Some occupations turn out to be more multicultural than others. Working in nuclear power exposed me to people from about every corner of India, and nowadays in IT I run into people from about anywhere you can name. At the moment I have a Turk in the next cube, a Hindu across the aisle, a Jordanian a few cubes down, an Iranian a row over, and by the time you make it out of the building you've run into someone from about everybody else.
Many of them know by now that I'm fairly shameless about introducing myself if necessary, asking where they're from, and maybe even debriefing them about world news. Nobody has screamed yet, but it doesn't always go well.
Today someone had ordered a bunch of pizza for a meeting and the surplus was sitting in a common area. Several people were there, including a Tanzanian woman I know with her Chinese and Filipino-Chinese buddies. Instantly, I had to know - what do they put on pizzas in Africa?
Several people heard me ask this question, and some made noises like it was the dumbest thing they've ever heard. My quarry was amused though, and allowed as to how they didn't have much pizza over there - it was still "Italian food". Ouch - if that's not cultural deprivation, what is?
As for the ones who laughed out loud at the question, well, somebody finally Googled for 'tanzania pizza', and by Jove you find a decent list back. From here we learn that "Zanzibar pizza is the local specialty. These are small dough discs cooked quickly on brazier with onions, egg and chillis added. Totally unlike an Italian pizza, it makes a delicious and different treat. " (They also tell us that local ice cream is flavored with ginger, cloves, and lemon grass. No wonder obesity isn't much of a problem there...)
So that's not a pizza to you? Well, call Debonair's Pizza in Tanzania, and also in Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Uganda, Ivory Coast and in it's home in South Africa. (Limited delivery area.)
Go ahead - find that on Instapundit...
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