Skip to main content

Food by any other name

Plums. Cameroonian plums. They make beautiful trees with their pink fruit before it ripens. They're eaten cooked - crispy, papery, purplish skin covering a scanty layer of avocado-reminiscent fruit ensheathing a large pit.

Plums, eh?

Pears. Cameroonian pears. We had them for supper again today and I think I like them. I've always been ambivalent about "pears" but the way these are prepared appeals to me. They're cooked, pit is removed and the hollow filled with a salad of tomatoes, onions and some other vegetables in a light oil sauce (because everything is cooked in oil here). Getting the feeling they're not really pears yet?

Avocadoes.
Labels:

Comments

lasselanta said…
Yes. And "grapes"! :-)
August 16, 2007 at 1:37 AM
kar0ling said…
ooh, i haven't encountered "grapes" yet.
August 16, 2007 at 2:28 PM
lasselanta said…
I encountered "grapes" when I was asking about one Oroko word (I can't type it here because I don't have the right letters, but the Scotts will be able to tell you). I asked if it only referred to oranges, and my language helper said no. "It means many fruits. Orange, lemon, mandarin, grape..." :-)
August 18, 2007 at 11:09 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Living stones in the holy land

I met Jesus in Israel-Palestine a few years ago. I found him not in the rocky, desert ground he trod, nor in the ancient stones of the towns and cities he visited; not in the subterranean grotto in the Church of the Nativity, nor in the mammoth Church of the Holy Sepulchre, encompassing the traditional site of his death and resurrection. No, I met him in the lives of Palestinians who incarnate his spirit, in humble, passionate people who are convinced that love is the only way. I met Jesus in people who spoke like this: “We need to be soaked in the love of Christ. Love is not a hug and a kiss. Love is to seek the life of the other that the cost of one’s own.” --Labib Madanat, coordinator of the Palestinian and Israeli Bible Societies “Love is not an opportunity to overlook justice. Love is an opportunity to pursue justice…. [But] we want to resist any form of evil with the heart and mind of Jesus Christ.… There is no love without justice. And there is no true justice without lov...
2 comments
Read more

The responsibility of those who go

I just had a meeting with my support group/sending team from my church tonight and again I'm blown away. I can't believe how intentional and involved they are. I'm only going away for 10 months; it doesn't seem like such a huge deal to me but they are so excited for me, so encouraging, so eager to be of help, and so full of wisdom. A significant portion of my church are former missionaries, a number of them to places in Africa, so there's a good deal of experience backing up their words, and I'm sure their input will be invaluable when I return and am all messed up and unable to cope with Canadian life. Actually, everyone I've told about my plans seems to be really excited for me. When I think about it like that, I realize I have a responsibility to those people. One thing I've always struggled with in regards to shorter term cross-cultural missions is that by the time you've worked through all the cultural, practical, linguistic, and logistic issues...
4 comments
Read more

Broken people...

After reflecting with one coworker on how often churches in all their forms really mess up and hurt a whole bunch of people in the process -- and how "we gotta do better" -- I stumbled into another conversation with a coworker which highlighted our brokenness, and I suddenly realized what was wrong with my take in the first. I wanted the church to be better at fixing our mistakes, or better yet, at not making them in the first place. But maybe this "fix-it" attitude is partly the reason we keep blowing it again and again! My friend recollected an experience when a church community was in a terrible place: compounded mistakes, hurts, and frustrations had blown up, spewing pain all over all parties. (I'm sure anyone with a long history in the church can think of one, if not several, such occasions in their past.) A new Christian who observed all these goings on responded in an unexpected way. Instead of "you people are a bunch of screw-ups! How could this pos...
5 comments
Read more