Over the last three weeks or so I have adopted a Saturday morning pancake ritual. In the past I made pancakes from a recipe on the food network website. The recipe called for making a powdered mix and then adding melted butter and beaten eggs – and I can’t always find butter. But now I have the “More With Less Cookbook” and I mixed up a big batch of powdered mix that I am keeping in the freezer. It’s in an old milk tin with a plastic lid and it takes up a ton of room in my tiny freezer but I figure that if the ants heard about flour with powdered milk and a dash of sugar (among other less ant-pleasing ingredients), they’d bore through the tin and lick it clean. This mix is very easy and makes delicious pancakes. Granted, I am in Kisangani so things considered average in the world of Albertson’s and Kroger and Costco might taste fantastic to me – but I am pretty sure after a few weeks of taste tests, they’re good.
Here’s the recipe:
The mix:
- 6 c. flour
- 1 T. salt
- 6 T. baking powder
- 6 T. sugar
- 2 c. powdered milk
The pancakes:
- 1 egg, beaten
- 2 T. oil
- 1.5 c. mix
- Water to desired consistency
Ring the plate with sliced ripe sweet bananas bought from the mama down the street and drizzle a touch of real dark amber maple syrup over the pancakes.
I’m not going to say it’s the best haircut that I have ever had, but it’s up there for barber shop haircuts. I’m not used to posing for website pictures so I hope those who requested a visual are happy with themselves!
Today is our office Christmas party and it should be fun. The staff decided that they wanted to cook a feast themselves and invite their families rather than go to a restaurant and have full-service. I like it when they cook together. I was going to make banana bread, which is always a big hit here, but then I was stuck at work until 9PM last night. Oh well. I’ll make some on Saturday and take it to Rwanda to share with my friends there. I plan to be in the Congo/Rwanda border region for about a week visiting both Rwandese and Congolese friends. I’m excited about the trip.
Oh, and I almost forgot… here’s what I looked like just weeks ago:
Living in DR Congo these days has me thinking more than ever before about peace, war, poverty, wealth, conflict, reconciliation, and the like. I’ve added some links to my page along these lines partly in the hope that I will better remember to read these sites and stay connected with movements for the good of us all. If you are at all concerned about these things, (and I hope that you are,) feel free to browse and learn along with me.
She is more faithful than your local Walmart greeter.
I have grown accustomed to my excited kitten greeting me at the front door to our office every morning. She runs ahead of me to wait eagerly at my office door, meowing and waving her tail all the way down the hall. But when I walked up on Friday she was nowhere to be seen. I started to fear the worst: illness, sudden death, the purported gang of cat theives who crave the taste of house cat… I asked around and staff members said that she’d been around just five minutes before - she was waiting there at the door for me.
We gathered around our big table for morning prayers and some time later I glanced down the hall to see the very tip of her tail as she sauntered into my office. (Whew, still alive.)
A little while later I heard our administrative assistant upset about something at her desk. I went to see what was the matter and she said that she’d brought some cooked beef in for lunch. It was wrapped in a plastic bag and she tucked it into her desk drawer with the intention of taking it to the room the staff uses as a lounge after prayers. It was gone! Apparently the cat snagged it and while I was looking for her she was hiding away feasting on her ill gotten gains.
The moral of the story is that my cat loves me because I give her food. At least her dependency is innocent and honest. I can expect to be ditched cold whenever she happens upon some illicit beef.
Since moving so far out of the USA and American culture I have realized that there are just a couple of major topics that are universal fodder for discussion: soccer and politics. Now I am a sports fan and I tried to appreciate soccer during the World Cup. But in the end I came to the conclusion that while a soccer game is fine to watch now and again, it’s a flawed sport that I can’t see putting much time and fanatic devotion to. That leaves me with the politics. When you are the only American in your city, there are many unique opportunities for political conversation. I normally try to present a reasoned point of view from my Christian worldview and my desire for peace. I try to represent my opinion faithfully and then find something else to talk about. I am a fan of the show Car Talk because they use cars as a unifying topic and they bring many aspects of life into the conversation, seasoned with wit and irony. Here, cars are rare. A lot of things are scarce. But just about everyone has opinions about this or that politician and once sparked, the conversation goes from there.
Truth be told, I am a conversationalist and I can talk about many things with many people. In college I majored in Psychology and minored in conversation. One of the things I do like about the political talk is that it seems that the US President’s name is butchered by most every non-American accent. He’s Mr. Boosh. Thinking about how funny it sounds lightens up many dour political conversations for me!
These seem to be tough political times and getting tougher. If the Middle East isn’t burning it’s smoldering, people are hatching plans to blow themselves up, democracy is on the march but mostly marching in place, and a leader of South America’s Leftist movement called Boosh “el diablo” while standing behind that marble bulwark of a lectern in the halls of the UN. I’m not sure what’s worse, being included in the “axis of evil” or being called “the devil”. Either way I’m guessing that Venezuela just got added to Mr. Boosh’s personal axis list. Lord have mercy.
Curtis and I both have dull headaches today. We remarked on it just now and I thought that it might be from straining our eyes working on a jigsaw puzzle this fine cool Saturday. Then the landlady knocked on the door and asked if we were the ones responsible for the gasoline odor. It didn’t even occur to me that the noxious odor wafting up into the apartment might be responsible for our headaches. Life here is not short on strange odors. There is a rice processing facility just next to our building and there is some kind of heat involved. Just about every evening as we come home from work there’s a huge steaming pile of half-processed rice near the building. That stuff is a pungent mixture of thick coffee and burning rubber. People don’t make much trash here but what they do have to get rid of generally gets burned. Weeds are often piled up and burned, setting off various sweet smoky odors depending on what weeds are heaped on the pile. Another day, three more funky smells. It’s a real tour de force for the olfactory nerve.
It’s not something to complain about, (the present petrol odor exempted). It just is. But it’s good to give the nose a reprieve when possible. Today I baked a loaf of bread. The smell is rich and rewarding. It’s almost as good as the odor just now creeping in through the window; the Indian family down the hall is cooking up something spicy and tasty. If only I could strike up a friendship with them… Last night we visited the new home of one of our staff members. Tony has just moved out of his folks’ place to prepare the nest as he readies for marriage. He lives in a neighborhood full of old Belgian mansions in various states of disrepair that have been claimed and subdivided by local landlords. After a dinner of fried plantain and smoked fish we watched the Netherlands beat Côte D’Ivoire by a score of 2 to 1 in Germany. I’ve always got to root for the underdog if I don’t come into it with a favorite. I was pulling for the Ivoire Elephants, and so was all of Africa. I couldn’t help but thinking of my friends there and how they have been suffering through civil war for years now.
As we arrived home, walked up the stairs, and turned into our dark hallway there was an odd whirring noise and a headlight coming toward us. It turned out to be the Indian family’s little girl on a battery powered toy motorcycle. It occurred to me that this cute little girl is so young yet she’s among the elite few in town with wheels.
There are few things from America that I miss very often. I miss people far more than things. I’d cut out most soda long before I left the USA and here it is often unavoidable. But truthfully, I do miss root beer. Yesterday I was in one of our little grocery stores and I spotted one lonely can of A&W Root Beer! I could hardly contain myself. As far as I know there isn’t any other country besides the USA that makes or drinks root beer. The Aussies have some drinks in the genre but they’re not the same. My British friends think it tastes like toothpaste or medicine. (We use mint and cherry to flavor cough medicine and apparently they use something like root beer.) I asked the shopkeeper how he got the root beer and he said that it came through Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. Dubai has been the major trading post for Africa and the Middle East for a long time and they say you can buy just about anything you want there. Still, root beer?! Back at the office I was savoring every sip and I noticed that it was canned in Southern California! It is a small world and it’s getting smaller every day.
The gasoline odor has faded as I’ve written this entry. Hopefully someone will light up a fire nearby before my nose gets bored.
Recent Comments