May 27, 2008
I have come to really enjoy Cameroonian food, even though when I first arrived it all would have disgusted me. I now look forward to certain dishes and can eat everything as fast as other Cameroonians. But eating with a family does give me my share of surprises. When I’m called to dinner I come in and Grand Pere is usually already sitting there with the food in front of him, in covered pots. We then say a ten second prayer, before he unveils what we are eating for the night. I always have a moment of anxiety over what we will eat. My favorite dishes are “bungo chobi” which is fish cooked in a black sauce, that is shiny and black like crude oil, but surprisingly very tasty. I also like “coq” which is some sort of green leaf vegetable cut up really small and then cooked with a whole bunch of oil and spices. Even in the dishes that don’t seem to be fish based there are always random fish bits in them. To add protein to meals Cameroonians will buy dried/smoked fish and then cook that in the sauce. So when eating a dish that seems to be vegetable based I always get surprised by bits of fish bones and eyes. Here the head is considered the best part of the fish and people tear it apart eating every piece of meat and chewing on all the bones till what’s left is a pile of white mush they’ve chewed up and spit out. The eyes of the fish are considered very tasty and another reason why people prefer the head, but when I find a random fish eye in my mouth I politely spit it out and put it down on the table. Another favorite dish is grilled fish, which is prepared on the street basically everywhere here in my part of the country. For less than a dollar you get a good sized portion of fish with some sort of manioc on the side, a small amount of green sauce for dipping and a small amount of hot pepper on the side. The women (and a few men) are everywhere around the village sitting in front of their little grill, fanning the coals with a plate and waiting for someone to come around and order. They give you a price based on the size of the fish and then you walk off to some bar and they bring it to you. You can walk into any bar and just sit there without ordering a drink. The fish women bring you your food, and in most places you eat the fish with your hands. When you eat in a restaurant or bar it is completely acceptable to just spit the fish bones out on the table or on the floor. All the floors are either concrete or dirt and just get swept out at the end of the day anyways.
For my not so favorite food. The family I eat with will sometimes have beef skin. Because meat is so expensive they will buy just the skin or a fatty part. So it is basically pure fat that takes about five minutes to chew with a tomatoe sauce. I usually try and cut the fat into small pieces and then eat it with some manioc to hide the texture and taste. Also I’m not a big fan of certain bush meats that you find often in the restaurants. Bush meats are just random animals that hunters go looking for in the jungle and bring back to sell in the market. The Pygmies are famous for being good hunters of bush meat. The most common bush meats are antilope, which is a small deer, porcupine, snake, monkey, and turtles. One bush meat that I found once was verron, which is a big lizard, which is very tasty. All the restaurants here in village prepare one big pot of food and then sell it plate by plate. So you have to go in and ask them what food they have. Most restaurants have some sort of fish daily and often times chicken. When it is bush meat they will just say bush meat, and you have to press them, “which bush meat?” and then they will tell you. With the Basaa people there is a tradition that women don’t eat snake. Part of the story is that if they eat snake and then become pregnant they will give birth to a snake-baby.
Yesterday the family I eat with had caterpillars for dinner. Not just caterpillars, but with other Cameroonian food. When they served it they told me I didn’t have to eat it because they know Americans don’t like that type of stuff. Thank god. When I told them that Americans think its weird to eat caterpillars they laughed for about two minutes. But other that that food is really pretty good here.
With the meals here there is really little sense of nutrition. People eat to become full, often huge portions of rice or manioc with just a sauce on the top. Vegetables are rarely seen in meals and when they are they are over cooked and with oil, losing all the nutritional content that is there. When I want vegetables I buy and prepare them myself. In village I can find tomatoes, peppers, celery, carrots, eggplant and other random African vegetable. For fruits everything is seasonal, right now there are mangoes, and some papayas. With bananas being all year long. It is the orange season soon which I’m really looking forward to.
Thats all for today. I’ll try and write again soon.
