Ku isoko no ku meza

Muraho mwese! What do you think about after a year in a foreign land? Well, for me, it's simple: food. I spend significant portion of my waking hours (and some sleeping ones) thinking about this necessity of life. Whether I'm walking home from one of the nearby villages under the sweltering sun, thinking of huge cold-cut sandwiches and cold microbrew, going to school in the morning and fantasizing about the wonderful breakfast of pancakes and bacon I would have had if I could, or lesson planning at school wondering what our house worker will be serving up for dinner that night, my stomach tends to run my mind. Luckily, I'm not the only one who thinks about food; this month's blog post once again comes courtesy of Nanny. I'll do my best to give you all a better idea of what type of food is available and when, what I eat on a daily basis and if it changes during the year, and how food is cooked and that fuel procured.

I'll start with what type of food is available. First, there is a nightly market in the center of my village, where cultivators from the immediate area come to sell their crops. The available food is basic, consisting of fruits and vegetables such as avocados, bananas, and tomatoes, starches such as potatoes, cassava, and sweet potatoes, meat (goat or pig), beans, and a variety of fried doughs. In addition to the market, the local shops offer up various flours (sorghum, corn, and cassava), salt, sugar, rice, and packaged foods such as biscuits and sardines. These basics make up the majority of my diet thanks to their convenience, but more variety can be found elsewhere.

Going further afield, there are large markets on most days of the week within one to two hours by foot. These markets attract people from a wider area and, hence, offer a wider variety of food. In addition to everything that can be found in our local market, one can find papayas, beef, garlic, small fish, eggs, more spices, and other foods. Also, for those who want to do a little work for their meal (or who want to raising a non-human baby), pigs, goats, chickens, rabbits, and cows can be purchased and taken home to slaughter or raise, provided one has the money and the necessary disposition. In these markets, because of the greater distance vendors travel to arrive there, the prices are often slightly higher than in the village, but not ridiculously so. Food from these markets tends to appear on my plate less often, not because of cost but because of distance.

In addition to the basic foods available at markets, one can find milk, either from someone who owns a cow or at any number of small shops in the bigger villages to add some welcome calories, fat, and protein to one's diet. The milk comes in two varieties: inshyushyu (fresh, but boiled to kill bacteria) and ikivuguto (old inshyushyu that has been left sitting at room temperature for a few days and is on its way to spoiling). I enjoy them both when I have them, but I must confess to having developed a certain affinity for the chunky, slightly sour, ikivuguto.

Every Sunday, I'm fortunate enough to get to speak to my mom, dad, and brother on the phone, and, as their phone call usually comes close to dinner time, they often ask me what's on the menu. It seemed that every week for a couple of months my answer would be "rice and beans" ( umuceri n'ibishyimbo), and they must have thought that it was the only thing I eat. It reminded me of a question I was asked during my interview for the Peace Corps. My interviewer, a returned volunteer, asked me if I could handle eating the same thing every day. Of course, I don't just eat rice and beans every day, even if the typical menu is quite simple.

My lunch and dinner on any given day usually consists of a starch (at least one), usually in the form of rice, with cassava, potatoes, or sweet potatoes sprinkled in every so often. In addition, there's always imboga, which means vegetables but is widely used to stand for anything not from the base of the old food pyramid. These imboga are often cabbage or beans mixed with tomatoes, eggplant, and onions. Finally, if the imboga aren't liquid enough, there is a mandatory sauce, usually with a tomato base and flavored with salt and onions. Everything tends to be mixed once it's on the plate, an imvange, so all the food typically ends up acquiring the same overall flavor, which, thankfully, is not unpleasant. Also, a good meal comes accompanied by avocado (usually 1/2 or 1 per person) and/or bananas (which, keeping in the tradition of mixing, I've come to enjoy on top of whatever food I'm eating, rather than separately). The third meal of the day, breakfast, is made up of porridge (corn or sorghum flour mixed in with boiling water and simmered on the fire) and anything that might be left over from the previous night's dinner (which is often nothing).

Simply telling you what foods I eat, of course, doesn't give you an adequate idea of what I actually ingest. To know that, you have to know how the food is cooked. There are essentially two ways to cook food in Rwanda: in water or in oil. Rice, obviously, is cooked in water, as is the African staple ubugari (a past-like substance made of cassava, corn, or sorghum flour), and beans. Anything else, though, can be cooked in either; I've had potatoes, sweet potatoes, cassava, meat, and cabbage all prepared both ways. Most days, I have food cooked using both methods, maybe eating boiled sweet potatoes and beans at school for lunch and green bananas (like plantains) fried in vegetable oil with rice and boiled cabbage for dinner at home.

Now, you may have noticed in the list of available foods that a good many of them have a rather long shelf life. Potatoes, beans, rice, and cassava, among other foods, are all easily stored for long periods of time, so they are available nearly year-round (especially considering that there are two growing seasons) with only small variations in price. For foods like tomatoes, bananas, onions, eggplant, and avocados, they can be grown at just about any time of the year, so they're always available at the market, even if sometimes they are slightly more numerous. Considering this situation, the goods on offer at the market and shops don't vary considerably throughout the year, and, hence, neither does my typical menu. The things that do appear at the market and on my table for concentrated periods of time before disappearing again are things like cabbage, corn, green beans, and squash, foods which have a definitive growing and harvest season and don't keep for long periods of time. I distinctly remember eating a lot of corn sometime around March, and we've been eating a fair amount of cabbage lately. Of course, even food which is "always" available is sometimes more plentiful (and so cheaper), and there have been times when I've eaten a lot of cassava, tons of green bananas, or (currently) avocado after avocado.

The question, once food is purchased and a meal is planned, becomes how to cook it. I heard on the radio one day that humans have, over many centuries of cooking food, changed our genetic makeup so that if one were to try eating strictly uncooked food, one would die from malnourishment (those raw food diets really work!). Certainly, this is something I do not have to worry about here, as everything is thoroughly cooked. The fuel used for cooking is usually wood or charcoal, with the additional options of gas (for those with enough money) or electric (for those with electricity) burners. Since my household doesn't fall into either of the latter categories, we use charcoal or wood.

Wood is often gathered up freely on hillsides where dead tress or branches welcome all-comers. In addition, scraps of wood can be found at carpenters' workshops or at one of the temporary manual saw mills where young men work long days plying a long saw back-and-forth to make wooden boards out of felled trees, often at little or no cost. Because of it's low cost, wood is widely used in the villages. Charcoal, which burns hotter (and thus cooks food quicker), is made from wood (usually Eucalyptus) in huge, smoking piles of dirt. The wood is set on fire and buried in dirt, with a few holes to provide some oxygen so that it becomes charred and becomes charcoal. This process tends to break down in the rainy months, so charcoal isn't always easily available. In addition, when it is available, it is more expensive than wood, with a large bag (which lasts our household of four about three weeks) costing 3,000-3,500 FRW ($5-$6), meaning that it is not as popular a choice of fuel. For our house, I would say that we use charcoal about 30% of the time and wood 70% of the time.

Before this gets too long, I'll finish with some of my favorite meals. My all-time favorite is ubugari (made with cassava flour) with pork and isombe (the crushed leaves of the cassava tree). I also enjoy a good sweras, which is a mash of boiled green bananas, onions, tomatoes, and maybe green and hot peppers (with meat is even better and called agatogo). Rounding out my top three is cassava with beans ad cabbage, preferably with the cassava either boiled or roasted. Of course, all of these meals are made better with avocado and/or banana, and a glass of milk (or a beer) isn't unwelcome either.

I'm about to really start rambling about all that I enjoy to eat, so I'll wrap it up now. The available food and the typical menu may be basic (think rice and beans), and it doesn't really change during the year, but whether it's cooked on wood or charcoal, I think that I could confidently respond in the affirmative to my long-ago interview question: yes, I can handle eating the same thing every day, although I do miss those cold-cuts, pancakes, bacon, pies, cereal, berries, microbrew, enchiladas,...

Happy birthday this month: Micah, Grandpa, Grandma, Niamh
Next month: School and teaching, a request from Granny

Murabeho!