The Christmas Kuku

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“Noooooo!!!” The water keeps pouring through the door stop. One kanga, two kangas, a dirty T-shirt, THREE KANGAS! These thin pieces of fabric are my bath towels, and laundry is nearly impossible with the nonexistent sunshine these days. I fold up my floor mat, and water seeps out from underneath. I’ll just have to wait until the rain stops. So, I go to the furthest corner of the room, away from the leaking doors and windows, and I snuggle up under a blanket, cold and reminiscing on the fact that two weeks ago, my love and I were snuggled up in the same spot to hide from the rain and eat Christmas cookies together. The most grateful form of homesickness, but sometimes the most painful.



It’s rainy season now. I’m typically soaked and somewhat chilly from the constant wetness, but my garden is blossoming like a jungle and my little water catchment system means I haven’t had to carry water for weeks. Pros and cons, people. Pros and cons.



This week, we’ll continue training women at the clinic on how to properly plant sweet potato vines and sprout roots. This lesson is the first of four that the project participants will be expected to have learned. Basic planting, nutrition and cooking, harvesting, and agribusiness lessons for producing flour will follow. The only real way to get a following is to go to them. At baby-weigh days, I’m guaranteed a captive audience of mothers, and they don’t lose any extra time on the farm. Just two days ago, my counterpart and I took a group to visit and check off those who have already planted. Honestly, I was in a terrible mood until I got to see how excited these 16 individuals were to show me their gardens. The oldest nurse at the clinic was one early recipient of vines to plant and likes to give me a hard time. When we visited her, she was working on her farm.

“You want to see the sweet potatoes?” She asked. “Well...I didn’t plant them…”

My face drops in annoyance and confusion. Does she know how hard these vines are to retrieve?! We specifically chose 16 people from the whole village to start this project and she just let them die?!



A smile creeps across her face.. “Come on, they’re in the garden. HA!”



She knows how to push my buttons.



I also had a breakthrough with the duck project, which I’m not terribly excited about. After reading my blogs, you all know how I feel about roosters. Maybe I haven’t mentioned that I can often be seen chasing chickens through my garden in my pajamas, machete in hand, and chucking them like a baseball out my courtyard door. Guess who just ordered sixty chickens for a substitute village project? This girl. Fortunately, I’ll only be raising five of them. Six of my most committed villagers will receive the others after demonstrating their knowledge on sustainable coop and nest creation, as well as chicken vaccinations and nutrition. I reallllly didn’t want to do a chicken project because villagers tend to just sell the eggs and don’t consume them within the family. To maintain the goal of the duck project (increasing family protein consumption), we’ve mandated that no eggs or chickens are to be sold until the flock has doubled in size. So, I’ll have to save my duck-raising dreams until I return to the States. The amount of eggs these few villagers will produce is a drop in the bucket of Tanzanian malnutrition, but at least it’s a drop.



I’m so looking forward to Mom visiting next week! I can’t imagine having to get through two years without some mama-TLC. I know it will help me recover from the blues of missing Loren after our amazing Christmas here in the ville. I’ll catch you up on that too!



Loren landed on a Sunday in Dar es Salaam, and we indulged in a fancy hostel and delicious Ethiopian food at Rohobot before heading to Zanzibar the next morning! We took the ferry and stayed in Stonetown, the historical centre, for 2 nights before heading to Paje Beach, known for its phenomenal kite surfing.



Stonetown was super cool! We ate our way through the town, drinking Arabic coffee from brass carafes at Stonetown Cafe, eating fresh lobster and octopus skewers at the night-market where fishermen sell their daily catch, drinking sangria from beautiful clay pitchers at The Taperia, and watching the sunset from the rooftop of Emerson Spice, where we enjoyed a five-course meal and a free round of drinks because…wait for it.. I’m a Tanzanian Resident! Mmmm.. that hibiscus champagne went so well with sunset. Our hotel was build in the 1800’s and is still run by the same Arab Family. It’s old wooden features and Arabic-Style bedding was so characteristic of Zanzibar, and their breakfast veranda was such a treat. One of our favorite spots was a hidden coffee shop called Puzzle, where they brew coffee eight different ways according to your taste and are famous for their baked goods. The highlight for me? A “mug-cake” with a hot brownie, ice cream, fudge, whipped cream, and piroulene wafers. I was in HEAVEN.



Arriving in Paje Beach was a completely different vibe. We walked through sand to reach our bed-and-breakfast and then relaxed at a café called Mr. Kahawa where we actually drank lattes and ate cake ON the beach. They set up hammocks, cushions, and small tables right there in the sand each morning. It was full of Europeans and the tribal salesmen (Massai Tribe) who approached us with their handmade goods were shocked that I could speak Swahili. Eventually, I had to stop speaking Swahili because it was attracting too many locals who wanted to meet the Mzungu who could speak their language. We took a tiny boat to go snorkeling on the reefs, and held hands while we watched the fish under water. We got caught in a storm under a bamboo-bar with a hoard of internationals and enjoyed cocktails until the rain didn’t matter anymore. We found hermit crabs, did yoga on the beach, and woke up laughing at 2am every night because we were both deliriously hot from the lack of AC.



By the last night in Zanzibar, we decided we didn’t want to leave, and so we went back to Stonetown and stayed an extra night to soak it all in one more time. We booked a double bed at a youth hostel called Lost and Found and met a few more interesting internationals, one of which had lost all his baggage to Egyptian Air. Loren was kind enough to gift the poor guy a clean t-shirt. Finally, we waited in a hellacious line to retrieve tickets for the ferry back to Dar es Salaam, and that night enjoyed Korean food before turning in to catch an early flight back to the Southern Highlands.



Christmas in my village was SO SPECIAl. It was simple, nothing extravagant, and our little gift exchange paired perfectly with strawberry French toast (berries from the garden), and homemade cinnamon buns that afternoon. For Christmas Eve, I made Indian Food, though we ate most of it for lunch on Christmas, we were so tired from traveling. Christmas dinner we ate with my counterpart and his family, who had cooked rice and chicken as a special occasion meal. Sharing Christmas with Tanzanians is a memory we’ll never forget. We even wore matching Tanzanian outfits I had ordered from a tailor in my village! My counterpart’s daughters learned how to make S’mores over charcoals, and even the adults were in awe. Loren fixed up my brick oven and we baked endless batches of Christmas cookies; raspberry thumbprints, molasses ginger-snaps, and chocolate chip with REAL Tollhouse chips! I had intended to share the cookies with my neighbors, but being cooped up in the house for 3 days from incessant rain meant the perfect opportunity to eat six-dozen cookies and cook pizzas, so we did...



The other food adventure we experienced involved the infamous Mr. Cluck Cluck, a chicken we had purchased in town on the way home and intended to cook for Christmas dinner. Thinking he was feeble and deprived of freedom, we cut his ties and let him meander through the courtyard with his last meal. That darn rooster pretended he could barely get around, and then, VOILA. He was gone. Our Christmas Dinner flew away. We encircled my house trying to find him and explaining to the neighbors how we lost our chicken (called a KuKu in Swahili). They got a kick out of it, but assured us that the Christmas Kuku would be back, which we didn’t believe. Low and behold, the next day, Dr. Cluck Cluck was back for more food. So… we cooked him. And boy, that trickster was delicious.



After a full week in the village, and Loren’s big debut giving away four soccer balls to the children who had participated in the Community Theater HIV training, it was time to head back to Mbeya. For New Years Eve, we hiked Ngozi Crater, a beautiful crater lake with mythological mystic powers. We ate cheese burgers in bed that night and passed out in our bed-and-breakfast at 10pm. Happy New Year!



Our plane back to Dar was cancelled, but we had a small bottle of whiskey on hand and watched movies at the Mbeya airport while properly celebrating the holiday. After all, we’d missed out the night before. Since I had made Loren haul 7 bottles of wine to my village, our luggage on the way back was far lighter. ?



Back in dar, we enjoyed sushi happy hour at Capetown Fish market, where Loren had the privilege of meeting a few of my wild Peace Corps friends. Post-happy hour, we enjoyed tandoori chicken on the street and checked out one last bar, Semaki Semaki, themed like a jungle cave. As it turns out, we had a few airport mishaps, and I got Loren for one last night and one more round of Ethiopian food at Rohobot the following day.



By now, you understand why I immediately started an Isagenix cleanse when I returned back to site! We truly enjoyed, indulged, and treated ourselves, but it’s been a couple solid weeks now of trying to get my fitness and nutrition back in line! I’m loving this cleanse, losing the inches I gained from that mug-cake, and feeling amazing doing my workouts again.



The next big village project—writing my grant for the 2,000 apple trees! I’m hoping to have that written by the end of February when I close my “ducken” grant so I can get the ball rolling before the end of the year.





WOW, end of the year. That means… end of 2018. Which means, start of 2019. Which means, when I close my service! Holy cow, it’s gone fast. I miss America more than ever. Little things like carpeted floors, rooms with ceilings, shorts, and clean feet become journal entries when I’m deep in thought about home. Homesickness creeps in, and I still cry fairly often, but overall, I’m doin’ just fine.







Thanks for readin’ bout my Christmas adventures, Y’all!







Sending love from Tanzania,



Kate

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