Mchicha week!

Ok so for my beloved Aussies, mchicha is a kind of spinach. Amaranth greens according to Wikipedia. And also the name of the dish you get when you cook it in coconut sauce (what is it with all the coconut sauces Zanzibar?!??) But it's nothing like the big silverbeet I grew up thinking was spinach.

It's a staple here. Great with rice and bread and I'm sure it would go super with ugali but hey, we're trying to be proper Zanzibari here, and for now this house runs on rice. Ideally mbeya. But that's another story.

So this week, mama mzungu (that would be me ;) has been making Aussiebarian mchicha, or mchicha wa mzungu. And it's been win so far. Both Mr Aussiebarian and little brother approve :) Woo!

So here we have it.

Aussiebarian Mchicha

Ingredients:

Mchicha, a bunch.

Garlic (I use about 5 cloves, or more. Helps keep the vampires away)

Onions.

Tomatoes.

Ginger. I like an inch or an inch and a half, but don't tell the Swahili folks cos they don't think ginger goes in mchicha. But I think it balances things out and frankly they don't seem to notice so much.

Coconut milk powder (yes I know this is cheating, but the only mbuzi in the house is me when I'm cheeky. So no grating coconuts for milk for now).

Pepper (again, don't tell the locals. They'll taste it and then realise the goodness).

Salt.

Capsicum, carrot (cut up until barely recognizable: super fine): optional, but good! This kind of works as a hidden veggie recipe

Wheat flour for thickening (I'd use something else but we have wheat, so that's what we use).

Method:

1. Get your minions (husband, brother in law, anyone but you) to tear up and wash the mchicha and cut up the stems while you cut the veggies up and grate the ginger.

Minion at work.

2. Soften the onion and garlic in a touch of oil on high heat in your big pot.

3. Add the mchicha and other veggies and some coconut milk powder mixed up with some water.. I start with 3/4 of a bowl and add a bit later if required but the veggies all release a bit of liquid. Add a little ginger, salt and pepper.

4. Bring to the boil, adding the rest of the mchicha leaves as the others wilt down to make room in the pot, mixing and stirring as you go.

5. Add the rest of the ginger, cover and simmer for a few minutes.

6. Just before serving thicken with a paste made from pan juices and a little cold water added to what seems like a ridiculous amount of flour. It makes it like a yummy coconut tomato gravy :) not Zanzibari but the boys aren't complaining. If you have too much, you can mix the leftover mchicha juice and flour paste with some extra water and fry it into what I like to call mchichapati!

7. Serve!

With just onion and tomato

Hidden veg version

Glossary:

Mzungu: European/white person (not derogatory)

Mchicha: Swahili spinach

Mchichapati: what you get when you cross mchicha with chapati: see step 6.

Mbeya: a type of rice. The favorite for eating plain as a.. I'd call it a side dish but it's really more like a spoon. Also a city on the mainland but I'm yet to find out if there's any connection.

Ugali: kind of a cross between powdered potato, bread and porridge. Corn meal or cassava meal cooked into a thick ball. A better spoon than rice. Zambians call it nshima.

Mbuzi: 1. A coconut grater - needed to get coconut milk out of an old coconut. 2. Goat(s). 3. Slang for a cheeky person.

Urojo

Dear India,

Thank you for the amazing Zanzibari food.

Love,

One very grateful Aussiebarian.

Urojo: Nungwi

So, I thought I knew what urojo was. I'd fallen in love with this mix of mostly deep fried goodies (potatoey kachori, cassava chips, falafely badia, boiled potato, boiled egg, jalfrese when real potato is running low), at home in Nungwi. 70 cents of deliciously satisfying flavours and textures.

More Nungwi urojo

And then today, I realized what people had been talking about all this time.

The real deal

Urojo is sometimes called Zanzibar mix. It's a Stone Town specialty. My husband (almost as good a reference as Wikipedia ;) says it originated from India. In Stone Town, they take it to a whole new level. 

Three kinds of salad, a few different sauces, mishkaki (don't ask what kind of meat. Beef or goat, I'm happy not knowing), egg, potato, badia, kachori, cassava chips... Or any combination you want: I saw a guy get just cut up chapati and jalfrese in his. Add soup, let it sit a bit for the juices to soak in and voila!

Stown Town urojo vs Nungwi 'mshamba' urojo

Tips:

1. Take your own container. Try and ask a local in advance to find out how much it'll cost to fill the container if you want to look extra cool ;) otherwise do my thing: fill 'er up Scotty! Or Juma, or Ali, as the case will more likely be in ZNZ.

2. Eschew the egg if you don't want to be rocket powered for the next couple of days. Unfortunately the green stuff isn't the parsley to negate the noxious side effects of consumption of delicious food.

3. Go heavy on the salad. I dare you. Nommmm!

4. Find a queue of locals at lunch time and join the line for the good stuff. I found this gem near the ferry on my way back from buying electricity. I've never been more happy after paying for electricity in my life!

End-the-power bill-blues urojo

5. If you're a strict vegetarian, this probably isn't for you. They have a habit of dipping the mishkaki in the soup halfway through cooking the mishkaki. But if you can ignore the faint taste of chargrilled goodness, eschew the mishkaki and go for egg as your protein hit.

6. Eat urojo. Love life. Be happy.

Cheers!

Mrs Aussiebarian.

Badia

Kachori

Glossary: 

Mshamba: country person. With kind of backward/not as good connotations, but in a cheerful way.

ZNZ: My (and the airport's) lame-o abbreviation for Zanzibar.

Last night...

I dreamed of meat pies and supermarket express checkouts.

It doesn't get much more Aussie than that.

#withlovefromAfrica

Kwa upendo kutoka Afrika

Maziwa. Or, why use coconut milk instead of real milk.

This is maziwa. Also known as milk.

I was wondering why so many breads use coconut milk here... An old coconut for grating is about TZS500 (500 shillings)  - about 30 cents. The box of coconut milk powder imported from Malaysia via the middle eastern market will set you back about $2.75, between TZS3500 and 4500. Ok so it doesn't have the nutritional value of an actual coconut but you also don't have to grate t, it keeps for a whole, and makes a decent amount of coconut milky flavoured stuff. 

BUT: this UHT milk from Kenya cost me TZS1200 for 250mL. Which is less than a dollar, but works out at 4800/litre. Which is more than $3.00/litre. Seriously???

Looks like it's powdered coconut, all the way. *has a little "it's cheaper in Australia!!" tantrum*

It's the little rorts like this that make me realize: living in Africa is expensive. I know I shouldn't cry over spilt milk, but it's more the fact that this isn't an isolated incident. Carrots are $2/kg and they're fairly common foodstuffs. Compare the wage I was on in Australia to the average income here... Poverty happens. Simple.

Work is pus: adventures in multilingualism #1

Thanks to a big chunk of my schooling and way too much time talking to myself around the house, I like to think of Indonesian as my second language.

So tonight when I was cramming for an upcoming adventure that I think might require some different vocabulary to my usual "I would like three tomatoes and half a kilo of rice please", I learnt something cool:

WORK IS PUS.

Explanation:

English 'pus' = 'usaha' in Swahili

'Usaha' means 'work' in Indonesian.

And that, my friends, is why work is pus.

(And also why you shouldn't assume a word is a cognate just because it looks and sounds the same. I thought a jail was a church for precisely that reason....)

Zanzibari Santa Claus

Around this time last year, I was in a minivan in a village in Zambia listening to English language Christmas carols.

Well apparently, Christmas in May isn't an exclusively Zambian tradition.

Claus encounters of the third kind..

In the past few days I've seen heaps (and by heaps I mean greater than or equal to 2) of people who from a distance look suspiciously like they are wearing Santa hats.

Is it Christmas in May?

Nope, they're just wearing beanies - red with a white band.

Ok maybe I need new glasses. But, given experience (think cranky autocrats wearing rubber duck race t-shirts, and virile young men in tank tops that say "100% princess"), I almost thought the whole recycled clothing thing had gone a step too far. Disaster averted! But beware, beanie wearers: red and white will make you look like Santa. And my inner fashionista definitely does not "fab" that.

It begins with Karibu Nyumbani (Welcome Home).

 Just before the new year chimed to ring in 2014, the biggest change in my life to date kicked in.

I'd lived a fairly ordinary life as a health professional in a small town not too far from the city in Australia, earnt a decent wage, had a reasonable life.

In 2013 I followed my love of helping people find comfortable shoes to Africa. Somehow I ended up running into the love of my life drinking ginger beer at a Rasta Bar on the beach in picturesque Nungwi, Zanzibar.

The next 6 months was a whirlwind of trying to pack up my life and job and sell my stuff while my boy was busy getting a roof ready for us to live under.

Finally after finishing up work in mid-December and a whirlwind of packing and culling that my parents are still trying to deal with, I took the 48 hour (including 10 hours wandering around Kuala Lumpur and 8 hours loitering around an Omani airport) trip from Brisbane to Zanzibar via KL and Muscat back to be with my man.

4 months on, there have been ups, downs and in-betweens. I'm never going to be Zanzibari, but I'll never be strictly Aussie again. But before I stop being amused by the antics of the little things in life here, which are surprisingly easy to get used to, I wanted this space to:

• bring together some of the little daily life tidbits that I just can't find in the phrasebooks
• remember this time of wonderment
• share with family and friends
• practice and share some Kiswahili
• ease some of the transition from career to housewife

I'm not an author by any means, but I hope you can join me on my journey to Becoming Aussiebarian.