making cake

it's amazing the shenanigans that you can get into when left to your own devices for entertainment. for example, one trip to somalia, i randomly decided that bringing instant cake (the ones where you add just eggs and water and bake) would be a great idea. this, despite having no oven, no baking dishes, no mixers, and eggs the size of coins. i think i had some random thought that i could just eat the dough (hello salmonella & typhoid!!). so yeah, there i was one day with a box of instant cake, a free afternoon, a friend as bored as i was and this was the result:

the beginning - 
dough made with tiny eggs 
(put in 5 when the instructions said 3)

this is the 'stove'

the dough was put into a pot

which was then covered

and topped off with hot charcoal

and then weighted down
with the top part of the 'stove',
also filled with hot charcoal

resulting in rather burned,

crumbly,

cake

the end result -
crumbly sweet cake which looks 
more like rice than cake,
but we ate it anyways! hey!
beggars can't be choosers!!

on the road

from the air

on an echo flight

food

often my favourite topic and often the centrepiece of my life, somalia became the only place i've been where i ate more for survival than for enjoyment.

colours

was watching a movie the other night, a ewan mcgregor film called 'stay'. in it, he's talking to his girlfriend about how to get somebody who wants to committ suicide to 'stay' in this world - and the girlfriend (who has attempted suicide before) says, 'tell him there's too much beauty, there's too damn much beauty to quit'. as corny as it sounds, there's truth in it. working in somalia, where beauty is not even an afterthought, this stands out even more starkly - and yet, perhaps because beauty is an (after) afterthought, perhaps because there is a lack of visual stimulation and distractions, you begin to notice the actual (read: natural) world around you, and the simple beauty of a sunset can almost bring you to your knees.