The Perils of Breakfast

I am a big fan of breakfast. A massive fan. My idea of heaven would be to be genetically combined with a combination of eggs, beans, hash brown, toast, mushroom and sausage, able to consume myself in an eternal nirvanic cycle... okay so I've had too much sun today. Breakfast here is a complicated, intricate affair, with many pitfalls for the uninitiated.

Generally, I stumble out of my room at about 7, hungry and in search of food like a primeval caveman. I mix up a big mug of Africafe, which I'm sure is a hidden subsidiary of Nescafe. Most days, there's a fresh loaf, fetched by the housekeeper from the only baker in the village, the aptly named Baba Mkate (Father bread). Sometimes there is no bread or the housekeeper will inform me sheepishly that the others (meaning him) have finished it all. There is one brand of margerine available on Zanzibar - the inimitable fluorescant yellow Nido, with a list of preservatives as long as my arm. Yum.

Then, I turn my attention to eggs. I'm a bit of a Gordon Ramsay when it comes to eggs; oversalting or cracked yolks are liable to send me into a rage of Godly proportions. Making eggs here is an interesting process. The kerosene stove has two settings - very hot and extremely hot. Added to this, the frying pan does not balance on top and the handle is too hot to hold, being made of metal (clever design). Therefore cracking an egg is a complicated juggling process combining precision balancing of the pan and cracking the egg with sufficient force but not so much that the pan tips over, splashing boiling oil all over your knees. Despite my best intentions, most of my eggs end up as a flash fried mess and I'm left sobbing over burnt crispy white bits scraped off the pan. Did I mentioon I'm a tad obsessive about eggs?

I often pop next door to get some fresh fruit from the shop. Fresh indeed, but not necessarily ripe, despite the shopkeepers smiling assurance. It was only yesterday that I realised his understanding of "ripe" roughly equates to "nice". Heh. "Yes, all my fruit is nice!"

Still, on a day where I manage a decent egg and find a ripe mango and sit down with my coffee, looking out at the dhows slowly drifting on the azure sea, I remind myself that there are more important things in life than the quest for the perfect egg. But not many.