Kenya Dig It? ~ NIMESHIBA!
Nov. 30th, 2007 02:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bloodyrosemccoyRight, where was I before the goat slaughtering interrupted the flow?
Oh, right. The chicken slaughtering.
Kaloleni was the beginning of our intensive Swahili lessons, which was the one thing I completely won at on this trip.* But even so, I had a question at the beginning of the first day of class ... the same question we all had.
How the HELL do you say you don't want any more food?
Anyone who said we'd lose weight in Kenya was seriously underestimating the power of ugali, as well as the Kenyan mindset toward what I call hobbit hospitality. The first night I stayed with my host family, I was given a giant pile of wali wa nazi (rice cooked in coconut milk) and cabbage and urged to eat. It was pretty good, and I managed to get through two thirds or so before I began to flag. But I knew it was impolite to leave food unfinished--it's wasteful--so I kept going. Plowing through that last bit was tough, because your stomach just DOESN'T WANT ANY MORE, and it sits there heavily. I had to go slowly and stop a lot. But finally, with a gasp of relief, I made it to the end of the bowl.
"I'll add you some!" my host mother said brightly. She whisked the bowl away and returned ... with the same amount as before.
I almost died.
It turns out I wasn't the only one. Almost every student returned the next day demanding to be told how to possibly stave of MOAR FOOD. Precisely what the food was didn't matter. It was simply that we had gotten way too much. So even for things we liked, we had to know how to say "Nimeshiba"--"I'm full!" pretty fast.
Kaloleni was also the beginning of my elaborate, highly detailed food fantasies. Cheese, for example. I began missing cheese,** and most other dairy products, like nothing else. Cinnamon rolls floated past my consciousness, followed by stir fry, Mexican and Tex-mex of all varieties, pizza, and Pita Pit.
Now, I actually quite liked wali wa nazi. I also rather enjoy chapati (flat tortilla-like bread) and beans. Biriani and pilau--rice dishes--were pretty good. Sweet noodles are delicious. And I don't even object to ugali, which is cornmeal.
But sometimes you get something that's sort of scary.
For starters, Kenya is all about the cooking fat. Cooking oil is bought in huge drums, and commercials abound for fry fat. And there is no butter; there is something called Blue Band, which bills itself as "spread." This is all the container has to say on the subject of contents that do not go bad, or even melt, at room temperature. It's creepy. But that's just the background.
The minnows were the most harrowing to describe, but they weren't really so bad. This dish consisted of ... well, of minnows. Dried, then oiled, then served. They're bearable if you swallow them like pills, although the fact that they still had eyes was a little creepy.
Much more horrible to actually eat would be goat liver. Now I completely understand that little story arc in Digger. It's like eating some sort of sponge that's been allowed to soak up all the poison passing through the animal JUST FOR YOU TO CHEW UPON.
I have always maintained that yogurt is milk that has gone bad. Here, they proved it. I atually did a spit take once.
I won't go near the soups made of intestines.
But I would say that the most awful thing I've had to choke down is mahamri.
"What?" you say, when I have explained that mahamri is a harmless dryish fried donut, possibly seasoned with cardamom. "You have had to choke down sour milk, whole fish, and parts of a goat you feel are better left unidentified. What the hell is so bad about DONUTS?"
And the answer is: I have no idea. My friends all adored it, there was nothing WRONG with it. All I know is that I dreaded every morning's breakfast of two mahamri and a cup of tea. I could not force myself to bite into the dry stuff, and when I did it took great effort to swallow. I started playing tricks, saying I'd eat it "on the way to school" and then giving it away, hiding it to throw out later, doing anything I could to avoid this stuff. I preferred bread with Blue Band. And THAT'S saying something, because at any other time, if I were offered the stuff my response would be a serious "Nimeshiba! Nimeshiba!"
So when I get home, please don't get me a donut. Instead, go for that holy grail of food fantasies, the one that all the students can agree on: a bagel. I won't even say "nimeshiba" to that.
*Five years of studying it beforehand makes you ready to brag about it.
**If you want to traumatize yourself, try describing cheese to someone who doesn't know what it is, like my host family. "So you take milk, and then you let it go bad. Then, if you want it to be really fancy, let it grow mold!" They have the sensible opinion that this is crazy. But they still eat yogurt.
Oh, right. The chicken slaughtering.
Kaloleni was the beginning of our intensive Swahili lessons, which was the one thing I completely won at on this trip.* But even so, I had a question at the beginning of the first day of class ... the same question we all had.
How the HELL do you say you don't want any more food?
Anyone who said we'd lose weight in Kenya was seriously underestimating the power of ugali, as well as the Kenyan mindset toward what I call hobbit hospitality. The first night I stayed with my host family, I was given a giant pile of wali wa nazi (rice cooked in coconut milk) and cabbage and urged to eat. It was pretty good, and I managed to get through two thirds or so before I began to flag. But I knew it was impolite to leave food unfinished--it's wasteful--so I kept going. Plowing through that last bit was tough, because your stomach just DOESN'T WANT ANY MORE, and it sits there heavily. I had to go slowly and stop a lot. But finally, with a gasp of relief, I made it to the end of the bowl.
"I'll add you some!" my host mother said brightly. She whisked the bowl away and returned ... with the same amount as before.
I almost died.
It turns out I wasn't the only one. Almost every student returned the next day demanding to be told how to possibly stave of MOAR FOOD. Precisely what the food was didn't matter. It was simply that we had gotten way too much. So even for things we liked, we had to know how to say "Nimeshiba"--"I'm full!" pretty fast.
Kaloleni was also the beginning of my elaborate, highly detailed food fantasies. Cheese, for example. I began missing cheese,** and most other dairy products, like nothing else. Cinnamon rolls floated past my consciousness, followed by stir fry, Mexican and Tex-mex of all varieties, pizza, and Pita Pit.
Now, I actually quite liked wali wa nazi. I also rather enjoy chapati (flat tortilla-like bread) and beans. Biriani and pilau--rice dishes--were pretty good. Sweet noodles are delicious. And I don't even object to ugali, which is cornmeal.
But sometimes you get something that's sort of scary.
For starters, Kenya is all about the cooking fat. Cooking oil is bought in huge drums, and commercials abound for fry fat. And there is no butter; there is something called Blue Band, which bills itself as "spread." This is all the container has to say on the subject of contents that do not go bad, or even melt, at room temperature. It's creepy. But that's just the background.
The minnows were the most harrowing to describe, but they weren't really so bad. This dish consisted of ... well, of minnows. Dried, then oiled, then served. They're bearable if you swallow them like pills, although the fact that they still had eyes was a little creepy.
Much more horrible to actually eat would be goat liver. Now I completely understand that little story arc in Digger. It's like eating some sort of sponge that's been allowed to soak up all the poison passing through the animal JUST FOR YOU TO CHEW UPON.
I have always maintained that yogurt is milk that has gone bad. Here, they proved it. I atually did a spit take once.
I won't go near the soups made of intestines.
But I would say that the most awful thing I've had to choke down is mahamri.
"What?" you say, when I have explained that mahamri is a harmless dryish fried donut, possibly seasoned with cardamom. "You have had to choke down sour milk, whole fish, and parts of a goat you feel are better left unidentified. What the hell is so bad about DONUTS?"
And the answer is: I have no idea. My friends all adored it, there was nothing WRONG with it. All I know is that I dreaded every morning's breakfast of two mahamri and a cup of tea. I could not force myself to bite into the dry stuff, and when I did it took great effort to swallow. I started playing tricks, saying I'd eat it "on the way to school" and then giving it away, hiding it to throw out later, doing anything I could to avoid this stuff. I preferred bread with Blue Band. And THAT'S saying something, because at any other time, if I were offered the stuff my response would be a serious "Nimeshiba! Nimeshiba!"
So when I get home, please don't get me a donut. Instead, go for that holy grail of food fantasies, the one that all the students can agree on: a bagel. I won't even say "nimeshiba" to that.
*Five years of studying it beforehand makes you ready to brag about it.
**If you want to traumatize yourself, try describing cheese to someone who doesn't know what it is, like my host family. "So you take milk, and then you let it go bad. Then, if you want it to be really fancy, let it grow mold!" They have the sensible opinion that this is crazy. But they still eat yogurt.
