Tag: The Interesting and the Amusing in My Daily Life Page 2 of 10

Missionaries are Great at Recycling. Even Dogs.

On July 17, 2018

If you go to a friend’s house in your missionary community, and you admire a piece of her furniture, no need to ask, “Where did you get that?” so that you can find one too. Just be patient. Eventually your friend will leave and voila, you can buy it off her.

We got my girls’ bunk beds that way (thanks, Kathy). There’s a great shelf I really liked at a friend’s house, and thought, “That would be great for storing toys.” Except when they left the country, they sold all their furniture to one family, darn it, so I couldn’t nab it then. Instead I had to wait another few years until that family left, then I could make my move. It’s now happily storing my kids’ toys.

Kinda cool. Except, kinda weird and creepy. Makes me wonder who is eyeing the contents of my house, waiting for the day I will sell everything.

But hey, my point is that missionaries are great at recycling. Take this booster chair, for instance. The McFarlane family had a carpenter make it, and it was used by their boys. Then the Shenks bought it and used it for their kids. We bought it at their leaving sale about 10 years ago and it went through all four of our kids. Last month, we passed it onto another HOPAC family. It might be, like, 20 years old now. We should have all engraved our names on the bottom.

But I never anticipated we would one day recycle a dog.

Eight years ago, our Minnie gave birth to her first litter of puppies. One of those puppies went home to our friends Jim and Lisa, whose small son Gabriel named her ‘Snoopy.’ When Jim and Lisa left, another HOPAC family loved Snoopy for several years.

In December, Minnie died. We thought about getting another small dog, but weren’t sure we wanted a puppy. Then we found out that Snoopy’s owners would soon be leaving Tanzania and were looking for a good home for her.

Voila. Recycled dog. Snoopy is now back in her birthplace.

See? This was 2010.

Josiah refused to re-enact the kissing picture, because “you will post it on Facebook.” Unfortunately, he also no longer owns overalls. So this was the best I could get.

Come Grocery Shopping With Me

By Amy Medina

On January 28, 2018

In Other

Thought those of you on the other side of the world might be interested to take a trip through my grocery store with me. Grace took most of these pictures, so some of them are kind of random….but maybe that will entertain you.

My grocery store recently acquired a whole fleet of these car carts. I just stared at them and thought, Where have you been all my life? Did you really have to wait to get these when all of my kids are in school? Johnny’s too big, but he still likes to squeeze himself into them any time he’s with me.

Things I buy:

Cleaning supplies

Coconut oil from Kenya. I buy this occasionally. It’s wonderful, but it’s about $12 for a quart.

Clarified butter. This I buy and use regularly. Love the stuff.

Palm oil is the cheapest kind available here, so it’s what I use most often.

Tanzania produces amazing rice. So much better than what is available in the States.

Spices. Big selection. Love this.

I often buy popcorn, flax seed, and raisins from these bins. And look at that–quinoa. $2.50 for 100 grams (3 ounces). Yikes.

We buy American Garden mayo, ketchup, canned corn….. I’m not really sure it really is Born in the USA, but it’s closest to what we are used to.

I grew up on Nutella in Liberia, long before it came to the States. It’s expensive here, but worth it (of course).

We eat a lot of local chips, usually plantain or cassava.

Various sugars

Locally produced jam–good stuff.

Pringles can be found practically anywhere in Tanzania–even way back in 2001 when we first arrived. I have no idea why.

Cheese, usually from New Zealand. Expensive but usually available.

Eggs come in flats of 30. We go through about one flat a week. I’ve learned to only buy certain brands, because only some kinds have yellow yolks (the others have white yolks, which means the chickens basically ate dirt). The brand I buy aren’t very clean, but it’s worth it for the yellow yolks.

Milk comes in boxes from South Africa. High temperature pasteurized, which means it can sit unrefrigerated for months. Practical, but not exactly healthy.

The other option for milk is locally sourced, and comes in 1/2 liter bags. I get this kind sometimes. We also eat the local yogurt, especially when strawberry is in stock.

Frozen whole chickens. Great for the crock pot.

Ground beef, known as mince around here.

Cereal is at least $8 a box so we only get it rarely. It makes good birthday presents.

We only buy soda once in a while, but it is literally found in the farthest reaches of Tanzania. Soda used to only come in glass bottles, but I’m kinda bummed that in recent years, plastic has taken over.

We eat a lot of local honey. I guess a good way to know for sure that your honey is raw and organic is when you find a dead bee in the unopened bottle.

My filled shopping cart.

I buy most of my produce at another store, or at roadside stands. We have so much wonderful produce available and take full advantage of it.

Including the monster avocados.

Things that are available that I don’t buy:

About $6 a jar; not worth the price. I make my own from the plentiful local tomatoes.

Apparently Spam circles the globe. Not interested.

We also are not interested in vegetarian mock-duck.

Granola bars range from $2 to $5 each. We don’t buy them….unless they are expired and therefore on sale.

These come out to about $1 per tortilla. Instead, I buy handmade tortillas from a local non-profit bakery.

$6 a box. I make my own from scratch.

Nope.

Chicken gizzards. Nope.

Way too expensive for me. But I recently have found another brand that is more reasonable….about $5 for a container.

Chicken necks. Nope.

And since we don’t have a lot of processed food available to us, we can conveniently buy this whole bag of MSG to add to our meals. Ummm…nope.

Invasion of the Millipedes

By Amy Medina

On November 26, 2017

In Other

We’re having a millipede invasion. Sometime during our four months in the States, they must have figured that no one else was living in our house, so they might as well move in.

Now it’s a battle to the death for territory: Them or Us.

This is a public warning to the millipedes: This is not the first invasion we’ve conquered.

There was the invasion of the cockroaches, which resided in my kitchen for years (yes, years). They travel in on bananas. I had to shake them out of the toaster and regularly re-wash my dishes in my cupboards. I got really good at smashing cockroaches with my bare hands. Finally Amazon.com found us a poison that worked and they are gone for good.

Medinas: 1

Bugs: 0

There were also the centipedes, which are nasty, nasty creatures with a nasty, nasty sting. I found one once in Josiah’s bed when I was changing the sheets [shiver]. And two guests have been stung by them in bed in our house [we know how to treat our guests well]. But luckily my friend Permethrin, when sprayed on the baseboards, kills the centipedes on contact. So we still see them, but they are always very satisfyingly dead.

Medinas: 2

Bugs: 0

Then there was the invasion of the ticks which also lasted for years (yes, years). We tried everything to get rid of them: Frontline, Advantix, drops, powders, and some sort of very scary pesticide that temporarily killed the ticks but also made the dogs throw up.

Our poor dogs were relegated to staying outside all of the time. I let our Jack Russell in the house only at night, and only in the laundry room, and still had to pick off at least 25 ticks from her small body every. single. night.

Yet still we found ticks everywhere in the house, including in my children’s beds. I cursed the ticks. I threatened to get rid of the dogs. I despaired of life itself. And then a year ago, a friend of a friend (who is a vet) sent us magical doggie pills that killed all the ticks in 24 hours and they’ve never come back since. That vet saved my sanity and if I had another child or another dog, I would name it after him.

Medinas: 3

Bugs: 0

(Well, then of course, there’s the ants. I’ll call that one a draw. I kill them when they are in my way, but mostly, we peacefully co-exist.)

So now we have a millipede invasion.

They turn up in odd places like on a wooden spoon in the kitchen and curled up under the towels. They get squashed in the door jams and hang onto our mosquito nets. Gil and I have found them on several occasions in our bed. Johnny woke up Josiah the other night because one was crawling on his hand. Last week, Lily tried to knock one off her mosquito net and instead knocked the net into the overhead fan, tearing a large hole in the net and making a dreadful noise. Lily is now totally freaked out and insists I check her bed before she goes to sleep (ironically, she wasn’t even this freaked out when she found a snake in her bed).

They seem impervious to permethrin. We plug the bathtub when we’re not using it and Gil has taped up the floor-drains, but still they are coming in from somewhere. They are not dangerous, thankfully, just gross. I can’t bring myself to smash them so I just flush them, alive, down the toilet. Our kids earn allowance money for each one they flush.

We haven’t a clue as to how to get rid of them.

But we will.

Oh, we will. Like I said, this ain’t our first battle.

Back-to-School Shopping, Tanzania Style

By Amy Medina

On July 17, 2016

In Life in Tanzania

First of all, let me assure you that Dar es Salaam does have some modern, sorta-kinda-like-Target department stores. But we try to avoid shopping there whenever possible, partly because they are way expensive and partly because how you spend can be just as important as how you give.

The boys needed shoes and Lily needed a backpack. So we headed to the local market instead, which sets up on Fridays and is one of our favorite places to shop.

Josiah always makes a beeline for the soccer jerseys.

Contrary to popular belief, African countries do have shoes. These are imported from China.

These are handmade from recycled tires.

And these are good quality used shoes from American and British thrift stores. Trust me, Africa has plenty of shoes.

African countries actually have plenty of, um, other necessities. “Donate your bra to Africa” might be an actual thing (Google it), but please….don’t actually send it. They’ve already got plenty.

Thankfully, we were not shopping for bras this time, but backpacks.

Personally, this is my favorite part of the market. Tanzanian avocados put Californian avocados to shame. No offense.

And we had success! Josiah and Johnny got super cool basketball shoes, Lily got her backpack, and Grace some new clothes and soccer cleats (which she negotiated for by herself!).

Pizza Hut is Definitely Worth Blogging About

By Amy Medina

On May 24, 2016

In Other

In America, I was not a Pizza Hut fan. I would always choose Round Table or Papa John’s….or almost any other pizza place over Pizza Hut.

But then I lived in Dar es Salaam for 12 years, and experienced ketchup used as pizza sauce, hot dogs as a topping instead of sausage, and whole olives–pit and all, rolling around on the top of my pizza. As the years went on, the pizza (at some places) has improved, but it’s still the European, brick-oven variety, which means thin crust, thin cheese, and just….thin.

I know. I deserve a lot of sympathy. Life is hard.

So you can imagine how we all rejoiced to know that Pizza Hut would be opening in Dar es Salaam.

It takes us an hour to get there, unless it’s rush hour–then it’s two hours. But who wouldn’t travel to the ends of the earth for Pizza Hut?

But….considering we do have a few other priorities in life (I know, hard to imagine), we didn’t make it out there until a week ago. We envied our friends who managed to get there before us, and we always had the same question,

“Does it taste like the real thing?”

They assured us that it did, and when we finally got a chance to test it ourselves, we wholeheartedly agreed. Chewy, greasy, totally processed and full of preservatives. It was glorious.

As you can see, the menu does reflect a bit of the local culture. There are no pork products because Dar is a majority Muslim city. “Macon” is a bacon substitute made out of mutton. I’m guessing that most Americans have no idea what paneer is, or maybe even tandoori chicken. And even though we love both paneer and tandoori chicken, we’ll never be ordering it on pizza. As far as we’re concerned, the only thing we’re interested in is pepperoni.

Ah, pepperoni pizza, how I’ve missed you. Hot dogs can just never substitute.