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 But before this point is fine...

Nyimo Bean Supreme

Here is something you will never hear me say: "Mmm.  I feel like eating some beans right now."  

I eat lots of so-so tasting foods because they are good for me. I'm talking about not-so-terrible-tasting-food-but-not-what-I'd-pick-if-I-had-any-choice-in-the-world food.  Beans fall into this category.  All, that is, except for one.  

When it comes to a little gem called the nyimo bean (pronounced like the famous fish Nemo), you can consider this one of my happiest Zimbabwean discoveries.  As I was reminded when boiling not-so-yummy lima beans this past week, the tantilizing treat of the nyimo bean is one of Africa's best kept secrets.  Nyimo beans are the easiest, cheapest thing to cook, and terribly tasty as part of a meal or anytime-snack by the handful.  

Known as an earth-pea, ground-bean, hog-peanut, Congo-goober, and a number of other things, these morsels of many names are considered a "grain legume" of valuable protein.  Full of affordable protein accessible to any class, these nutrient rich legumes are known for growing in (and improving) marginal to poor soil and are strong against low or inconsistent rainfall levels and high temperatures.  Pretty ideal!  

I was first introduced to nyimos by a teacher visiting an orphanage with me in Harare, who would boil a big pot of them and hand out handfuls to the children.  Pretty soon I had adopted the habit.  As a delicious way to pass out desperately needed protein, nyimo beans and bananas became my method of choice for healthy snacks of starch and protein.  (Both of these foods were especially good because they are kept clean inside of their skins until being eaten!)

The nuts can be eaten fresh from the ground (cracked out of their shell much like a peanut), shelled and roasted, or boiled in slightly salty water- my favorite!  When boiled (usually for about an hour), the salt seeps into the shell and adds just a little flavor around the bean.  When the beans are cooled, the woody-gelatinous shell slides off easily, allowing the beans to be popped straight into the mouth. 

'Tis the season for nyimos right now... If you can find some, do indulge in these goodies.  And then, mail me a few!

 

 (Terrible pictures; sorry.)  Here in a kitchen hut during Shona tea, a large pot of nyimo beans are 
passed around with a tea cup for scooping and serving a tasty pile onto the plate!  

I miss you, nyimo beans!

The Narrative of Africa

Let’s take a minute to talk about something that has been punching me in the gut numerous times each day since the killings in Kenya.  As many of you following African politics know, this past week in Kenya four/five armed terrorists systematically separated the students of a Garissa University student body by religion, executing a total of 147 students who identified themselves as Christians.  As I scroll through my “newsfeed” of 45 ways to bake an onion, crucial camping life hacks, and cute puppies and kittens --I’m not throwing insults here; I do love me some cute puppies-- I am slapped with the lack of attention being given to the blatant brutality of others on the other side of our shrinking globe.  So my question is, why?  After all, I haven’t exactly posted the gruesome images of those nightmarish events, either.  But why haven’t I?

There are oodles of questions and suggestions we can offer up:

-Is it because the story touches on something so dark we don’t want to touch it with a ten-foot pole? 

-Is it because we see the victims coming from a place in which a lot of people unjustly die anyway?

-Is it because it feels too far away?

-Is it because we are talking about a continent that a number of us can easily ignore in our daily First World lives?

-Is it because we’d like to stay unpolitical or don’t want our nations involved in more efforts overseas?

-Is it because the victims seem so different from some of us? Racially? Religiously? Culturally?

-Is it because we don’t understand the perceived reasons for this injustice and therefore feel too ignorant to join the conversation?

-Is it because we choose whose deaths matter and whose don’t?

These are all interesting questions to juggle and conversations to have, but when we see the attention media pays to tragedies like 9/11 and Charlie Hebdo, we have to go deeper in our understanding of why these traumatic events that will change the face of Kenya forever have gone largely unnoticed by the First World.

I don’t have the answer.  In fact, like many of you, I admit I don’t even like touching the subject.  It’s painful.  And horrifying.  And scarier than ever to me when a group of people is against you not because of what you do, but simply because you exist. That’s the stuff Holocausts are made of. So trust me when I say that I’m processing some of the above questions, as well. 

But perhaps deeper in the heart of all of this is something I call The Narrative of Africa.  It may not at all be that so many of us, media included, don’t care.  But for us in the First World, what is the narrative we have assigned Africa?

 Is it dark?  Scary?  Dirty?  Unsafe?  Uncivilized?  Disease-ridden?  A violent zone of conflict?  Wild? Overwhelming?  In-accessible?  Uneducated?  Hopeless? 

We do have a choice in how we interpret places, what we know about them, and our pursuit of the cultures that find home within them. That is, if we open ourselves to them. 

It’s been interesting to gage reactions of those around me when they learn that I have just moved from Africa and Spain.  Nine times out of ten they will focus on the negatives of Africa before commenting on anything else.  Sometimes this takes the form of political commentary; at other times it involves ebola, famine, or other disease.  --The other one time out of ten is usually regarding elephants, but that is another story for another day!-- As anyone who has returned to the US after living in Africa knows, even the word “Africa” in one’s background gives a person instant street credit.  “Oh, they lived in Africa.  They must be (insert adjective here- most often: brave, interesting, or crazy)." And the funny thing is, that most of the people I speak to say that it is one of the places they’d most like to visit but are sure they will not ever go near.  Though an expensive plane ticket is often the off-the-cuff excuse for this opinion, when pressed further most people stammer on about things like immunizations… and not knowing where to go… or what they would eat… or not wanting to be sick… or how to do it safely… or, or, or, a number of other things that shines a light on their distorted personal narratives of Africa.  Nothing was as telling to me as when we had a set of enthusiastic renters for our Connecticut house suddenly fall through out of the blue at the last second because, when they had told their friends, everyone said that landlords living in Africa could only mean it was a scam. Ask me for twelve more examples; I've got them.  The word "Africa" elicits interesting personal narratives.

So here is my challenge to you.  If you, like me, are bothered by the lack of media attention given to the horrifying events of the past week, or to the 200 missing Nigerian girls, or to the museum attack in Tunisia, or to the Nairobi Westgate shootings, or to the 4 million political killings in the Democratic Republic of Congo, or to the alarming rates of sexual violence in South Africa, or to the violence that took place just today in Egypt’s Sinai, educate yourself.  Pick a place and shine some light.  For yourself and for others.  Care.

If we can one by one change the Narrative of Africa into a narrative of growth, development, creativity, hope, innovation, resource, and aspiration, THEN we make lost lives matter- independent of how the media pays attention.  When we change the Narrative of Africa to the bustling continent of hope, goodness, and ingenuity that it is, the easier time the world will have in seeing the connections of this challenged continent to other continents.  And even more importantly, the easier time the world will have in recognizing that African lives DO matter.

Take a moment to reflect upon your views of Africa, ways in which you could learn more, pieces of it that confuse or even scare you.  Let’s change the Narrative of Africa one person at a time. 

I'll start; you go next.

  

  

  

  

  

Passports and the Green Mamba

In Zim, everyone knows what a black mamba is.  It's a snake... And not just any snake, but a highly venemous, fast predator related to the cobra.  Here is the last time I (knowingly) crossed paths with one:

We pulled up to a parking lot and there it was, sitting between us and the store....  We went shopping elsewhere.

Now here is what most Zimbabweans refer to as "the green mamba":

The power of your passport can be a fascinating topic when you live abroad and suddenly realize there are number of perks that come with belonging to a certain passport club.  And a number of limitations if you don't... 

The passport is a funny thing.  Well, funny, that is, if you're an American.  In Zimbabwe, it's no laughing matter.  With the help of outspoken leadership and political pariahood, Zimbabwean passport holders have been seeing a lot of closed doors these days.  

The "green mamba," as Zimbabweans call it, stands as a symbol among many locals as a reminder that they are shut out of access to other countries, despite the languages they may speak or their ancestral backgrounds. As one of many examples, my friend -whose grandfather holds the key to a city in Great Britain, fought in their army, and was sent to Zimbabwe as part of his military duty- reminds me that she is being made to feel less and less welcome in her home country of Zim, where her rights are not systematically equal to that of every other citizen in the country. Yet, though she feels the government's pressure to push out those colonialist families who have now called Zimbabwe home for generations, she has no where else to go.  "All we can do," she once told me, "is teach our children to marry someone outside of the country! My husband and I say, 'Don't marry for love!  Find a good passport first!'" Though there is a humor in her speaking, there is also sadness. "We have nowhere else to go.  This is home, eh?  Whether they want us here or not." When times get tough in the country, citizens do not get the same options to move across borders as we Americans confidently have.

Most local Zimbabweans have their own stories. Some involve the limited number of times one can apply for a visa in a foreign country. Some involve getting all the way to the other country before being denied entry. Some involve having to show a great deal of money in  a bank account, as well as proof that one is returning back to Zim eventually with a job waiting for them. Some involve proving familial connections through documentation extending as far as turning in mortgage papers for the homes of in-laws in other countries. And all involve hours of running around and completing interviews to get the correct paperwork and approval stamps.

Visas for those citizens of Zim are an arduous, expensive, full time job to say the least.  As political climates ebb and flow, companies devoted entirely to getting locals visas in other countries are still learning how to jump through hoops decades into service. Travel and moving can be a tricky thing when no one will have you. 

Apparently nobody wants a green mamba knocking on their door....

To view this fascinating graphic up close, check it out at its source: http://awesome.good.is/infographics/how-powerful-is-your-passport/516