Hujambo!

I’ve been visiting the USA for a few weeks now. Home is San Diego, California, but my twin sister Randi lives in Portland, Oregon. I have a bunch of old friends strewn along the California coast, so it seemed like a good idea to drive up to Oregon instead of flying. California and Oregon are both beautiful states, so the 1,095 mile (1,762 kilometers) drive is quite enjoyable. The weather was great, so we could see Mount Shasta, Mount Hood, and Mount St. Helens very clearly.  It kinda reminded me of all the times I’ve seen mountains in East Africa, but without the annoying tour guides!

I think Portland (and Oregon as a whole) really has their stuff together; recycling is easy and efficient, public transit is pervasive and cheap (sometimes free), bicycle commuting is encouraged and bikers have lanes all over the city. Portland’s motto is, after all, “the city that works” (a google search for that reveals that Chicago is too…).  Social services for the unemployed seem to be pretty good too: I hear it’s pretty easy to get on food stamps, and the state does fairly intuitive things to give people work.  For instance, you’re not allowed to pump your own gas in Oregon.

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My mom’s husband was telling me the other day how, sometimes, he feels like he’s surrounded by idiots. I felt the same way today when, as I was merging onto the freeway, some guy cut in front of me. After he swerved over from the “going straight” lane, he slowed down to yield to an obviously empty on ramp which joined ours. I found myself yelling, “WHY ARE YOU BRAKING?!” out of nowhere. I haven’t driven in two and a half years, but hellooo? So I’m visiting California for a few weeks… welcome to CA!

Last week, when I was still in Kenya, my mom asked what I would want in the fridge when I got home, something I missed; the only thing I could think of was strawberries. Not that we can’t get strawberries in Kenya, I guess they’re just expensive or something, so I never eat them. Anyways, I’ve been eating strawberries and blueberries every morning in my Kashi Heart to Heart cereal with almond milk and I’m officially addicted to breakfast again.

Don’t get me wrong, I love mandazi and chapati, but this tastes good and is actually good FOR you! The almond milk isn’t a must, and could be substituted with soy milk or even the kawaida moo juice. Try it out, you won’t be disappointed!

I was in Tanzania for a few days over the Easter holiday. I always figure, living in Kenya, it’s the closest I can get to being in San Diego and hopping over the border to Mexico to eat a few tacos. It’s only a 5 hour bus ride to the decently-sized town of Arusha, and once you’re there the going is cheap and easy. My favorite part is the street food at night; people set up grills and sell all sorts of great finger foods for just a few shillings. Even better, I’ve never felt unsafe in Arusha.

After a great weekend wandering around Arusha and Moshi (the town just below Mt. Kilimanjaro), I came back to the Kenyan border and waited in line to be interrogated by the customs agents. I have a valid Tanzanian visa, and a valid Kenyan work permit, but for some reason the lady decided to be difficult. When she asked me “Where are you going?” I told her “Westlands,” which was apparently the wrong answer, because she asked me “Where is Westlands?” After a few more rounds of me hearing her incorrectly and giving more “wrong” answers, I finally told her, “Nairobi” and she let me go.

I don’t know if she was trying to catch me in a lie… or maybe she decided that, because Westlands is a suburb of Nairobi, the correct answer should be “Nairobi?” What if I wasn’t going to Nairobi? Would Nairobi still be the correct answer? We will never know…

If you don’t like the sour Ethiopian bread injera, steer clear of Tibs Firfir! It’s number 50 on the menu at the National Cafe in downtown Addis, next to the National Theater and the big lion statue. In Amharic it looks like this: ጥብስ ፍርፍር. Don’t say I didn’t warn you… I made a bit of a mistake ordering dinner tonight with a friend in Addis Ababa. We decided we both liked tibs, an Ethiopian dish with roasted meat and, sometimes, tasty sauteed vegetables. What we didn’t know is that the “firfir” changes the game completely! Your itty bitty pieces of meat come mixed with shredded injera wrapped in a huge, pancake-like… injera!

I’ve eaten tibs a few times now, and every time it comes differently. I’m going to stop saying I like tibs until I speak better Amharic and I can explain that, “I want the one in the bowl with veggies, not wrapped in injera.” My friend and I had a good laugh when the food came, and we never let on that we were expecting anything different. We did our best to eat it, her continually asking for more water, and me asking for more bread. Add it to the list of things I’ll never forget about Ethiopia.

Live and learn… injera is not for me! Oh, and I need to learn Amharic if ILRI is going to be sending me to Ethiopia more often.

Ethiopia is the birthplace of coffee and I can assure you they make a damn good cup of joe in Addis Ababa. The Ethiopians were never colonized, save a few years in the 1930s by the Italians, so the culture of drinking coffee is truly their own. Coffee has been drank ceremoniously in the region for hundreds of years, spreading eventually to the Arabian peninsula, Europe and finally the Americas. Thanks to Starbucks and their “gourmet” blends, many Americans have an association between Ethiopia and coffee, but very few people know that it actually originated here.

You can drink good coffee in Nairobi but, compared to Addis Ababa, you really have to go out of your way to get it. Until very recently there wasn’t really a culture of drinking coffee in Kenya, Kenyans instead preferring to drink tea (a habit brought by the British in the early 1900s). Now there are several European-style coffee shops in Nairobi (Java House and Dorman’s, for example) and it’s becoming more popular to go hang out over a cup of coffee. That being said, Kenyans are very frugal and coffee’s still a bit expensive in Nairobi, so you really have to LOVE coffee to do it often; I always end up offering to pay just so I can get MY fix…
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