The Peace Corps / Tanzania Cookbook 2012

Here in Tanzania cooking is quite an adventure. Many Volunteers arrive in country with very little knowledge of how to cook much more than Ramen noodles or Kraft Mac & Cheese, let alone how to do all of this on a small portable clay stove, let alone how to ignite the fuel and maintain it at just the right temperature. So each year, as in all Peace Corps countries, a group of Volunteers works together to produce a new cookbook: a guide to cooking of sorts, suitable for the neophytes and the executive chefs in us all.

The Peace Corps / Tanzania cookbook this year includes some of the basics of cooking, some as basic as what does “chop” versus “mince” mean. It’s also got instructions on how to set up a Tanzania jikoni, what kinds of pots and pans are best, how to start up your very own little charcoal jiko, how to actually cook something, how the hell to bake a cake when we don’t actually have an oven, and, of course, a plethora of recipes for omnivores, vegans, dagaa lovers, cookie monsters, and those who just can’t get enough ugali.

For those of you living the sweet life back home, I’ve shared this cookbook with you because the recipes are great even when you’ve got a fully stocked kitchen, real butter, and a oven that obeys your temperature commands. Maybe you’ve always wanted to slaughter your own chicken and cook it up. Maybe you’ve really been jonesin’ to make your own butter, or homemade cake frosting, or your own watermelon jam, or your own mango wine, or a batch of Kahlua to spice up your weekend. The reason this cookbook is so great is because it’s written for people like Peace Corps Volunteers who don’t have the budget or the means to buy fancy things every week like bottles of wine and real butter, and so most things are do-it-yourself, make-it-from-scratch, go-plant-yourself-a-mango-tree-first kinda stuff.  So here it is: download Kumbe! I Can Cook!

MIA

I swear I’m going to write something soon. My second year has been busy; after taking a much-needed vacation, visiting old friends in new parts of Tanzania, traveling around Rwanda (and almost DRC — almost), and spending a week eating amazing food in Dar es Salaam, I’ve hunkered down at my site and have begun a few projects to keep myself busy, my mind alert, my heart beating. A new library, a lovely garden, some trees to plant, a cookbook to design, a website to create, and continually helping my students learn math and physics. And trying to find time to study for the GRE in between. Life is hard in the Peace Corps, I say, life is hard. And wonderful.

But seriously. It’s been months since I’ve actually written anything, and maybe because I’m used to things now, nothing is new, the unexpected never surprises me anymore. Writing was, and still is, a form of catharsis for me, but I don’t find myself wanting to pull my hair out as much and maybe that’s why I’ve stopped writing, stopped journaling, even. Or maybe because I don’t spend enough time in town to sit down in front of a computer, utilize the internet connection and the electricity, I haven’t written anything. Whatever it is… something new will come, and soon.

Say it With Pictures

teachers relaxing after a long of day of work

me and a handful of my form2 students

MIATANOMIATANOMIATANOOOOO!. tomatoes for sale

three of my form2 students overlooking the rift valley on our hike to and from mto wa mbu

a teacher and a super short student out back in front of the Ngorongoro forest

mahafali ya endallah -- student's at paff's school, endallah, giving a speech to good ol' mr BC, during the form4 graduation celebration

making pizza with real CHEESE at jolene's

electricity physics practical with my form4s

the "town" of the next village over

a dilapadated "mudhut" a few kilometers from the forest, where it's hot and waterless

my crazy dog mona who won't let me go anywhere by myself

Kahawa ya Nyumbani

Home Coffee (Home-roasted, that is)

1:30pm, the jiko is stoked, though it’ll be a while before the coals are hot. This afternoon I’ve come home in the early afternoon to roast coffee, two kilograms of raw beans I bought at the market in Dodoma. I’ve never roasted my own coffee before, here or back home, but I somehow feel that this setting — in a do-it-yourself Peace Corps atmosphere, in the bush in the middle of East Africa’s fertile coffee producing highlands, and on my own tiny little charcoal stove — makes it all the more appropriate.

Green coffee or rocks? Hard to tell...

While in Dodoma for the Peace Corps “gathering,” I stopped at the market to buy some green coffee beans. Take a look at these things and they hardly look green. There is a world of difference between these beans which have been sitting out in the open for who knows how long before they made it from the farm to the market to my hands and the beans I’ve seen at roasteries back home, all carefully stored in climate-controlled closets. Many of these beans haven’t even been properly de-pulped, and not only did I find a few rocks in the batch but also a couple of maharage, the kind of beans I douse my rice with. While I waited for the coals on the stove to heat up to temperature I ground up the last of some coffee beans brought to me straight from ATX (thanks Chelsey and Bethel!). This is a good way to pass some time before I can begin roasting unless I want to blister my fingers fanning the coals like crazy with a bucket lid or my MUFA frisbee. Frisbees, like donated mosquito nets, have a seemingly endless number of uses here.

stirring… and stirring… and stirring…

The coals are hot and I throw 2 kilos of green coffee in my giant sufuria, the same one I transform into an oven on ocassion. My trusty kipekecheo, usually used for stirring some ratio of maize flour to water into uji or ugali, is the perfect tool for the job. Constant stirring is essential. Too bad I burned a few beans in the first 15 minutes. It’s hard to keep the lid on to contain the heat and to keep stirring to prevent the beans from burning, but I stir and stir and stir and after 40 minutes the beans don’t look anywhere near roasted enough so I close the lid to keep more heat inside, picking the whole thing up to shake it every 30 seconds or so. This seems to work better. I continue for another 30 minutes or so until the last of my coals die and I have no choice but to finish up. I pick up the sufuria and splash my hot beans onto my mkeka to cool.

Once the beans cool I make some attempt at grinding. This proves to be a tedious process with so many beans and such a small mortar and pestle but I put on my headphones and twanga my little heart out ’til my hands get tired. And it takes a loooong time, but fills up three peanut butter buckets. I’ll have plenty of coffee to make me bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready to greet my Form II math students in the morning as we pound away at the few topics we’ve got to cover in the month remaining before their national exams.

When I finished I had a cup of my fresh home-roasted coffee, and though it’s certainly not the most delicious cup of coffee I’ve ever enjoyed, it is by far the most satisfying.

Roasted coffee of all colors

Happy Tanziversary

Today is 24 September 2011, exactly one year since the Education 2010 training class arrived in country. It’s amazing how much of this past I remember so clearly, like it was all last night’s meph-induced vivid dream. I remember who I sat with at staging in Philadelphia, who I talked to on the airplane, the chaos of 39 trainees trying to sort through heaps of luggage in the scruffy Dar es Salaam airport, the feel of the air as we stepped outside and took our first breath of the air, the memories of trying to find my way to the airport in Thailand in the darkness that were prompted by our drive through the streets of Dar at night. I don’t think I’ve ever had such clear memories of an entire year before. And there is just so, so much to remember.

Each and every one of us has had our moments here in Tanzania. The frustrations and lack of freedom of pre-service training followed by being abruptly dropped off in our site, far, far away from our friends and everything familiar, and the rollercoaster of emotions that inevitably followed. We’ve all succeeded fantastically and failed miserably at least once, and I think each and every one of us has become just a little bit wiser in the past 364 days. So I’d like to take a minute to share some things that have helped me get through the tough days and enjoy the best days even more.

1. Go outside every day. I read this piece of advice on a PCV blog before I even came to country, and let me tell you it works. There have been days when I’ve decided to spend an entire 24 hours in my house, baking brownies or cookies and reading a whole book in an afternoon simply because I don’t feel like dealing with the things I deal with in the village. But there have been other days when I don’t feel like venturing down to the ville but am forced to if I want to eat anything that day, and nearly every single time I’ve come back happier, regardless of what I expected when I left my house. Even if it’s just a few words of hello, how is your family, what is the news of many days, people always seem to be happy and radiant and full of energy and genuinely sincere in their concern for you and your happiness. And that feeling is contagious.
2. Don’t take things personally. I don’t know how many times I’ve been asked for money, asked to marry someone, asked how I can possibly cook or clean or ride a bike or walk two kilometers, called mzungu on the street and followed and bothered in the cities, but absolutely none of it has anything to do with me as Danielle: it has everything to do with me as a foreigner, as my status as an outsider, and especially as someone who people here perceive to be rich and full of wealth and things to give to everyone. And honestly, people can’t be blamed for it, especially with the absurd amount of money your average tourist spends and the constant handouts given by volunteers and NGOs. Taking these sort of things personally causes only frustration and bitterness — take a minute to look at things from their perspective.
3. Say yes! This is Peace Corps, damnit! An opportunity to experience things you’ll never again have the chance to do, a door which you can step into and enter in a completely different world, emerge a new and refreshed person. Take every opportunity to go out and explore, no matter how much you really want to finish that book your aunt sent you or how you’ve really been jonesin’ to cook some pumpkin bread. Say yes to every offer, every chance to visit a friend in the village, to take a hike through the woods, to meander with a friend to the next village over. You’ll never regret it.
4. Smile. So simple, yet so helpful. Being grumpy never helped anyone. Showing your frustration or anger that your math classes have been suddenly canceled for the third day in a row only makes people keep their distance from you and hurts the personal relationships that you’ve strived to build with people in your community. Just grin and bear it, and realize the things that frustrate you at school and in the community are things that more than likely you cannot change.

And finally, my favorite, number five: when you’re thinking of ET-ing, when you’re just about ready to call up Peace Corps and have them book you a ticket for home so you can have a hot cappuccino and a burrito and a ham & cheese sandwich and a chocolate chip ice cream cone and a car to drive and a couch to lounge on and a remote control to watch stupid TV shows on a giant LCD screen television and constant fast internet access all in less than 72 hours, just close your windows, stir up some cookie dough, bake some soft pretzels and turn on Border Crossings on VOA and dance in the dark, stark naked.