ju-eece for lunch

Juice in East Africa is pronounced as ju-eece, two syllables. In Kenya and Uganda and Tanzania, fresh juice is readily available - I know that they tell you never to drink such things in Africa, but I always do, with adverse results very rarely. Mostly, you get passion fruit juice and I pretty much universally love passion fruit juice unless it is made from concentrate, which is horrible and yet somehow very popular in Rwanda, where the concentrate companies buy up all the passion fruit and raise the price of the fruit and make fresh juice too expensive for any restaurant but Sol e Luna to bother with (which is why Sol e Luna has my undying affection even though they overcook their pasta). Here in Tanzania, fresh passion ju-eece is everywhere, although sometimes people don't understand me when I say juice like a North American.

Trying to get more fruits and vegetables in a healthy eating kick (okay, the juice has sugars, I know, but the orangeness is there) and being horribly thirsty because I went running at 6:30 this morning, I drank passion juice at lunch and then tried tangerine juice, which was amazing and fresh - they made it after we ordered it - and full of lovely pulp. Then we bought beautiful big red raspberries at Meat King (Meat King? I don't eat meat) which are only 1700 shillings, about $1.70, which is cheap for raspberries but expensive for Tanzania. But anyway, they are good. Very good.

Mundane details, again, partly because I remember people from churches saying to me, "It's so wonderful that you give up so much to help those poor people." when I left for Rwanda. I give mundane details to show some of the things that I love so much about Africa - some of the reasons why I'm gaining more than I'm giving up to be here.