Food

On the road to Harare there are lots of farm stalls selling watermelon, potatoes, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, butternut, squash, and oranges.  I bought lots for my stay.  Most days I didn’t have power.  Zimbabwe has no power and very little money to buy power from neighboring countries.  Also its elite citizens have a habit of not paying their power bills, a habit picked up by the government which racked up an outstanding bill of 200 million dollars from Mozambique for power.  So there were only two days when I had power all day and most days I’d only have power for a few hours at night which gave me a little hot water in the morning and kept my fridge from being completely useless.  Because I was getting up at three in the morning a lot I got used to going to bed at seven.  Having no power made that even easier.  Most evenings I would come back from the farm and make myself pasta with lemon zest, lemon juice, olive oil, pepper, and pecorino cheese and eat it by the light of a small candle and a gin and tonic or a glass of wine.  The day before I left I went into Harare and sampled some gelato that uses the raw milk that I was helping to collect every day.  I got a cone with coffee and strawberry gelato and it was very yummy. 

Roses from the British ambassador's residence