Abduls, Mango Juice, and Matatus

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Jambo! This was another fun week of forest, monkeys and good company. Abduls refers to the local restaurant that we eat at almost every Wednesday. This week went somewhere different, but I want to tell you about the amazing food that Abduls gives us. We have to order several hours ahead, because normally there are over 10 of us going. Once we arrive we get a glass of nice, cold tamarind juice, followed by a chapatti. For those who don’t know what that is, it’s fried flat bread. Then its coconut rice, coconut sauce, scuma, which is a spinach mixture that’s fried and very good, fried cabbage, beans, and a whole fried fish per person. I come away nice and full every time. There are also several cats that live in that area and whenever we eat they hang around our feet, trying to jump on our laps and eat our meal.
Another type of juice that Abduls serves is mango, and I must say that that is my favourite, although it’s almost tied with his passion fruit juice. Monday was a 15km day of walking in the hot sun, and Thursday was several hours of transect cutting that left the whole group very hot. Both times, on the way back to the house, we stopped by at Abduls and had a juice. Monday was passion fruit, and Thursday was mango, and Thursday had crushed ice in it, which was amazing.
Matatus. These are the 15 seat buses that are used for public transportation in Kenya. Myself and another girl used them today (Saturday) because we were going into the town of Diani to run some errands. We arrived at the matatu spot in Shimoni, and waited for 45 minutes before it took off. Now, I say 15 seat buses, because they stuff as many people as physically possible on those things. There are no set stopping points. If you are walking along the road and see one coming you wave at it and it will stop, and if there is breathing room, they will let you on. At our fullest we had 25 people, and that’s with 5 people standing hunched over the seat and 3 people standing out of the open sliding door, which didn’t close properly. It was quite a fun experience, and it was around 2 hours for us to get to Diani, costing about 3$. Once there we discovered that the internet, which we had come especially for, was not working. So we had lunch at a very nice Italian restaurant. Veggie pizza and ice cream. I hadn’t been craving ice cream until Liam told me about the giant bowl of ice cream and fruit that he’d had a few days before, so it was nice to get that craving satisfied. Smartie, coconut, and mango flavours. We picked up some supplies at the Nakumaat, the local supermarket, and headed back. That was a little more interesting then getting there, because our matatu only went to the junction with the Shimoni road, and there was still 15km of road until Shimoni. We walked for around 10 minutes when a truck went by and we hitched a ride with them, which was very nice, because it was still very hot and neither of us felt like walking 15km starting at 4pm.
A very fun week all around. I was very good and didn’t buy any chocolate this time. But I can’t make any promises for the next time I go.

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Comments

[Deirdre Richardson]

food
You must be really enjoying the food, but do they really fry that much? I'll have to look up some of those foods and see if I can make them. In the Okanagan we had sorbettos at the gelateria that sounded much like the juices you are having there. We always tried two or three before choosing which one we liked. I love your blogs. Love, Mum