african foods: the good, the bad and the fried

my african mama is making me fat. i swear. the portion sizes she serves up are not only massive but fried mostly. its delicious, do not get me wrong, but how does one go about telling a very generous african woman and proud cook that you just cannot eat all that she makes. if you know me, you know that i am not shy about my food intake and love food (including the majority of african dishes now added to the list) however i am thinking that for the life of me i would love it if i didn't have to eat something fried for just one day of being in tanzania. legitimately i eat something fried for almost every meal of every day and my body does not want that. i dont want that. its good but i just dont eat fried food that much. also mama keeps coming into the kitchen when we are eating and telling us we must not like her cooking and that she must be a bad cook due to our birdlike intake of her cooking. it is delicious but to eat the portions mama eats herself would be undesirable to say the least. it would probably be easier to deal with if we didn't have to eat FOUR meals a day, but because we are volunteers people want to show us that we are appreciated and give something to us. for example at school the teachers give us two massive fried dough balls roughly the size of my fists or bigger which we have no choice but to eat both and all of it because otherwise it is essentially a slap in the face to the teachers, the cooking and the school. it is the same principle with mama as to why we cant eat smaller portions. its a huge dilemma in the house and none of us know what to do: not eat as much and have mama be actually angry at us or eat it all and feel nasty...? bah! #whitegirlproblems

safari

there are elephants behind me

this is lake manyara national park. it was our first day of safari and the sun beat down on us like it was tanzania in the summer time... the shade provided by the 92' land cruiser we blasted thru the countryside in was not sufficient

there arent naturally camels in tanzania but this maasi man explained to us that they were given to his family as a gift from a british family who lives on some maasi land

a good spot to have lunch before the storm 

wildebeest crossing 

no zoom

no zoom 

going into ngorongoro crater on day 4. nothing but wild life down here

camping on the crater rim and waking up to a mist-laden crater below us

maasi women welcoming us to their village 

making new friends 

maasi warriors jump and grunt to display their strength to the maasi women 

maasi warriors running across the open ngorongoro to relieve the young boys that normally watch the cattle and donkeys as a massive african storm sets in

giraffes literally just chilling on the side of the road

dirty, wind burnt, tired but not wanting to leave a moment early 

the safari crew