In Case I Forgot I Was In Africa...

...I made pretzels today and it reminded me very clearly.

Well, before we made pretzels, we were going to have to walk over to secondary where Christina and I were meeting some of our friends. We were going to bring some flour along, but found a couple bugs in it...and there wasn't enough to bring over, so we left the flour. On a side note, bugs in the flour is an unfortunate but not unheard of experience in Africa...

We began walking and it was.....HOT.....
It is the dry season here right now...and we haven't really had a good rain since Christmas. We had a short rain on the 20th of January (whose keeping track?) where it drizzled for a little while but it didn't amount to anything.
But back to the point, since it was three in the afternoon, it was very hot and very dusty. So, by the time we walked to secondary we were tired, hot, dusty, dirty and ready for a drink of water!
When we got to our friends house we discovered that we didn't have enough flour (cause there was bugs in their flour too which resulted in them running out sooner than they had planned...sense a pattern here?) ...so we did what most people from New Hope would do. We went around asking people for flour to contribute to the pretzel making and we got what we needed. Living in a small community in Africa is good...cause usually someone has what you need!

We continued making pretzel by mixing it all together and then kneading it for five minutes. After that we all sat around and looked at photo books...now for 5 girls who usually really do like talking...sitting/lying on the couches looking at pictures is a sign that it was too hot to really do anything else. We looked at pictures from Kasana's recent furlough and saw pictures of the snow, but that didn't seem to make us feel a whole lot cooler-or energized.

We also commented on how we will appreciate parties a whole lot more in North America when you just need to open the bag of chips and buy a can of salsa...or at most bake a cake...instead of making pretzels and cookies and all sorts of other goodies that involve turning the oven on and spending a lot of time in the kitchen.

Back to pretzels...due to the extreme heat the pretzel dough rose about 10000000 times faster (okay not really...) and we were able to shape them a little bit sooner. I gave remedial pretzel folding lessons although I completely made it up since I have never made pretzels before ;). My dear friends who had forgotten to read the full instructions realized that the pretzels needed to rise again so we let them sit for a while, but due to the a fore mentioned heat, they seemed to rise quicker than the recipe said and we dipped them into baking soda water which also reminded me that I do indeed live in Africa.
Number 1-we estimated how much water we put into the pot to boil and didn't do the whole 6 cups of water that they called for...after all why waste so much water when you aren't really going to need it all?
Number 2- baking soda water would require baking soda in the right proportions. If you add too much water then you'll have to use more baking soda which will in turn waste a bunch of baking soda...
SO, we cut down on the baking soda and the water because after all who would want to waste such things?

At this point Christina and I needed to go home, so we left the pretzels in the hands of our two remaining friends...and they'll have to tell us how they turned out.

Christina and I walked back and we slowed down/sped up deliberately to avoid passing behind vehicles that were kicking up ridiculous amounts of dust.

When we got back we pronounced that pretzels were really not worth the effort because of all the work and time involved and that it would be much easier to buy them from a bakery or store or wherever else you buy soft pretzels.

And so ends the pretzel saga...and the realization that making pretzels in Uganda's dry season will really tire you out!

As a final closing thought....the one good thing about the dry season is that the water for our showers gets surprisingly warm as it warms in the water tank so until the rainy season starts again and the temperatures get cooler we will have much warmer showers : )

By the way...this is my 100th blog post!