Somalia Unit

Finding pictures of Somalia is tricky. First there are the pictures of people on vacation in some sort of variation. Then there are the pictures of the results of the civil war, and I’m sure Somalia doesn’t want to be known for war. Finally, there are random landscape pictures, some of these are of the Savannah, and others like the picture I chose are of really cool-looking animals. I wish I could find a better picture. Oh well, our Somalia Unit was a fun geography lesson, even if many things did not go well. It did go better than some other countries in our Africa Unit.

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Somalia Unit Resources

Hmmm, let’s dig around on the good ol’ internet and let’s see what sites I find. The internet does not think Somalia has many interesting facts because the most number of facts I can find are 20 facts. Sorry Somalia, the internet has declared you to be boring. They aren’t even calling the facts interesting.

• 20 Interesting Somalia Facts– Though some of these facts may not be what Somalia wishes to be known for
• Somalia Country Report– hmmm, Somalia is one of the countries that uses their right hand to eat with…
• 10 Facts for Somalia– they opted to go for generic landscape for their picture, oh wait and a camel, but then I scrolled down and they had a lovely waterfall picture

The Geography Now video:

It’s kind of funny to realize the video came out after we had started watching it, so I have actually seen this video three times now. First when it showed up in my feed, then again when I watched it with the kids, and finally as I wrote this post.

Yes, I am weird.

I do not apologize.

Somalia Unit recipe: Somali Rice and Chicken

I am first going to give you how this recipe went for cooking, then I’ll give you actual real instructions.

First I looked at the directions and realized I should have started it about 10 minutes ago, at least. Then I started finding all of the spices I needed to put together the spice mix. I spent a minute or so toasting it, then went over to the coffee grinder to grind it up.

This is when I discovered when they say let the spices cool before grinding it up, they mean it. So I put it in the coffee grinder and it started smoking. When I took the lid off, smoke emerged. That is not a good sign.

We were out of olive oil, so I substituted butter because it was a better option than coconut oil. I think this led to problems of the rice sticking later I think because the butter cooked off.

So, while the onions were cooking I started cutting the chicken into bite-sized pieces, I turned around to stir the onions in the dutch oven and Leezard had jumped up onto the counter and was desperately licking the chicken trying to eat it. Shrieks of “Leezard Leezard Leezard! That’s not your chicken!” came from me as I ran over to stop her. A minute later I put her in her crate, and got back to cooking.

The rest of cooking dinner was interspersed with her letting me know she was stuck in her crate and my yelling back, “You’re not coming out because you tried to steal our dinner.”

Proceed to cook the rice, and then after a whole lot of work you have a super awesome dish.

Only it wasn’t.

It wasn’t as tasty as the sheer number of spices should have been. I don’t know why. It made me very sad.

I have not figured out how to make these one pot chicken and rice meals taste as good as they look like they should taste.

Somali Chicken and Rice

Print

Try this one pot meal as you learn about Somalia.

Prep Time 20 minutes

Cook Time 30 minutes

Total Time 50 minutes

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 2 tablespoon Xawaash Spice Blend
• 4 chicken breasts cut into bite-sized pieces
• 1 white onion chopped
• 4 cloves garlic minced
• 2 tomatoes diced
• 6 ounces of tomato paste
• 2 tablespoons Xawaash spice blend
• cinnamon stick
• 8 whole cloves
• 5 green cardamom pods
• 2 cups rice
• 5 cups chicken broth

Instructions

1. Add the oil to the dutch oven and allow to heat over medium-high heat, add the Xawaash spice blend and cook for 1 minute.
2. Add the meat and stir to coat in the spice mixture. Cook until well done. Remove from heat and scrape the bottom of the pan to loosen any browned bits, add more oil and allow to heat.
3. Add the onion and garlic and cook until translucent, about five minutes.
4. Stir in the tomato paste, xawaash spice blend, and other spices. Stir to combine it all, then add the basmati rice. Pour in the chicken broth and bring to a boil.
5. Reduce the heat to low, cover and cook for 10 minutes stirring occasionally. When the moisture is absorbed stir in the chicken and cook for another minute to reheat the chicken.

Notes

To make your own xawaash spice blend, combine a 2 inch cinnamon stick, 1/2 cup cumin seeds, 1/2 cup coriander seeds, 1 tablespoons black peppercorn, 6 cardamom pods, 1 teaspoon whole cloves, 2 tablespoons ground turmeric, in a spice blender or coffee grinder

Somalia Unit: Animals

Here is what I learned from the Geography Now video, and the picture I chose to use.

• camel
• Somalia ostrich
• Indian ocean tuna
• Nile crocodile
• Somali bee-eater- picture above, isn’t it pretty?

Somalia Unit notebooking pages

We filled out the Africa notebooking pages and happily filled it out.

Or maybe I happily filled it out, and the teens supplied sarcasm.

Let’s see what did I write down for cool facts…

• Somaliland claims to not be part of Somalia, that is a large portion of the country
• Puntland claims to be autonomous, but still part of Somali, as you can see Somalia has a lot of disagreements about borders
• Blackhawk Down crash site museum- I find it fascinating that has turned into a museum, I wonder how long it will stay open
• Las Geel- some of the oldest cave paintings in the world (I’ll have something related to that in my other ideas section)
• bioluminescent sea- why couldn’t I find pictures of that?

And that was our Somalia Unit. I’m ever so slightly closer to finishing off writing all of these.

More great learning ideas

Let’s see what all I can grab, I know of at least one I’m sharing, the rest I’m randomly turning pages on my blog post list and picking something that’s been updated.

• Cave Paintings of Lascaux– this was so much fun, I miss doing lessons like this
• Finding the Elements of Story
• Lewis and Clark lesson

And the dog just had a seizure, so I’m going to schedule this and go help her.

Somali Bee used under Creative Commons rights– I first accidentally embedded the whole photo…