Chapati

Ignore the toilet paper. That's not what we're going to talk about to today. You're looking at Sunday's meal because it was only after our housemate Layla started taking pictures and saying how it was the perfect time of day for doing so that we remembered we had a camera too. (If not for housemates you'd never see pics on here.) So... leaving me to roll out the chapati, Patience ran up to get the camera and....

Voila, Daren rolls chapati. So what pray tell is chapati? Well the way we make it, it comes out something like gordita tortillas; which is actually awesome because while the taco shells they sell here are quite tasty, they cost an arm and a leg and are roughly the size of a folded dime. Chapati, on the other hand goes something like this...

put some flour in a bowl

add warm water until you think it looks right

knead in bowl with hand until it becomes "laini" (smooth, not sticky - this is actually the tricky part because it never becomes unsticky)

add a pinch of salt or two or three (Depending on your blood pressure and your family health history)

next comes the FUN part (if by fun, you mean a measure of tedium mixed with small bruises on your fingers from the rolling pin that you don't notice until you wake up the next morning and think... where on earth did THAT come from?)

roll flat (think tostada)

spread teaspoon of oil over the top surface

roll round (think tostito)

roll spirally (think cinnabon)

add some more oil

Roll flat again (think flat and THIN)

Then the cooking (what you see above is pre-cooking)

dry fry one side

add oil, fry both sides

EAT with greens, rice, ground beef (mincemeat here), fish, potatoes, chicken, eggs, pretty much whatever. It essentially doubles as the fork AND bread for the meal.

It starts to get a little hairy...

This is Patience. She is an absolute darling with a wonderful sense of adventure and infectious friendship. Every other day she takes Swahili lessons and she likes to practice what she's learning with everyone she meets - the guards that hang out on the streets outside the absurdly beautiful mansion/gardens near the British Institute, the grocer, the baker, and of course the Butcher. (Unfortunately, we haven't met any candlestick makers, yet). At least one of these conversations has earned her "the best lamb I've ever tasted, it was amazing". That would be from the butcher's mom, who has insisted that she bring her husband (that's me in case your wondering who's writing) along next time so they can take us out to eat real Indian food.

But her best new friend is Sheline. Not only is Sheline great company and about the same age - but she knows where to shop. Two pairs of jeans for $25, including a couple snazzy leather belts can do wonders at cementing a friendship. So can food. Sheline has redeemed "ugali" in Patience's mind (its essentially REALLY stiff malt-o-meal made from corn flour); apparently its much better when its fresh and served with vedge (that veggies for all you non-Brits out there) and tasty herbs and fish biriani (biriani is a tomato based sauce). Whenever you get ugali at the restaurants its been sitting in a tin pot since morning and usually served with barely warm sukumawiki (literally "push the week", actually a green leafy vegetable similar to collared greens) and a semblance of tomatoes and cabbage that counts as "salad" around these parts and is usually discarded by overly cautious wazungu (travelers) who've been scared to death by various travel clinic doctors.

But enough digression, you want to
know about the hair. Well, here it is. Courtesy of Sheline who provided the reference and brought Patience out to Kibera to the salon, Patience is now a Rasta.

Matatus and Piano Lessons

Daren and I are settling well into life in Africa. Daren is gone most of the day, busy with research in downtown Nairobi at the National Archives, an imposing dirty-sun yellow manse, surrounded by bustling dirt streets where dust is constantly whipped into the air by shuffling feet and furiously careening matatus ( 14 passenger vans, often stuffed with twenty people, but which you can take almost anywhere for 60 cents). Daren is complaining of a continuous sore throat, a side effect of breathing the grime in and out every day, but other than that is doing very well and is especially enjoying daily Swahili lessons with a woman from Lamu, an island off the coast of Kenya, where they speak, as a Nairobi native put it, “Very fine Swahili.” Since we’ll be spending most of our time on the coast, it’s awesome that Daren is practicing coastal Swahili which is smooth and lyrical instead of the harsher, more English spattered Swahili, or Shang, which is spoken here in Nairobi. I’m also taking Swahili lessons three days a week and having a blast! My mwalimu (teacher) is teaching me formal Swahili, so I’m looking forward to blowing people out of the water with my “very fine Swahili” when we get to the coast.

We are staying at the British institute while in Nairobi, a stone cottage with adorable spiraling staircases and large glass windows which open over fragrant gardens filled with exotic African flowers and trees, as well as a few, out of place yet sturdy, down to earth daisies which are sprouted in clumps here and there, belying their tropical setting but pleasantly remind me of home.

There are eight other people staying here at the moment, and for the four bedroom house, it makes for a comfy crowd. Leila, Jess, Sarah, Dave and Hannah are from the UK, and are mostly graduate attaches working on archaeological research. I’ve been helping Dave and Sheline (the native who is envious of coastal Swahili) with flotation, a process where soil samples from varying sites are floated in water which carries the soil particles through four sieves, each catching smaller and then smaller particles, such as bone and pottery fragments in the first, roots in the second and so on till the last, which usually catches such things as seeds. Yes, it may sound tedious, and I have reason to believe most people think so; when we first arrived and I offered my services, Dave jumped the chance to use me and has blissfully been engaged with other things since! I’ve always had a soft spot for archaeology, and believe in a previous life I must have been born with a brush and trowel in hand.

Daren is starting to teach piano lessons today to George, a young man in his late teens/early twenties, who we met this past Sunday. During the main meeting at church, the bishop invited anyone who could play the piano to please do so, and when no one rose, I kinda nudged Daren in the side and he soon complied. Singing may make the world go round, but accompaniment sure makes it go around a lot smoother! Before we left the US, Daren was morosely mewling (just slightly, I mainly wanted to use those two words together) about how much he was going to miss playing the piano, which, even through all his course work at UVA, he had tried to play a few times a week. Well, as they say, we were put here on earth to be happy, so now, no more mewling for Daren! Daren gets to play the piano at church once a week as well as teach a few of the members who swarmed him after the meetings, begging him to teach them.

Pictures and another post will follow later this week, but for now, I better get to that Swahili lesson!

The Three-hundred dollar Passports

We had to rush to D.C. on Saturday before we left for Kenya to get emergency issue passports because the Kenyan Embassy never sent them back to us with our visas (of course they did find them AS we left for the airport on Monday... a little late, don't you think?)

Can you say long day? We left home at 5am to get to the passport place by 8:30 am and then hung out at the Smithsonians (Hirshorn gallery of modern art) and walked around D.C., found a huge and awesome fountain full of ducks (whom we tortured with false promises of bread), and then returned to the office at 1pm to pick the passports up (can I just say I liked my other passport photo way better?).

Anyways, three-hundred dollars and a call to our senator later, we got our passports and avoided one more delay. (note that a ticket change would have cost us $700).

As a side note, on the way home the interstate traffic was going as slow as molasses and I was totally about to start kicking up a fuss when we started seeing cops on the side of the road, one every mile for about six and then a cluster of four police cars on the seventh. After we passed them the traffic cleared right up and everyone was going the more preferable speed of ninety to nothin' trying to make up for lost time. Listening to the radio five minutes later, we heard the reason the police were lining the roads was because someone had called the police station saying that there were men with guns on the side of the road, and that's when the announcer on the radio started laughing. "Turns out the men were hunters!" the announcer said.Okay northern Virginians, this is hunting season for goodness sake, and turkeys are in!