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Foodie Friday: Street Food

March 19, 2010 By Danny

Many travelers make a rule of never eating the food they find on the street, fearing all manner of diseases. Instead, many of these travelers choose food from restaurants where they cannot see the kitchen or preparation, which can be more dangerous. Since day one on this trip we’ve eaten food from street vendors where we’ve found it and have NEVER been let down.

It began in Mexico when we sat down at our first taco stand, we carefully ordered one of what everyone else was eating, then another and another. The stands owner offered us some spices to make it tastier which we foolishly took, setting our mouth on fire. Not only did we survive but dinner that night and breakfast, first waiting in a long line, the next morning were also consumed on the street. In Africa we actually expected to find bush meet, basically cooked baboons and other wild animals, for sale in the streets. All we’ve found so far is chicken and beef and our skewers with chips were quite nice, in fact some of the best food we’ve had here in Africa so far this trip.

The Basics

The rules of street food are easy:

1. If it looks questionable skip it.

2. If you don’t see it placed on the fire yourself, ask for it to be reheated before you buy and begin eating.

3. If you smell the food from a mile away, get in line and buy two. Oh, and even if the fish looks good, unless I can see the body of water from which it came, I pass.

Eating this way serves two very real, good purposes. One, it allows us to save loads of money as this food (like hot dogs in New York, half smokes in DC, and crepes in Paris) generally are the cheapest and best value available; it is always hot and can generally be purchases on the go with spare pocket change. The other reason its so good is that most travelers seem to prefer the guidebook recommended restaurants and so you’re often on your own with locals who are happy to share their culture’s favorite foods with you and make sure you’ve got a good sample to try. Someone famous once said you haven’t experienced a new place until you take a meal there, I think that’s true but taking a chance on the street food is often the best way to do just that.

So much more than a place to rest

March 18, 2010 By Jillian

We’ve seen so many things in the last year: nearly twenty-five countries, the ruins of civilizations, four oceans, new continents and perhaps thousands of new people. We prepared for this trip by saving money, researching the practical financial, health and emotional considerations, but one thing we hardly touched was our itinerary. We hardly knew what to expect and while we had an idea of our initial direction, many of you may remember the answer we gave last year when asked where we would go…everywhere. While our route hasn’t surprised us very much, there has been one thing that we hadn’t relied on, the kindness and incredible hospitality we’ve received. The best experiences of the last year are by far those with other people, generally people we don’t know that well that extend an invitation for a drink, dinner or a place to rest.

Both Danny and I have written a lot about our couchsurfing experiences, and often these are the memories we hold- not the museum, ruins or places we’ve been. It’s true that travel is about people, for had it not been for a swiss couple in Honduras we never would have done La Moskitia. Had it not been for the other four on our salar de uyuni trip I would have thought the whole thing rather boring. Had it not been for the man we met hiking in Argentina and his invitation to stay with his family, the garden route would have been another beautiful coast not a place we’ll always fondly remember. In fact, had we not struck up various small talk conversations on buses, tours and even boats over the last year we would have missed out on getting to know some pretty incredible people who have given us memories that we’ll never forget. They’ve given us a home, a place to rest, a welcome into their lives, often not knowing much about us beyond our names and faces. Without knowing it these people have provided us so much more than a comfortable place to rest our heads, or good conversation. They’ve given us the comfort of being with a family again, the feeling of hanging out with old friends, and the sense of normalcy.

No amount of preparation and planning can prepare a traveler for what its like to be away from home for a year. It might sound weird to those at home, but we miss the everyday routine and normalcy of home. It’s a strange bout of homesickness when you start to miss getting up for work everyday, but trust me after a year it starts to happen.

So if you’re one of those people, and I believe many of you are, who we’ve met along the way, and who stay in touch through our blog: thank you, gracias, merci, danke for everything. For adding a bit of normalcy to our lives, for unknowingly relieving our homesickness and for making us feel welcome. There is no way we can express our appreciation for what you’ve done except to pass it forward and to say we couldn’t have done it without you.

Off to Malawi…

March 15, 2010 By Danny

The trip to Malawi was a long one but worth it. We’d have to cross through Mozambique and needed a visa before doing so, which cost $30 at the border or $110 at the embassy in Harare so you can guess which option we chose. Rushing to the front of the bus at the border though quickly caught the eye of just about everyone else aboard with them all wondering why the mzungu (swahili for foreigner) was cutting the line. Having been the first people in the office and the bus still waiting for us a good 10-15 minutes, everyone was soon thankful we’d cut in front.

Once inside Malawi we were greeted by some of the warmest hospitality we’ve encountered on this trip. The minister sitting behind us helped us to find both accommodation and transportation upon our arrival in Blantyre going so far as to walk me to the nearest hotel and allowing me to use his cell phone to call a second when mine ran out of credit. We made it to the one we called on his phone and when it was time to leave had a hard time saying goodbye to the staff, who were eager to see more of our pictures of lions and hyenas…we gave them about 6 gigabytes worth.

The strangest thing about Malawi was the currency, and I say this having just come from a country that printed $100 trillion notes. The exchange rate quoted by the street money changers was between 170 and 180 kwacha to a single US dollar. This was about the same as at the legal and legitimate banks and exchange bureaus in Blantyre, the business center of the country. At the ATM however, we received K150.05 to a single dollar, making the currency about 20% more expensive. Clearly the border rate wasn’t a black market rate given that the legitimate banks and foreign exchange bureaus were giving the same rate- how strange then that the ATM would give such a different and lower rate. Luckily we’d hit the ATM’s in Zimbabwe had some excess USD to change rather than rely on the ATM’s as we usually do.

There was no end to the kindness of the Malawi people though. We decided to send all those stone sculptures home as the post here wasn’t too expensive and the postal clerk gave us her cell phone number in case it does not arrive on time. I’m not sure what she can do, but she just eagerly wanted to help. In posting it took only minutes to find a store owner willing to give us a free box for the shipment as well. I asked one store owner, when he gave me a 5 kwatcha coin as change if he had any smaller ones I could have instead to add to my collection, he quickly produced a full set of coins (nearly impossible to find in circulation because of their low value) and gave them to me. When Jill purchased a photo album from a local development project’s paper recycling/production workshop, her hand was shaken by every person working there…thanking her for her visit and purchase….as we walked out. Although we’ve met genuine and warm people in every corner of the world we’ve been too, the Malawi people as a whole take the cake!

Foodie Friday: Dining in Lesotho

February 5, 2010 By Jillian

While staying at Malealea Lodge in Lesotho we were rather well equipped to provide for ourselves, or ‘self-cater’ as its referred to here, each night. We had just enough food between the four of us (ourselves and two others we managed to squeeze into our little car) to last us our entire stay with the exception of dinner one night. Dinner at the lodge didn’t look too bad actually, but something else appealed to us a bit more. A traditional Basotho meal served at the home of one of the villagers.

On account of the rains our host Teboho arrived to pick us up at the lodge early. We wrapped up what we were doing and scurried with him out of the lodge and to his father’s home. The house was a one room, 10′ x 20′ block consisting of a few chairs, a cabinet/closet that looked like something from Ikea, some other shelves, and a double bed. We each took a seat as Teboho ran out of the house to the kitchen to bring us our meals.

While he was gone, his 74 year old father joined us and began to tell us about his life. He was proud of his only son (who was lucky enough to have 4 sisters) who started this business and that they often hosted people 2-3 times a week. His people didn’t use cow skin as blankets any more because the first white men who came (French missionaries) brought blankets that were so warm and so soft and so fuzzy that his people decided to use those instead. He taught me that when the beer or wine (we’d brought a bottle of red) was running low it was tradition in Lesotho to pour the elderly first and congratulated me on learning the tradition so quickly.

The meal itself was simple; a small piece of chicken, an unknown green vegetable, and mealy pap. Pap is basically a brick of corn meal that, well, tastes like a brick of corn meal. Although pap figures on the favorite food list of no one I’ve ever met, the vegetable and chicken were both seasoned rather nicely and left us all quite pleased. When our friend asked what the vegetable was, and we had a hard time understanding the word ‘spinach’ through the thick accents, we understood the word ‘popeye’ once Nicopane put his arm up and flexed his bicep for us.

Signing the guest book by weak lamp-light we knew we’d been apart of something special. Sure, this was a business venture by the young Basotho but it was unique. It was a venture that started with the help of a a Peace Corps volunteer over a year ago whose time in the Corps ended the day after Teboho hosted his first dinner guest. It is little bits of gold like this that make us most proud to be Americans.

Foodie Friday: Street Food

The Basics

So much more than a place to rest

Off to Malawi…

Foodie Friday: Dining in Lesotho

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