Food

My daily lunch costs anywhere from 75 cents to $1.15! The Kenyan diet, although somewhat limited, can actually be fairly tasty. The staple is ugali -- a very dense mix of flour and water that essentially replaces any need for a utensil (if you don't mind getting your hands dirty, that is). A chunk is separated form the larger bloc and formed into a spoon with one's hands. Then, it gets dipped into a stew that consists of fish or beef, or intestines (a delicacy here that I have no intention to try) next to a pile of sukuma wiki (greens). The ugali itself is fairly tasteless, I'm told, but it serves as the backbone for the rest of the dish, pictured here.

As for myself, I prefer using chipatti as my utensil, which is not surprising, considering how much I love Indian food. Usually, I order beef stew or fried beef, which comes with sukuma wiki and a side of Chipatti. The greens are surprisingly good -- a great thing, considering that this is my only vegetable of the month! Today, however, I opted for the fried fish. Tilapia is abundant in Mbita, as we are on the banks of Lake Victoria. As much as I enjoy the current meals, I am looking forward to a brief stop in Kisumu this upcoming weekend for some good Indian food. My taste buds lost miserably in "the battle of the spices" two weekends ago, but I look forward to the re-challenge. :)

For dinner, Christine and I attempt to cook. This week, our gourmet meals will likely be very carb-heavy, as we did not head back to Kisumu over the past weekend to visit a real grocery store. We did find the sole "supermarket" of Mbita yesterday, however -- there were four isles, consisting of many beauty products, rice, pasta, bread and peanut butter, porridge and beef flavoring. Needless to say, we can't go very far with this assortment! Thankfully, the open air market had an abundance of tomatoes, potatoes, sukuma wiki and fruits, which I was quite pleased about. The pineapple here is really good; I have a feeling that it will become my daily dessert. If only it weren't so difficult to prepare (i'm a lazy bum at heart).