Elephant for Tea

Yes, for the first time, I cooked elephant for tea! I made the jiko into a kind of slow cooker and made a casserole! But I think it was an old elephant as even after almost 2 hours, it was still pretty tough! Imagine all the meat you would get from an elephant! Louisa was most disappointed when she saw the raw meat, and asked where the trunk was! The elephant came from outside the Ruaha National Park; there are a limited number allowed to be killed each month, and people buy an amount of meat to then sell in villages. Another lady in Magozi was drying her elephant in the sun. Elephant jerky anyone?

Fresh elephant steak

Slow cooking the elephant

We have had a great week, really encouraged by how well the first week of training with the group has gone, despite all our inadequacies! I will blog later on about what the week involved and get some photos up! But I just wanted to say hi and enjoy some communicating in English again! We are here just for today and head back first thing in the morning in time for the group training.

The girls are doing well, despite struggling with sickness. Amisadai in particular has had quite a few bouts of vomiting and diarrhoea. They were fabulous looking after themselves during this past very busy week, and helping with some fun actions and singing in my health teaching too! Amisadai managed to drop her croc shoe down the pit on Sunday. And we had a bit of a time going fishing for it! Tim hooked it and Andy (who came with Angela to visit for the day) heroically reached down into the pit and grabbed it, little realizing how covered in maggots it would be! Disgusting!!

Going fishing!

On Saturday we attended a wedding! It was great to experience this wonderful celebration in the village! Late the evening before I was asked to make a wedding cake for the morning! I was very unsure about this, with limited ingredients, no cake tins and no oven! But agreed to try and sent an SOS text asking for recipe ideas! I was all set for this new jiko challenge when mama came over the next morning and said not to worry, someone else was already making one! I was actually a bit disappointed not to try, but it was probably a good thing for the bride and groom! But once at the wedding I was asked to be an official photographer with my camera!

Louisa placing a garland on the groom as part of the wedding ceremony