It had been two weeks since Pudica got a job feeding pigs, and she didn’t hate it too much. Her key problem was having to carry buckets of pungent pig food through the mud.
Most of the time she was hungry because she needed a government-issued rationing card to buy things like bread, yogurt, or rice. And the kiosks were so expensive only tourists shopped there. Cari’s family shared their portions with her, but she didn’t want to take a lot from them. They had been kind enough to let her sleep on a hammock in the living room, and she was grateful.
For the eighth round of the day, Pudica grabbed a bucket of rotten rice and banana leftovers and dumped it into a bigger container with palmiche. She added water and held her breath. The next step was blending it, but her mixing stick br
