Wednesday, June 3—Mwanza day 5: A Taste of Life in Tanzania
Bugs bugs bugs everywhere. As I sit here scratching a bug bite I am reminded of bugs, not that I need much reminding because I cannot escape them here. Before I leave for my internship in the morning, instead of wearing perfume, I lather myself in deep woods bug spray. When I get home I scour my room for cockroaches invading my privacy. I usually find two or three throughout the night, in addition to a fascinating variety of ants, and a plethora of other little bugs. Most of the time, I just try to keep the bugs from crawling in my bed. Luckily Maimuna kindly bought me a mosquitoes net, so that keeps the mosquitoes away from me and hopefully the malaria too! But the ants are really everywhere. I do my best to keep them away but they are always find a way to invade. In the kitchen I refrigerate everything (which is a shame because the fruit and vegetables never taste as good cold) and in my room I don’t eat. The few snacks I brought, I keep wrapped up tightly. This morning I got to my internship and realized that there were ants all over my bag. Thinking I must have set my bag down in something sticky I brushed the ants off and found more. Seemingly thousands of tiny translucent ants with huge pinchers on the front were crawling all over my bag inside the front pocket where I had (I thought) safely stashed away the precious second half of a granola bar. Apparently nothing is safe!
Music music music all the time. The music here never stops. When people call me on the phone they think I am having a party in my apartment because the music is so loud and the sound carries so much. Right now, I don’t even have my ipod on because no matter what it cannot compete with the volume of the music party outside.
Food is Ugali. Today I ate my first meal called Ugali, a traditional Tanzanian meal made of corn. It is baked to look like a huge puff ball and everyone at the table shares it. People use their hands to take a piece, roll it around in your hand and then dip it in a tomatoes-based sauce. It is lots of fun to eat and very filling, but not particularly special in taste. By no means is it a bad taste, it is good, it just isn’t anything gourmet. But, many Tanzanian’s LOVE Ugali. I ate it at a very “local” restaurant that is comprised of a few different food vendors. You go up to the vendor you want to buy food from and then they bring it your table, which are shared by all of the vendors. A nice additive is that you are sitting next to a bunch of guys plucking chickens and then leaving them on a cutting board while the flies have their go at them, until they collect the plucked chickens to cook. Had I seen this beforehand, I wouldn’t have ordered the chicken by Injgerd (Norwegian student who has been here for 4 months) loves the chicken with the Ugali dish and recommended we try it. So I did, and the chicken wasn’t too bad. A lot of bones and not much meat, but pretty tasty. After we eat the chicken we just put the bones directly on the table to be collected later. The chicken dish also included some unique chicken parts not usually eaten in the US. At one point I noticed my friend, Kelly (law student from Canada) gnawing on something that looked rubbery and I commented on her difficulties in eating it. Pamie (my Canadian roommate) then said, “oh yeah that’s a neck.” Kelly dropped the whole chicken neck with a screech. I also found something that resembled liver. I gave it a try, but it was dry and the only way to describe the taste is “funky.” I couldn't finish it and instead treated myself to something sweet on my way back from lunch to work.
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