Cooking in Cotonou

One of the things living in Africa is that, even with a new hypermarket in town, and access to Webgrocer, there are things you can’t find or can’t ship. So, you try to make them yourselves.

My first challenge – bagels.

Not my bagels!

I started here:

http://hubpages.com/hub/Homemade_bagel_recipe_Make_great_nadrolled_water_bagels__its_as_easy_as_baking_a_loaf_of_bread

But, the first batch I made, although they tasted fine, never really rose, never really browned, and were strangely wrinkled after boiling. My second attempt was this morning.  This time I pre-activated the yeast, gave the dough more time to raise both initially, and after forming the bagels.  I used a smaller pot of water so I could get a better rolling boil on the water. I increased the oven temperature to 450.  Finally, I baked them 15 minutes on a side instead of 10.  This batch came out much better, although a little over-browned.  I think I’ll cut back to 12 minutes a side next time.  Toppings were caraway seeds, onions (dried onion flakes browned up nicely in the oven), salt (I found kosher salt, but not not course ground — too bad) and finally Old Bay seasoning (which I’d never had on a bagel).  I had one for breakfast, and sandwich on one for lunch, and froze the rest for later in the week.

The second attempt of the day was pizza.  I used this recipe:

http://americanfood.about.com/od/pizzainsideandout/r/nypd.htm

for the dough, although I let my bread machine on dough cycle do the hard work.  I don’t have a pizza stone, so I greased and floured a metal pizza pan, stretched it to fit (more or less) and left it to rise in place 20 minutes.  Next time, I may give it 30. I oiled and spiced the crust (oregano mostly), added sauce (Prego from consumables) and cheese (local) and some more oregano.  No toppings this time, since I wanted to see what a plain cheese pizza would do.  Preheated the oven to 500 degrees (probably closer to 450, my oven runs a little cool) and cooked it for 10 minutes.  The crust didn’t look done so I gave it another 5 which burned the cheese a bit.  Still, the crust turned out well for a thin crust pizza.  maybe next time I’ll give it a short pre-bake without sauce and cheese, then finish up with all the toppings on.

I have enough dough left over for another pizza, or I may try to make a calzone.

Next on my list – half-sour pickles, but I need to accumulate some jars and find a source of small pickling cucumbers.

Canyon, Yeager and Glenn — Nothing to do with Africa…

I was hanging this up at my house in Cotonou and I thought I’d tell the story.  It’s a bad scan here, but this is, as it says, an original pen and ink drawing of Steve Canyon (a popular comic strip character in the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s).  How did I get it?  I found it in the trash.  Specifically the trash at Griffiss AFB where I was stationed.  It had hung on the wall of our office until someone needed a frame and took it out.  But, you see, it wasn’t this picture facing out, but an offset print of the flag of the 416th Bombardment Wing.  Nobody knew the original Canyon was there, until I saw it in the trash.

The signatures?  The Chuck Yeager was obtained at the World SF convention in Baltimore, when he was traveling around promoting the movie “The Right Stuff”.  The John Glenn I got from Steve Robinson, one of Glenn’s crewmates on his space shuttle missions.  Steve was renting my house in Houston at the time.

Back to Africa next post.

Observations after Lomé

Driving back from Lomé, I had time to consider some observations about Africa after 10 weeks or so.  First general, then specifics.

The Beach at Ouidah, Benin

Africa is beautiful.  Africa is a dump.  Often at the same time, in the same place.  Look one way, and you have a view of waving palms over a virgin beach with a teal ocean, breakers pounding the shore.  Look a little bit one way or the other, and there’s a pile of trash, a half finished building abandoned years ago and left to rot, and the rusted remains of something no longer recognizable.  It’s a real shame.  Some of it is the fault of African government, some the fault of colonialism and neo-colonialism, some just the laziness of some people.

I say some people, because many of the Africans I have met are very industrious, even entrepreneurial.  The roads are lined with small shops that can be everything from a real shop in a real building, to a lean-to with corrugated metal roof and palm frond walls.  For sale?  Gasoil mixture for motorcycles in a bottle (pick your size).  Kids’ backpacks with well known US cartoon characters, tires (new and used), small laundries and clothing shops and snack bars.  Driving back from Lomé (I should explain I didn’t do the driving, an Embassy driver did) we cut through some local neighborhoods to avoid traffic and passed mile after miles of these shops in areas of town no Westerner visits.  Roads can be dirt hardback, loose sand, paving stones or any combination of those and blacktop.  The road we took paralleled a set or train tracks on which I have never seen a train!  I have been told it does exist, but doesn’t go anywhere anyone wants to go!  A train along the coast from Nigeria to the Ivory Coast would help develop the corridor as much if not more than the road they built, but nobody seems to be interested in that.

A little bit about the border crossing from Benin to Togo.  You know you’re getting close, because both sides of the road are lined with parked trucks, narrowing what would be two or three lanes to one, sometimes less.  As you get to the border, a market has sprung up on each side.  Typical for Embassy folks is to stop at the Benin side, have the driver go get your passport stamped.  Drive to the Togo side.  Get your passport stamped. Meet a driver from the Togo US embassy who drives you the rest of the way.  Reverse to go in the other direction.  Dodge motos, bicycles, trucks, cars loaded 15 feet high on the roof with goods and pedestrians which drive randomly and park randomly.

Lomé has Marines - Cotonou doesn't

Since I mentioned the Togo US Embassy, I should mention that unlike our…veteran…complex of buildings in Benin, Togo has a large new embassy complex that opened in 2006.  From everything I saw, it’s a great place to work and the consular section has (almost) all the things I could want in Cotonou but will never have, but architecturally, the exterior of the building is butt ugly.  Sorry whoever designed it, but…we can do better.

A couple of final observations on the trip.  Nobody told me Togo is in a different time zone!  I found out when I went down to breakfast an hour before it opened.  I saw one Togoese in a Larry Bird jersey, which seemed completely normal after I saw the guy in the NY Rangers hockey jersey!  The only ice in Togo (or Benin) is in drinks.  TV in the hotel was in French (mostly), Arabic (one station from Morocco…I think), German (Deutche Welle) and English (Euronews, and occasionally DW.)  No World Series for me!  The Yankee fan missed the clinching sixth game.  It was all over by the time I got back to Cotonou and my AFRTS.

Next adventure — Frankfurt in December!  Time to pull out the winter clothes I packed…oh wait…I didn’t…

Tune in to see how I figure this one out.

Togo (no space) is not a menu option…

Here I am in Lomé, the capital of Togo, the country to the west of Benin.  I’m here for a conference with other embassies and DHS about fraud and how to detect it.  Everyone wants to come to America, and some of them are not too honest about how they do it.  Some of the attempts are amazingly bad, but some are quite sophisticated.  I’m sure I’ll know more after Thursday and Friday.

Cotonou to Lomé is about 3.5 hours by car, which is how I went.  A driver from the embassy did the driving.  The road’s not bad.  They’re trying to sell Lagos (Nigeria) to Accra (Ghana) as an economic corridor, so the road is paved and more or less maintained.  Part of it is toll road, but no EZ-Pass.

The border is a bit of a zoo.  First they check you out of Benin.  Then you drive 200 feet, and they check you into Togo.  As you cross the border, if you’re on a motorcycle or bicycle you have to walk your bike across the border…about 10 feet worth.  Of course, the cars and trucks drive right past, and there’s a separate line for pedestrians.  LOTS of pedestrians, and markets have grown up on both sides of the border.  There are no traffic laws, and several places parked trucks and barriers narrow the road to one lane, one direction at a time.

For a good part of the trip, the ocean is in view, which is quite pretty.  My hotel has an ocean view, but of course, I’m on the government rate, so I’m facing the other way!  There’s a nice pool, but I didn’t know, so I didn’t pack a suit.  Oh well.  When I go to Frankfurt in December I can…wait…Frankfurt in December.  Never mind.

Baseball in Benin

First of all – I’m back online from home, from my desktop computer.  What was it?  Somehow (maybe when I installed a printer driver) my Norton antivirus file got corrupted.  That was blocking port 80 (I think).  In any case, a reinstall fixed things.  Thanks to the systems guys at work who made me look at the firewalls again.

One of the nice things about serving overseas is the opportunity to meet people from all over the world.  The expatriate community comes together for things like — well, Halloween trick or treating.  After the kids visited my house, I joined the gang as we visited the homes of people from several Embassies and schools here in Cotonou.  It was obvious folks at brought (or ordered) decorations from home and lots of candy for the kids (and their escorts ).

Baseball.  I’m a Yankee fan.  Have been my whole life.  Stuck through the terrible years in the 60’s and early 70’s, so don’t lump me in with the front runners who became fans when they started winning.  So, with the Yankees back in the World Series, I want to watch.  Unfortunately, in Benin, that means a post-midnight start time.  The last two days I have slept from 8pm to 2 or 3 am, and then woke up to watch (most of) the game.  I eat some breakfast, blog, and go to work.  The only conversation about the Series I have had in Benin was at the after trick or treating dinner at a local restaurant, with a Brit who spent a lot of time in NYC and married an American!

Let’s talk a little about Cotonou.  For whatever reason, construction here is almost all of concrete and concrete block.  I don’t know if that’s because wood was used for fuel, or rotted, but the typical US “stick built” house doesn’t exist here.  Wood is used for forms for the concrete, and occasionally scaffolding, but that’s it.  If you get on Google Earth and look at my house, you’ll see a huge empty lot next door.  That photo is old.  It’s now a huge, under construction complex of large houses.  Who in Benin can afford those houses, and where did they get their money?  I don’t know, and I don’t ask.  I know there seems to be not enough money to pave any but a few main roads (even outside the large, fancy houses).  I know most Beninese live very simply.  The middle class here is very small, and a lot less middle than we’d see in the US.

Everyone seems to have a cell phone.  That’s in part because wired phones are rare.  We have them in our houses, but even we seem to use our cells to call each other.  Of course, the fact everyone in the embassy’s cell phone numbers are programmed in when we get them may have a lot to do about that!

Tomorrow, I meet more Americans as the new Ambassador holds a Town Hall meeting for AmCits at his residence.  I’ve been organizing this, so hope for the best.  It was on short notice.  Then, wednesday afternoon, I head for Lome, Togo for a conference on fraud, a chance to network with my fellow West African consular officers.

Mobility (real) on, Mobility (virtual) off!

I got caught in the rain yesterday. The good news is why.

I am independently mobile at last.  Since I’ve been in Cotonou, I have been dependent on others to get me around, any way but on foot.  I don’t have a car here (that may change eventually).  The embassy has been driving me to and from work, and friends have been picking me up to go grocery shopping or to a restaurant for dinner.  But my bicycle and electric moped arrived in my HHE, and although the bike is still in pieces (a project for this weekend), the electric moped is up and running.  I was planning on waiting to start using it until later this week, but the car didn’t arrive Tuesday morning, so instead of calling to remind them, I just hopped on the moped and headed in!  I’m quite a head turner in Cotonou traffic.  The white guy with a bicycle helmet on, riding a moped which makes no noise as it goes by!

Yesterday afternoon, I took care of my last step for being ready for anything.  I installed the baskets I ordered, so now I can carry a reasonable amount of groceries (or anything else) on the moped with me.  Before this, I just had a small zippered storage bag on the back.  That now holds a couple of bungee cords, and a raincoat.  The last got added after I made a midday trip over to the American Cultural Center, and got caught in a downpour riding back to the embassy!  Fortunately I had dried out by the time the Ambassador came by to tour the consular section.

Virtually, I’m without home access for cruising the Internet.  For some reason, I can’t browse.  I’ve tried IE, Firefix and Chrome.  I’m connected.  Skype works, but something weird is happening.  I’ve done a traceroute, and it seems to be stalling about five hops out, before it leaves Benin.  I have more investigating to do, including hooking my laptop up to see if that still works, but until then, work access will be all I have.

Blue skies…

Up early to watch the Yankees clinch the AL.  The sky is blue, except for getting the pictures hung I’m mostly moved into my house, and there’s a new Ambassador arriving in Cotonou today (actually last night).

One of the projects was getting my desktop computer up and running.  Plug it in and turn it on, right?  Wrong.  Okay, that will make it run, but to access the Internet I need to configure it.  My virus protection is months out of date.  My versions of browser, Java, flash, etc.  are months out of date.  I needed to download and install Skype and Open Office.  Finally, I cleared out unused programs and files and defragmented the whole thing and I was finally ready to use the computer.  I’m sure I’ve forgotten something .

My past homes have all had frame and wallboard walls, even the one in Florida where the outer wall was concrete block.  Hanging pictures is easy.  Push pins are strong enough for a lot of them.  A small brad will take care of the rest.  A heavy mirror means you should find a stud to hammer the nail into.

Not in Benin.  The walls, inside and out, are masonry.  So all the photos, paintings and souvenirs I brought to make the house a home are still sitting in stacks on the chairs and the floor.  I’ve been told the GSO will send someone over the hang them, but I don’t know exactly where I want something until I put it up, so that won’t work.  I’m looking at some of those “stick up and remove” hooks I’ve seen advertised on TV.  I’ve ordered some through amazon.com.  I’ll see how (if) those work.  But, that’ll be a few weeks, so my housewarming will wait until after Halloween.  Maybe before Thanksgiving.

Speaking of food, I realized this weekend how much my cooking has come to depend on the toys I have — a crock pot, waffle iron, George Foreman grill, and half a dozen others.  Not all are electric.  I have a little chopper.  It’s a jar whose cap has a spring loaded handle with blades on the bottom. Put something in the jar, screw on the lid, bang the handle up and down until the blades chop whatever (onions, celery) into whatever size bit you want.  This weekend, I chopped pickles (available here)  into relish (not available here) for a hamburger (cooked on the George Foreman).

I meet the new Ambassador today.  More on that in my next post.

Unpacking is the beginning

Almost everything is out of boxes, but that doesn’t mean I’m moved in.  There’s lots left to do.

First cut was pretty much take it out of the box and put it down somewhere, anywhere.  Other than a few books, that’s been done.  Now comes the fun part.  Putting things where they belong for the long haul.  Replacing using my laptop for all my home computing needs with my desktop (and putting Skype on my desktop).  Putting my bicycle back together.  Putting all the shades on the lamps and the lamps where they go.  And making a run at organizing the kitchen and pantry.

One big challenge is going to be hanging pictures.  The walls are,  more or less, concrete.  I see pictures on people’s walls, so I know it can be done.

The damage count continues to be low, and nothing I can’t fix.

In other news, our new Ambassador arrives Sunday night.  We’ll see him first thing Monday morning.  Here’s his bio:

James Knight, a career member of the Senior Foreign Service, most recently was Director of the State Department’s Office of East African Affairs, which provides political and economic policy support and liaison for Comoros, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Mauritius, Seychelles, Somalia, Tanzania, and Uganda. Mr. Knight was previously Team Leader of the Ninewa Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT), based in Mosul, Iraq. Before Iraq, Mr. Knight was Deputy Chief of Mission (DCM) for the U.S. Mission to Angola. Previous assignments include DCM for Embassy Praia, Cape Verde; Country Affairs Officer for Ethiopia in the Office of East African Affairs; Political Officer for Embassy Antananarivo, Madagascar; Political, Economic, and Consular Officer for Embassy Banjul, the Gambia; and General Services Officer at Embassy Lagos, Nigeria. Before the Foreign Service he worked as an economic development specialist for the U.S. Agency for International Development in Niger and as a software developer for the private sector. Mr. Knight holds a PhD from the University of Chicago.

Through early morning fog I see, visions of my HHE…

Okay, really it was late afternoon, but my HHE (sea freight) along with my consumable (food!) has arrived.  It arrived from the ship in four large wooden crates on the back of a flatbed truck.  The biggest challenge seemed to be getting the metal straps off the crates (the cutter didn’t work, they ended up beating them with a mallet against a crowbar to weaken the metal).  A bit of background for those who don’t speak State Department.  HHE is the freight that comes by sea to your post, several thousand pounds of it.  This is most of what you decide to bring to post with you.  It’s how you can take some furniture and other things that will make an empty, if furnished, house, a home.  All my kitchen was packed in there complete with George Foreman Grill and Crock Pot.  So was my e-Go electric moped and my bicycle.  The rocking chair from Costa Rica and parchments from Egypt.

Also, in its own box, a few hundred pounds of consumables.  Things like toilet paper and paper towels.  Bush’s baked beans, Crystal Light and Log Cabin syrup.  Things you can’t get, or are hard to get, at a post.  Cranberry Sauce for Thanksgiving.  Matzoh Ball soup for Passover.  Salsa for parties.

Here are a few pictures.  More to come.

Water Pressure 2 – The Wrath of Pump

So after yesterday’s adventure in no electricity (the UPS finally gave out about 3 – they got everything put back together about 7:30), I looked forward to a quiet morning sleeping late, followed by some grocery shopping. I’m still shopping with friends since I’m without transportation, so I had planned a shower before I left. Flipped up the lever on the shower — no water. Okay, I’m in Africa. These things happen. But since I was shopping with the person in charge of things like — water pressure in our homes, I took advantage of our time together to let her know.

About 3 this afternoon the plumber arrived and I learned something. We have a backup system for water when the city water goes out. A large cistern and a pump, only the pump wasn’t working. Now it is (short version of the story).

I’m watching my complete set of the West Wing from beginning to end, and in the fourth season they spend some time invading “Equatorial Kundu”. Where’s that? In West Africa, somewhere near the Ivory Coast, Not Ghana (they mention that) or Nigeria (they mention that) and it has a small embassy, only 10 FSOs.

It could be Togo .