We miss Tesco

We’ve been on our school holidays for the past two weeks so time has been filled with the normal things of life - the everyday tasks that sometimes seem quite bizarre in the context of our previous life. In the absence of any other excitement, we decided to share some of our weekly challenges and joys.

We miss Tesco. Daily food shopping includes a walk to our local bread lady where we proudly ask for ‘mkate’ and ‘mayai’ if the local chickens have been in a laying mood. It’s then onto the moving fruit cart and the canny banana lady whose prices seem to be indirectly proportional to the size of our smiles and length of time spent greeting her and her friends. Finally, a visit to the vegetable market which consists primarily of avoiding the piles of dried fish and trying to work out what a ripe aubergine is supposed to look like. 

Tanzanian fruit and vegetables are local, season fresh and much tastier than the chemically treated, frozen-for-long-journey varieties we are used to. It’s currently mango season which is an incredibly delicious time of year. Not all our fruit has to be bought, we are fortunate enough to have quite a few fruit trees in our garden and have even resorted to climbing to get at the best lemons, limes and papaya.

When in the market, we usually have a tentative look at the meat section...always disconcerting when the meat section engages you in staring contest before returning to peck and scratch. Our lack of killer instinct has meant that our home diet has been entirely vegetarian, only eating meat when it has been slaughtered and cooked by someone else. Having struggled to decide whether to pick a spritely, optimistic, king-of-the-coup chicken or do the humane thing and pick the dejected one in the corner that looks as though it would appreciate being put out of its misery, we have persuaded friends to buy, keep and kill chickens for our Christmas dinner.

Home dinners mostly consist of rice and vegetables. In the absence of Uncle Bens quick boil rice in our local ‘duka’, it has taken us quite a bit of practice to master the art of rice cooking. After many stodgy, sticky, lumpy attempts we discovered that the rice must be washed, soaked for 30 minutes, sautéed in oil and boiled in salty water. The learning process did provide us with our own recipe for ‘creamed rice’ – our many failed attempts becoming a white congealed mass which turns out to be tasty with sugar and banana. 

There’s no municipal waste disposal facility so every couple of weeks we gather together as many dry leaves as possible and carefully pile our plastic bags of rubbish on top. While admittedly bad for the environment, burning does seem quite effective – although we do now have a small charred pile of glass bottles and tins in our front garden. 

We’re delighted our families are visiting for Christmas; a countdown of days has been going for some time! We’ve been stocking up on all the visitor essentials – charcoal, insect repellent and beds. The bug spray and charcoal are easy enough to get, although we are learning to always check a charcoal bag for sneaky rocks, bits of damp wood and other ‘filler’. The previous tenant of our house took one of the beds with him so we’re going to have to buy or hire some for Christmas. 9 days and no beds – we really are adjusting to Africa time well.