like $0.15 in the states...it buy it in one long stick and then use a machete to cut it into fours and take it home