Food

I get on with the food here very well, though I'm not sure my waistline agrees. Lack of food is not a specific problem in Arusha as the climate and soil are very good (due to many local volcanoes) and it gets a lot of rainfall. So whilst, as with everywhere in the world, there are those that go without, and clearly a balanced diet is still hard to achieve for most, actual lack of bulk food is not an issue for the majority.

The 2 staples are Wali and Ugali, Wali being white rice, Ugali being some kind of stodgy polenta dish. Breakfast is Uji, a kind of porridge but not like at home, it has no substance to it and is instead a thick gloopy starch type drink.
Of these I only really like Wali. I have tried with Ugali, and will continue to, but there really isn't much to it. They love it here though.
Wali na Maharage is my favourite, definitely the way Mama Lydia cooks it. Rice and Beans, the Wednesday dish and the beans are cooked in a kind of coconuty sauce, delicious.
Wali and meat is also popular, though the rice far outweighs the meat.
I had a local stew the other day which was meat and banana. These are the bananas whilst they are still green and savoury. Again the bananas far outweighed the meat, but it was tasty. Most dishes come with greens, which tend to be very salty and I'm not entirely sure what they are, and carrots feature highly.

Another staple, at the moment at least, is Parachichi, avocado, which I am currently eating everyday in one form or another. They vary quite a lot, with some being very watery and some being much nicer and richer.

Eli's mum cooked me some food – fried bananas, boiled sweet potato and hot milk straight form the cow. Very good, but also a huge amount and very filling, so I let him have the lion's share. She also gave me some bananas for the road and we picked some parachichi up off the track, so I went home with quite some booty. Can you die from an avocado to the head? I hope not as it is a real danger at times.

All portion sizes in the local cafés are enormous, particularly of the the Wali and Ugali and I am frequently amazed to see people polish it off.
I've probably already mentioned the sugar issue – every drink has at least 5 teaspoons of sugar in, hot or cold, so I am trying to stick to water where possible, though after home visits from 9am til 3pm without a break, you do just sometimes need a hit.

Everything else is fried. 'Bites' include chapati, samosa, deep fried flour, deep fried flour and sugar etc. Actually, they do have boiled or roasted maize which women cook and sell on the street which is probably the healthiest option. Unfortunately nowhere near as good as sweetcorn, but a bad lunch substitute.

To give you an idea of prices, a bunch of bananas is 500 Tsh (25p), a roasted maize 300 Tsh, a chapati 200 Tsh and a meal of Wali Maharage or chicken and chips in a cafe 1500 Tsh. Beers are 1500 Tsh for a 0.5l bottle in a bar, weirdly they are 1400 in shop, so the bar is making practically nothing.

Then there are the high end restaurants, where prices are similar to the UK (well, the North anyway) with a cheese omelette being 8000 Tsh in a nice cafe in town. Cheese is very rare though, so it is occasionally worth the splurge.