Tracy's Cooking Adventures in Kenya

This is a journal entry from another July expeditioner.  Tracy volunteered her time and energy in the Koins kitchen, helping Emily with the food for our large group.  Tracy created some delicious new dishes for our expeditioners.  Expedition food has come a long way in the past few years.  With limited food options, and stores far away in Mombasa, being creative is key to providing a well rounded, tasty meal 3 times a day.  I personally am indebted to Tracy, as my kitchen skills are limited at best, and in Kenya are essentially non-existent.  The joy she found in working alongside the Kenyan kitchen staff, and presenting her food creations to the expeditioners was obvious to all.  With her help we enjoyed scrambled eggs, a delicious cornbread, birthday cake, and a variety of cookies, which were all new dishes for Kenya.

 

Tracy and Mama Emily in the KCC kitchen

Tracy and Monica work on dinner preparation

Tuesday July 17th, 2012
Written by Tracy Jackson

Today I woke up at 5:30am and made pancakes and eggs for everyone. Myself, Emily, and Ester are the three ladies that have been cooking here at the KCC, (Koins Community Center) and I LOVE it! I got to teach them how to make scrambled eggs for the first time.They had never seen how eggs can form if just heated. Random Africans surrounded the pan as I stirred. They all kept slowly saying over and over, "scrambled eggs!" Haha! They always have so much energy and we are even laughing that early in there. It just makes me want to do it even more the next day.

After a very loved American breakfast we all left to go milk the goats.When we got there they asked that we help water the shambas. (garden) About 15 of us went to the water to go scoop it up with our buckets. It was so muddy we had to let the one African woman scoop it for us while we carried the buckets out to the shambas. Each bucket waters about 2 1/2 plants and there was about 1/2 an acre of them. We finished about half the work, and realized we were out of time and couldn't milk the goats. :( It took us about 45 minutes to do that much)

Tracy and Heidi painting one of the Miyani classrooms

After we came back we went to the Albino school. It was nice to see they had a safe place to stay. They live at the school, and can do the other things they need to do there too. Unfortunately they can't go outside much. It's not safe. There is not a fence around and we were told there are some bad Africans out there who would love to swipe an albino child and sell them, or sell their body parts for trinkets. Ugh..so sad to talk about, but I am so happy that they are in a safe place. We gave them some hats, sun lotions and sunglasses. They were so happy.

Tracy painting a Bofu classroom

After we returned, I went back to the kitchen to get working on our next meal where we made potato balls. They are made from peeled, boiled then grated potatoes, formed into a pattie in your hand, then filled with chicken. We then rolled them into balls, and fried them. I like to learn how to make all these different foods.

Tracy running in the race to Bofu

Tracy teaching a kindergarten class

We also got a chance to to the Sean Michel's School today. It is a school for the children with disabilities. We painted nails, played ball painted faces, shot silly string,and had a great time meeting all the great kids.

Things I'll always remember about this trip:
*Pulling up to the KCC for the first time and seeing the African children surround the bus.
*Cooking in the kitchen and learning how to make all the new foods.
*Riding on a camel on the beach
*Almost convincing a handcraft wood salesman on the beach to buy my shells
*Listening to Benny sing
*Hundreds of children running towards our bus singing before the Zimmerman brother's dedication. 
*Carol Guest reading her magic book to the African teens.
*Listening to Buffalo's life story
*Feeding the monkeys mango
*Fighting a monkey for a basket of rolls
*Teaching Kindergarten
*Painting the schools
*Singing
*Finding jellyfish
*The safari
*Stopping at the mud hut when Cindy was there
*Learning to hold water on my head
*Shutting the door to the kitchen and dancing/singing with the women in there.
*Seeing elephants close up
*Shopping with crazy good prices
*Taking Sheryl to church
*Giving her my Book of Mormon
*Singing "Jerimiah Was a Bullfrog" for a class in the secondary school that didn't have a teacher.
*Shadowing Agnes.

Feeding a monkey at the hotel in Mombasa

Playing with the children at the Windridge school

Riding a camel on the beach in Mombasa

I love being here in Africa! The people here are amazing and I hope to come back soon.