Coming Home

It's that time--I'm returning to the US. I am officially malaria and parasite free, I've packed my bags, and I'm bidding Arusha good bye. I can't believe it's already been three months! This also marks the end of my blog. Thank you to everyone who followed and commented, and I hope it has been a window into a different world.

Chickens and Rain

Tanzania in the winter, as far as I can tell, is chilly and sometimes cloudy, but not really rainy. There were times that it rained during the night, but it was usually done by the time I had to go to work in the morning. Then, during the day, the sun will come out and the temperature will rise so that it's really quite a nice day. This is my first real rainy day here, and it was so novel that I had to take pictures of it. Unfortunately it didn't rain enough to fill the gutters on the sides of the street--there was a puny little trickle, but I wanted a moat.

My neighbors have chickens and a new bunch of chicks just hatched. They are so cute! My landlady's kids don't come in the house anymore, because they're busy watching the little chicks run around and scratch in the dirt. So, I figured I'd join them and watch too.

Sometimes dinner is pretty...

...and sometimes it isn't. The first is a picture of a "signature" stew concoction (read: I use what I have in the fridge, recipe or no) made with green beans, onions, carrots, green peppers, and plantains. I fried them a little first, added some tomato paste and salt, fried them a little more, then added enough water to let them boil for a bit and soften. It really tastes good over rice with some chili sauce! The second is leftover ugali with leftover thick vegetable soup (from a packet) poured over it, and two eggs for protein. There are probably ways to make it look prettier.

I am Tanzanian

I just bought a snack on credit from the snack shop downstairs (because she didn't have change for my large bill) and I have gone to the tailor's shop twice now and have only been heckled once on the street. I also walked down to the fabric shop with another intern and no one even looked twice at us.

I have also managed to keep my shawl wrapped around my shoulders while still walking at my usual (speedy) mzungu pace, which is quite a feat.

Supa Loaf

Here's a little anecdote about life in Tanzania. Not all bread is the same, and not all of it is good. I bought a loaf once of Sunkist bread and got sick from it. When I told my landlady about it, she said "Oh, you should always get Supa Loaf, because it's always good. It's a good quality bread." So now, whenever I stop by the shop to pick up bread, I ask for "Supa Loaf" by name, rather than just asking for bread. And I have to do it with a straight face. (Try saying "Supa Loaf" quietly to yourself and you may appreciate how difficult this is).

Beans without gas

Another trip to the market last week, and I decided to go crazy and buy a different kind of beans. I'm not sure that the picture is doing justice to how lime green they are.


I'm not sure what they're called, and I'm not sure what the real difference is between these lime green beans and the purple ones I've been cooking with so far. They taste kind of the same to me, they're about the same size, they look remarkably similar except for color, and they certainly cook the same. At the market, after I decided that I wanted to try something new, I asked my friend, "what's the difference between the two?" After a flurry of Swahili between her and the seller, she translated the response: apparently the purple ones cause lots of gas, and the green ones only cause a little bit of gas. Sign me up.



This is a picture of my bathroom/shower. You'll notice the switches on the wall outside--the small one is for the light and the big one is for the water heater in my shower. Here's how the heater works: when you flip the switch it activates some gadget on the head of the shower that heats the water as it leaves the nozzle. If you turn it on before you've turned the water on, you get scalding steam--not fun. So, you have to turn the water on, then turn the switch on, then fiddle with the water so that the amount coming out doesn't overpower the amount of heat the gadget produces. You may also notice that the switches are quite some distance away from the door, which means that after you're done with your shower, you have to leave the water on, get out of the shower, reach around the doorframe dripping wet and cold, turn the heater off, then get back in the shower and turn off the water. It takes some skill. The point of this story is that this switch no longer works, and while I wait for it to be fixed, I get to sponge bathe in ice water in a drafty concrete room in 60 degree weather.

As a side note, the lemon soap is good at its word. I have used it for both laundry and personal hygiene and it works marvelously for both. Now I smell refreshingly like lemon, in addition to my laundry. I am hesitant to take it into the kitchen and use it (there's an odd mental block about using a single bar of soap to clean the sink, me, and my clothes) but I'm sure it would work just as well there.

The Good, the Bad, and the Chapatti

So, my adventures in chapatti.

My recipe is pretty basic: flour, water, oil, and salt. Bread products outside the US are very different from bread products inside the US (or maybe I should say bread products that originate in Europe?), and it's actually really hard to make them because you just can't get the ingredients. When in Tanzania, make the bread products that Tanzanians make.


Chapatti are actually made with ghee, which is a special type of butter, but I just used oil. I spoke with my Kenyan friend and she said oil works just fine. The second thing about cooking with my recipe is I don't actually have any measuring utensils. That makes cooking very interesting. In retrospect I could have spoken with my Pakistani mother (my landlady's mother, because my landlady doesn't know how to cook chapatti) about ingredients and recipes, but she's visiting her sick mother in Pakistan, which makes conversation difficult. Also, I think I would have to work very hard to just get the recipe--I think once I showed interest she would just want to make me chapatti and feed me (which isn't bad, really, but not quite my intent).

My pseudo-chapatti. If it cooks like chapatti, tastes like chapatti, but looks only kinda like chapatti, is it still chapatti? I didn't have a rolling pin and I'm really not that skilled to make them flat without one, so my chapatti are very lumpy! They looked a little more like pita than chapatti, but they tasted good. Mine are very filling because they're thicker!

So, of course, I tried to make them again the night before last, and added too much water to the recipe. Rather than dump my whole bag of flour in to make dough I decided to cut my losses and make chapatti-pancakes. I must say, it was the ugliest batch of chapatti I have ever seen. Like I said, I'm not sure if they actually count as chapatti, but I eat them and like them, so I consider it a win!

I am also surprised by how much I like puttering around the kitchen in my khanga (kanga? I'm not sure if it's like the animal or the Mongolian emperor) trying new things. (That is a window in the picture, by the way). Cooking without measuring cups and without an actual stove makes it more novel and unpredictable, but also more exciting. I cooked beans the other night and added onions and peas to it and really enjoyed the whole thing. I think my priorities are very different from other interns here, but I like living a different way, not just being a tourist.