What is Tanzanian food like?

It's time to write about this. Food.

Food is something you can't reeeally export. I mean, if you want a Canon camera, though the price may vary, you can buy exactly the same stuff in Japan, US, Singapore, India, maybe Tanzania and so on. But food is best enjoyed in the "original" country. I mean, no Japanese food is better than what you can find in Japan, and you can say the same to all sorts of food - French, Italian, Spanish, the rest, think of your favourite cuisine :)

So. What is Tanzanian food like?

...Any idea?

Well, I'm here to report!
I actually don't have the whole range of photos yet, so I shall introduce the typical "main meal" of local food here :)


This is one of typical lunches I have in Dar - Ugali na mshikaki, 1500Tsh ($1). Ugali is made from cornmeal, mixed with water till it's like a porridge/dough. Nice Ugali tastes like smashed rice. Reeeeeally really hot when it's served, but you eat this with your hand. On this pic, I've got mshikaki (meat -beef?- skewers) but often you have stew kinda stuff with ugali and you dip a bit of ugali in it and eat.

They also eat rice a lot here.
(I don't have too many pics of city lunch so the following is from village lunch and dinner.)


Ah yes, the bananas too - they aren't sweet. I have to say I don't particularly like these bananas raw - when you see bananas in city, they cook it and it tastes exactly like potatoes, and it's okay (still a bit weird though.. you know you are eating bananas but it's like potatoes..).

Overall do I like Tanzanian food? Yes I do!
(those who know me know that I don't dislike any food but.. well.)

Apparently food in West Africa (French colony area, as opposed to East Africa = British) is NICE. Nicer. I'm curious.. but I like Tanzanian food so far.

It's true there's not THAT much variation here, but as you can see on my city-lunch plate, it's a pretty well-balanced diet! carbohydrate stuff, meat/fish, veg and it's not oily!

Wait, as I said earlier, these are just typical "main meal"s. There are more snacky food as well. But I don't have photos of them so maybe another time.

Let's see how long it takes me to be entirely sick of ugali!

Village life

My life in Tanzania, until last Sunday, was mostly in Dar es Salaam.. and at the end of the last post on my excursion to Bagamoyo, I concluded that I like countryside.

This week, I went to stay in a village called Lwelu, near Mtwara - South-Eastern region of Tanzania where (it is said) development is happening rather slowly compared to other areas.


About an hour's bumpy drive from the nearest town, I arrived in this village with no electricity, no water taps, no motor bike, no mobile phone reception.

I stayed in the headteacher(of the only school -primary school)'s house (on the left). Fortunately or unfortunately, I was privileged to stay in probably the best house in the village. Watching and learning Mama's cooking was fun..(pic on the right: kitchen) I can easily write one full post on this.. maybe another time!

I stayed in this village for 3 nights, to see the life of ordinary Tanzanian people in rural area. So I had my thoughts on work, but my activities consisted of kula(eat), kunywa chai (drink tea), pika (cook), tembea (take a walk), pumzika (rest), cheza (play).. well, what could I do, that was what local women were doing :)

So, "taking a walk" was my most productive activity in the village. I went to see the primary school (no secondary school, the closest one is 1hr+ cycle from Lwelu), dispensary (one rural medical assistant + several nurses. no ward), farms (most of them does not even look like someone is deliberately growing things), market (only tomatoes, small dried fish, some green leaves, cassava, oranges available), water pumps (there was one made by Japan too!), workshops (where men hang around)..

My pictures can probably explain better so.. here we go! and of course, I just have to include the pics of over-excited kids of Lwelu :)


People lived quite happily. Is there a need for development assistance? I guess "yes" - because.. ok, they are not "suffering", but they know they can have a better life.

Talking to one of the teachers at school (there were a couple of teachers who could speak good-ish English), I was asked, "Seeing this village, if you are the planner, what would be the first thing you change?"

Difficult question!

My answer, at the end of the three-nights' stay, was infrastructure. I saw many issues, in infrastructure, education, health, people's mindset etc etc. Although I see the need to improve qualities of education and healthcare, Lwelu village lacked essential infrastructure to start off. A decent road access would improve opportunity for education and healthcare for the time-being, clean water for better sanitation, electricity and mobile phone reception for all sorts of means of communication.. well, you may disagree, but my impression of these few days was that this is what they need. NOW.

Out of the city -Bagamoyo

Well well well.
This week I've been working hard like Japanese.
You never know when I decide to adopt Tanzanian "pole-pole" (のんびり/chilled out? or in other words, SLOW) style though!

I've been working both inside and outside the office. Out of the office, I've had several occasions to meet current volunteers in and outside Dar. It's always good to hear stories of other people's experience, especially of people who have somehow ended up being here!

So, out of the city, I went to Bagamoyo - about an hour+ north of Dar.


Bagamoyo is the oldest town in Tanzania and is one of the world heritage site in this country. "Bagamoyo" means "lay down your heart" - it used to be a port for slave trade, so it was the last town of homeland slaves would stay in (so the meaning is kinda nice but sad). There are some remains of stone walls and buildings, but it is now just a small, peaceful town.


Walking down the street of Bagamoyo.. (I saw GOATS walking around but can't put too many pictures)


What is called "fish market" - where they pile fish on wooden boards and.. I didn't see any selling&buying happening.. what I saw was people frying fishes in massive pans!


And of course, beautiful friendly local people. A guy selling fried cassava, おすましmodel-look kid, local massai guys (and the volunteer, it's not me).

Did they look poor and sad? No, they might not have things we have in the convenient world, but they live in their way and it seems ok. What is my work for? I think I have my answer, but I shall keep thinking while I'm here, with an open mind!

So, conclusion for today: I love countryside :)

Mon premier weekend à Dar

To those who are confused - no, they don't speak French in Tanzania.
It's Swahili and English. Before I came, I was thinking "hm that's kinda boring.. no linguistic fun-struggle if they speak English".

Wrong.

English is spoken, yes, but only little. Local, ordinary people speak Swahili, often only Swahili. So in order to communicate with the locals, especially in the rural areas, I and D (another guy here with me on the same scheme) have started taking Swahili lessons :D

ANYWAY (that was not even about the weekend),

Here's a short report of my first weekend at Dar es Salaam :)

First of all.. the picture at the very top, is the typical scenery you get if you walk about in Dar. I walked and walked and walked and didn't bump into really-interesting things. Well, those people (the pic on the left), balancing things on their head, was amusing -they truely make me re-realise that I've come to Africa.



We also went to a couple of shopping malls (where I met this beautiful kid!), but not the developing country-like markets yet.. yea, that's on the TO DO list for the next weekend!


Among many things I did on the weekend, one to be mentioned is the visit to Tingatinga village -where a group of artists live (I think), draw, and sell these African pictures. Look. How cool??!

This is one of the pictures I bought.. the smallest size available, only 4000Tshs (less than $3)!

On the whole - it was a great weekend, but I need to dig deeper.. to see the life of the ordinary people here. so... TO BE CONTINUED! :)

New Stage

Hello people,

Some of you might have been thinking by now, "is she actually gonna do a blog?" -yea, I was actually wondering about that too.

Here's my first post.. though I hate to write a lot cuz I s*ck at it, I figured that a first post just has to explain a little.

On the 7th of July, at 3.10pm, a plane landed in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. On board, there was an over-excited girl who will be spending the next 3 months and a half in this country.

Just before the landing, there was a great welcome reception - Mt Kilimanjaro!
(Can you see it on this picture? middle-rightish)

You just have no idea how excited I was!

I had the broadest smile on my face, pointing at the Kilimanjaro or at the invisible globe I imagined in front of me and going "25hrs ago I was here (japan) and now I'm here (tanzania)! woooooo"

Now, it's been a couple of days. What's my impression?

Well.. the weather is great (not humid at all compared to japan, the temperature is just peeeerfect!), good food (you all know I like all sorts of food..I'll do a dedicated post on food sometime), nice people, not too many mosquitoes..

and It's definitely a lot more developed than I imagined, but I think it's too early to form any opinion or impression, cuz so far, I've only seen about 5 mins-walk-radius around this hotel-apartment I'm staying in. Too bad my office is 3 mins' walk away :P

Ah yes, the office... I'm here for work!

I've only been here for a couple of days, but I've got a gut feeling that I will learn a lot in this environment. Experience of reality, the reality of international development, had been the piece missing in me for years. Now I've got a chance, how much can I learn in this 16 weeks? I wonder...

This is my new stage. With a lot of new experience to help me grow!

But first of all.. the first weekend is fast approaching now, and I can't wait to make the most of my off-work time :)