Food

Life has become much more simple here, there is work, there is heat (lots & lots of heat) and there is food.

After a long day we went to the market and I bought some meat. There was not much left (or more accurately no beef left) so I had to get goat. Not sure that I’ve ever eaten goat, but red meat is red meat and at 1000 feet altitude, every little healthy red blood cell counts. So we pushed through the heavy smell of farm animals looking to find the seller with the least wildlife on his hanging meat – no cold shelves here and certainly no shortage of flies.

So – how to cook? I cut the meat up into little pieces, to ensure it cooked properly, and threw together some vegetables  and coconut milk to make a Thai curry. Not bad. I suspect the key to eating goat is to make the pieces miniscule so that even if they are a bit chewy, you can still swallow them if you get bored. [Reminds me of a friend’s description of eating raw squid – you pop it in, chew for a while, take it out to look at it, note that it is still there in its entirety, pop it back in and continue chewing]

We had a shared meal last night and – guess what? – it was goat again. This time goat stew. Rather nice actually. I don’t miss chocolate much but I do miss sweet things and suspect I need to work out how to cook something like flapjack on a two ring gas burner....

Work continues to be challenging, with countless homeopaths squished into a different small, airless room each day, whilst we struggle to learn how to take cases. Six homeopaths plus six laptops generate one heck of a lot of additional heat and I am amazed that the patients say anything, faced with a barrage of Muzungi (white) faces poised behind open computers. But they do and we are grateful for the opportunity to learn.

Talking of learning, we had our first Swahili lesson last night, learning key phrases like hello, goodbye and where is the toilet? Make that where is the womens’ toilet? as Cynthia has already inadvertently entertained a group of young men by trying to get in the gents’.

So life is good and still challenging - but then that's partly what being here is all about.

P.S. I cannot get into facebook from here, so please pass this on to anyone you think may be interested.