Tales from the road: Uniform veggies

Wherever you move in Tanzania, if there are people along your route, you are always able to buy 4 basic vegetables throughout the whole year: Tomatoes, onions, garlic and peri-peri (pili pili). What fascinates me is the fact that there is no variation in the type of these. None at all! It will always be this Roma-shaped elongated tomato type. It will always be red onion. It will always be habanero-like bell pepper. In total, I spent 10 months in this country, scattered over 4 years, and drove 10.000+ km into nearly every corner. I never saw differently shaped tomatoes and never encountered yellow onions nor other chili peppers. Strange, isn't it? What might be the reason? I suspect some kind of seed cartel behind this. Also, you can observe the omnipresent phenomenon of "everybody copying his neighbour": If there is one petrol station, shortly afterwards 5 more will pop up directly next to it. If one sells tomatoes and onions, the neighbour would never think of selling potatoes or cabbage. It must also be tomatoes and onions.

From time to time you also find regular sweet peppers, but then only green ones! Recently, there have popped up very tasty, small "African white garden egg(plants)". I cannot remember having seen them two years ago. Must be a new trend!

And with these tomatoes, of which you can buy a bucket of 10 kg for 2.5 €, you will
be preparing Italo-style tomato sauces all days long! 🤤.Baca selengkapnya