So the topic for this discussion--answering that timeless and always so delicately expressed query of, "Oh my God, what the hell are you going to eat over there?" To be honest, I can't complain--I did tell the Peace Corps interviewer that new cuisine was one of the things I was looking forward to experiencing. Well, I suppose I got what I asked for.
Having grown up on the Gulf Coast with that spectacular blend of seafood, Cajun/Creole and just good 'ole Southern, coronary-inducing food, I am surprised that I haven't been too distraught over the reative lack of variety here. Not that it's all been kobe beef and truffles. Every meal is basically the same--a large portion of a flavorless, fluffy, cornmeal based starch called phuthu (poo-too), which I've come to like quite a bit, with a "curry," generally a brown sauce made from a soup packet with meat in it, maybe potatoes as well. (In other regions, phuthu is substituted with pap, a thick cornmeal paste, immeasurablt worse than phuthu with its flavorless, sticky, digestion-inhibiting properties). This actually doesn't sound bad, and depending on the meat involved, it's usually quite good. Of course, depending on the meat it can also be really, really bad.
Chicken is not consumed nearly as much here as at home, and when it is, it's usually small wings. I now have a very definite mental image of the phrase, "suck the marrow out of life." Chicke
n bones are meant to be cracked into here, relishing every bite. I haven't yet worked up the courage for this, but politely pass the bones along for someone else to bite into. But beef of all varieties is the mainstay. By "varieties," I mean beef meat (as in muscle tissue), beef stomach, beef liver, kidneys, intestines, even HEELS. I actually saw "guts" advertised for sale at the meat market the other day. What?! Then the other night we had curry with what my host mother described to me as the "stuff" on the inside, doing a general wave with her hand over her abdomen in an effort to clarify. I never was able to completely identify what it was. However, my intricate knowledge of anatomy led me to believe the piece I ate was stomach, as it had neither the fluffy, villous texture of intestines, nor the homogeneity of kidney or liver. It was rubbery and, you guessed it, really gross. Since that night, my host mom warns me when we are having "insides," and I gratefully cook for myself.
Other meats regularly consumed are sheep (mutton) and goat. Word to the wise: goat meat often causes the dreaded yet ever looming "runny tummy," as it's so lyrically called here. Again according to my host mom, about 80% of Africans have this unfortunate reaction to goat meat, so it's not too widely consumed. However, having been invited to a friend's for dinner, aka the goat they had slaughtered the day before, I felt obligated (I didn't want it to have died in vain). Luckily, I only just missed the actual slaughtering (I seem to have become good at that). Sure enough, I fell into the category of people negatively affected by goat meat; I'll pass next time. As for the mutton, the only part of it I have tried was the liver. Something I have learned about myself in South Africa--I really, really hate liver. I know people eat it everywhere, and I always had a curious desire to try liver and onions. But not anymore. I don't know if the type of liver makes a difference, but just imagine eating dead, sweaty, rotting feet. That would be better than this. The only other thing I have sworn off since coming here besides the liver is Pilchard's (a brand name), aka tinned fish, aka rotten sardines in a can. I like canned tuna fish, so it's not the idea of fish in a can I'm inherently opposed to. But if all the food in the world disappeared except for mutton liver and Pilchard's, well, even then I'd have to think about it long and hard.
Anyway, other than that, most meals are served with a side of some fruit or vegetable, usually something in season. At this point in time, it's cooked butternut squash, fresh a
vocado or pickled beetroot, all quite nice. Something else I learned about myself here is that I really like beets, can you believe it? And if you've never seen a fresh beet before, they really are that color. Some of the more adventurous things I've seen here are chicken feet (haven't yet had to try, but I suppose I will at some point), unidentifiable meat on a stick (a really gross version of the chicken on a stick that you get at fairs; I asked the person selling it what it was, and he kind of looked at me funny and said "cow"), and ishongololo, or dried caterpillars. Behold the attached picture--a bit blury because my camera was so close to it, but it's about three inches long and as wide as those fat pencils little kids use. Yes, I ate one of those. It tasted like a dried stick.
But I have to say that so far, my cooking has not gone over just swimmingly either. For a long list of reasons, I haven't had the opportunity/capability/strength of will to do much cooking since I've been at my new host family's house. I would like to do this for myself as I always feel I'm putting my host mom out, but the kitchen is tiny, difficult to use, and she always brings me a huge plate of food before I can say no. Anyway, the few times I've cooked it's generally been pasta ("You always cook pasta. Pasta! Pasta! Pasta!" my host mom says. "But you always eat phuthu!" I want to return. But don't, of course.) Anyway, even this seemingly un-mess-up-able dish has left a lot to be desired. The pasta sauce here (at least where I c
an get it) is pretty gross, and everything fresh I buy goes bad for various reasons. So then I tried buying one of those boxed cheesy tuna pasta things--let's just say the South African equivalent is, well, gross. The next one of these boxed meals I had (I'd bought the two at the same time), was one that you "just add chicken."
A brief synopsis of my meal preparation: there's nowhere to cut the chicken, so I use a dinner plate. Meanwhile, I've dumped the rock hard block of fake powdered cheese into the water in the pot and am trying to crush it with a ladle before my host mom sees the mess I'm making. While that heats I cut up the chicken, then go to the bathroom to wash my hands (no sink in kitchen). Of course there's no running water, so in the process of trying to dip up water to wash my hands (and I'd purchased the only hand soap in the house; hand washing isn't a big priority, hence a good deal of the runny tummy), I managed to spread salmonella throughout the entire house, including the huge water barrel that's used to bathe with and flush the toilet. God only knows where the bacteria ended up, although I did the best I could. Then I go back to break out the pasta that came with the kit only to see that it has been infested with little black bugs. I noticed this in a bag of rice the other day and my host mom said I shouldn't throw it out because there are hungry people around who would want it. True enough, I thought, so she took it to debug it before giving it to s
aid hungry people. So I therefore debugged my own pasta as best as I could and dumped it in the pot. Later, when the meal was actually cooked, I realized that a good dash of fresh ground pepper (which I finally found here) covered up the sight of any lingering bugs so that I could eat in peace, and they probably added to my protein intake anyway. Afterwards, I went to wash the plate and knife I'd used to cut the chicken in the bucket of dirty water that had been sitting there all day for dishes to be intermittently washed (it started out clean) with a minimal amount of soap in it; just a splash of water will do, no need to superheat the water to antibacterial temp, nor to use such superfluous things as clean water and soap. After all this, not only did I fully expect to be suffering the rampaging furies of a gastrointestinal meltdown the following day, but I figured the food would be gross too. But as fate would have it, it actually turned out quite good, and I (and everyone who tasted it) suffered no ill effects in consequence.
So that's today's food diary. There's more for future posts, of course, but I'm sure you're sufficiently hungry by now. Now go eat some jalapeno poppers in honor of me. As
for today's pics--The first is of friends (L to R) Claire, Katie, Kim, Leah and Erin on a weekend break, cooking dinner and enjoying some American ex-pat company. The zebras were in a small herd that came to drink from the lake at Newcastle (I think I posted another really pretty pic of Newcastle scenery in an earlier post). The boy and girl are just some of the cute kids at the school where I'm working. After that is a pic of some of the OVCs eating the lunch we provide; no covered area to eat, no spoons--they eat with their hands then rinse their plates themselves in a big bucket of water, then the plates get used again. General hygiene in this regard is going to become one of my projects. Following this is the oh, so delectable caterpillar. The next is of my host family's house; notice the satelite dish. The one following that shows some of the traditional style houses which are on my host family's property right near their own home in which some of their extended family live.
One other thing--I recently read the really good book,
The Art of Crossing Cultures by Craig Storti which the Peace Corps so generously provided us with. I think this is a great read for anyone doing any serious traveling, but even if not, it's appeal lies in teaching us as much about our own culture and all its many ridiculous and funny faults as those of others. I will leave you today with some quotes taken from this book, which themselves have been pulled from other works. These I felt were particularly apt for me.
It is so very HOT I do not know how to write it
large enough.
--EMILY EDEN, Up the Country
An American? I looked up. "How do you know?"
"Wearing a hat," he said. "Carrying her own
boxes." "That doesn't mean she's an American."
"Riding the night bus," he smiled. "American."
--PAUL THEROUX, The Consul's File
I went to a cultural dance competition for students the other day--this was one of the groups of boys preparing before their turn.
Another group of primary school boys who were in the competition doing ingoma, or Zulu dance. I'll send home a CD with videos for Mom to post on here; too difficult for me to do it.
Host mom JZ with friend Mduduzi. I really liked this pic because both are smiling; it's kind of a Zulu thing that no matter how much laughing and smiling you do otherwise, you don't smile for pictures.
In the tree is host brother Thalente with his cousins; on the ground is Sipheto, dancing as always.
This zebra was in the middle of someone's yard in a nice little resort town; it and another had just wandered in.
Besides the fact that this shows a 200 Rand bill (R200, or almost $30), there's something else in this picture (the bill is used for sizing). Super props to whoever can figure out what it is in the pic.
