If you can't stand the heat...

I've spent a lot of time in the kitchen lately. While Bryan was gone I tended to eat only one full meal a day, and spent the rest of the time just munching on cucumbers and raisins. It's just so hot that my appetite evaporates along with every other vestige of moisture in the air and cooking required more time and energy than I seemed to have. Now that Bryan (who has the metabolism of a race-horse) is back and Dan and Laura are here with him, I have gotten better about having food on the table and they have all been so patient with my experiments. Last week a team of six Americans/South Africans passed through town on their way to work on a project in a neighboring village and they camped out on our compound for a few nights. They were an easy crowd to impress and a loaf of banana bread and pot of stew seemed to go a long way. Even so, the sole woman in the group made a passing comment that was funny to me. Sitting with me in the kitchen as I mixed up the dough for some saltine crackers she said, "Wow. You must really love to cook." And while I certainly don't mind cooking I wanted to laugh out loud. Because it's not that I love cooking. It's that I love eating. Here, if you are at all interested in eating, than you better learn to love cooking (or marry someone who is).
We were vegetarians for the first few months here because I was scared to buy meat at the butcher. Now our iron intake has gone back up and a trip to the butcher is more like a weekly adventure. The bloody cement room plunked in the middle of the market has windows on all sides to which you push your way through the crowd to reach. You shout your order to the man in the bloody apron wielding what might be properly described as a scimitar (the order basically being "red meat" or "regular meat" which includes bone fragments, fat veins and various pieces of unidentifiable organs. I generally opt for "red.") and he hacks off his the preferred amount from the half of a cow hanging from a hook on the ceiling. The whole time he is slicing I am praying the flies swarming the room are not carrying any dreaded diseases this week and that the ash from the cigarette dangling from the butcher's lips doesn't hit my intended supper. He throws it on a scale, tosses it in a plastic sack and hands it out with a friendly smile. I've learned that it's good to have exact change. A ten pound note tends to come back through the window with dark pink fingerprints on it. One time my language lesson failed me and before I could catch myself I asked for "green" meat instead of "red" meat. The sad thing is before I could correct myself I only got a vaguely surprised look from the butcher before he turned to go scrounge some up for me.
We have had a lot more vegetables available lately which is really nice. Carrots and cucumbers have become somewhat regular features in the market and papaya has even graced our breakfast table recently. Bell peppers are also around occasionally, though they tend to be spicy, like chilli peppers. Weird huh? Someone told me it is because they are growing in such a dry climate and not enough water makes them spicy. Does anyone know if that is true?
Tomorrow Laura and I are heading to East Africa for a women's conference. And I have to admit, I am looking forward to a few days out of the kitchen. The thought of milkshakes and hamburgers is almost as enticing as the idea of eating something that I didn't cook. But I know, once our trip is over, I will be glad to get back home and back to experimenting in the kitchen. I've found that there is a certain creative outlet that comes with making new things with new ingredients. I feel a new appreciation for my grandmother's generation not to mention the women all around me here who are doing so much more than I am with so much less. I am so grateful for a lifestyle that makes eating responsibly and simply so much easier than it was in the States.
Even so, I have to admit I'm looking forward to a few days of irresponsible eating of complex food. A few days out of both the heat and the kitchen will do me good.

Rooster and Rice

R.I.P

Our good friends next door called me today to tell me that they found our rooster dead in their hen-house this morning. Now that sounds like a case for CSI, doesn't it? Except, we all knew our rooster had recently abandoned his family of ten (now nine actually after an unfortunate incident involving a hawk) and shacked up with the two single hens next door. This may (or may not) have also had something to do with a incident in which I whacked the poor time-impaired bird off of a chair with a flashlight outside my bedroom window at 4:45 in the morning. Or when Bryan pegged him with a rock at 4:30 am on a separate occasion. (Neither of us actually meant to hit him. It was dark and we were only half conscious. What are the chances?) Nonetheless, I went next door after I got the call and sure enough, there he was, dead as a doornail. The weird thing is, we couldn't figure out what killed him. There were no abrasions or contusions, no signs that he has been sick (not that I would know what those were in the first place), and upon a closer postmortem examination, no fang marks, either insect or reptilian. We all stood around and stared at the rooster in silence for a moment, each with the same burning question:"Is it safe to eat him?" We asked around and the general consensus was a shrug of the shoulders followed by a confidence-evoking, "Sure, why not?"
Before I say what you know I am about to say, let me mention that chicken is not sold anywhere here (at least not in the non-feathered, non-pecking, non-crowing at 4:30 am kind of way) and I haven't eaten poultry in two months. I felt my "Lord of the Flies" side kick in as I carried my once sorta-pet by his feet back to my house, handed him to our Askari and told him if he would do the dirty work, I would cook the bird up for the both of us. Which is exactly what happened. I ate my rooster for supper. And he was delicious!
So the moral of the story is, if I come down with claw-in-mouth disease or poultry flu or something equally terrible, you guys will know why. Really my only concern now is that Asad and Nimir, who thought they had died and gone to heaven when I gave them those chicken bones, will put two and two together and start looking and those little chicken babies running around the yard differently...

And on a much happier note, BRYAN COMES HOME TOMORROW!

Only four more days...

I've realized that I don't write as much when I am unhappy. Which I guess is a good thing considering I generally write a lot - blogs, e-mails, journal entries and other random bits of scribbling I keep to myself. And for the past few days, despite ample time to do all of the above I have hardly written a word, to myself or anyone else. My flu-like symptoms deteriorated into gagging-on-my-tonsils throat infection that had me down for three days. And it was on one of those days that I found there was no room on the incoming flight for Bryan, pushing his homecoming back to Tuesday, two full weeks after he first left. Needless to say I was a little bummed.
BUT, the good thing is a round of antibiotics has me back in the land of the living and, even though Bryan wasn't on the flight today, he was able to smuggle on a box of good stuff for me so tonight I dine on peanut butter and Nutella sandwiches! (And no, I'm not being sarcastic. This is a very good thing!)
Though I would never have wished to be here by myself for this long, I have to admit it has been really good for me. I have had lots of Arabic language practice with only my cat and dog to speak English to and it has been fun to learn new things. I have had to do a lot of those weird things that scare me like rounding up water (you've already heard about that one) changing money, paying construction workers (building a store room/garage for us) etc. All of this has left me feeling just a little more confident if I ever have to be here alone again and that can only be good.
I think those who will have to adjust the most when Bryan comes home are Asad and Nimir. I have found that one of the things I am not brave enough to do is sleep in our tent by myself in these horrific wind storms so I pulled my bed into the kitchen and have been sleeping soundly behind cement walls. This means though that Asad is usually cuddled up under my bed and Nimir cuddled up right beside me. I have had to take back all the bad things I have ever said about sleeping with animals. Lately, I haven't minded all that much...