The quest for food

The food here is pretty good, but we definitely have missed certain things, especially food with lots of flavor and food that reminds us of home. You know, comfort food. We have been known to take a bus for 8 hours for a chocolate milkshake or for good Indian food. Today, we went on a quest for cheese.

Rumor had it that the Peramiho Catholic mission 30 minutes away had cheese, pork, and sometimes even ice cream. The next closest place that we know of with these items is 5 hours away. So we pilled into a dalladalla (minibus) and headed to Peramiho.

We arrived and as usual had no idea what we were doing or where we were going. We weren’t even sure we had arrived; we just got out of the dalladalla when everybody else did. But soon enough we stumbled across a beautiful church, then ran into a man trying to sell us carvings, and finally came upon a little shop. They didn’t sell cheese but they had salami. We hadn’t had anything close to salami since America, so we ordered some with a roll and sat down for a snack. I guess in this part of the world bologna is the same thing as salami, but beggars can’t be choosers so we had our bologna snack and off we went again in search of cheese.

We asked a few people where to find it, and each gave very vague directions. You have to understand that cheese is not an ordinary food item here, and we were asking people where to find it as if it were some sort of drug. We really wanted cheese, and were getting some strange looks. But finally, after wandering around the mission for another 30 minutes, we were told that the cheese was at the farm about 3 km away. So we headed off in the noon-day sun down the road to find the farm. We came to the farm and started asking around for cheese again, and were directed from one person to the next until we were directed to an old German man.

This kind man, who had been living in Tanzania for 52 years and didn’t speak a word of English, informed us in Swahili that yes, they had cheese, but the store was closed for another 2 hours. But he invited us inside while he went to see if he could find the key. He returned again and said that he didn’t have the key but would we like some food? “Wonderful” we said, so he led us to the dinning room, set the table, put a full meal in front of us and says enjoy, he will see us later. Then he walks out.

After a delicious free meal we head back to the road to catch a bus back to town. Another successful adventure! But alas…no cheese.

The beautiful church at the mission

The road to find cheese
Arthur enjoying a free meal