Tennis at Wimbledon

Tennis Fan?

Clem and I love watching tennis matches, he even more than I. His hero is Roger Federer, who is playing in the finals at Wimbledon today.

The match is already over but I don’t want to know the result until we watch the replay at 6 pm on The Tennis Channel. Our son Sam called at about 11:30 and said he was watching. I didn’t let him tell me the score.

Then I spotted a headline in my gmail from The New York Times a little later with the name of the opponent, but I moved my eyes away as fast as I could!

Yesterday we saw Serena Williams defeated by Simona Halep in a fairly one-sided match. Serena didn’t seem to be fully herself, with several shots into the net.

I was annoyed that I had seen the result, again in an email from The New York Times in the late morning. I sent them an email to say I was mad that they put the result right in the headline so I couldn’t miss it! Why couldn’t they just say Wimbledon Result In, and leave it to me to decide if I want to read it!

And why do we say “Federer” and “Serena”? OK, we have to differentiate between Venus and Serena, but still, it makes me wonder.

Groundnut Stew

BarbaraLee Tonneatti Purcell was in my Peace Corps training group at UCLA in the summer of 1962. More than a decade ago she published a lovely book called Groundnut Stew.  I had looked at it briefly when she published it but did not read it all.

A few days ago I went back to it to see if she had any recipes that I could use in my book on Nigerian cuisine. Of course she has a recipe for groundnut stew, one of the most popular dishes in Nigera and the rest of West Africa. Although I have another, I may ask her if I can use hers. She also includes a vegetarian version.

Her book has lots of interesting descriptions of her teaching experience as a Peace Corps volunteer in northern Nigeria. She also has dozens of photos, some from our Peace Corps training and more from her time in Funtua and other northern cities.

One of the pleasures was seeing a photo taken during Peace Corps training of me and Bob Wynne, (although she said the man in the picture was Bob Wrin), “on top of a mountain in California when we went to the Mt. Palomar telescope.”

She added a note: (Kathy (sic) married a Nigerian and became Kathy Zastrow Onyemelukwe! (If you
have the courage to Google “Onyemelukwe,” you will find websites that refer to her, and to her
daughter.)”

In her book she included articles from the Nigerian media. Imagine my surprise when I found an item about Nigerian trains written by Aig Imoukhuede! We have been friends with the Imoukhuede family since we lived across the street from them in Ikoyi, Lagos! The older son is Aigboje, the younger is called Aig. I think the article is by Aigboje who has been a friend of our son Chinaku’s since they were very young.

In addition to her recipes for groundnut stew she has a recipe for yam muffins! I can’t quite imagine, but maybe I’ll have to try this. If it comes out all right, I’ll ask her if I can include it in my book.

Nigerian Beverages

This past week I’ve been working on the book chapter about Nigerian beverages. I wrote all I could about Star beer, loved by Peace Corps volunteers. I exhausted what I had to say about palm wine, the most important traditional drink. Then I wrote about schnapps! Do you know what that is?

Soft drinks are in their own section, with Fanta leading the popularity contest among former Peace Corps volunteers. I was looking for information on other drinks and found Chivita, a company that makes fruit beverages. I read that they had been bought by Coca-Cola several years ago.

I was telling our older son Chinaku who is in finance about what I was learning. He said he was familiar with the deal.

The Unitarian Church in Westport Summer Services

This morning we had another excellent sermon by a lay person, a non-minister, at The Unitarian Church in Westport. Mary Meghan Marshall spoke about patience and finding grace on the MTA!

Several months ago she moved to Brooklyn New York but kept her job as a case manager in Norwalk, just south of Westport.

Her daily 2 and 1/2 hour commute started with two or three different subways to get to the train. She said that a conversation with her godmother led her to think about the importance of gratitude and grace, which brought her to patience with others.

Her godmother’s comment made her comfortable with her own use of space and not being concerned with what others thought about her. And she understood that each person who shoved or pushed, getting into or out of the subway, had a place to be that was important to them.

She told us near the end of her talk that she is starting a new job in Manhattan next week! She said, “I’ll miss the commute a little – I had all that time to listen to blogs and practice grace!”