Food is such a part of daily life.
There are many aspects about buying and
preparing food that we take for granted – until we change continents and
cultures! Recently, someone asked me to
talk about what I eat here. Well, a lot
of that is influenced by what I ate in the US and, of course, foods that are
available here. (I am having trouble spacing pictures well. Please excuse that they don't match the text.)
In the US my staple meal was beans and rice
with whatever vegetables and spices I had on hand. While I prepared mostly vegetarian meals
there, I also prepared (often frozen) fish, turkey, or occasionally another
meat. I do the same here since I am
preparing most of my own meals. I rarely
buy or prepare beef, fish, or chicken, but I have occasionally bought mackerel
or tuna in cans. (Call me a coward if
you want – I am not sure how to buy the best meat in the market or to prepare
it so that it is not just shoe leather-like.
These conditions have encouraged my trend toward vegetarianism... When I eat food prepared by others, I do eat
meat – see below.)
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mangoes, cabbage, millet, flags:
US, Cameroon, CAR |
What can I find here that I am used to
preparing? Dried beans (red, black-eyed
peas, some others), rice (white long-grain mostly, but several other white
varieties are available in some places – I miss brown rice!), sweet potatoes, corn
(dried or on the cob, but it is more like hominy than sweet corn most people in
the US eat), yams (although these look very different – see picture), bread (a
couple of types), tomatoes, and onions.
These have usually been available in all the towns where I have lived
(Baboua, Bohong, Bouar, N’gaoundéré, Garoua Boulai, Yaoundé – an impressive
list for 6 months!) In all those places,
I have also been able to buy raw peanuts, peanut butter, and often grilled
peanuts. What are less available are
vegetables which people here had traditionally not eaten: green peppers, celery, parsley, carrots, green
beans, cabbage, spinach, squash, avocado (in season, which just ended) and okra,
although I can find them in larger towns or, sometimes, on market days in
smaller towns. Some Africans have begun
to eat these vegetables, so they are more widely available now than in the
past. (Two factors affecting the
purchase of these vegetables are cost and developing a taste for them.)
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| sweet potatoes |
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| parsley and celery |
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| fat, sweet bananas |
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other bananas -
spots don't change the taste! |
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| fruit
boiled and used to make a juice |
Bananas seem to be available all the time –
various kinds. The small, fat ones are
very sweet. The often have spots, but
that doesn’t affect the taste! Other
fruits are seasonal: oranges (although
most of these that I have eaten are not very sweet), lemons, watermelon (small
and round and delicious), mangoes (just coming into season), and others I don’t
know by name. Many
places you can also buy plantains – the kind of bananas that must be
cooked. When ripe, they are very
sweet. When less ripe, they taste more
like potatoes. They can be pounded and
made into a ball (like cous cous – see below) or cut into pieces and
fried.
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| veggies from the market |
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| small yams that each feed me for days! |
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| cleaning millet |
Some people here eat millet regularly
(often those from further north in both Cameroon and CAR). Manioc root is often eaten as well, esp. in
CAR. Grains must be cleaned – picking out
small stones, clumps of dirt, and maybe a few bugs. They must also be washed to get the dust
off. Here’s a pictures of some millet I
cleaned this morning. On the left are
the little “caps,” or stems. In the
middle are a couple of grains with their caps and on the right are those ready
to be washed and cooked.
Also, very commonly eaten are greens. These can be manioc leaves or others grown in
the reason – including squash leaves (in season). Central Africans often prepare them with a
peanut butter sauce (with a few tomatoes, salt, onions…). In Cameroon they are prepared differently and
are probably different leaves. It is
hard for me to ask questions about greens.
People willing tell me the names of things – in Sango or Gbaya (or maybe
Fulfulde), but can’t give me a French equivalent. Or, if they can tell me in French, I don’t
know what it is in English! My current
practice is to buy what looks interesting in the market or to eat what is put
in front of me.
Meats are often tough because the animals
are free-ranging. Here’s a picture of
beef “being grown.” Beef is served with
bone and gristle. Africans eat the latter and eat all the meat off the former. Fish
is served with head and tail intact. It
may be grilled – my personal favorite – or cooked into a stew. Fresh-water fish is what is most readily
available. In Yaoundé and closer to the
coast, seafood is also available.
It is hard for me to say what Cameroonians
or Central Africans eat on a regular basis.
When I am invited to eat, it is a special occasion. Meat (usually beef or chicken) is always
included to honor the guest. It shows
that they can afford to buy and offer the best (even if they can’t really
afford it). Most meats are prepared with
lots of oil, onions, some tomatoes, other vegetables, and Maggie cubes (these
are beef bouillon cubes that can be bought plain or with some tomato added). While I prepare my food on a gas stove (with
oven), most Africans here cook outside or in a separate kitchen building over a
wood fire. The little I have seen of
this process is to boil the food in a kettle over a pretty high flame. I think adjusting the flame is much more
difficult over an open fire. Those of
you who camp and cook over fires would know more about this than I do. For meals I have been offered, the women
(yes, this is still primarily a woman’s job although some men, especially
students, can also cook) also make rice, macaroni, and cous cous. This last is what they call prepared manioc,
corn, or yams. They grind them up into flour
and then add it to boiling water and stir.
They look like of like balls of bread dough, but the consistency is
different (denser and less springy) and it doesn’t need to be baked to be
eaten.
Many Cameroonians and Central Africans eat
one meal in the evenings. They may have
other snacks during the day. Beignets
are one choice. They are round
doughnut-like pastries that are fried in oil.
Grilled nuts, when available, are another good choice, as are
bananas! People also sell hard-boiled
eggs with which you can get some powdered hot sauce.
Macaroni, pasta, spaghetti sauce, canned
vegetables, popcorn (not the microwave kind, of course, and what I bought doesn’t
pop completely – more roughage for my system, right??), chocolate, jam, soda,
soaps, shampoo, hand cream, toothpaste (OK, these last few aren’t foods, but I
thought you’d like to know…), and lots of other canned goods/items are
available in boutiques. Market refers to
open-air places where people sell what they have grown – a version of Farmers’
Markets we know in the US. Yaoundé has a
few supermarkets like those we have in the US.
Other towns and neighborhoods have small shops (boutiques) that sell these
kinds of things. Think Convenience
Store, but not exactly. Cameroonians and
Central Africans shop in these stores, but buy less and avoid more expensive
items.
Many missionaries eat bread (in some form)
or cereal for breakfast. I don’t
usually. I often have food left over
from an earlier meal. (Anne told me last
week that this is very African! I did it
in the US, too, sometimes.) I also eat
fruit and make tea or hot chocolate (from a powder). Coffee and I have I like-hate relationship; I
like good coffee a lot, but it makes me hyper and gives me headaches. Avoiding it here is much easier since most
people serve instant coffee. (You can
buy ground coffee, but most Africans don’t and I can easily not buy it. I have instant coffee in the house to offer
to visitors.)
I try to eat my largest meal at lunch time. As I said, I usually prepare for myself. I hired someone to work in my house in Baboua
– to clean and cook sometimes, but ten days after she started working for me,
we were evacuated! (She is currently
keeping that house clean and in order.
And, the man I hired as gardener has been planting and caring for a
large garden. I should have fresh
vegetables, etc. when I get back! Yeah.)
In the evenings I have something to drink, some fruit, and maybe some peanuts
or left overs if I feel hungry, but often I don’t.
There are some restaurants in towns, but
not many. Non-Africans tend to avoid
many of them because we can’t be certain about how the food is prepared. N’gaoundéré has a good restaurant often frequented
by local and visiting missionaries – the Coffee Shop (which is actually a
regular restaurant). My favorite meal
there is fish brochettes with fried plantains. Yaoundé, of course, is a very large city with
many great restaurants.
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| kilichi from N'gaoundere |
People also prepare some foods and sell
them in the market or a small shop. In N’gaoundéré
a Fulfulde specialty is dried beef made with a peanut butter sauce. Many stalls grill beef. There are various other foods I have seen,
but not tasted. It is better for
missionaries not to eat these “fast” foods because it is more likely that the
water used to cook them was not clean or other, less sanitary practices are
followed.
Whew!
Did I cover everything? Probably
more than enough. I guess it is time for
me to go eat the meal that has been cooking as I write – millet, beans, tomato
sauce, and peanut butter are the main ingredients. It is my own concoction – want to join me???
Monday Greg Nelson and his son Eric arrived
in Garoua Boulai from Yaoundé. Greg
works with ELCA missionaries, but usually in the US. He came to see some of us “in the field” to
better understand our life and work.
Also on Monday, Anne Langdji arrived from a visit to N’gaoundéré. I made dinner – see? I said it was
mundane! 
