Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Vegetables

Vegetables in Kigali are generally good and cheap.  Avacados for a quarter, pineapples for under a dollar, a kilo of tomatoes for under a dollar.  The main market in Kimironko is quite good with a good selection, though usually the same set of produce.  You can regularly buy pretty fresh red, white, and green onions, roma (and only roma) tomatos, potatoes, sweet potatoes, cassava (which scares me - that whole neurotoxin thing), carrots, radishes, lettuce, brocolli, green peppers, green beans, chillis, mushrooms, zucchini, eggplant, garlic, ginger, thyme, rosemary, mint, cilantro, basil, parsley, rhubarb, pineapple, oranges, local lemons, limes, apples, passion fruit, tree tomatos, papaya, and sometimes watermellon and fennel. Oh, and tons of scary dried fish, large carcases of hanging meat, chickens in the "local frozen," "imported frozen," and waling around variety.  The only weird thing is that the variety doesn't ever change.  All tomatoes are roma tomatoes, all chillis are the same kind of thai green chillis.  I kind of miss going to the market and seeing what new or different things they have in stock.  And for someone who has never particularly liked celery, there have been a ridiculous number of times I have needed it for something and failed to be able to find it.  Any suggestions for something other than celery for the stuffing for Christmas? (Other than apples and onions?)  Celery salt, strangely, is available - so I might need to improvise there.

I have to go to the market tomorrow to buy things for Christmas.  The whole expedition (and then the washing process) is somewhat lengthy, but it's really a lot of fun.  But to show you something of what's available, the other day Elizabeth and I went a little crazy on vegetable patrol and bought the following for about $30 USD:

Holy Strange Dreams Batman

 So... I'm wondering if the fact that I am having crazy - *and i mean crazy* - dreams every night is related to my antimalarial drugs.  Doxycycline isn't supposed to have this as a common side-effect, buy who knows.  I very rarely remember my dreams at all, and I've been having vivid dreams that I remember each night.


A small sample as of late of the crazy things going on in my brain at night:

1)  Stopped someone who had killed their 14 siblings, but got stabbed three times in the leg as a result.  After going to my grandparent's house they convinced me to go to the hospital, and conveniently there was a hospital just through the garage at the house on Inwood Dr.  This became infected, caused my brain to grow outside of my scull until I was only a giant brain with tentacles as legs to move around.  The infection had its own consciousness, and was attempting to destroy the world.  I was a person on the beach (the site of the world-conquering efforts of the brain-infection-consciousness) as well as a consciousness in the brain trying to stop the infection-consciousness from destroying the world.
 

Albert the Frog
2) We were all performing in a staged production of some disney-esque play but no one knew any of the words and we we just making it up as we go along.  It involved flying purple birds - they were centrally important - and somehow we were friends with Paris Hilton who was a kind sweet caring person (definitely a dream).  Albert was a great friend, also in the play.  Albert was a frog, a green and brown frog.  Somehow, during the performance and after we were all fumbling for lines, Albert fell deep underground.  We stopped the play to mount a very dangerous rescue mission to save him.  He was so scared and lost that he was trying to hide as opposed to being rescued.  The stage was sinking and we were close to getting Albert but it involved being wedged between an electrical panel and running water, which was starting to shock us.  At the same time the front of the stage (which was made of a car) stage that was slipping into the mud abyss had trapped a lady.  All of the other frogs were mounting an operation while we tried to save Albert.

Um...  So definitely staying on the antimalarials while I'm in Mombasa and for the necessary time when I get back, but I might need to consider something else if this continues.  Eternally curious at what the night will bring when I go to bed now.

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Christmas in Kigali

Someone rather triumphally announced yesterday that the rainy season (the short rains) had passed.  Somone was epically wrong.  It has been raining - and I mean RAINING - for several hours.  Like raining to the point that it was streaming into the kitchen from the balcony.  All of the surrounding hills have disappeared as well into the brigadoon cloud that has enveloped Kisimenti.

Rain and 82 degrees, I have to admit, does not feel like Christmas, especially for a Maine boy like me.  I definitely do not miss the cold that is the reality in Chicago and Maine this time of year, but I miss the snow - or at least the *idea* of snow. :-)  I've been working on decorating the appartment for the holidays, with the limited things that are available.  I borrowed a tree from the courtyard with large waxy leaves, actually found some lights and then have been making ornaments out of paper.  The goal was to find red and green paper, but, well, welcome to Kigali. 

Shopping here is a bit like a treasure hunt.  Strange things can be found easily and in abundance, while others are completely hit or miss.  I could go out and buy 20 maps of Rwanda, and about 700 Liters of oil without any difficulty, but finding vinegar or garlic was a never ending task today.  I tend to wander through shop after shop looking for the random items on my list for Christmas dinner.  In each shop I might find a few items, or none at all.  One store today had, literally, 30 containers of tea masala spice, and no other spices.  At another I found vast quantities (by which i mean 8 packages) of fish boullion, but finding chicken boullion took a half-dozen more shops.

Hunting for paper was the same way.  After numerous people thinking I was absolutely crazy for wanting *red!* paper, I finally settled on lime green and pink paper.  The result is that the decorations in my appartment make it lind of lokk like Christmas in Key West.  Especially since the same paper is being used for everything - the paper stars, danish woven heart baskets, as wrapping paper for presents...  But it's at least feeling a little bit like the holidays.

The day after Christmas I leave for Mombasa, to spend a week including New Year's on the beach.  Again this seems absolutely crazy to me, but is sounding like a lot of fun.



Christmas dinner is going to a bit of a fusion event of Danish, Rwandan, and Finnish dishes.  The is looking like the following::

Breakfast:
Danish Tea Ring and Local fruit salad

Diner:
Pineapple Mint Salad
Pickled Cucumber Salad
Dilled Carrots
Danish Carmelized Potatos
Sage-Apple Dressing
Chicken, Pork, and Beef Brochettes with Orange-Thyme Marinade

Dessert:
Orangesmekeager
Ris ala mande
Rhubarb Crumble

All of this is,of course, dependend upon finding a few things during my next shopping treasure hunt in the city.  We'll see how it goes...

 And yes, that is a Flying Turtle on the Christmas Tree!

Friday, December 3, 2010

Invaders

These creatures were attempting to invade my home the other morning.  I found this when I entered the Kitchen in the morning (the poor thing was still alive):

  
After removing the unfortunate cockroach from the kitchen, I headed into the bathroom to get ready and discovered the following:

There are bugs and creatures everywhere here.  It's like a never ending war.  The ants are particularly annoying and incessant.  They are part of the reason that I made peace with Lloyd, the white lizard who lives in the kitchen behind the fridge, and have decided to let him stay.  As long as Lloyd keeps helping with the bugs, and only startles me every few nights, I'll be fine.  I'll try to get a picture of Lloyd sometime, as well as of Steven (the conglomerate name for all green lizards that live outside the building) and post it.