4. All things food

Several members of our team were very worried about the food that we would get to eat during our stay in Tanzania.One of the teen boys on the team said he was getting himself ready to be hungry all the time during the trip!  I usually eat pretty much anything (which is why I am always having to go on a diet!) but even I wondered if I would like food that is likely to be so different to what I am used to.

We all agreed very soon into our time in Ibumu that all those fears were unfounded. The food was delicious!

We had a good selection of food - not at all repetitive. I cannot remember all the meals but the food that I really liked and remember are: 

• Uji - a runny porridge made from maize meal. In my native South Africa, we have a similar product in 'slap mieliepap' but this topped it all in taste. I don't know how it was made, but I know that there was milk powder and sugar in it. It was good to eat just as it is and I started every day with a big bowl of uji.
• Bread and tomato soup/sauce or jam and honey- It is a skill to make bread. I don't often try this in my well equipped kitchen at home. How our cooks managed to bake bread (both the quality and the quantity of it was superior), given their limited facilities, is beyond me! We had the bread with a thick tomato soup, which was more sauce than soup, but boy, was it tasty!
  
  We begged and Miriam and the cooks relented and made bread a second time, which we had with some of the beautiful home- or is that nun-made jams and local honey, the taste of which I won't ever find in a Tesco in the UK. Which of the jams is my favourite? Was it the mango jam (a first for me), the plum jam or the peach? Or the tropical fruit jam? They were really yummy, made by the nuns in the Iringa monastery, I think.

It almost disappeared before I could take a photograph of 'the bread'!

• Tanzanian cabbage - I loved the cabbage! It was a type of stir fry made with cabbage, carrots and tomatoes (amongst other). It was served with rice and made a tasty, filling meal. Even the staunch meat lovers amongst us agreed that the cabbage was delicious.
• Pasta - Carrots were smuggled into most meals, including the pasta. I am sure that I'll never get pasta and carrot to taste the same. The pasta was served with some sort of stew (once beef stew and once chicken stew, if I remember correctly).
• Beans and rice - again another meal that I am sure I cannot replicate in the UK. The beans are like a homemade baked beans in sauce. The beans are dried beans to start off with, but end up as a bean stew.
• Pilau rice - not as we know it at home, but a spicy, fragrant rice that is served at parties. We only had that once, at our farewell party.
• Fresh fruit - banana, mango, pineapple, pawpaw. Fresh and ripe. Tree-ripened, most likely. And TASTY! We had fruit with every meal - a perfect end to the meal.

I wish that I made notes on what we have eaten. Or had taken photos of the meals so I could show what the food looked like. At the time, I was more concerned with eating it! I even had to cut back on taking seconds as I was picking up weight, rather than losing it. There were seconds at just about every meal and nobody went hungry - not even the teen boys with hollow legs!

Kitchen

The kitchen was pretty much off-limits to me. We weren't banned from entering, but I did feel that I had no business being in there, other than to fill up the water barrel or bring left over food containers into the kitchen. The wooden structure that was the kitchen, acted for as much as I could figure, as a storage space. The real cooking took place outside.

The kitchen

One of the projects that Emmanuel International is working with in Tanzania, is Fuel Efficient Stoves. You can read more about this on the EIUK website and I promise to do a blog post on fuel efficient stoves as the Ibumu Stoves Group demonstrated to us their skills in making those, an experience in its own right! The cooks used similar stoves to cook all our food (including the amazing bread!).

Fuel efficient stoves in use

The food was lovely, tasty and I could not fault it at all. I am amazed at the ability of the cooks to conjure up food to feed all of us, nearly 20! I battle to do that at home... And to do this with the limited facilities available to them...!

Kudos to our Cooks

Our cooks are incredible ladies. Yes, I have mentioned their ability to miraculously produce the wonderful food we've had. But they are so much more. Lydia, Edna, Tula and Tabitha worked from very early in the morning through to late at night, always with a smile and a warm greeting!

Tabitha, Edna and Lydia

Tabitha

Lydia, Edna and Tula talking to Jesca

I am very aware that I use 'amazing', 'wonderful' and 'really' a lot in this blog post, and rightly so. These ladies deserved all the accolades coming their way.

In the mornings, while we were all still lying in bed, I could hear one or more of the ladies getting up, opening the door and getting into the kitchen to start with breakfast. Next we'd hear the sound of the floor being swept. It was supposed to be one of our chores, but the cooks did this every morning! They also cleaned and disinfected the toilets every morning, another of our chores. We took turns to do this (again) in the afternoons.

They prepared 3 meals a day, at least 2 courses for every meal. They did all the prepping, which included helping a couple of chickens out of this life into a pot! They cleaned all the pots and cooking equipment. We as a team had a washing chore each day, but it was only for our own cutlery. By the time their duties were done, it was already dark!

And yet, all four ladies were always laughing, ready to jump up if you came out with a pot or such to give to them, often filled up the water barrels during the day to save us doing a 'water run' and willing to teach us a bit of kiHehe. I am afraid that my attempts at greeting them with "Weuli" (the appropriate greeting when you see someone for the second time in the day) were not very successful and often met with a few giggles. I just could not get my pronunciation to follow the correct musical intonation!

Each lady has their own story and their own complications for their duties...

Lydia, our main cook, is also the lady who helps the Sharpes at their home in Iringa. Her littlest daughter, Happy, came with on the trip. During the time we were in Ibumu, Lydia got really sick and was coughing terribly. There were no doctors to see, no pharmacy to go and buy medicine. There is a dispensary in Ibumu, though. Lydia cooked a mix of ginger, garlic, lemon and honey and made her own medicine, which had soon seen her right. She didn't miss one duty!

Happy, washing her school uniform by hand

Edna is the pastor's wife. She was at the village hall early every morning, preparing breakfast for us. From there, she went to the Preschool, which she runs in the church. Then back to the village hall for the other two meals. She is the mother of 3 children, the youngest only 5 years old. I am not even aware of the other things she did, as pastor's wife, during the same time.

Tula and Tabitha are young girls, not much different in age to our team's teens. They were cooking, cleaning. laughing and always busy! They are lovely ladies and we really warmed to each other. They always welcomed me back from the building site, preschool or holiday club; always ready with a 'weuli' and a warm smile!

The other cooks

I can't not mention the 'other cooks'! On the second Sunday, the cooks got a well-deserved lie in. They were given breakfast off and two team members volunteered to do the cooking. Thanks so much to Tom and Iwan, for our eggy bread!

Food for thought

As a Christian, I have often heard about having a 'servant's heart'. I thought I had a servant's heart, but let me tell you, after seeing our cooks, their work load and their attitude, I am seriously doubting that I have even the slightest grasp on what it means... I have a lot of room for improvement here.

More food for thought

I was just thinking about this again... I know that I have been plugging the Tanzanian recipe book ad infinitum when we were raising funds for our trip... but I have a couple of recipe books left and thought that perhaps, if I could sell what I have left, we could use this money to support the people of and the church in Ibumu.

I am flogging recipe books again!

Madam Pastor (our cook Edna) runs the preschool in the church (a future blog to follow on this!) and she has very little available to her in terms of teaching aids. The church has also started building a preschool building next to the church. The children are being taught in the church at the moment, not an entirely appropriate situation. All funds that we can raise could be forwarded to the church in Ibumu, to use as they find appropriate.

The recipe book contains recipes for the food we ate and loved in Tanzania: the bean stew (served with rice), pilau rice and the Tanzanian cabbage, amongst others.

So, if you don't have a recipe book yet, please contact me to find out how you can get hold of one. They used to be £10 each, but I shall be happy to accept any donation you are willing to make (and covering the cost of getting it to you, of course). Please!