What's for Dinner?

There were many questions that I was asked repeatedly before I moved to Africa: Will you be coming home? Where will you live? Do they have cable? By in large, the answers I gave to most of these questions were correct. However, I have been surprised by the answer to the question, “What will you eat in Africa?” My answer was, of course, rice and beans. (and yes, we do eat a LOT of rice and beans here. When we get tired of rice (mchala), we eat ugali. When we get tired of ugali, we eat rice, when we get tired… you get the picture.) But, two American girls and a Brit can’t live off rice and bens forever. We start to get cravings… and having cravings can be a bad thing when grocery shopping. (12 bars of chocolate and 4 boxes of biscuits later…) So, we’ve had to improvise and make the most of what Africa can offer.

Fish Heads: that’s right… I said fish heads. When you live next to an ocean, you eat fish. Lots of fish. And not fish that you buy at the store (just ask Lisa about the Prawns). But fish that people catch, lay out next to a busy street, and sell. And that’s how we buy it. You see the fish you like (ooh, weaver…a red snapper…very tasty!) then you tell the man how many pieces (Ninaomba samaki tano. Tafadhali.) and he hacks off some pieces of fish, wraps it in newspaper and hands it to you. We clean it, scale it, debone it, and cook it. (We like to squeeze fresh oranges over it that we buy at the stall next to the fish stall.) But, we don’t often eat the heads… there’s not much meat on them.

Mexican: One of the cravings that we all frequently get is for Mexican food. The only problem is, we live in Africa, where there is no Mexican food. So, when we get a craving for tacos, we have a couple of options:

1. Ignore the craving. (Rice and beans is kind of like Mexican food…)



2. Make tacos using chipotis. (Chipoti is an Indian flat bread that is SO GOOD, but very greasy and not really a whole lot like tortillas.



3. Leave Africa, fly to Mexico, get Mexican food, fly back. (Hmm.. will AIM let us make this a special project for supporters?)



4. Figure out how to make Tortillas.

We’ve tried #1. The cravings don’t really go away. We usually settle for #2 because our “mamas” (our houseworkers) are chipoti pros. But, it’s not really the same. And since #3 is not really a feasible option (we’re having enough trouble getting Tanzanian visas, let alone Mexican ones), one of the first “foreign foods” I learned how to make it Africa was tortillas. To welcome our new short term missionaries in August, we made them a Mexican feast, with tacos (wrapped in my hand-made tortillas), guacamole (avocados are EVERYWHERE here… in Kiswahili they’re called parachichi), rice (of course) and refried beans (red African beans, boiled until we could no longer stand the heat in the kitchen, then mashed with a potato masher.) It was great fun! (and once the tortillas were made, a little salt, a little lime, baked on a cookie sheet in the oven gave us a reasonable facsimile of a Tostito. Reasonable… but not quite close enough. Why couldn’t Lays ship to Tanzania?)

Dinner in Kenya: One of the "Celebration Meals" that some friends and I enjoyed eating in the States was "Dip-things-in-things" night. We made "things" (guacamole, bruschetta, hummos) and dipped "things" (tortilla chips, baguettes, pita bread) in it. We had a sleep over with some friends in Nairobi a couple of nights before we left Kenya, and we "dipped-things-in-things" Kenya-style!

Dinner at a pub across the “street” from us: Really good food… really LONG wait. And lots of Kiswahili practice. They laugh at us when we order Ugali… and they’re even more surprised when we eat it correctly! (Thanks, Deb Liston for the practice. The rest of the girls here have been grateful for lessons.)