Cheap Food Availability

An idea stolen from Charlene (a fellow UW Peace Corps-er who's in Mongolia).

From an article from the NY Times about cost-saving grocery items…not
necessarily so cheap (and/or available) here...
(http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/29/healthy-foods-for-under-1/?hp)

1. Oats: cheap by American standards (about 20 cents for a
medium-sized tin), but far more expensive than other grains here.
Still, I buy them virtually every time I shop.

2. Eggs: Cost about 12 cents apiece, up from 7 cents each when I moved here.

3. Kale: Everywhere. 10 cents for a head.

4. Potatoes: Again, everywhere. Maybe 30 cents a kilo.

5. Apples: Ha, only in Addis, and about 50 cents each.

6. Nuts: Uh, peanuts are cheap-ish, as is peanut butter. Otherwise,
forget it, unless you're a rich farengi and can afford the
extortionate prices in Addis.

7. Bananas: Yep. About 70 cents a kilo. And sweeter than any banana
I've ever had in the States.

8. Garbanzo Beans: Yes, though usually ground up into a fine powder.
Definitely my major source of protein.

9. Broccoli: Ha. I tried to grow it once but it never flowered…

10. Watermelon: I saw this (and was delighted) when we had a training
in the South. Never up North, though.

11. Wild Rice: Cracked wheat almost approximates this.

12. Beets: Thankfully, yes! I love them! About 50 cents per kilo,
though somewhat seasonal.

13. Butternut Squash: Nope. Pumpkin, sometimes (in the Fall), is as
close as it gets.

14. Whole Grain Pasta: At the farengi grocery stores sometimes, but
about 10 times more expensive than the white flour stuff.

15. Sardines: Not sure about this one. Never looked for them. Canned
tuna is disgusting enough, tinned in oil and flake-form as it is…

16. Spinach: Hard to say, really…we have lots of different kinds of
green leafy veggies, but I'm not sure I've ever seen spinach itself.

17. Tofu: Maybe in Addis. I looked up a recipe to make it, but it seemed hard.

18. Milk: Great in coffee, less great for anything else. I mostly use
the powered kind, which is ridiculously expensive (about $6 for the
equivalent of 3 liters), to avoid having to pasteurize the farm kind.

19. Pumpkin Seeds: I guess so, when pumpkins are in season, but
really? What am I going to do with a whole pumpkin?

20. Coffee: Need I really say more that that Ethiopia is its
birthplace? A cup in a café is about 5-10 cents. A kilo of raw beans
is maybe $2.50. Not sure I've gone a day since coming here without
drinking coffee. Really.

home again (almost)

I've been away from Bahir Dar now for exactly one month (with a three day stop over back home in between). It's been lovely and refreshing, but I'd be lying to say that I wasn't excited to get back home.

I spent a week in Ambo with the new trainees, who arrived at the beginning of December. It was fun to recount my experience over the past year. They certainly had lots of questions. They seem like a great group (so excited to be here! so idealistic and un-jaded!), and it will be great to have some new neighbors and new energy. Five weeks into training, all 40 of them are still here, which is nice. Ambo was a great town, and it was fun to watch the trainees navigate it with their still-shaky Amharic and to realize how far we've all come in the past year or so. It was also great to get to spend time with the training staff (many of them back from last year). During our training, I think that both volunteers and staff were a little scared of each other, and it was hard to actually make friends with the Ethiopians. Not so this year--our staff is really incredible, and it was wonderful to get to joke around with them (in Amharic, no less!).

My parents arrived in Ethiopia on Christmas Eve morning, and we were together for nearly three lovely weeks. We spent time in Addis, Bahir Dar, and Lalibela in Ethiopia, and in Ruaha National Park in the Southwest and Zanzibar, in Tanzania.

Brief highlights:

* Christmas Dinner with Liz, Chris, and Chris's parents at the fanciest restaurant in Addis
* Visiting the monasteries on Zege Penninsula in Lake Tana with Tom, my friend the anthropologist, who lives there and consequently knows everything about them
* Seeing the rock-hewn churches at Lalibela (again). They were just as spectacular the second time
* Getting stuck in Lalibela (the plane apparently needed a "particle," which had to be shipped from Addis the following morning), and having a taxi driver from town appear at the airport shouting "Hana! Hana!," looking specifically for me to take me & parents back to town (ah, the benefits of speaking Amharic!)
* The van from the airport back to Lalibela breaking down on the road, and the Ethiopian Airlines car driving right past us without so much as a wave to make sure that we were okay
* Spotting two leopards resting in a Rainy Tree after killing an impala. Mom missed out on that one because she wanted to take a nap
* Drinking a gin & tonic by a campfire under the stars in Ruaha National Park
* Holding a baby bushbaby (less spectacular was having the baby bushbaby pee on me)
* Watching lions eat giraffe guts from about 3 meters away
* Snorkeling in Zanzibar--so many fish! I have decided that scuba diving is decidedly in my future
* Consistent access to cheese, non-Ethiopian food (though I did miss my injera fix somewhat), and hot showers for nearly three weeks

I'm back to Bahir Dar on Wednesday, after a much-needed, but potentially somewhat stressful, meeting with my UW advisor tomorrow here in Addis Ababa. It will probably be quite a challenge to get up and running again after having been away for so long, and I'm sure that I have dozens of exclamations of "tafash!" ("you've disappeared!", kind of akin to "long time no see") waiting for me in Bahir Dar. But my oh my will it be good to be home again.