How to bake a cake without an oven

Ovens are scare here, but don't worry, there are still ways to make baked goods. What you do is take an enormous pot, put a bowl at the bottom, then put the pan with the cake batter on top. You put the lid of the big pot on and place the entire thing over a fire. It gets tricky setting the right temperature, so you have to play around with it a lot adding wood and taking some away.

The food here, otherwise, is sometimes great and sometimes not so great. Unlike Madagascar where I had rice every single day, I eat a much more varied diet of starches here: corn, manioc, rice, pasta, and lots of plantains. My homestay family’s favorite meal was couscous de maize.Do not confuse these couscous with those of Northern Africa…what they mean by couscous here is dried, powdered corn or manioc that is added to boiling water and essentially tasteless and void of any vitamins. My first night in country we ate it with Gumbo – a snot-like, guey green sauce, which did not make a good first impression. Luckily, there is really great fruit!

On the right is a picture of a baker's oven. I'm trying to teach him how to make chocolate chip cookies!