Wait, WHAT have I been eating!?
A lot can change in a year, and a lot has. Today officially marks one year in country. Time has truly been flying by, it seems like only yesterday that I was sitting down with my host family, trying to figure out what exactly was being served to me. In hindsight I now recognize that I was eating like a king, well, a Cameroonian king. Every night we either seemed to have chicken, fish or beef, which are all extremely costly. Beef mixed with spaghetti or rice was right up my alley and I never had a problem cleaning my plate. Chicken was also a meal that I could eat without even realizing I was in another country. Although, unwittingly picking up the neck and head one evening proved interesting. I did some slight dissecting of the spine and skull but my appetite didn't last for two long after the operation started. And being served chicken feet for breakfast one morning was one of the few things I refused to even try at all. Now fish, although always smelling amazing, also was quite a challenge. You wouldn't realize how many bones a fish has until you eat a fish with all of the bones still there. I ended many meals with a fishbone lodged in my tongue or gum and had let the remaining meal on my plate go to waste as my mouth was too wounded to continue battle. With time I became more proficient at avoiding the bones and eating most of the fish, although it was always a tedious process. Then one dinner we had something completely new to me, le porc-épic. I was told that porcupine was trés cher and considered a delicacy. I took a few bites and quickly agreed, it was indeed delicious. As I ate further down the leg it became slightly more difficult to separate the meat from the bones and tendons. And then for the finale, there was a small paw with little toes and everything. I bypassed that section, not fully having the stomach for it. Then I looked across the table and saw my host brother gnawing on the porcupine's face. So it was safe to say I had one of the more desirable sections. Towards the end of training I was accustomed to all this food and thought I was well adapted. Some of my friends had eaten a few more exotic options. I was told snake was delicious, tasting somewhat like a combination of chicken and fish put together. I've been wanting to try this but haven't had an opportunity yet. Apparently hunters will not even go out looking for snake and will only kill it if it happens to cross their path. The mindset seems to be, if you go out looking for snake to kill it, snake will ultimately look for you and kill you. Another friend of mine was served antelope, which he didn't recommend trying and claimed that he had the smell lingering on him for the next three days. And even though I thought I had tried a lot of new things, there was still plenty more that I would soon be introduced to.
Coming to Enyoh, I was quickly exposed to a whole new culinary variety. One thing I quickly learned was how expensive the food was that I had been eating with my host family. And even if my monthly allowance could cover the costs, only a select few items are available in most places. Although I had initially thought Ebolowa was small in my opinion, it was technically the regional capital of the South. And with the paved roads, it allowed those who lived there to have access to food that those of us living in the bush simply do not. So it was now time for me to branch out even further and explore more exotic dishes. I quickly began to enjoy water fou fou and erro, which is basically a sticky white lump of finely ground manioc root which is eaten with somewhat spinach like vegetables. A close relative of this meal is corn fou fou and njamanjama. Corn fou fou is similar to grits, maybe if it were left in the pot for awhile and started drying out. In both of these dishes, you pinch away a piece of fou fou and then add vegetables to it and pop it in your mouth. This is a common trend with many Cameroonian dishes. Like with Achu, you grab a somewhat mash potatoey like substance and dip it into a spicy yellow soup. It's surprising how easy it is to eat soup with your fingers, and it this point, I know of no other method. Achu is arranged so it is on the perimeter of the plate and the soup is put in a large crater in the middle. Marinating in the soup, a thick chunk of cow skin can be found, canda. At first I wasn't overly fond of this, probably because I never thought eating my belt would be particularly appetizing either. But now, canda is something I'm hoping to have added to anything I'm eating. And on a particularly fortunate day it is even served with cow foot or cow tail.
So the staple meals of the village are things that I now truly like eating. Then there is the bush meat. Mole rat is probably the most common item. I've had it once or twice and not thought too highly of it. Although, it goes with spicy peppe soup, which I can never pass up. I've also been informed that when eating fish, the bones are where all of the vitamins are. I haven't bothered to learn if this is true or not, and most things I hear in village often turn out to be false. Nonetheless, now when I buy fish, the only remaining items are the eyeballs. These are oddly hard to eat, they're almost like small marbles. But the spine, the tail, the fins, and all of the bones are eaten indiscriminately. I figure I might as well get the most out of what I've paid for.
For awhile, this was as far as my palette had gone. And then my friend told me of a meal that trumped all other meals he had eaten in Cameroon. So we went deep into Guzang market to find the mamma that would prepare this for us. We made our way into a dark bar, and then further into another back room. In there the woman lifted up a bag with something moving around inside of it. She told us to come to her chop house in three days. We arrived there and sat down to a plate of bitter leaf and two chunks of meat for each of us. I quickly observed how tender this meat was. The flavors combined with it were phenomenal. The meat slid right off of the small ribs. After one bite everything seemed to just melt in your mouth. We both finished quickly and were very satisfied. We paid the bill, which was notably steep. In all of the villages near me this was probably the most expensive thing I had eaten. So unfortunately with the price being somewhat prohibitive I won't be able to make it a staple of my diet, but whenever there is an occasion which calls for a luxurious celebration I'll be sure to go back and order another plate of cat.
