kar0ling

The good thing about mango season...well, the good, or rather, GREAT thing about mango season is, of course, that you get to eat tons of mangos (at 5 for 100 CFA, or about 25¢),... but the fringe benefit is that it provides practical motivation to do what your dentist is always telling you to do (which you guiltily pretend to do more often than is true) -- floss regularly.

Transition-season-moving-toward-rainy-season seems to be a fruitful time for the yield of the field (or rather, forest). At one time, we had bananas & pineapple (both all-season fruit), mangoes, guavas, bushapples, lemons & oranges (in their minor season), avocadoes in the house here in Bekondo. Yum! The village kids just kept on coming bringing their excess fruits. I was particularly impressed by the young man from whom I purchased some guavas; on Sunday he was in church (a rare occurrence in itself) and went up during offering to put money in the basket. That was one of the first times I've remarked a child going up for offering.

While we're on the topic of interesting food, I finally got to try snails. Or rather, snail. (Not that I was waiting on tenterhooks, but it was a goodly while ago they warned snails would be on the menu.) The night Friesens had snails for supper I was eating at the Scotts, but, eager that I should not miss out on the cultural experience, Lisa sent some rice, snails and sauce over for me to try. The sauce was tasty, though it had a vaguely snail-like essence to it. The snails were not repellent but neither were they palatable. They didn't have much flavour, so the overwhelming impression was of rubbery gnurple. I'll try anything once, I always say. After that I may get selective.

At breakfast this morning, Becky mentioned they'd gotten some meat last night. As the plan was for us to eat it at lunch today, she instructed Kenneth to get it from the fridge to show me. I couldn't imagine what it could be that a small bag of it in the fridge would be recognizable. Then I looked closer. Scaly skin. Lizard? Yes, Johannes (Scotts' househelp) and Bruno (Scotts' German Shepherd) went hunting yesterday and shot a monitor lizard which they generously shared with us. So today in our pepe soup we had pieces of lizard meat. Actually, Becky pulled out the meat to serve it separately, and I must confess I ate but a miniscule amount. The taste itself was not problematic and the meat was very tender. But the skin was still on it, and there were still some small bones, and I really am a child when it comes to fat, bones and gnurple in my meat. The skin itself was very thin and peeled nicely off the thick layer of fat so that once you got down to the flesh, a walnut...

Avocados, where have you been all my life? Or maybe the question is, where have I been? I've always been ambivalent about avocados but now I realize that's because I never really tried them. The week (with me as master of the house) started with two avocados on the vegetable shelf and when kids came by selling some, I thought, “sure, why not? They're cute kids, and bought two more. Now, I have had an avocado salad here, using the fruit as a cup, filled with tomatoes and onions, which is lovely, but I didn’t want to make that. I’ve eaten avocado like butter on bread with a dash of salt and a slice of cheese or tomato, but I didn't want to do that either. One of the avocados was starting to look pretty nasty and threatening to spoil, so, running out of options, I made guacamole. I don’t think I’ve ever really tried guacamole before. It is the only explanation I can come up with for why I didn’t know the stuff is fabulous. First of all, it was fun to make. I n...

Soya is an ambiguous word, and I couldn't say what exactly I would expect of something called "soya" at home. It might be soy beans themselves; it might be tofu or another soy bean product; it might be the ubiquitous soya sauce of Chinese restaurants. But I'm fairly positive that it would not ever be spiced, skewered meat roasted over a barrel fire on the side of the road. It's delicious, despite its seeming misnomer. Some are "party in my mouth" spicy, while others are "get water quick, there's a fire in my mouth" spicy, depending on the vendor. It's also known as "typhoid on a stick" but I prefer not to be so negative about food. As long as they're reasonably hot when you buy them, you just chow down with relish and pray that ignorance is bliss.

I ate a fish, on the beach. Just a slab of fish on a plate. It was great. It was grilled, of course, and slathered with a delicious sauce. And I was going to say I ate all of it, but that wouldn’t be true either. Lerry (Cameroonian girl) looked at me strangely a few nights earlier when I was eating bar (a kind of fish) with rice and dodo (fried sweet plantains, mmmm) at Hot Spot, and asked “Why don’t you eat the bones?” Ummm, because a) I’m a wimp, and b) I’m Canadian, so it’s not really standard practice anyway? This is a big step for me to just be eating fish like this, all fishy looking and all. But it was really good, especially at dusk on the beachfront at Limbe. We went up to the crude grill, picked out our fish from the selections given, then they were thrown on the grill and served up to us with a roasted plantain (mmmmm!) later. I tried to be more responsible this time and eat at least some of the bones, but only some. And I couldn’t bring myself to eat the head; I’m sorry, bu...

Once again translation week and a "Friesen week" have coincided for me so I get to eat "country chop" with the translators at lunch. We hadn't had waterfufu yet this week, so I was expecting--but dreading--that for lunch on Wednesday. Before leaving for lunch I thought to myself, I dearly wish lunch would be plaintains or something. Imagine my delight when it was indeed boiled plaintains with a red sauce and cabbage. A healthy fire burned in my mouth from the first bite and I avoided scooping out any meat with the cabbage but otherwise the meal was excellent. Today Lisa and I were sharing our dread of waterfufu and our earnest wish that we would not have to eat it today. Finally, the ladies brought the food and our suspense was ended as one of the translators lifted the lid and exclaimed in consternation: "we had this yesterday!" (Actually he said it in Oroko, but that's a paraphrase of my understanding of what he said.) Lisa and I looked at each o...

One of the few fruit trees along main street in the village, the shadok* tree spreads its branches widely above the mud. Not a very tall tree, its long arms, weighed down by the enormous orbs hanging like oversized Christmas decorations on an Charlie Brown tree, need to be propped up with sticks to keep them from breaking under the weight of the slowly ripening shadok. The unique (and gigantic) citrus has slowly been finding its way to our table. (*Shadok is the word used for pomelo in this area. It is not widely known or used. It seems to be a pidgin word, though what its origins are, no one can tell.)

Now that Friesens are back, I eat my meals with them one week, Scotts the next. Translation week this month was a Friesen week for me, so I lunched with the translators: local food made by local cooks for local consumption. (When Friesens' and Scotts' cooks make local stuff they modify it for Western palettes. Primarily, this means less oil and less pepe.) Gearing me up for the experience, I ate rice and fish in sauce at Joe's house (one of the indigenous translators) for lunch on Sunday and partook of a sumptuous spread at Chief Esoh's house for supper that evening, including a small piece of "bushmeat" which apparently was porcupine. I'm neither much of a connoisseur nor much of a fan of meat in general, so as far as I'm concerned, one fatty chunk of meat is the same as the next. Monday -- Pepe soup The national dish of Cameroon, or at least, of this region. Pepe is the local hot pepper used to spice everything. It was a thickish soup, a murky greyis...

Who knew those words could go together? Spaghetti omelette. And not only go together, but taste good. To say it is Cameroonian food would probably be to mislead; perhaps more accurately it is a Cameroonian take on Western food. Whatever it is, eaten here, and it's surprisingly likable. It is just what it sounds like-an omelette with spaghetti in it. Why, you ask? So did I. To get more mileage out of your egg, of course. And to get protein with your spaghetti. (In North America, another reason would be to use up left-over spaghetti, but I don't think that's applicable here.) It's more spaghetti than egg; the egg mostly holds the concoction together. So, adventurous cooks out there, give it a try!

This time it's bush apples. In a bowl, on the table, they look like apples. Slightly longer/less round, yes, but for something with the name "bush apple," the colouring and general appearance is about right. When you bite into them, the impression is not entirely dispelled. Granted, they don't taste like an ordinary apple, but are reminiscent of Chinese apple-pears, though lacking the firmness and crispness of either the aforementioned or an ordinary apple. So it wasn't until I reached the centre that I realized we were dealing with a horse of another colour. There, where the core should have been, was a small, round, light brown pit. Not an apple after all, it seems. Finally, let me not forget the "grapes"-they've made their appearance. We haven't opened them up yet, but Becky showed me two huge grapefruits, one in particular is as large as a pomelo. I guess grapes as we know them in North America are actually a product of our colder, more north...

What came first, the fruit or the colour? I don't know, but I can attest to the fact that oranges are not orange here in Cameroon. The colour orange only comes at a state of extreme ripeness; that stage where if you look at the fruit the wrong way it'll rot. Accordingly, oranges are picked, sold, and eaten green - on the outside anyway. I must admit they do taste different from any oranges I've had before, so in all fairness, they are probably a different breed of orange than those we eat in North America, so perhaps the latter has done more to earn their name.

No, not the rabbit walking through the forest. Food. There are different types of fufu, depending on what it's made from. (As far as I know, this staple carbohydrate comes in cocoyam and corn varieties.) I've had the very similar Congo-style luku-made with cassava, I believe-in Canada, and now I've had South West Province Cameroon-style fufu in the village. Made from a particular type of cocoyam, the purplish-skinned tuber is peeled and boiled like a potato then placed in a large mortar where it is pounded to a greyish-white gooey paste. Johannes, the Scotts' cook, made it today and invited us all to participate in the pounding. Kenneth gleefully mashed up the cocoyams, then I got a turn at pounding the now very sticky mush. It looks like mashed potatoes, but gives a great deal more resistance. With the mortar on the floor, I sat on a chair, using my feet to keep it steady while battering the cocoyams into submission. I've always been one to be turned off by texture...

Today I ate cashews. Only, they weren't actually cashews. I have no idea what they would be called in another life, so I'll do my best to describe them. It is a nut, served boiled. You crack the thin shell of the dark brown quarter-sized round nut, either with a nut cracker, or with your teeth as the locals do, and eat the colourless meat. It doesn't taste particularly nutty, but that is probably in part because it is boiled, not roasted. The flavour isn't particularly strong one way or another, but I was warned not to drink water immediately after eating as it would dry out my mouth. If anyone has any ideas to solve the mystery of the Cameroonian cashews, I invite you to post and enlighten us all.

Monkey kola From the outside, it looks like a dark, bumpy root or something - which it probably is, I actually don't know. Inside, it has 3 or 4 pieces (hmmm, I'm actually guessing about this as well since I haven't seen it peeled, only whole and on a plate). Okay, the point of this all is that I've eaten one and I wanted to describe it to you. It's a lot like lichee, only firmer, less sweet, less watery and much larger. But really, it is similar to lichee! Well, that was a failure - my attempt to describe monkey kola to you. I'll make it up to you by commenting on the weather. Humidity is high today - as always - but for once it's actually warm. You may think I should not be asking for warm weather, I'll get enough of it soon enough, and I agree with you, however, it has been very cool, not just in Bamenda, but also here in the village, and I was so thoroughly warned about the heat here that I packed pretty much exclusively for that, and have very littl...

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.