I woke up around 6:30 and went for a 45-minute run on the beach. What a great way to explore! I kept stopping to snap pictures and look at the gorgeous sunrise or an interesting sea creature. The beach north of the pier narrows and becomes pretty rocky with incredible overhangs where the sea has eroded the rock. I passed a few villagers, mostly men but a few women, working or fishing.
Breakfast:
Crepes w/ papaya jam (went back for seconds), my first andazi which is like a plain donut, slices of papaya and watermelon, and a really nutty coffee with milk. We tried a small taste of a juice that looked like lemonade, Nate thought was pineapple, but turned out to be orange juice.
I decided to wear a bathing suit with the same strapless yellow cover-up I wore yesterday, no top shirt this time, and black flip-flops. Clothing at the resort is clearly western.
After breakfast we rented $5 bikes and rode down to Paje, about a 45-minute ride. Since the tide was high, we were advised to take the inland road instead of the beach.
The bikes were rusty despite looking relatively new - I'm guessing the sea air contributes to this? Riding from the hotel gate through the sand to the road was tremendously difficult. Fortunately it was only about a 2-minute ride! Once on the road I was able to switch gears easily. Nate wasn't as lucky. His gears were rusted out so he had to make due with only the low gears. I think low gears are easy in sand, but they are aren't so easy to use on the road!
Riding to Paje took us past several other resorts and beach hotels, with shouts of "Jambo!" from locals all along the way. I regretted my decision not to bring something to cover my arms, but none of the locals seemed overtly offended. We passed several villiages and streetside shops, including one bearing a sign that read "Hair Styling Saloon." We also passed a large soccer field that was clearly very well maintained and used, though it was vacant at the time. Our destination, Paradise Beach Bungalows, was on the near side of the town. We had read in our guide book that they sometimes offer a cooking class, and when we asked the bartender he said he would call to arrange a 10 o'clock lesson for us "in town." He asked us to wait and said someone would come pick us up.
While we waited, I took a quick tour of the facilities. They are Japanese and very beautifully landscaped, featuring a cluster of bungalows, each w/ its own waterfront hut w/ a hammock and chairs and a table. Water is delivered to the bungalows each day, and there is a little trough built into the slab porches for washing sand off your feet. Several turkeys, chickens, roosters, dogs, and a cat populate the property. A central open air hut similar to the one at our hotel appears to be the main dining facility. A group of Japanese tourists was waiting there for a taxi, having apparently just checked out.
Soon a stout man in a taqiyah (the Muslim cap I mentioned in yesterday's post - it's also called a kufi by most westerners) appeared and asked if we were interested in the cooking lesson. When we responded that we were he exclaimed "Oh, I have seen you already on the bicycles!" Nate recognized him, too, saying "Ah, yeah, we just passed him." So we all hopped back on our bikes and headed into town. What happened next was completely unexpected.
We followed the capped man, who was missing his 4 front teeth, back out to the main road. We stopped at a streetwise fruit stand to buy coconuts. A family of four was sitting under an awning nearby. The two children caught sight of us and called out "Jambo!" when I replied and waved, the boy began showing off a little. He picked up a thin wooden sign of about a square foot in size and threw it, wizzing the father's ear. The father began scolding the boy, wagging his finger at him - I guess that gesture is universal across all languages!
After the capped man paid for the coconuts, we continued on our bikes into what appeared to be a schoolyard. Children clambored from inside, and occasionally one would catch sight of usand point or wave. We continued past the school buildings until I realized we were in a village. Children played in the paths between the small concrete buildings. Soon we arrived at a home where the man dismounted his bike and gestured for us to follow him inside. I had assumed we would be taking our cooking lesson in a hotel kitchen with a group of other white tourists. Turns out we were to be treated to a home cooked meal for just the two of us.
We were introduced to two women in a small courtyard space which housed a large basin with a running water faucet and clothes lines overhead. The home was U-shaped with a wall at one end to enclose the courtyard.
There were no doors save a front door, which was a nicely carved wooden door with a metal latch and lock that looked new. The few other doorways featured worn curbs or curtains.
The women offered each of us a kind of stool that is only a few inches off the floor. We sat and the women quickly began gathering various vegetables and a few other supplies from the cupboard. A few crude stoves resembling camp stoves sat on the floor across from us. Two were already burning and one had what looked like a cast iron pot on it (it was soon revealed to be cooking red beans). Various pots and cooking tools hung from a rack on the wall above the stoves. A variety of pans were used to serve as lids for the other pots, though none were originally made to serve in that capacity. The ceiling above the stoves was charred from years of smoke.
Soon there was a flat bottomed metal pan containing three coconuts, a small red onion, a few small potatoes, an eggplant, and two green vegetables we didn't recognize. None of these were bigger than my fist. The women gave us the names of each vegetable in English. I asked the Swahili names and tried to repeat each one. Then they set the coconuts aside and peeled everything else, including the tomato, and put it in a pot to boil.
One woman pulled out a kind of wooden folding stool that had a metal device on one end, unfolded it, and sat down. She took a coconut and began pulling the fibres off of the husk. I asked if I could help and was handed a coconut. It was more difficult than I thought it would be! Next she held the coconut over a metal mixing bowl and whacked it with a wooden dowel until it split cleanly into two sections. It split against the grain, which surprised me. I've always assumed coconuts were split with a machete when I saw the clean cut, but apparently that happens naturally. She pulled the two halves apart, being careful to try to keep much of the coconut water in the shell. He then sipped some from one half and offered the other to Nate and me. We drank, then the woman passed both halves around to the man and to a few children who were in the kitchen with us.
Next she turned the stool so she was straddling it with the metal bit in front of her. She placed a plastic bowl beneath the metal and began using it to grate coconut from the shell. We soon learned that this stool is called an mbuzi, which is the word for goat. After she finished a couple of coconuts, she offered to let me try (they made the same offer to Nate, too, but he declined). It was difficult at first but then I got the hang of it. I got coconut all over the floor, though! There were also a few pieces of coconut shell in the bowl by the time I finished.
My tetanus shot was a good idea: I grated a bit of my hand. One of the women spread a little coconut on the wound.
At some point several pieces of fish were placed in a pot of water and left to simmer. I do not know what type of fish it was, but it must have been a sizable one based on the cuts and the bone.
The women chatted with each other while they cooked. I asked if they were sisters and was told that they were. I wondered if they were blood sisters or plural wife sisters. A young girl, age 4 or 5 I would guess, occasionally helped with the work, mostly removing potato peels or pans that needed washing. I noticed that the women had taken their head scaves and wrapped them around their waists - I'm guessing they only wear them on their heads when they leave the house.
One woman filled a flat wide basket with rice and sifter through it, picking out the brown grains and tossing them to the floor next to the stove's flame. I thought they were going to burn them but they just swept them up later with the rest of the kitchen mess.
Once the coconut was all grated (3 total), one woman poured water over it and then squeezed handfuls over a strainer into a large metal pot. She repeated this process three or four times and then asked me to do it (again Nate declined). Once the bowl was full of the coconut water (this is actually what we call coconut milk), she poured a little of it into the pot with the vegetables, a little of it into the uncooked rice to soak, and then put the pot on the fire. It soon came to a boil. This was a relief bc I was worried we were going to be asked to drink tepid coconut water. Phew! The coconut itself was put to the side. We were later told that they dry it and sell it in Stone Town.
Next one woman took a large wooden pestle from the top of a cabinet and put garlic and tomato into it. She mashed them with a mortar and added this mixture to the beans.
The rice was added to the boiling coconut milk to cook. While it was cooking the woman in the red and gold took one more coconut, grated it on the goat, squeezed it and poured the milk into the beans.
We all sat and chatted while the rice finished cooking. Just when we thought it was finished, the woman with the henna took it from the fire and carefully placed a lid on it, removed it from the fire, and covered the lid with coals. The rice then baked for another 30 minutes or so.
Throughout the cooking process, people were coming and going at the house. It was a lively place! Half a dozen or so children arrived after school ended (around noon), coming in to change out of their school uniforms and then quickly leaving again. An elderly woman came and joined us not long after the schoolchildren. She was very chatty with the sisters but did not greet us. Soon a young woman stopped by with an infant in her arms. She and the infant were both heavily made up with eye makeup and penciled eyebrows. Apparently there is a custom to go from neighbor to neighbor showing off new babies a few weeks after they are born.
After about 2 and a half hours, lunch was ready! The two women prepared a platter with the four dishes (baked rice, curried vegetables, red beans with coconut milk, and fish - with the curry sauce from the vegetables poured over it - along w some fresh mini bananas) and invited us into an adjacent room where a mat had been spread across the floor.
Lunch:
Stewed white fish of an unknown species in a curry sauce, red beans with coconut milk, plain white rice (best meal yet!)
Nate and I ate alone, although we tried to invite our hosts to join us. Several children gathered to watch us eat. When I took a photo of Nate, the children got excited to see the camera, so I invited them to play with it, showing them how the camera flipped so they could see themselves.
After lunch we thanked our host and hostesses and headed back out of he village across a soccer field that also appeared to serve as a kind of town square. We rode back to Dongwe, returned the bikes, and sat by the pool until tea time. There was coffee this time, yay! We placed our supper orders (the hotel asks you to order in advance so they can shop accordingly) and decided to go for a swim in the ocean. We both wore our water shoes although that made it very difficult to swim b/c the sand grips the shoes and makes it hard to move. I charged ahead and soon felt like a real jerk b/c Nate fell and filled himself with urchin spines. One of the staff rushed out to help him while I worked my way back to him on the shore. The staffer, who happened to be from Kenya rather than Tanzania, pecked lightly at the flesh of a papaya, causing it to weep a milky liquid that he dripped onto Nate's pricked hand, knee, ankle, and foot. He then pulled out the spines that could be grabbed easily and told us to leave the papaya on until supper. We went to the restaurant to see what the papaya would do. While we waited we watched a group of locals play a pickup soccer game on the beach.
Back in the room we were able to remove a few more spines with tweezers, although there were several that we had to leave in place b/c they were broken too close to the skin to pull out. One in particular, in Nate's hand right where the pinky meets the palm, was especially quarrelsome.
I put some ointment on Nate's wounds and on my hand where I cut myself on the goat. We stayed in the room until supper. I wore a slinky black dress with ... well ... flip-flops. Hey, it's the beach.
Supper:
Nate and I split supper, which consisted of a small vegetable salad, stewed lamb with rice and steamed vegetables, and a plate of orange, mango, and papaya slices. I had white wine and finished with a cup of coffee and a shot of Afrikoko, a coffee and coconut liquor.
During supper we met one of the other guests - another American (we're not the only ones after all!), a Georgetown student from Ashville NC who had been on the mainland for a couple of months living with a family in a remote village while teaching. He worked for an NGO called One Heart Source. He was only in Dongwe for two nights and was then planning to head to Bweejuu to teach for a day before heading to South Africa for four weeks.
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