Fish = homesickness

There is nothing like a steady diet of rice, beans and greens to make me miss home. Here in the villages in southern Tanzania, most meals are the same – rice, beans (on lucky days the rice and beans are flavored with coconut milk), greens, and a tomato-based sauce, that more often than not has whole small fish (samaki) in it. On lucky days the meat is chicken. Now I absolutely love fish, and some of the best fish I have ever had in my life has been here in Tanzania, fresh-caught from the ocean, but my passion wanes when said fish has been kept unrefrigerated and half-dried for days, and then transported in open trucks, to be sold several hundred miles inland in little piles set out on booths in the sun. Saying that dishes with samaki in them have a “fishy” taste is a massive understatement. But people here love it. A research colleague of ours arrived last night from Mtwara and brought Irene and me a gift of fish wrapped in newspaper, and the smell was so strong I had to beg Irene to take it away and hide it in her room. She held the oily package to her nose, inhaled deeply and said she couldn’t wait for dinner.

I literally cannot stomach eating samaki, which means that I usually have a choice of one of two meals: 1) rice, beans, and greens, or 2) rice, beans, greens, and chicken. On desperate occasions I will eat only greens and rice, or beans and rice. Occasionally ugali, a paste made from corn, something like thick grits, will be substituted for the rice, which is so bland that it does little to diversify the available flavors. I have skipped meals on more than one occasion, retreating to my room with a box of juice and a protein bar. What’s worse, I have daydreams now, starting as early as 6am, of eating fried shrimp po-boys with Remoulade sauce on crusty French bread, field green salads with fresh feta and apples and candied walnuts, pumpkin soup and rye bread, a Nathan’s hot dog in a squishy seeded bun, spaghetti with homemade marinara sauce and a glass of red wine, tomatoes ripe from the garden. And cheese. I really miss cheese. When Matt and I lived in Ethiopia a whole year, the only thing we really missed was Mexican food and a good burger. In Dar es Salaam there was enough diversity (and enough good Indian food) that again, all I really missed was Mexican food and a good burger. But here, in the field, even thinking about such foods is a recipe for homesickness.

Three and a half more months doesn’t seem so long, but when I consider that that is 220 of the exact same meal (not counting breakfast, for which I eat beans and a banana, and sometimes a chapati), August seems a long way away.