Grilled Cheese!

Freshly Made Grilled Cheese!

Yeah, so what about grilled cheese? No big deal, you may think. I would think the same thing when you have a car to drive to a supermarket, or even a gas station, buy bread and cheese, and bring them back home to your refrigerator. Additionally, it takes you maybe 5 minutes to put a pan on your electric stove, and make your grilled cheese.

Well, that is not the case for me here in remote location somewhere in Kenya. I do not have any refrigerator, less means for transportation. So I would like to share with you, my dear readers, my experiences today that led into the grilled cheese you see in the picture above.

This morning, being a devout cheese lover, had this urge to have some cheese, and even grilled cheese. So, after checking the weather, it was sunny and may be a good day for me to travel to the mid-sized town Karatina about 100km away. So, I got dressed, put on my backpack, empty but with two bottles of water, and started my journey down the mountain road. I walked about 4km (45 minutes) down the mountain to the tarmac (paved blacktop road), and waited for a matatu to come by.

Got on a matatu, and as always, the matatu stopped every time someone needs to board, and before we got to Karatina, there were like 24 people sitting in the matatu that has 14 seats. People of all ages sit tightly together, arms up or wrapped, and children sit on laps, not necessarily on their parents' laps.

Once we got to Karatina, I took the time to scroll around town and get to know the town a bit better. They have, supposedly, the largest open-air fresh vegetable, fruit, rice, and bean market in entire Kenya. They also, at another location, a large (but probably not the largest) open-air market for clothing items -- like a giant goodwill. I stopped by a hotel (restaurant) and had a cup of coffee and samoia (sp? triangle fried crust with ground meat inside) as a snack.

Then I got in Uchuma "supermarket" where I knew they had cheese. Cheese is a rarity in Kenya -- only in large hotels or large cities like Nairobi would you easily find cheese. So because it takes a lot of time and effort to get groceries, I went ahead and shopped for groceries as well as some household items.

Then it was past noon, so I went in the same hotel (that I liked -- one of cleanest looking place in Karatina) and ordered Sukumi Wiki (cooked spinach with flavors) and Chapati.

Then, being in the "rainy season" (it does not really rain everyday, but it has rain, while it does not rain at all out of the "rainy season"), it poured. So, I decided to call my trusty taxi driver Peter whom I was introduced to by previous volunteer as dependable and trustworthy to come and pick me up. I hoped we would not get stuck in the muddy roads going up the mountain to my school site. But the rain stopped and the dirt did not get too muddy so I got back home timely and safely.

Now, that I finally got cheese and bread at home, Using my single burner gas stove on the kitchen floor, I made TWO grilled cheese sandwiches, especially because I did not really eat much food these days (yep I lost who-knows how many kilograms), but more importantly because it is a TREAT -- its cheddar cheese.

So, can you imagine how much time, cost, and physical effort it takes to make a simple thing as grilled cheese?

Because I cannot eat the whole cheddar cheese block (shredded about half, ate about 1/8 of it in cubes), I hope to make egg omelete with cheese tomorrow morning -- that is only if the cheese did not spoil overnight.

Burp! Excuse me, but hey, don't you think I deserve it!