Yesterday was a lovely day – relaxing morning at home with Derek, coffee, pancakes, talking, spending time in the Word. After our relaxing morning, we headed out for an afternoon on the town. Our list of things to do was quite ambitious…and it became more ambitious when we got about 4km from home and stopped. All of the sudden, traffic came to a dead halt. And the traffic police “helping” the flow of traffic at the roundabout [you don’t need someone to direct traffic at a roundabout – that defeats the purpose!] combined with the flash flooding from the morning thunderstorm combined with the broken-down truck being pushed by 2 guys right in front of us made for a very ugly traffic situation.
After over an hour, we finally made it to our first destination – only 14km away from home. By this point, both Derek and I were fighting sour moods, despite the fun music we listened to from our new iPod hook-up in our car. But we managed to go several places and get a few things crossed off our list.
The last thing we debated doing was going to the Blue Moon. It’s a new cafe that is owned and run by a guy from Ohio. There’s really nothing like it in Zambia, and it’s a real mzungu watering-hole [white person hangout]. Bagels and bagel sandwiches, ice cream sandwiches, blizzards, a coffee bar, etc. What is there not to love about it? Well, it’s on the other side of town for us, which is a slight damper.
But we decided that even though it was across town and we had been sitting in traffic and waiting in personal-space-invading, odor-amplifying, only-slightly-worse-than-American lines at the post office for 2 1/2 hours, Oreo and Snickers blizzards were calling our names. [By the way, I think almost all government postal workers are trained at the same place worldwide].
Once we placed our orders at the Blue Moon, the owner asked if we wanted to be judges in a coffee tasting competition. “You get free coffee” was the part that really clinched the deal. There were a few other judges, and we all got briefed on how to judge coffee. We were only able to stay for round 1 out of 3, but we got a traditional espresso, cappuccino, and the barista’s “special” drink – a spiced macchiato. The cappuccino was our favorite hands down – and it even had cool latte art on it! Sorry – no picture.
Derek and I had been talking about how we want to start a tradition of going on a date each week, and after yesterday, we made our decision – alternate the Blue Moon and Mahak’s [a great Indian place with $5 all-you-can-eat vegetarian lunch] every other week.
Our Blue Moon blizzards and coffee were a great end to a…great day.
Derek and Kristin Dearth 