Candlelight and Khangas

This is going to be a post of dark pictures. Terribly sorry for my photography skills.

So I happen to come home one evening to no power and no water. I decided to make a moment of it and post it on my blog. This picture actually gives a pretty good impression of my life here: that's my little table where I keep my computer; that's my huge bucket of peanut butter because I couldn't cook anything without water; that's my book of Sudoku (ah, sudoku and candlelight...); and those are my candles that I bought for maybe 10 cents each. They're stuck in empty bottles because I couldn't come up with a reason to spend money on candlesticks (but, so you know, those bottles are from a friend. I don't drink here!) It happened that I bought the candles not thinking I would need to use them, and so I forgot to get matches, too. When I realized that I thought "well, I probably won't need them" (I hadn't turned on any lights by then) but something told me I should go buy matches before it got dark out. Thank you, God!

These are two of my beautiful khanga. I thought at first that three would be enough, but when I think about how much I love them and how I'm likely never going to be back to Tanzania, I think one for every day of the week might be better. Or I might get two for every day of the week, just in case I want to wear a different one in the morning than in the evening. : ) These pictures show the center print and then the border. I didn't take pictures of the words, but on every khanga, centered above the bottom border, is a saying in Swahili. The khanga below says "God is Great" and the khanga above says "There is no God like you" (not that it particularly matters, but the Swahili is the Christian God). When the khanga is wrapped (like a sarong) then the words hit mid-calf on the back of ones' legs. I put a pair of shorts on underneath them and wear them around the house kinda like sweatpants, only much better. You're supposed to get the edges hemmed but I haven't yet (they are printed in big long rolls, and then cut apart. When you buy a khanga for about 5000Tsh, you get two pieces: one to wrap around your waist and one to wear as a shawl. You then have to cut the two pieces apart yourself and get them hemmed).


It's interesting how khanga can be a social commentary: everyone on the streets wear them (and one thing I will tell you about fashion in Africa: NO ONE is afraid to mix prints, stripes, plaids, and everything in between!) and you see them all over. I was speaking with my landlady, however, and she said that a lot of the businesswomen in Arusha refuse to wear them. I'm not sure if her statement is correct or not, but it introduces an interesting socio-economic flavor to the mix.

You can get khanga in practically every color and with any number of sayings on them--many are religious, like mine, but not all. The patterns vary from flowers to simple designs to Obama's face (not sure whether I'm going to get one of those...) There are lots of corn patterns and chicken patterns and nature patterns. I think they are so beautiful!

Home

As promised, here are pictures of my lovely home. Most houses have gates to the courtyards here, for safety reasons, but not all. All of the homes on my side of the street do, but the homes opposite us have no gates or fences. The homes are simpler, too (no shutters on the windows, looks like one room only, but they have screens). I'm not sure why there's a difference but there is, even from one side of the street to the other.
The ditches on the road are the most interesting thing to me. They're really quite deep--likely three to four feet--and in town there are all sorts of haphazard wood planking to get from one side to the other. You can leap across, if you're agile and not carrying anything, but I haven't tried it yet (mainly because I wouldn't want to get laughed at if I fell in!). Usually they're kept pretty clean--swept, and there isn't a lot of trash in them. Occasionally some fruit remains, or a wrapper or two. I just try to imagine these during the rainy season filled with water!


This is the front part of the courtyard, inside the gate. I walk through here every morning to go to work.

And here is my little friend. I'm not sure how he got in, or how he got out (my idea is the grate in my wall that promotes airflow), but he was really cute and quite shy. My landlady hates them but I love them!

Plantains

[Funny how someone who cares as little about food as I do should be talking so much about it!]

I discovered yesterday that you can "just peel" a plantain, provided that it's yellow. I also discovered that they lose their starchy taste when they are yellow, and taste just like a banana, rather than a potato. I also did some research and discovered that you can cook them and eat them even when the peel is black--I think they're really sweet then, or something.

So, in sum, I fried bananas and carrots last night and made some rice, and called it dinner (and breakfast this morning, because I've run out of milk, cereal, and bread). They taste really good and quite sweet.

Ugali

Last night was the ugali adventure. Compared to beans and plantains, ugali is a piece of cake! I got a recipe from online that is pictured above--that single page is all it takes. I'm not sure if cornmeal flour is available in the US but, dear readers, you should try making it. For those of you who have been to South Africa, too, this is the same as pap or mealie pap. I boiled my water, added the salt, and had my two cups of cornmeal flour ready to "stir in slowly, letting it fall through the fingers of your hand." (I picked this recipe because that seemed "authentic" to me, for some reason).

Letting it pour through my fingers lasted through about the first half of the first cup: I dumped it in slowly after that. After I dumped it I was a little worried that it would hurt the recipe somehow, but I can't see that it's had any negative effects at all. Also, a thick-bottomed saucepan is not required--I used the same aluminum bowl as I did for beans (since it's the only one I have to cook with). I think it's hard to screw up ugali. The recipe says stir until the mush pulls away from the sides of the pot, and by the end it started feeling like I was stirring concrete--ugali is pretty solid stuff! I'm not sure whether it actually took 10 minutes or not, but it did started pulling away from the side of the pot in an easily identifiable way.

It looks like mashed potatoes but it is not light, nor fluffy, and I didn't put any butter in (but did put salt in). Ugali is stiff, so it can actually be cut like bread, and tastes delicious! My Kenyan friend here says ugali is a staple for her, so she's going to try some of mine during lunch. I told her that even if I didn't make it right, it's edible and I like it, so I'm not too poorly off.

Yum. Now I really need to find a good sauce recipe.

Ugali
Water: 4 cups
Salt: 2 teaspoons
White cornmeal, finely ground: 2 cups

1. Bring water and salt to a boil in a heavy-bottomed saucepan. Stir in the cornmeal slowly, letting it fall through the fingers of your hand.
2. Reduce head to medium-low and stir regularly until mush pulls away from the sides of the pan (approximately 10 minutes)
3. Allow to cool.

Cooking in Tanzania

This past weekend was devoted to market shopping and cooking, and so I will post pictures of both. Another intern and I went to the market on Saturday and shopped around--I stocked my cabinets with fruits, veggies, beans, and corn flour for about $7. That is one thing that I'm going to miss the most when I'm back in the USA: cheap fruit and vegetables, year round. I'll also miss being able to buy odd numbers of things. It took me a while to get used to not buying things in bulk, but now I prefer it. I can buy three avocados (of varying ripeness--I have one that's hard as a rock in my cabinet right now, waiting to ripen at the end of the week for me to eat it) if I want, or just two; I can buy five eggs, and not worry about them going bad; and I can buy four bananas, or just three, and then when I run out just get more (because I buy them from my next door neighbor. "Welcome banana" is their unfailing greeting to me, even though I've tried to say hello, hi, mambo, and all manner of other things).

So, in the next few days I will be attempting exciting culinary delights: plantains, chapati, ugali, and beans (without a crock pot). Yesterday I cooked beans and plantains.

I don't actually know what kind of beans these are, but they're very gook cooked with salt and garlic. At the market there's a huge burlap bag filled with them, probably as tall as my waist, and the shop owner scooped up a bunch, weighed them, and put them in a plastic bag for me. I soaked them for 12+ hours--which I think is the secret--and it only took about four hours on the burner for them to be nice and soft. (By the way, when I say "burner," I mean "burner," singular. What you see is what I have to cook with by way of a stove. I'm actually quite impressed that beans on a gas burner, in a thin aluminum bowl, with a glass plate as a lid, came out so well.)

I've never had much luck with beans before. When I cooked them on the stove it looked like a bean massacre because the pot boiled over (and I mean massacre: it was all over the stove, somehow all over the walls, on the floor, dripping down the oven), and when I cooked them in the crock pot they came out crunchy. These beans are the softest, best tasting beans I've ever made, and I am so happy to eat them at lunch (and dinner, and lunch again, and dinner...) For lunch today I had them with rice (which I have yet to master) and avocado. Yum! Good for my digestion, probably not so good for my office mates.

The plantains were a bit more of an experience. They're super good fried or boiled and I like them more than potatoes. I first had them on the coffee farm tour and they weren't cut up at all, but were fried whole. So I figured I would just peel them and pop them into the pan, and all would be good. First, you don't "just peel" a plantain--this I figured out by the time I got to the second one. I wouldn't say the first one put up a fight, but I would say we struggled for a bit (it lost). Second, frying them didn't quite turn out like I thought. I've fried a number of things before, but I put too much oil in the pan and so they were practically deep-fried. Not bad, because the vegetable oil here really tastes good (and has no cholesterol) but I think I'll try boiling them next time.

This bar of soap has changed my life. "Sunlight" yellow and smelling so pleasantly of lemon, it has freed me from the bonds of waiting for laundry. There are no washing machines in Arusha--not one. All clothes are washed by hand. My landlady's mother has a maid who does her clothes, and so she told me that I can just throw mine in with hers. This is a very nice arrangement, as you can imagine, but the clothes take about 4 days to wash, dry, and the iron (I really like wearing ironed t-shirts. Call me crazy.) But now, with this lovely bar of soap, I can wash all manner of small things and have them dry by the next day. And I even iron them. Apparently this is miracle soap, too: the label said "for laundry, kitchen, and personal use." Just add water, and the whole house will be clean before you know it.

Lastly, this is the small lizard that was hanging out in the corner of my room for a night. I think he's outside somewhere now. He looks like a gecko (based on the foot and coloring) and he was probably no more than two inches long, tail and all. I wished him a happy life and told him to keep eating all of those mosquitoes.