Coffee, surgery and banana beer

Things remain interesting.

Our surgical ward is soon to be opened! Soon we will be able to do life-saving procedures here instead of referring them to Arusha-- some three hours' drive away.

The only downside is that the offices had to be reshuffled to clear out the surgical ward, and consequently I got booted from my nice big office to my new closet. This was not unexpected. When the most junior, least important staff member has the nicest office on campus, it's not a stable situation.

Old Office

New Office

 In other news, I just got back from a trip to Kongo, a little village on the slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro. A friend of mine (who stays in the same house in town), has four weeks off work (he's a teacher), and he invited me to come meet his family. One five-hour bus ride, one one-hour dala dala ride (mini-bus), one boda boda (motorcycle taxi) ride, and one half hour walk later, we arrived.

Kongo and its environs are everything that I expected of equitorial Africa-- small villages clumped on steep tropical slopes, banana and coffee cultivation, everything green except the red soil.

I had a great time, and actually managed to take a few pictures too.

Here is a view of the landscape around Kongo.

Here is one of myself, my friend Kessy and his faithful steed-- the piki piki (motorcycle).

I also got a chance to learn about making coffee. It's one of the main cash crops in the area. I got some practical experience with every step of the process from planting to drinking. I knew surprisingly little about where coffee came from before. It turns out that the fruit is pretty tasty all by itself.

Here are some coffee beans in different stages of the coffee making process. From left to right, unripe fruit, ripe fruit, extracted beans, dried beans. The ones on the far right are ready for roasting.

I also learned about banana beer, the local home-made alcohol of choice. I had tried Karatu's local brew--millet beer-- on market days. That stuff tastes like someone ate a bowl of gruel, chugged a bottle of vodka and then vomited it back into your cup. Proper etiquette for drinking millet beer involves blowing the mold on the surface away from the edge of the cup before you drink. They serve it in giant plastic mugs that probably haven't been washed since they left the factory, and the men imbibe gallons of the stuff.

The banana beer on the other hand isn't so bad. It has a sweet flavor and not nearly so much mold.

Here is Kessy with a generous ration.

The hospitality I found at Kessy's house was very nice. The whole family was extremely welcoming, interested in teaching me about Tanzania, and interested in learning about America as well.

Here is the whole household together.

They sent me off with a kilo of coffee and an invitation to return. Then Kessy saw me to the bus station in Moshi, where we encountered a terrible choice.

I had brought a really excellent novel for the trip: The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga. It was so good, I finished it on the trip there and had nothing to read on the way back. Fortunately there was a book store close to the bus stop. Unfortunately, the only English offerings were this...

  or this...

I'm sorry to say I made a horrible mistake. Next time I'll learn about juicing.