First, a brief history lesson: my mother and father met at Wheaton College. That is all well and good, but it is entirely possible that they never would have tied the knot if it hadn’t been for one of mom’s good friends, Jane DeGroot. It was Jane who pushed my dad to ask my mom out on a date (he succeeded on his third try, but I suppose that’s another story for another day). As they say, the rest is history. Jane is currently a TESOL (teaching English to speakers of other languages) Fellow with the State Department at a university in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo. She and several colleagues are here in Cape Town to enjoy a couple weeks of rest and relaxation. I haven’t seen Jane in quite a few years…so what fun it was to encounter her on the southern tip of Africa, of all places! We enjoyed a brief stroll through downtown Cape Town and ended up at Nyoni’s Kraal for lunch.We had a wonderful time together, catching up on each other and each other’s families (the DeGroot kids and Gieser kids are roughly the same age), and sharing about God’s faithfulness in our lives. We were blessed to have this time together.For interested parties, I jotted down a few dishes available at the restaurant:
Tasty Vetkoek (Cape Dutch fried donut) Samoosas (you can get these at Indian restaurants in the US; indicative of the Indian influence in the country) Biltong (traditional dried meat, sort of like beef jerky) Smoked snoek (typical fish caught along the Western Cape) Maybe tasty but haven’t tried yet (have you?!) Tripe (sheep or cow stomach) with samp and beans (thick bean stew) or pap (thickened cornmeal) Amangina (chicken feet) Mopane worms (from the Mopane tree in Zimbabwe) Amatumbu (sheep intestines)
Ever since we noticed this Ethiopian restaurant in the city, we have been itchin’ to try it out. So last month, as a surprise birthday gift for me (Jul), Jim got a group of friends to meet up with us on a Friday evening. All I knew was that we were going somewhere for dinner, so when we started driving in the direction of the restaurant…and then parked on the street…I tried to appear casual and surprised, though inside I was saying, “Yes, just what I was hoping!” Guess the six years of marriage are starting to have their benefits. I was surprised, however, to find seven friends (from church) join us for the meal.
We both enjoy Ethiopian food a lot – me because of Mom and Dad’s time there and the many times I ate it as a child, and Jim because of the three months he spent there during the summer before college. Amazingly, none of our friends had eaten at this restaurant, and only one had ever had Ethiopian before! The meal was served and eaten out of a large basket lined with injera, which we used to scoop up the various dishes of vegetable, fish, chicken, lamb, and beef.
In the photo (left to right): Fritz, Kirsty, us, Mark, Vuyi, Tulani, Tanya, and Blanche
*note: in the future, we Americans will make dinner reservations (a ‘booking’) for 7 pm or later, in an attempt to fall in line with custom here. On this occasion, we arrived at 6, and the restaurant hadn’t even officially opened! So we had the place to ourselves until another group showed up around 7 or 7:30. By the time we left at 9:30, the restaurant was full and busy.
