Food

The most common dish in my village (and across a lot of the country) is a large portion of pap [pr. pahp - a.k.a. bogobe, a.k.a. porridge] with chicken feet or chicken/beef entrails or morogo [any number of green leafy vegetables, but generally cabbage or spinach, which is closer to what we call swiss chard]. Pap is a thick porridge cake thing (to the point of holding its own shape) made from mealie meal [corn meal]. Most people eat this dish, or some close variant, for every meal. According to Mabatho, if she goes two days without pap she feels weak. That is because pap makes you strong. Or, rather, it rapidly metabolizes directly into sugar in your system. Diabetes is a huge problem here. Also, pap is absolutely delicious and is the reason I will be pushing 200lbs when I come back.

To eat pap, you grab a little in your hand, roll it into a ball-type-shape between the fingers and palm, and then use it or a spare finger or two to pick up meat or veg, or soak up some soup/gravy (usually the leftover oil/residue left from cooking the meat or veg). The chicken is usually boiled in a pot with water, oil, sautéed onions, and some soup mix. Vegetables are generally chopped into microscopic bits and boiled until the cows come home (about 4 p.m. judging by the herd near me), which, for you non-nutritionists out there, means that most of the nutrients are drained from the food before it reaches the table. Nutrition becomes a project for many PCVs.

I've started eating two meals a day, for the most part, generally waking up too late or being too lazy in the morning to make breakfast. When I do have time I make egg-in-a-hole (with fresh eggs from a neighbor), oatmeal with a banana, or just have an apple.

I tend to have lunch at the org because we have a feeding scheme for the kids and workers get fed for free. In fact, I just had lunch (pap with chicken feet and gravy – pictured below) with two co-workers between this sentence and the last. It was fantastic.






For dinner I usually make rice with vegetable stir-fry (onions and tomats sold in the village and green peppers from Tzaneen, with Indian spices from this wonderful little spice shop in Tzaneen which smells like I imagine heaven would), dal (an Indian lentil dish), pasta with homemade super chunky sauce with basil from the org garden, or, if I am feeling lazy, ramen.

My family is fascinated with my eating habits. My two homestay brothers/nephews what live at home, Dankie and Motlare, stand right next to the hotplate and squeal with excitement any time that I add spices. The younger one, Motlare, demands that he get a pinch of salt when I use it. Boy loves his sodium. I once gave my other brother, Silence, 10 years and off at boarding school, a small piece of partially cooked garlic. He seemed less interested in my cooking after that.

Dinner preparation takes about twice as long as it should because I have to take breaks to wrestle with my brothers or tell Motlare not to touch the hotplate because it is fisha [hot]. Everything I don't want him to touch (hotplate, knives, my phone, etc.) is fisha. Works wonders.


A list of interesting things I have eaten:
Mala ya kgogo [chicken entrails] – fairly delicious with a good gravy and hot pap.

Mala ya kgomo [cow entrails / stomach] - not so tasty, in my opinion. The smell alone is enough to to turn the stomach (mine, not the cow's). Unfortunately, when I ate them I had three women watching my every move. I am proud to say that I ate the whole steaming bowlful.

Chicken feet - we have them regularly at the drop-in center. They are delicious heavily salted and just off the grill. You just have to make sure to bit off the toenails before digging in.

Mopani worms [grilled caterpillar] - not bad if you stew them in some olive oil with onions and tomats, but you mostly find them grilled to a burnt crisp and then left to harden for goodness knows how long. Everyone here asks if I've had mopani worms, but I've never met anyone who likes them. I think they are kept around to haze the lekowa [foreigner - it is my default name until I tell people my real one, sometimes longer than that]. In reality, though, they breed prodigiously on Mopani trees during the rainy season and are a great source of protein for families that can't afford meat.

I'm still waiting for someone to make me some locusts or termites. That and boiled chicken head. Oh, how the vegetarian has fallen! I still don't prepare my own meat, though. Well except for that bacon for the delicious mixed green, hard-boiled egg, feta, avocado and bacon salad I made at my friend's apartment in Tzaneen. We splurge on rare occasion.