Budget friendly recipes

Yesterday I came across a blog by A Girl Called Jack who started out writing recipes she could make on a really really low budget in England. Not only did I find her blog articles moving, I realised that many of her cheap recipes suited a VSO budget down to the ground. I figured that I could probably make quite a few of them based on what I could source here in The Gambia. When living on a low budget and / or being limited to just a few ingredients (in my case tomato, aubergine and onion!) it's nice to look for some culinary inspiration once in a while. 

I found a recipe for aubergine and kidney bean burgers, which I made last night. Ms Jack costs everything up as she goes, so some of my costs are included as well - although I halved the aubergine and kidney beans to use for my dinner tonight so they will make two meals for me.

Ingredients:

1 tin of kidney beans (30 dalasi / 60 pence)
1 Aubergine (25 dalasi / 50 pence)
1 onion (about 3 dalasi / 6 pence)
A little fresh chilli (1 dalasi / 2 pence)
Teaspoon of tikka masala powder - should be cumin but I made do with what I had... tikka masala powder sent to me in a food parcel from my bestest.
Some flour (from my store cupboard)  

Served with 1/2 cup of rice (4 dalasi / 8 pence) and tomato and onion sauce (approx 8 dalasi / 16 pence)

The original recipe is here. I softened one onion, half the aubergine, chilli and the tikka masala powder in a frying pan while boiling half the tin of kidney beans to make them soft, as the recipe recommended. Once the onion / aubergine mix was soft and nicely fried I added it to the drained kidney beans with some salt and pepper, and mashed the mix up. I stirred in some flour and left it to rest for a while. 

I decided to serve my burgers with rice and a homemade tomato sauce, so I prepared the sauce and cooked the rice while the burger mix rested. Next I shaped two burgers from the mixture and fried them for a few minutes on each side, until crisp and brown. 

At this point the light went out, so the rest of my cooking and photo taking was done in the dark - but here are the results:

Aubergine and kidney bean burger with rice
and tomato sauce

It was a good meal, and nice to eat something different!

Tuesday night girl night

On Tuesday Helen and I went for dinner at Janneke's house, and had a lovely European dinner. 

Fresh ladyfish cooked with dill and cream, served with pasta with red and green peppers, aubergine and PESTO! Helen and I were both very excited to have pesto. This was washed down with a gin and tonic - delicious and a real treat! 

Weekend fun

This weekend was a nice sociable weekend.

On Friday I went for pork in Manjai with Janneke, Jaap, Helen, Nicola, Abdoul, and Nicola's mum and dad. 

Nic with her mum and dad

Cheeky Helen

On Saturday afternoon, after some much needed sofa time in the morning, I decided to go for a walk. I chose a circular route around the Bakau women's horticultural gardens, up to Cape Point and back home via Bakau market - 7.5km in total. I put on my trainers and headphones and really enjoyed a peaceful walk to music and birdsong in the late afternoon sun. 

I passed a few people along the way who were happy to call out 'enjoy your exercise', and greeted a couple of groups of women farmers walking home from their gardens. It was lovely to say hello to them and be greeted by them, kind of the opposite experience of being hassled by men shouting 'what is your nice name?'. 

I saw some fantastic kingfishers and herons, as well as other birds that I wasn't able to identify, although the only wildlife I was able to capture on camera was this HUGE spider. 

Spot the spider

I was hungry by the time I reached the market so I bought a segment of pumpkin, a carrot, a couple of potatoes, onions and tomatoes and went home to cook a big vegetable stew with pearl barley. While the stew was cooking I chipped up one of the potatoes into cubes and fried them to make the kind of chips mum used to cook for us when we were little, which I wolfed down with some salt and plenty of water.

On Sunday I woke early and travelled to Kotu to meet Nicola, Abdou, Lamin and Nicola's mum and dad and we set off for a day trip / fishing trip to Sanyang. We called in at Tanjii to buy some fish to use as bait and some smoked fish and bread to eat for lunch (just in case we didn't catch any fish!). 

Buying the bait on Tanjii beach

Meanwhile Nicola's dad was being asked for footballs!

Abdoul inside the smoke house

Once at Sanyang we walked away from the tourists down to our favourite spot - the quieter end of the beach. Here we read, swam and lazed around while the men fished (and didn't catch anything). 

Just us on the beach

 

Not a bad view for a lazy Sunday! 

Abdoul and Nicola prepared the smoked fish, making a salad of fish, lime juice, salt, tomato and avocado (from Nicola's tree), which we ate with bread and the boiled eggs that Nic's mum and dad had smuggled out of their hotel breakfast. It was delicious, and a very relaxing day. 

Abdoul preparing fish as a local dog snoozes
in the shade

Lunchtime 

Rainy days

We are having a strange weather spell at the moment. We have technically moved into the season of 'nice' weather - weather that attracts the tourists with hot, clear, bright days and cool, comfortable night time temperatures. The last time it rained was the end of October, and in the first week of November the humidity plummeted. We thought that this was the end of the rains... until yesterday. 

The last few days have been really cloudy, quite windy and definitely a bit chilly - especially at night. And then last night it rained. Not quite the torrential rain of rainy season, but pretty persistent rain throughout the night. I think it's because we have guests! Nicola's parents are here, Janneke's sister is here, Martin's son is here, and Rao's wife was just here. All these people visiting volunteers have come expecting nice warm African sunshine and unfortunately it's been a bit gloomy, but things look set to improve from the weekend onwards. 

The grey weather reminded me of my rainy day down time back in rainy season. In September the rain and the humidity made leaving the house pretty challenging, so I spent the time indoors getting creative. I had a number of thank you cards to send out, so I brought some paints and set to work. I managed to entertain myself quite nicely, and even painted a birthday card for Janneke. 

Leybato scene for Janneke

Rural Development Institute and AVISU

Our third APR was in Mansa Konko on Friday, with Aisha from the Philippines. Aisha has been working at the Rural Development Institute, supporting lecturers and college staff to improve services, as well as holding her own lectures on environmental studies. 

The session was really positive, and the RDI seemed like a really nice institution. It was vibrant, and all the students looked busy and engaged. Quite a few students took part in the APR so we were able to get a good cross section of views. 

Aisha with her group

The grounds at RDI

After a huge lunch of domoda we finished up the session and hit the road once again. 

This portion was for one person.
I managed to eat about a quarter of mine.

We crossed back over the river by ferry - by this point our third time to cross. 

Abdoulie decided on a career change...

We decided to stay overnight in Farafenni, which meant less driving and more time to rest and prepare ourselves for the final session of this trip. 

We woke early on Saturday morning and drove to Kaur to hold the session with AVISU. We decided to work outside, under the shade of the mango tree, and the day went well. 

Wonjo - hibiscus - growing in
the AVISU compound...

...which is dried and used to make wonjo juice.

After a good session with Godfrey, Eliazer and the AVISU staff, board members and farmers we embarked on our final journey, and one more river crossing, to get home. We left at 4pm and I arrived back into Bakau at 9pm... where I quickly ran out the door to meet some friends and have a well deserved glass of white wine! 

From Njawara to Pakalinding

After a good sleep I woke early at Njawara Agricultural Training Centre and prepared some resources for the workshop as the early morning sun filtered through the mango trees. 

Is this evidence of the competency 'resourceful volunteer' -
cutting out loads of slips of paper with essentially a pair of nail scissors?!

The session was well attended, and like last year was as fiery as ever with strong characters dominating the show. But we got some good information, and although I found myself fantasising about stabbing some of the group members in the eye with my marker pen I remained calm!

2nd APR down (and the 27th session I have conducted since being at VSO) we hit the road to Soma, and had a nice drive as the sun was setting.

We decided to stay in Pakalinding as it gave us an easy drive in the morning to our next APR in Mansa Konko. The accommodation was nice - clean and bright, and after driving into Soma for a quick meal of chicken and chips, we all retired early. 

Mega journey

Wednesday was the Muslim new year, and a public holiday in The Gambia - but not for all.... Abdoulie and I needed to get up country to continue with the APRs, and we had two of the new volunteers to drop off at their new homes, so Wednesday was agreed as a travelling day. 

Alieu and Abdoulie picked me up at around 8:45, uncharacteristically earlier than the planned 9am which almost caught me out - thinking they would arrive some time after 9am I was just about to make some porridge. So, abandoning breakfast plans I jumped into the pick-up and we drove round to the shared house to pick up Deborah (from Zimbabwe) and Maja (from Denmark). We hit the road around 9.30 but only got as far as Brikama before needing to stop and make a few repairs to the vehicle. While we were there we called in on Jocelyn, a volunteer from the Philippines who arrived in September, and who Laura (who just arrived from Ireland) has gone to share accommodation with. About an hour after arriving in Brikama we were off again, and after a quick pit stop in Soma we pushed on through to Kuntaur - Deborah's new home. 

We travelled on the South Bank road, so had to cross the river at Janjangbureh to get to Kuntaur. It was nice and cool by the river and Deborah commented that if her new house was close to the river she would be very happy. The smile on her face as we saw the location of her new home lit up the car - she was very close to the river indeed! This picture was taken standing at Deborah's gate - you can see the river in the background.

We were met by a crowd of people who wanted to welcome Deborah or just watch her move in, so Alieu unloaded the pick-up under watchful eyes. The house wasn't quite ready, but Deborah dealt with it very calmly. While they were unpacking I wandered down to the river and checked out the abandoned looking wharf. Apparently Kuntaur, like Kaur where our partner AVISU is, was a very vibrant town in the 1960s, with a roaring river trade. It was sad to see the area in quite a dilapidated state. 

Maja and Deborah

The outskirts of Kuntaur were surrounded by rice fields which was interesting to see. The rice grows well in the fresh water in the area, and when cut it re-grows. Theoretically The Gambia should be able to produce enough rice for the country, yet we have so much imported rice here from Thailand and the east, and cheap broken rice from America. 

An area that has been cut back and is re-growing. 

After unloading Deborah we moved on, heading to Kerewan with a quick stop at Kaur to drop some money to them to prepare food for our APR. By the time we arrived in Kerewan at Maja's place it was pretty dark, but we were greeted warmly by Maja's compound family and her neighbour Gareth (a former VSO who returned here to marry a girl he met on placement). 

By this time it was about 7/7:30 and we still weren't at our final destination, so we left Maja pretty quickly (as she was being given her new Gambian name) and headed off to Njawara, 11km away from Kerewan down a very bumpy off road track. 

We arrived at about 8pm, or maybe later, ate some food and flopped into bed - exhausted from our mega 11 hour journey. 

APR season begins

Tuesday saw the start of the 2013/14 annual partnership reviews, and our first partnership to review was the Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education. This is Nicola’s placement, and the project that they are working on is placing national volunteers in secondary schools across two of the furthest regions in The Gambia. Furthest from the Kombos that is, which – due to rural to urban migration and the lure of the ‘big city’ – makes the teaching vacancies harder to fill.

I ran the session with Ebou, and it was well attended by national volunteers and a senior teacher as well as Nicola’ direct counterparts and MoBSE colleagues. The project is doing really well, and this year they recruited 44 national volunteers, a considerable difference from the 4 they had in 2010. The scheme is generating a lot of recognition, with teachers requesting national volunteers, and asking if the programme can be extended to cover upper basic schools and the other 4 regional education directorates, which was nice to hear. It was interesting doing the review for the second year in a row as I was able to see what progress they had made since last year, and how well the partnership between VSO and MoBSE was working.