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Taste of Tanzania, or the rooster that came for dinner but didn't leave

Andrew's friend Kajuna, a teacher at Kongei Secondary School, offered to fix a chicken dinner for us our last night there. Great!

We were staying with PCVs John and Randee Edmundson in the house Andrew occupied during his Peace Corps service 2006-07. Thanks to Randee, it's much more attractively furnished and decorated now.

One feature is its enclosed courtyard between the residential quarters and the storage room, kitchen and bathroom area.

The bathroom actually is divided into three spaces -- one with a squat toilet, one for taking bucket baths and one with a sink.

There's also a sink in the courtyard. There's no running water in the house itself.

It's necessary to boil water before drinking, but washing with it is fine as long as you don't expect hot water. You might, though, because it's chilly at night up there in the Usambara Mountains. In that case, you can add some heated water to your bucket.

The house has electricity, an improvement from Andrew's time. It makes a big difference, and John says the cost is less than burning kerosine lamps.

The courtyard is a great place to sit in the evening. One of the main attractions is gazing at the sky, so bright with stars thanks to the clean air and lack of lights in this rural area.

We were there during the equinox, and because we were also near the equator, Jupiter rose to a position straight overhead.

We were in the courthouse waiting for Kajuna and the promised chicken dinner as it grew dark and cool and close to 7 p.m. Andrew and I needed an early start the next day for our journey by bus back to Dar es Salaam.

Finally, he arrived ... with a rooster.

Not a happy one.

It had reason to kick up a fuss because, before long, Kajuna had cut its throat, soaked it, plucked it, gutted it, dismembered it and thrown all its parts into a pot ... all there in the courtyard as we observed the proceedings.

The pot actually was a pressure cooker that Andrew had purchased and left for the Edmundsons.

It made all the difference.

Chickens over there are rangy and tough. They need a lot of cooking, particularly when the parts being cooked include the head, feet ... well, everything. Waste not.

Throw in some potatoes, carrots, a bit of spice and what comes out after an hour of pressure cooking is going to be tender, finger-lickin' chicken.

We ate well, if not fancy, during our visit. Staples include rice (you can jazz it up by cooking it in coconut milk) and a cornmeal concoction called ugali that's kinda sorta like grits. It's not very appetizing plain, but add a tomatoey sauce and it's better.

By the way, check out this cool blog -- A Taste of Tanzania. Here's an entry about ugali.

John and Randee get regular deliveries of eggs and milk (which they have to boil); John buys coffee from a nearby priest, and they eat a lot of fruits and vegetables, including papaya, tangerines, tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots and potatoes. For breakfast, Randee fixes a millet porridge that's  tasty and nourishing. John still dreams of Eskimo Pies, but you can't have everything.

Dar es Salaam, meanwhile, offers a variety of ethnic restaurants, as you'd expect in any large city these days.

Although, come to think of it, I never saw a Mexican place. Surely, there's a great opportunity.

Andrew and I ate at a couple of restaurants that were favorites of his from his previous visits to Dar, one Lebanese and the other Chinese.

In deference to Muslim sensibilities (and Dar is a city where the call to prayer rings out through loudspeakers several times a day, starting at 5 a.m.), no alcohol was served at the Lebanese restaurant -- a shame because my dish was really spicy.

Not that it's hard to find a drink in town. There are plenty of bars, and some casinos if you want to gamble a few hundred thousand shillings (not me). Depending on the watering hole, you can find beer, liquor or wine from around the world. I might not trust local liquors, but some of the beer is good enough, like Ndovu, which is brewed in Dar with Czech hops.

If you're going nonalcoholic, you can do well with tea, coffee and fruit juices. I had a blend of mango/papaya juice for breakfast our first morning in Dar, which was quite nice. And I like Tanzanian coffee so well that I order it here.

Otherwise, you can go with soft drinks (Coke brands dominate) and bottled water.

When you order any drink in a restaurant (except tea, coffee or fruit juice), it's customary for the server to open the bottle in your presence to assure you it hasn't been tampered with. Tea and coffee, of course, are safe to drink but you're probably taking some risk with the fruit juice.

One food that isn't common, because of the large Muslim population, is pork. Kajuna, Andrew and I set out from Kongei one day to find a place that might prepare some for us, with John planning to join us there.

Our first stop, a restaurant/lodge in Soni, was negative, but the proprietor of a place down the road was able to accommodate us. Within an hour or so, we had a first-rate feast of rice, tomatoes and cucumbers and pork and other vegetables in a sauce spiced with bits of red-hot chili peppers served by a young woman wearing a Barack Obama T-shirt.

It was a fine meal, and we never heard a squeal.