Banana cake, popcorn, ugali...

There's a lot that goes on here that I can't really write about because I don't know who reads this blog and being on the internet, it's public domain. So normally I just stick to the happy parts. When I was home for Christmas I delved a lot more into the nitty gritty inner workings of how things are here, but now that I'm back I have to be careful what I say.

So, in keeping with tradition, I'll stay focused on the good stuff. School is going alright, except that the new Form 1's are starting to arrive and they don't have a classroom since the teachers are currently using the Form 4 classroom as an office (maybe that's not so good). Nobody has seemed to do any real planning about what's going to happen when the Form 1's come, so I guess I'll just wait and see, which I do a lot here. I'm teaching a LOT of lessons per week (which isn't new) and still loving every second of it. Every minute with my kids is precious. Although by the end of the day I'm so flippin' exhausted I crash, normally before 8pm, if I don't have clothes to wash.

So basically it's the same old same old. Teaching and teaching and eating ugali. Today after computers I sat outside school on a bench with my book and watched the sun go down while the boys played football and the smell of the looming ugali wafted through the air. Such a normal, every-day, no-big-deal type thing, but somehow so totally perfect.

Yesterday some of the boys asked me to teach them how to make banana bread, or "banana cake" as they call it. I told them if they got me the ingredients I'd be more than happy to show them how to put them together. They got sugar, flour, butter (not enough), and some eggs. I realized we were missing a lot of things so I ran back to my house to get the other essentials. We have this FABULOUS cookbook from Peace Corps, (the one Peace Corps manual that actually gets used - don't tell) and the page with the banana bread on it is entirely covered in food stains and cat prints and everything else you can think of. I make banana cake A LOT. My neighbor, and another teacher at the secondary school with me has a banana tree in his yard, and sells bananas two for 10 shillings. What a deal! So I came back to school with everything else we needed for banana cake, and started whipping it up (since clearly I have the recipe memorized by this point).

          2/3 cup sugar
          2/3 cup butter
          1 cup flour
          1 egg
          pinch each of salt, baking powder, and baking soda
          little bit of vanilla
          enough cinnamon and nutmeg till it tastes good
          as many bananas as you can handle!

By the time the mix was ready I had about 20 kids all huddled around smelling the different ingredients and asking me what everything was. NOT UGALI was my continuous answer. Now since having an oven in a mud hut kitchen -where everything is cooked over a wood-burning fire and rocks always find their way into my beans- is unlikely, we have to make do with other things. The trick to baking without an oven is just making sure the heat is not coming directly from the bottom. So you take one large sufuria (silver pots we cook stuff in here) and put a whole bunch of rocks or dirt on the bottom as a spacer from the actual thing that's being baked. Then the banana cake goes into a smaller sufuria, which goes on top of the rocks, and ideally there would be a lid for each. We only had one lid last night, which made it bake slower. I had to leave before it was done, because it was getting dark, but I got a text later on from one of the cooks that it was delicious. And everyone who had some last night told me again today how good it was. Yay banana cake! One of my kids wants to be a chef, so he regularly asks me how I cook things and what I ate on the weekend, and how it was made. Keep it up, I say!

Here's the banana cake evidence:

Last weekend I spent at least two lunches in a row at the Boatyard, that swanky place I went to for New Year's. I think I'm becoming a regular, Lord help me. The food is a little pricey, because the clientele is the rich white Kenyans and ex-pats that live in Kilifi, but the cheeseburgers are homemade and TO DIE FOR. It's 700 shillings well-spent I think. Anywho, Sunday after lunch I reluctantly followed a friend from the UK onto another friend's boat with the prospect of going water skiing. Apparently I can ski on snow like a champ, but on water I'm crap. Everyone kept telling me it's ok because it was my first time but I still think I was miserable at it. I got a ton of salt water up my nose and probably in my brain too, and my arms hurt like hell two days later. Oh well, I tried, and I'll try it again later, hopefully with better luck, and with less looking-like-an-idiot.

So in the spirit of the good stuff and happy parts, and since life is pretty much the same as always, here's some more pics to keep you busy :)

School meeting one Saturday morning

This is the girls' new sign name for me. 

Long story short they're making fun of me. 

Osman looking like a pretty little girl with a new bag

I'll never get tired of this view: Beach 3km straight ahead, 

Mombasa an hour to the right, and Malindi an hour to the left

Boys during afternoon football

Ugali line at dinner time.

Monica and I, love this girl. 

So life is life, and not much new. The cats are still redonkulous by the way. Marie is totally healed up from her uber-invasive surgery and Toulosue has taken to shredding my couch cushions. Thanks a bunch cat. They spend the mornings outside chasing chickens and hiding from Kenyans, before they come in for lunch and go back out to do it all over again. Between the food for the two of them and the spaying and neutering I've spent way more money on them than I ever imagined, so who knows what'll happen at the end of this year. If I can't even leave my cats behind how will I ever leave my kids?

Oh and projector update: We have been successfully having movie night every Saturday and it's quickly become me and the kids' favorite night of the week. The weekend before last was "Iron Man" (a sure-fire winner) and this past weekend was "The Incredible Hulk." I plan on something Pixar related this weekend so  we stagger the genres  and don't exhaust all the bang-bang-shoot-'em-ups in one month. They'll probably complain there's not enough fighting but I can always say Pixar or nothing at all, since I'm the movie/projector guru anyways. Last week some friends decided to "sponsor" my movie night and handed me a 1,000 shillings to buy popcorn for everybody on Saturday. I made a deal with the popcorn lady outside Tusky's and Saturday afternoon had three giant bags of popcorn to take home. The kids loved it. AND we started off the evening with a video chat with Charlotte, the volunteer at my site before me. Ten minutes of video consisted of each kid wanting to ask Charlotte if she remembered them. Obviously she remembered all of them, because, like I've said before, how could you ever forget them? Look how happy everyone is with their popcorn!

And I'll leave you with my favorite view in all of Kilifi - the bridge from a boat on the creek :)

Cheers and I miss you all!

~ Shub :)