Food for thought

 This blogpost is some random thoughts loosely related to food.

The Universe is smiling today – just as I poured my coffee and sat down to eat the banana and passionfruit pikelets I’d made before having my (hot) shower, the power went off. If it had gone off half an hour earlier I would not be smiling!

I love cooking.  Here in Arusha currently that’s quite a challenge. The power is off for at least a part of every day and I have electricity as my only option for cooking – conventional stove and microwave – and hot water. I cook when I have power but occasionally I’m left with half a batch of pikelet batter (banana & passionfruit, peanut butter & raisin, mango. …) or a cake a bit fudgy from finishing its cooking in a rapidly cooling oven.  Last Thursday evening I had bananas that needed to be used or pitched so I risked fate and made a banana cake. Topped with passionfruit icing it went down well with all the staff at morning tea-time on Friday. It’s good to finish a long week with a positive experience.

Maasai don't just eat meat

Living on my own simplifies the electricity / cooking issue. If I have electricity when I arrive home from work I prepare dinner straight away and eat early. If there is no power and it’s still off at 7 o’clock I have a cheese sandwich, making sure I’m quick opening and shutting the fridge, and go to bed with my Kindle. If I’ve had dinner and then the power goes off I watch ‘television’ by candlelight on my MacBook.  I leave everything plugged in and ready for when the power comes back so computer, modem and kindle are all fully charged.  Luckily I don’t have the problem of power surges here that were such a problem in Bukoba.  Last Sunday I woke to no power – so a cold shower and down to “Complex”, the local shopping centre that has generators, for coffee. Mornings when the water is also off are a greater problem – luckily a much rarer event. When you live on your own you have the freedom to choose if, when and what to eat – not so simple if you have a family who need proper sustenance at regular and predictable intervals. Also the unreliability of the power and having Complex close means I can pick up a takeaway curry and naan bread on the way home from work “just in case” and eat it as soon as I’m in the door or punt on the power staying on and reheat it for later. Then my only problem is doing the dishes – can’t boil the jug for hot water – if the power goes out, so really “hamna shida”.

The new ‘vertical garden’ at work has also had “food” issues. We planted the first seeds just over a week ago. As a lesson in biology it has been a success but not otherwise.  We mixed builders soil with chicken manure and leaves to make what we hoped would be “good soil”. We put it in the gutters, sowed some lettuce seed and watered well. Two days later we had a crop of an unexpected kind. Centimetre long, grey wriggling larvae by the thousands covered the top of the soil.

Wadudu

Steve suspects they may be beetle larvae.  The mlinzi (guard) called them wadudu, which is a general term for insects, and said they would have eaten the seeds we sowed. It’s true that we’ve had zero germination but the seed did have a use-by of 2012 so that’s not conclusive.  The mlinzi also suggested wood ash mixed in the soil would kill the wadudu so we’ll try that next with fresher seed. We haven’t watered the soil since the larvae plague so now we have hordes of ants in the gutters carting away dead larvae.  It has all been quite entertaining but we won't have lettuce to eat anytime soon!

I’m counting down now until I leave – 4 fortnights to go!  I have two weeks until the Easter break – then 4 nights at the base of Mt Kilimanjaro. Two more weeks then until the term break followed by two weeks with my sister and cousin in the closest National Parks.  After that there are two weeks back at work before I fly to Namibia for a few weeks holiday with Steve.  It’s all gone so quickly! Watch for a further report soon.

International Women’s Day 2015

Who is this grey haired old Bibi?

We celebrated early with an afternoon of activities on Thursday March 5th aimed at informing students about gender discrimination and women’s rights. The theme this year is “Make it Happen” so we were looking at practical ways of improving women's lives and making a difference here and now.

We have been planning this for a while and I was co-ordinating activities.  My first challenge was teaching the students Helen Reddy’s “I am Woman”.  This was a challenge because I cannot sing a note, so we were doing it by singing along to a YouTube of a live performance. Some of the boys were not so keen but I talked to them about solidarity and empathy.  It doesn’t help that Swahili doesn’t have any of the articles ‘a’, ‘an’ or ‘the’ so the students do not get the distinction between ‘I am Woman’ and ‘I am a woman’.

The afternoon started with a welcome and introduction to the proceedings and then the students sang.  We should have had a practice beforehand because this first performance was less than impressive – but they had two more opportunities over the course of the day and they did get better!

He may be a sleaze but he uses a Mac!

The students had also had to do some preparation in their teams – each team had to put on a short drama that they had written on the theme of women’s rights. The first team tackled discrimination and rights in the workplace – a sleazy boss got his comeuppance after asking female job applicants for their phone numbers and pressing them to go out with him to enhance their prospects. In the second team’s production a father is encouraged to see that his 12 year old daughter should be going to school rather than being married off to fill his pocket with money and his boma with cattle.

We watched the first half of a Ted-talk “We should all be feminists”, by Nigerian author Chimamanda Adichie.  It was quite inspiring as well as being entertaining and amusing.  It’s worth watching and you can find the YouTube here.  A fellow AVI talked to the students about Goal Setting as a way to “Make it Happen” and set them a task of researching their choice of Malala Yousafzai, Jane Goodall or Anita Roddick – three inspirational women! We had technology issues getting the data projector to talk to the computer and had to change to plan B transferring the video to a different computer using a USB stick but that gave the students another chance to sing “I am woman” with an emphasis on I am invincible and I can do anything! And the power failed just as Leeanne finished her powerpoint presentation. So that was good timing and most un-African as power failures usually happen just as you are starting!

 

Then we had some more student activities – this time art-craft and a game.  

Evaline and I had sewn 120 purple, green and white flags on to bias binding to make “bunting”.  The students added women’s rights symbols and messages to the flags.  They designed t-shirts with women’s rights symbols and slogans.  Some were a little confusing.  I think Emanuely’s message of “Big up the women” is saying we should be encouraging women in their ambitions but that wasn’t exactly clear! Many girls chose the Margaret Atwood quote “Men are afraid women will laugh at them, women are afraid men will kill them” for their t-shirts. 

I had made a game called “Lottery of life” where students had to read a chance card then throw a die to determine whether they were male or female. It was good for the students to see the disadvantages as well as the advantages of the two genders.

The Lottery of Life

 

The students had been told that only those who sang with gusto would get soda and cake so we had another rendition of “I am woman” before students and staff had cups of soft drink – including a choice of Mirinda Purple! – and purple iced banana muffins.

T-shirts and bunting

It was a good afternoon.  We now have the bunting up decorating the IT room – all 25 metres of it - as a reminder of our day and I hope that we have changed attitudes or made the students reassess at least a little the patriarchal sexism endemic in Maasai culture.