The self-proclaimed best Mexican food in Gabs (or: What Rebeca's missing while she's home in Boston for a month, part 1)

Mexican food doesn't exist in Gaborone. If you ask a local where you can find Mexican food, they'll point you to a chain restaurant called Spur that serves your typical generic grilled meat and, paradoxically, has a Native American mascot decked out with a full Apache-style headdress. Needless to say, the locals have no idea what Mexican food is.

However, one day our good friend Rebeca informed us that she had found canned refried beans at one of the larger local supermarkets! So, thrilled with this discovery, we have attempted to re-create some semblance of one of our favorite cuisines and to help us along, Shanthi has taken it upon herself (in the theme of acquiring new life skills) to perfect the technique of making flour tortillas from scratch. Sadly, we can't find lime-treated corn meal here and we do not quite know how to turn regular corn meal into lime-corn meal for corn tortillas, so we're restricted to flour tortillas. In any case, here's the spread we made recently for dinner with Rim.
From top left, going clockwise: fresh flour tortillas, sauteed corn and zucchini, mango-cilantro salsa, roasted peppers and onions, refried beans (from a can), sage and garlic roasted potatoes, cheese.

My kingdom for a lime

Shanthi and I are fortunate that we live in a developing country that is so...developed. Housing is more than adequate, we have reasonably reliable electrical power, running cold and hot water, and even DSL high speed internet, something my parents in Vermont don't even have available to them. We can go to grocery stores and purchase marmite, branston pickle, tasy breads and cheeses, 2% milk, various honey varieties, bulgarian yogurt, sugary iced coffee drinks, ginger beer, shortbread biscuits. fresh apples, oranges, spinach, potatoes, herbs of all types, dried pasta, fresh pasta, ice cream, phyllo dough...blueberries have even made an appearance on local grocery shelves once in a while, as well as what is perhaps for me the loudest flag proclaiming "Here thar be ex-pats": cranberry juice.

But we can't buy limes. Because, like bombay sapphire gin, maple syrup, fresh tofu, fresh curry leaves, tempeh, masaca (lime-treated corn meal used to make tortillas and such) and high quality loose-leaf tea, limes have not made it to groceries in this corner of the planet. We have no idea why that is. We can buy lime cordial. We can buy citrus that looks exactly like a lime, judged by color, size and shape, which turns out to be a green lemon. We can buy sprite, a soft drink famous for its "limon flavor". There's something to be said about the marketing of food products that mimic flavors of foods that are simply non-existant in the place where one is marketing the flavored product. I guess it works...I've never seen a kola nut...have you?

One of the interesting challenges of living abroad is the re-creation of foods from back home with the limited availability of certain ingredients. For Shanthi and I, who absolutely love limes, this has been trying at times. However, we've accommodated...we've gotten used to lemons where we'd prefer limes. We've used generic white cheddar instead of parmesan or mozzarella.

In some ways the limited resources we encounter here in Botswana contribute to the reduction of stress in our everyday lives. Somehow when you have slightly fewer choices, fewer varieties of clay to sculpt with, decisions are simpler and creativity gathers bounds. I wonder if we'll eventually forget what we're missing...

Doritos in Botswana

One of the interesting and often humorous things about traveling or living abroad (outside the U.S.) is discovering American brands in new disguises. These surprising variations on the ol' tried and true can frequently be found in the snack sections of convenience or grocery stores. For example, I believe I was in Bali when I had a bag of Cheetos that did not taste like Cheetos at all, as most Americans would know them. Cheese flavoring was non-existant and instead they tasted like sugar-coasted corn fritters, which I found to be a rather disgusting but understandable variety on the brand in a culture that basically doesn't eat cheese (except on something they call "pizza"). But it begs the question: why are they still called Cheetos?

Here in Botswana, I've found Kellogg's corn flakes, which are exactly like American Kellogg's corn flakes except the box has the catchy, somewhat patronizing slogan: "If it doesn't say Kellogg's on the box, it's not Kellogg's in the box". Is that right...? Wow... who knew?

Snack foods (like the Cheetos above) are often completely different when they cross borders. For example, exhibit A: Doritos. I have not seen Nacho Cheesier Doritos here yet. Maybe they simply haven't evolved past the archaic Nacho Cheese-flavored chip stage to the ultimate, Cheesier variety. But I did one day see this flavor party of a corn chip: Poppy seed, roasted garlic and Italian cheese flavor flavored Doritos. As I love garlic and Italian cheese (flavor) and do enjoy a poppy-seed bagel or muffin now and then, my curiosity gave way and I tried these out. If you look closely at the photo, you'll note that I bought into the marketing and did try these tortilla style corn chips in a bowl, but that I decided to leave out the chunk of unidentified Italian cheese (flavor?), the clove of garlic and the two scoops of poppy seeds that were "suggested" in the "serving suggestion". I figured they were already in the chips:

How were they? They were...interesting and...unlike any Doritos I would ever expect to be developed and sold, at least in the U.S. I will not buy them again as I'm not convinced that garlic and cheese flavor goes well with corn chip-flavor and poppy seeds, but they definitely looked interesting, with the poppy seeds somewhat impregnated in the corn chips.

Random Mish-Mash of Events

I am so behind in posting items to the blog that I now have a virtual stack of photos dating from events back in October and November and rather than sit on them further, I decided to just make one post that is of the "more photos, less text" variety. I, of course, do expect that readers of this blog (basically the Kappagodas, Whittiers, Muellers and another Woolsey plus a few intrepid friends) will break into "more photos" and "less text" cheering groups like in the old Miller Lite commercials.

So...here we go. Snapshots from our lives in Gaborone.

We'll start off with a photo of Shanthi and I and our friendly cab driver, Tendai Panga. Tendai is from Zimbabwe and emigrated to Botswana a few years ago after the situation in Zimbabwe became increasingly dire. Tendai is a good friend, is always cheerful and recently I have been teaching him about computers and the internet, setting him up with an email account and such. His first name, Tendai, means "Thank You" in Shona and his last name, Panga, is what they call large knives, like machetes, used to cut down brush. Hmmm...this is a bit of text and I promised less of that in this post, but Tendai deserves a lot more. He and his wife returned to Zimbabwe for the month of January and we can only hope that they are doing well, reunited with their children (who are in school, staying with relatives there still ). Certainly, some amount of cheer has disappeared from our lives in Gaborone with his absence.

This is a photo of some goats along the road to Gabane. You will see livestock along or in the roads pretty much anywhere in Botswana. It's sometimes cute during the day time to see traffic halted by a stray cow, but it is NOT so cute and instead rather dangerous at night.

Some of you may know that one of my favorite hobbies is pottery. I'm not doing any of that here in Botswana, sadly, but we did go visit Pelegano Pottery in Gabane and a potters in Thamaga as well (G's are pronounced like H's in Botswana; Pele-Hano, Ha-bane, H-aborone, Thama-Ha). Here are some photos of the pottery studios, starting with the very traditional and cute rondavel-style houses that comprise the studio's buildings:Looking through the doorway to the pottery on shelves within:Women working to score and paint the pottery:Shanthi finds some shade from a malevolent sun:

The Kiln!!!

I don't have photos of the other pottery studio in Thamaga, but I did get a photo of the strange hill in Thamaga. The terrain in Botswana is generally flat and littered with jagged stones. But some of the hills, notably Kgale Hill in Gaborone, look like just a big jumble of stones piled by giants playing one hell of a game of bocce. The hill in Thamaga:

Onward with the random photos, here's one of a vervet monkey munching on some tree fruits on the roof of a car shelter in our neighborhood:

An ice plant flower:

Me, enjoying the fine interior of a Gaborone cab (not Tendai's, by the way). The roof lining was draped in a somewhat tent-like fashion:

Most cabs here are pretty run down cars and almost all of them have cracked windshields (probably the heat).

And to give you an idea about how OLD some of these photos are, here's one with Shanthi, Edna, a guide and Rebeca as we tour the David Livingstone memorial site where the famous explorer once lived in Botswana:

Edna, myself and Shanthi saying goodbye to Edna ages ago. Yes, we were thrilled by her visit and we are still very sad that she had to leave :(

Music in Botswana

Since arriving in Botswana, I have looked forward to experiencing some of the local music. I am a musician and have spent many years studying and playing music from different parts of the world and given the substantial music traditions of Zimbabwe and South Africa, I assumed that Botswana would have a great music tradition as well.

When we arrived, we soon found out that the popular music here is American R&B, hip hop and rap. Not a good sign. But if you wake early enough and walk to the hospital you will hear a choir of nurses and hospital staff, their beautiful voices singing morning hymns in Setswana and any walk through the main mall or the BBS mall in Broadhurst will tell you that there is other music...a more indigenous music with happy chord progressions and whistles. I wanted to find that music.

I asked around at some CD stores and got a couple of names: Shumba, who had just released a new album and Maxy, a woman who apparently sang more traditional songs. I peered over the shoulders of my fellow combi riders to read the writing on a cassette as the combi driver popped it into the cassette player with the resulting cheerful music blasting from the booming combi sound system: Matsieng.

One day, our friend JC texted (it costs a lot to actually phone people, so most of our phone “conversations” with friends consist of SMS text messages, which are relatively cheap) us to see if we wanted to go to a traditional music and dance event at Botswana craft. Botswana craft is an arts store that sells all sorts of beautiful crafts, pottery and artworks made by local Batswana. It’s a little bit higher priced than buying directly from the artists, but it’s more or less one stop shopping, conveniently located on your way to the airport. They also have a stage and open outdoor performance area, and thus many music groups have CD release parties there.

Of course, I was going to go. Rim (giving the Japanese tourist salute. She's Korean. Inside joke there...), Michelle, Shanthi, JC (with the long arms, taking the photo) and I all went. Note the fellow in the background drinking chibuku, a local drink made of fermented sorghum, out of a gourd. The line-up included Maxy, Shumba and Matsieng, and a couple other groups whose names I did not catch. Again…one stop shopping. It turned out that the event was put on specifically for foreign diplomatic missions (JC is a marine that was stationed at the US Embassy in Gaborone…he’s now moving on to Cambodia in his next posting) with the aim of expanding exposure to traditional music of Botswana, hopefully leading to the export of the music and culture across the western world.

Sadly, I don’t think this will happen…at least not with the current state of the music performance scene.

The night started out pleasant enough. We sat at tables laid out with two bottles of Amarula (an alcoholic cream drink much like Bailey’s, but with the distinct flavor of the marula fruit, a small yellow tree berry that is native to southern Africa and is a favorite treat of elephants. The marula fruit are harvested by local women and made into this delicious beverage), amarula-logo shot glasses, serviettes (napkins), basically an amarula marketing campaign. But we love amarula, particularly since it supports local women (Rebeca’s fail-proof logic for continuing to imbibe the stuff), so we were thrilled.

The performance started with a backdrop of the typical evening thunderstorm, which was all very scenic until the thunderstorm and accompanying rain hit us. We were standing in line for dinner when the rain came and it put a temporary stop to the proceedings. The roof over the performance seating areas at Botswana craft is made of aesthetic-looking twigs constructed much like a bamboo sushi-rolling mat; fairly quaint but entirely dysfunctional in preventing leaks when the rains come. Thus, we were all forced to huddle under the narrower metal roofs on the fringes of the performance space. The artists, who were in the middle of performing, were gathered under the roof on the stage. Our amarula remained, abandoned, on our table.

Finally the rains stopped, and the performances resumed. We tramped through large ponds and a small river, carefully avoiding the invisible crocodiles, to get closer to the stage and watched the performance. I’m kidding…about the large ponds…there was only one pond and it was only a medium-sized one.

So…the music. Well…there was indeed music. Only thing was…no musicians. The “bands” typically comprised maybe 5-6 men, one of whom was the lead “singer” (the other were dancers and whistle blowers) and two women who danced and “sang” back-up vocals and harmonies. Note the quotation marks. It was virtually all lip-synched. [Above, Shumba]

Yes, the two women and the lead “singer” had microphones, and the lead “singer” was probably doing some of his singing live, but it was backed by a track of him already singing what he was singing into the mike. The women did do some backing vocals sometimes, but they were likewise just doubling two of the harmony lines coming out of the speakers. The actual music? Pre-recorded, all of it. After completing one song, the group would take a short breather and then start another song. The curious thing was that the music would be nearly identical. The same chord progression: 1 4 5 5; i.e., C major triad arpeggiated staring on g. F major triad. G major triad. G major triad arpeggiated starting on d. It wasn’t just the same tune for one group…every group played different key variations on this theme. It was like there was only one song. Ever. And nobody was playing it. They were just dancing and lip-synching to a multi-tracked synthesize-produced recording of the same cheery 3-chord progression. The interesting bits must have been in the lyrics, which were all in Setswana (or Setswana mixed with Basarwa when Maxy sang) and which we, of course, could not understand. JC later informed us that he found out from a Motswana working at the embassy that one of the songs was about a man asking his girlfriend if she was cheating on him because he wanted to cheat on her and would, I guess, feel justified in doing so if she was already cheating on him.

It all made Nickleback seem like innovative song writers.

[Above, Shumba again]

That was the traditional music. I really felt like a candle had gone out in my heart. Finally Maxy got on stage, a large woman who opened with some real singing. She promised to bring some real performance skills to the stage, but ultimately she was little different from the others. She sang on top of her own pre-recorded voice, cutting out at points and adding little nuances here and there. Nothing impressive. At one point, after singing melismas at the conclusion of a song she stated that “this is the real thing…I know people say we are just lip-synching up here, but I did that to show you this is the real thing”. True…she was singing now and then, but usually only doubling her own voice coming from the recording played on the PA system. Her back-up dancers did not bother to carry microphones to mimic the back-up vocals in the recording. It was a big disappointment.

The best part though was that I got to see all these “traditional” music stars of Botswana all at once, in one event at one venue. Thus, I didn’t waste time and money ever searching for the real thing and being disappointed each time, always thinking that maybe the other groups I heard about would have it.

I’ve heard the real thing exists…it’s out in the villages and much like the performance during the Exodus Live Infinite Word Festival, it involves a larger group that sings, chants and dances to their own accompaniment of hand clapping, foot rattling and vocal trills. I look forward to seeing that again…who knows when I’ll get the chance. But sadly, I don’t feel the need to see Shumba, Matsieng or Maxy again. And I don’t think anyone outside of Africa will ever see groups like this performing at your local venues. Without authentic musicians on stage and slightly more complex chord structures, I believe that this traditional popular music of Botswana will stay in Botswana.

The dancing, however, is interesting and quite charming at times. If only there were musicians playing the original acoustic instruments that must have formed the backbone of this music years ago…*sigh*…

I have a few videos from the performances. however they are too large to post on the blog, given that some folks are reading from dial-up connections. If I post them on a video-sharing site, such as YouTube, I'll let you all know.

The Clove Saga, Part 3 (Long...)

Fiasco in the offing.

Calling Lufthansa was easy. You just dial a number. Or eleven numbers. And it’s not even as hard as dialing cause really we just punch the keys on the cell phone and hit send. It’s quite simple. No waiting for the wheel to click around before we can dial the next digit. Don’t have to dial at all really, though we still talk the walk we took 30 years ago rather than the walk we take now. What wasn’t easy was the $360 phone bill I would soon earn due to sitting on the phone virtually all day speaking to idiotic fools who spoke as if they had The Answer although they, like Philly, didn’t realize that it was the wrong answer, or maybe the question they thought was being asked was not the question The Answer was answering and so what they really needed to do is understand the original question but before they could figure it all out, The Answer up and left for Denver. 42.

What happens in this scenario is that you get driven in circles. It’s like one of those maddening dreams that I have from time to time. The ones where I am solving a mathematical computation and the summation is just not working and I must go through the accounting yet again, correcting errors but in the process creating them anew, and so on and so on.

And

So

On,

my mind swimming in spirals of illogic and confusion, interrupted by episodic out-takes of other dreams but always returning to the theme of the non-additive summation that drives me insane until I wake in a fog, quite unrested.

Lufthansa reservations could confirm my cat traveling in the cabin from Botson to Frankfurt, and from Jo-burg to Frankfurt and Frankfurt to Boston. But that all important Frankfurt to Jo-Burg leg? No confirmation. Why is that? If you work at Lufthansa reservations, feel free to choose one of the following two answers:

a) Because that flight already has capped it’s limit for the number of animals they can check into the hold

b) Because the booking is made through our Frankfurt office and we are waiting for them to confirm it

If the customer asks any follow up questions, repeat the mantra of the bookings that have been made once more: We are able to book your pet on 3 of the 4 legs of your trip [thus indicating success in acquiring the booking rather than a failure to book], the flight from blah blah to blah blah, the flight from blah blah to blah blah and the flight from “look what we’ve conveniently done for you” to “although this is all complete rubbish, isn’t it”. Gloss over the fact that booking the later two legs of the journey is moot if the critical second leg of the 4-part sojourn has not been confirmed. If the customer persists, tell him/her that this is all handled in Germany, and that s/he must call the offices in Germany.

And what happens if s/he does indeed call the offices in Germany, having looked up the phone number on the internet as nobody at US customer relations would give it to me?

So I called Germany. Yes I did. Germany said that the problem was that I wanted to make a booking for cargo in Germany. That means that I would have to call so and so pet transport in somewhere-ville and it would cost about $500 and yada yada. Oh, another thing Germany said…while we had them on the line…and this is very interesting. Those keeping score at home might want to lick their pencils and enter this onto the scoresheet.

There were no animals booked onto the flight from Frankfurt to Johannesburg.

None.

Zero.

Unless you’re counting humans, that is…

I believe that’s what they, in the fraternal order of major league baseball umpires, call a line drive caught at third with the bases loaded, turned for a 5-6-3 triple play. You are out, Lufthansa US Reservations! The side is retired on excuse for non-booking number 1! The run does not score. Red Sox win. Papelbon is pumping his fist as he marches toward to plate to greet Tek (who is, indeed, a Monster. True fact. Ask A-Rod). The plump policeman in the bullpen who exchanged fist pounds with Papelbon on his way out to the mound at the top of the ninth is smiling. Give it to us, Joe Castiglione: “Can you believe it?!?!!?!?”

I can. And it led to further enlightenment. Let me first remind you that at this point, we were leaving for Africa in two days. Furthermore, and this is critical to grasp the full meaning of the enlightenment promised to hit you, the reader, in just a few moments, it is important to know that our itinerary was to leave Boston on a Thursday, arriving in Germany on a Friday, and then depart Germany that Friday’s evening, arriving in South Africa, and subsequently Botswana, on a Saturday.

So I called German veterinary transport business X. I had a very informative conversation with a fellow whose name I have forgotten. He told me something very important because he asked a seemingly unimportant question. He asked me for my itinerary. I told him my itinerary. And the next words out of his mouth were:

“No. This is impossible.”

Fully perplexed, I asked the man to explain. So here’s the thing:

You see, South Africa only allows importation of animals into their country if they

a) have proper documentation

b) have been transported as cargo and are listed on the ship’s manifest

When the animal arrives, the documentation and such must be inspected by a qualified veterinarian on the ground and, you see, since I was arriving on a Saturday, there would not be a vet available at the airport as the vets do not work on the weekends. Thus, Lufthansa could not confirm the booking because the guys who do the bookings (the fellow I was speaking with) know about all this and simply will not book animals to arrive outside of a weekday (and, presumably, outside of working hours on a weekday) because if they do, that animal will essentially return on the very same plane as it makes its way back to Germany. So therefore, I had to either fly the very next day, so that I arrived on Friday, or I had to change my flight plans to arrive on Monday. But there simply was no other way around it, if I planned on bringing the cat with me.

Furthermore, the man told me that they have a great pet care facility in Frankfurt, where they feed the animals, let them out of their crates, take them for walks, etc. I can just see Clove going for a walk.

I then called back Lufthansa U.S. Reservations, tried to confirm pet travel for the Frankfurt to Jo-burg flight on Monday. It would not confirm. Things were going nowhere. In a mood of despair and desperation, I phoned the offices of Lufthansa in New York City, and left a message asking the people there to call me back. Like I said…a move of sheer desperation

Miraculously I got a phone call later that afternoon. It was a kind, logical pleasant German man phoning from Lufthansa offices in NYC. More enlightenment ensued.

What I found out is that there’s “putting the animal in the cargo hold” and then there’s “Putting the Animal in the Cargo Hold” and they are two completely different things, handled by completely different people. When South Africa says that in order for an animal to enter S.A., they must travel in the cargo hold and be on the ship’s manifest (this later bit being amongst the very fine print), they mean just that. But in order to get on the ship’s manifest, the item MUST be checked in as cargo, and thus all arrangements for transport are handled by Lufthansa CARGO. Reservations will be happy to check an animal into the cargo hold, but while they are being transported in the cargo hold, in this case, they would not be listed on the manifest. Two different things. Two different ways to go about arranging them. So the issue was that reservations could not book the second leg because

a) they can’t book cargo

b) that cargo cannot arrive on a weekend, and thus even if it could be booked, it would not be allowed to proceed on the dates given in my itinerary

wish they had just given me those two answers to begin with.

So I called up our poor travel agent and informed them that yet again, I was going to need to change my flight. I moved my departure to Saturday so that I would arrive in Jo-burg the following Monday morning. I had to book the hotel stay in Frankfurt again. It would have cost us more unnecessary funds to again change Shanthi’s flight plan and indeed made the whole switch for her from Emirates to Lufthansa moot.

I also called Lufthansa cargo. Turns out that they can book the cat as cargo the whole way. The whole way?

Well, no.

Or…

Shall we enter even greater depths of the fiasco? O! Let’s!