The Thing with Food

Dear reader
I have been asked what kind of food we are eating here. Well, let me show you and tell you via todays blog.

During Ramadan, eating habits are of course a bit different than at normal non-Ramadan times. All of us, muslim or not, are eating dinner around half past six in the evening. Only that we call it break-fast during Ramadan. At around 18.28pm the muezzin starts singing and that's the sign of sunset and thus of breaking the time of fasting. We eat two things at that first breakfast: Samosas, those triangle thingies we know from India and a kind of bakery, sweet and a bit like doughnuts but thicker and less soft. Also on the table are two bowls, one with vanilla-custard (vanille creme) and the other with a kind of soup and bones. The bones can be sucked dry of the marrow, I think it's goat, I have to ask Edna about it. The soup consists off wabbly, brownish stuff, like fat put through a mixer. I have never tasted it and most probably never will if you understand what I mean. I usually add melon or banana to the vanilla custard, that's jammy.

But the most important thing are the dates. Every fasting should be broken with a mouthful of dates. They are of course delicious, sweet and sticky. By the way, did you know that you can survive on dates and camel milk in the desert for a very long time, several months long in fact. With the food there is of course liquids on the table. Here at Edna's table there's always water, fresh mango, lemon and melon juice and Karkadé, sirup of the Hibiscus flower.

The muslims eat quietly for a few minutes to kill the worst hunger and thurst, then they get up and go praying. There's a small mosque on the hospital grounds, that's were a lot of them go, the men on one side the women on the other, as everywhere in the world. The non-muslims either stay at the table and talk or they too go and do something else for a while.

Samosas and the sweet stuff

 

Dates

 

Karkadé, Mango, Lemon, Water and more Mango

 

the table after the first breakfast

 

About an hour later the table is set again for dinner. This time it's 'real' dinner, most of the time with either rice or pasta, liver, meat and potatoes, lettuce and tomatoes, or vegetables like beans or cabbage. Food here is seasonal and completely unprocessed. Some of it comes from Edna's farm. There's always watermelon and banana on the table too, sometimes also papayas. To me, the meat dishes are quite spicy and hot, yesterday the beans were too spicy for me too, but generally there's a more spicy and a less spicy dish to chose from. Again water and juices are served in abundance.

People show up for the second dinner at different times. Some are there at 8pm, others at 8.30 or even 9pm. Depending on who's at the table we have more or less heated discussions. And sometimes we just laugh at the latest exercise videos from Barakat. Sometimes we drink a cup of tea after dinner.

 The Buffet: everyone just serves themselves

 

Meat with Chips (French fries, Pommes Frites)

 

The Meat and Potato Mix (rather spicy)

 

 Rice
 

The Jammy Stuff

 

believe me, these bananas taste like bananas!

 

this is Angelika's favourite spicy Sauce (too hot for me)

Muslims are allowed to eat all night until dawn. That's when I sleep so I don't see the 4am crowd eating. The non-muslims eat breakfast like we normally do, around 7am or 8am. There's fresh bread (like the baguette cut in pieces of approx. 10cm), Somali pancakes, porridge (Haferbrei), cornflakes, peanut-butter, marmelade, nutella, something they call cheese but it looks like white-stuff-you-can-smear-on-your-bread-that-has-nothing-to-do-with-cheese! and honey. The honey has a chili-sting to it, it's a bit hot. I wonder since we're here where that comes from. Angelika says it's 'wild forest' honey, but I still don't believe it because I have not seen nor heard of wild forests in Somaliland. We'll find out before we leave. Like in so many places worldwide we find Lipton teabags and guess what? Correctamente, Nescafé! The stuff that they call coffée but people who have had real coffée know, it's a fake. Of course there's milk powder and of course Nestlé is quite dominant here too. There are other brands and we try and use those.

While I write there's another gigantic thunderstorm and heavy rain going down on Hargeisa. It's refresing and has a great cleansing effect. Besides, it helps the plants and all other living creatures short on water. Actually, this one is bigger than the ones last week. There's even hail hitting the windows. Wow.... well, let me finish this blog first.

Ladies and gents, that's what we eat here at the Edna Adan University Hospital. We have been out twice so far, once to the Ambassador hotel where I had camel meat and once to the Ethiopian restaurant where we all eat from the same platters. Other than that, we've been happy here at Edna's table of the united nations.

Question: how do you always know a Swissie has been there?

Greetings!

Liana

:-)