And later, for dinner:
Vegetable stew on onions, pepper, garlic, tomatoes, cabbage, green peas and groundnut paste with rice, and deep fried tofu brochettes that we’ve started buying from a girl who sells them in the street.
(They are all over the place here, the women selling different kinds of food from buckets – deep fried bean dumplings, deep fried plantains, deep fried fish. It is very rare with tofu, though, so when we accidentally drove past one, the whole car went into a frenzy and we now even have her number, to get the tofu delivered to the hotel. They marinate it in some kind of sauce that very much reminds me of pesto. It’s delicious. Anything high on protein tastes heavenly now, after almost four weeks of a basically vegan diet.)
Sitting on the floor cutting vegetables into a pan. Crying like it was the end of the world from the extremely potent onions that they have here. Cooking the food on the gas stove in the corner of our hotel room, camping style (I remember we had the same kind of gas bottles to cook on while camping during the excursion in Namibia, all those years ago), and then sitting down on the floor for an episode of Community with Elli and Desiré while eating. The deliciousness of almost anything edible after a full day of fieldwork. But also: the quality of the vegetables here is amazing. Another nice routine that soon won’t be anymore.
Katja Malmborg 