A touch of British culture in Tanzania...

Last week, a little piece of British culture made its way into my living room here on the MAF Dodoma compound...

To celebrate my first birthday in Tanzania, I thought that it might be nice to bring something traditional from England to our multi-national community here- and decided an English Afternoon Tea was just the thing for the ladies here! Seeing as Andrew was away for the 2 nights either side of my birthday, flying medical staff for a hospital in the north of the country, I invited ladies only to come and celebrate with me (while all the energetic children were sent outside to play and eat popcorn!). We got together on the Thursday afternoon, representing 6 nationalities between us.
To be true to the old English Afternoon Tea traditions, I made cucumber sandwiches to accompany home-made scones, with strawberry jam I found in the local "duka" (the label on the jar says 65% sugar, so not much room for fruit, but at least it looked like strawberry jam!) and I whipped up a packet of "Dream Topping" (from my English container supplies) to stand in as cream.
We had tea and biscuits as well and a loaf of Tea-Bread from an old Lake District recipe my Mum had given me.

However, for me, the "icing on the cake" came when a fruit and veg seller turned up at our gate, selling, of all things, wonderful fresh strawberries! They are grown in the hilly and more rainy area of Morogoro- a 3 hour drive away. I was so excited to have fresh strawberries on my birthday! I bought 2 bowl-fulls and was able to decorate my cake with big, fat, juicy strawberries- how much more English could my Afternoon Tea be??

Time to cut the cake, with a bit of help from Ben... :-)