Tanzania: Week One

I already don't want to come home and not just because of the EU referendum results...

In the last week I have experienced a wedding, a christening, climbed gangilonga rock, been to church and attended a festival of Tanzanian heritage culture. In my foundation training, I have watched fellow Tanzanian volunteers take up role play dressed head-to-toe (let your whole body talk) in drag WITH PADDING and learned the African Macarena. I have been immersed in a culture that despite a 50:50 Islam:Christianity split, their peacefulness makes Britain look like a 1930s Soviet Union.

My first week experiences have exceeded my expectations for the full 13 week placement and I have picked up more Swahili than German -which I was taught at school for 3 years (sorry Mrs Stoddart).

On the other hand, my luxuries have slowly declined -I started with two long-haul Etihad flights, stayed at a kind of luxurious hotel (see my last post), spent a week in a high standard hostel, and moved to my new home with a concrete floor in my bedroom, waking up with back pain and a long drop toilet that doesn't flush in Iringa. But despite the latter, Tanzania is home. 

12 days of Christmas: Day 6, Charity of the Year

Hello! Hope you all had a fabulous day yesterday. Now that Christmas is over, the focus is all on the New Year celebrations: reflecting on the year that is almost over and looking forward for what's to come. While I reflect on my 2015 and think of my New Years resolutions, I'd like to tell you about my 'Charity of the Year.

While I was on my family holiday in Lanzarote this year, a cat followed us back to the villa almost every night. During the first few days, there were several debates over whether she (we assumed she was a girl) was a stray: she was extremely affectionate and even followed us inside and sat on our laps! One morning, as my dad was giving her a cuddle on the garden, a van pulled up. A man jumped out and passed my dad a pouch of wet cat food over the garden wall. That was all. 

After that night, we began to see small shelters - the perfect size for a cat - dotted around the island. The man-made shelters contained cushions and blankets for comfort and a bowl of dry cat food. Next to every one of these small homes, written on a rock was 'Freddy's Cat House'. To begin with we thought Freddy was one hell of a lucky cat! After some research, we discovered there was a stray cat crisis on the island and a gentleman named Freddy had built these homes himself to help the animals. Not only did he build the shelters, he took the sick cats home and nursed them back to health. He also took the young ones to be neutered to improve the stray cat crisis and to avoid young pregnancy. We assume that the gentleman that gave us the pouch of wet food over the wall was helping Freddy. 

Without a car, or a driver's license, Freddy walks all over the island to build these homes and feed the stray cats across a variety of resorts. On his website, Freddy asks for help as he could not carry large amounts of cat food round the island. Because the crisis is so big, he can not recover the issue alone. He asks that people fill the shelters he built with dry cat food - and explained that wet cat food can go off quickly if it is not eaten and make the cats sick. There is the option for holiday makers to foster a cat during your stay and even the possibility to give one of the cats a new home and Freddy's Cat House will pay for the flight!

Towards the end of the holiday, almost every night we saw an elderly gentleman 'taking his cats for a walk'. The cats had no leash but stayed almost glued to the man's feet and every so often he would stop, pull out a handful of cat treats and fuss them. We recognised the him - It was Freddy!

photo source: freddyscathouse.weebly.com

Read more about Freddy's Cat House here: http://freddyscathouse.weebly.com/
Like his page on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/freddyelgatolanzarote/videos?fref=photo

PETA: The Great Vegan Bake Off - Chocolate Chip Coconut Cookie Jars

Peta are running the Great Vegan Bake Off for the third consecutive year and after succeeding in making my own recipe for Orange and Cranberry crinkle cookies (see this month's posts) I decided to try it again to demonstrate my support for the radical animal rights charity! 

As an avid chocolate lover, plain chocolate was the first thing I could think of when pondering vegan foods and after finding Lindt Coconut Excellence on the chocolate aisle, I decided to base my recipe around the little bar of lusciousness. To further emphasise the coconut flavour, I added coconut oil as a substitute for butter - I even made my own flour by putting oats in a food processor my parents received for their wedding 25 years ago (can you believe it still works???)

I chose to make the cookie jars individually as in a rush of excitement I bought (non-oven-proof) glass jars... oops! So to check that the glass wouldn't explode in the heat, I made them one by one. If you want to try them for yourself, the recipe below provides ingredients per jar so if you want to make one for an evening snack you can... or if you want to make 50 for a party you can just multipy the measurements by 50.

Ingredients (to make one jar):
1 tsp. baking powder
3 tbsp. caster sugar
45g ground almonds
85g oats
2 tbsp. coconut oil
40g lindt excellence dark chocolate coconut squares

Method:
1. Mix together the baking powder, caster sugar and ground almonds.

2. Weigh the oats and pour them into a food processor to grind into a flour consistency and add it to the mixture.

3. Stir in the coconut oil to make into a sticky dough and add the chocolate.

4. Put the mixture into oven-proof jars or make into teaspoon size cookies (optional).

5. Bake in the oven at 160 C for 20 minutes. Eat up!