Late Christmas, Rain Showers, and Ugali Pizza?

Short clips from life in Tanzania...

the first picture here is of course the Late Christmas...Carolina loved her little horses from McDonalds! thank you Ceili!

almost one month ago it was the feast of St. Placid. Since the guest house in Dar Es Salaam is named after this saint, there was a party that night! here are some shots from the festivities. i have a good video of the Cake song if you ever want to see it, too. As Clare was at the guest house for a visit that afternoon, she was of course invited to the party as well. It was a good first chance to meet the monks!

We traveled back to Hanga on January 18 and there was a bonfire that night to celebrate our return! We got to burn the old Christmas wreaths too. that was fun. Oh, and here we are roasting bread on sticks...STICKBREAD!


these are from out trip to Songea the next weekend. Here we are sitting at the Songea bakery (PCV Mateo from Peramiho joined us unexpectedly as he was just passing through)

Clare and I went with one of the monks to visit a place in Songea where this woman makes her own wine. We got a couple bottles of banana wine, some rosella, some rose, and of course some grape. It was pretty neat to see the process.

Sometime in the following week we decided that we wanted to have another bonfire with STICKBREAD! so we went to the kitchen to see what we could make from scratch...

Everyone watches as Charlie measures out the curiously grainy flour...

"this is kind of coarse isn't it?"
"i think it will be okay...just not as fine as we are used to..."
"wait, isn't this corn flour?"
"does that really matter? i think we might have made it with this same stuff last time..."

And then the collective reaction of embarrassed laughter as we realize we are not making bread dough...but a large batch of cold UGALI. hmmmm i guess that gluten stuff in wheat flour does something to hold it all together...kind of hard to stick ugali on a stick to roast it...

But of course, we didn't give up there. when life gives you cold ugali dough, you make...UGALI PIZZA!

it was pretty dense, okay it was really dense, but it was at least edible :) and we took some of the rest of the dough, added cocoa and mashed bananas and sugar and spice, and made a pretty good looking/tasting chocolate banana corn cake! i wont say delicious...but it wasn't bad....

Not the kind of pizza Francesca is used to at home, but definitely a good story to tell :) ("those crazy Americans..."

The past month we have been working to hand out the scholarship money raised by the volunteers from Saint John's that were here last year from their Phoenix Rising bike trip across Tanzania. Here is charlie presenting one of the students at the Seminary with his certificate.

And the rain shower...it was pouring one afternoon and i decided to run around and splash in the puddles. The slick tile in front of our hostel becomes a slip'n'slide when it is wet, too! And since the gutter leaks, there is better water pressure standing there under it than in my bathroom shower! Please excuse the 1/2 nudity.
Finally, one week ago the our Bennie volunteer friends came from Imiliwaha to visit Hanga for a few days. On Sunday we learned that some of the new nuns that are helping in the kitchen are learned in the art of roasting coffee! so, Charlie pulled our 15 kilograms of raw beans out of storage and we got to work! first you have to pound them to get the shells off the beans, then there is an art to separating the raw beans from the shell casings (sara was the best at it) and then they just go into the oven! So, for the past week there has been delicious fresh coffee almost every day from my coffee maker. DELICIOUS!

Clare and I will travel to Njombe/Nole tomorrow to visit the chemchemi water bottling plant that is run by the monastery. And from there Clare will head back to Dar and I will be back in Hanga on Thursday. I think there will be another group of German tourists here when i get back too...life is never boring here in Hanga.

check back next time for pictures from the bottling plant!