Chakula Tayari!

The Morogoro volunteers came over to the island this weekend for a visit. It had been pouring rain all week in Stonetown, but we lucked out for the weekend and hot, sunny weather! On Saturday we took them to Paje beach and then Shemsa cooked up a big feast for all the volunteers and the program officer’s that night. In order to cram 15 people into her living room for dinner, we took away the couches and set up a big mat on the floor. This was the similar to our very first dinner in Zanzibar. Because of Eid, Shemsa had a big dinner with her family and friends to celebrate the ending of Ramadan. We all sat together on this big mat and ate our meal on the floor. It was like an indoor picnic!

For dinner, Shemsa made pilau, sugar-cane flavored noodles, fried mashed potatoes, mkate wa fute, and a cabbage, tomato dish. For dessert we had dates, pineapples, candy coated baobab seeds, and chocolate chip, banana cookies which Catherine and I made from scratch! In general, the meals we have in Zanzibar are usually high-carb with lots of rice, noodles, potatoes, cassava, buns, or other bready foods. Not good for digestion! Then she usually makes a vegetarian side-dish as a few of the girls are vegetarian. I am a carnivore, so the only meat I get is at restaurants and street vendors. She also really loves to make cassava. It has a similar taste to potatoes and can also be used to make “potato” chips. Cassava chips are excellent! I’m not a fan of when she uses the leaves of cassava. It tastes like flavored grass and has this grainy texture like I’m eating a mouthful of sand. Everything is either flavored with sugarcane, ginger, or cardamom. We had what we call “sugar beans” and “sugar noodles” once. Sugarcane should never be put with beans or noodles. The first time (and the only time) we had these dishes I took a heaping amount because I expected a dish with beans or with noodles to be salty. I had to force the food down because I would have felt bad leaving a heaping mound on my plate. We ate very little of both dishes which Shemsa must have picked up on because they were never made again, that is until the Morogoro volunteers came over for dinner. Personally, sugarcane is great of chewing only!

I absolutely love it when Shemsa makes mkate wa fute. It looks like flat bread but puffier. This type of bread is made with coconut, flour, and sesame seeds. You can buy them at any street vendor, but the home-made stuff is the best! I also really like chapatti. It’s a nice little snack on the go. There’s only one street vendor where I always buy my chapatti from because they serve them hot and it has just the right amount of flakiness around the edges and softness inside. Delish!

Among many other things in Zanzibar that I will miss, I will definitely miss the convenience of stopping at the street vendors for food which can be found at every street corner or along a strip of duka’s. They all serve the same things: chapatti, chips (a.k.a. fries), samosas, shredded cabbage salad, sandwiches, things that look like sugared donuts, and meat kabobs. As long as you try to ignore the fact that there may be a few flies flying around in the glass case that holds the food, the food is pretty tasty.