Hujambo!

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!

It’s easy, it’s healthy, and it’s delicious with a cup of tea or coffee. Another bonus is that you can eat it for breakfast, lunch, or dinner (or in the dark). I dabbled a bit with roasting my own peanuts, but buying peanut butter is definitely much easier. Furthermore, one of my well-organized friends has influenced me to buy plenty of extras for my pantry, so I always have some in stock. I’m not sure why I had to re-learn that skill, but it has paid off big time.

I don’t really like sweets very much and, unless I’m out and about pretending to be fancy, I don’t usually eat dessert after dinner. Having said that, I love the sweetness that toasted brown bread, peanut butter, and honey has. That brings me to my point: toast and peanut butter, washed down with a cup of coffee, is the perfect way to end an evening after eating a few grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner.

Good night.

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.

I’ve been in Addis Ababa since this morning. The taxi picked me up at my house at 5:30 and I was in the ILRI Addis office by 10. Not bad! I’ll be in Ethiopia for another ten days or so, mainly doing some capacity building of the ILRI Addis web development team on the Linux platform (they currently use Windows as a server platform but want to move some applications to Linux servers). I was in Ethiopia last year, but I didn’t take a bus this time so I am already off to a better start.

I’ve got a great room in the hostel here at the ILRI campus. The campus is much more beautiful than I’m used to (hard to believe if you’ve seen the Nairobi campus). For example, today I was sitting in my office just before dusk and I saw a dik-dik grazing in the grass just outside my window. The working environment here is much different too. After lunch we all went for coffee in the campus bar, then took a walk around the compound. I thought my counterparts just wanted to take a stroll, but looked behind me and saw another twenty people just walking and chatting. It felt like a walk to cure cancer or something, very leisurely and social. We don’t do that at ILRI Nairobi…
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Since I moved into my new house last week I’ve been exploring cooking again. It’s been a few months since I cooked last, instead I’ve been opting to eat out or make simple things like toast with peanut butter. It was fine with me because I eat something healthy like yogurt with granola before work, then a good, hearty meal at ILRI’s cafeteria every day; meals at home were more of a casual “tide myself over until lunch tomorrow” thing. All other reasons aside, I guess it really boils down to not feeling “at home” in my old apartment. The stove was only 1/4 functional, the pots and pans were funny, the sink was dinky, and there were always people coming and going.
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