FOR EATING

I've written about the topic of food [chakula in kiswahili, meaning 'for eating'] before - beans and farting, ugali, killing animals, etc.

Oooh, speaking of which, there is a great new butcher in town. Good meat, good selection. But if you want 'steki' [nice, boneless meat] you have to get up early to get any.

But I think I have yet to write about the PASSION of eating that is so frequently on display here. I've thought about it several times in the past week, for the following reasons:

EATING WITH HANDS: most of the food I eat is with my hands. Ugali certainly is, as is meat. When i go to eat at my arab friend's house [the family is Tanzanian but of Omani descent - thus they are called 'the arabs'], they eat EVERYTHING with their hands, usually rice.

I was eating over the other day and we had rice and chicken, with our hands. I find food far more enjoyable when it is eaten with your hands [refer back to the entry I wrote about the snobs eating fried chicken with a knife and fork]. It tastes better, you eat slower [with rice at least], and the actual art of shoving a handful of food into your mouth with your hand just seems much more dramatic, and thus interesting [vs the subdued melodrama of the knife and fork elitists].

Maybe part of the reason it seemed much more emotionally charged is that we were also discussing topics like Hezboullah, Hamas, Osama, and general Arab-American relations, while shoving the food rather forcefully into our mouths so that we could resume the discussion. These arabs are not big fans of the 3 groups/peoples i just listed, and are rather fond of Americans [though NOT the ones in charge]. They even gave some visiting relatives from Oman a picture of me, after I managed to speak in Swanglish with them for 20 minutes.

BONES
Everything we eat here that has bones [cow goat sheep chicken duck fish] we eat with the bones still inside/attached. I've gotten used to this, and don't mind it as much as I did at first, when I was still used to the American-style of pre-prepared, de-boned, eat-it-in-5-minutes-and-get-back-to-work type cuisine.

Fish bones kind of suck though. NOT very passionate, as you are constantly spit-spit-spitting to try to get them off the tip of your tongue and onto the table.

But cow or chicken bones - MAN, do people here love them. They say that to cook the meat without the bones deprives you of the flavor, and wouldn't have it any other way. The other day I was next door and we had chicken [rare, it's expensive these days, as people have harvested their food and are not hungry, so they have less incentive to sell chickens for low prices to buy corn for dinner]. I'm used to the art of gnawing at chicken bones and sucking out the marrow, but the youngest neighbor boy literally sat and gnawed at a bone for a good half an hour after dinner was over. This is a little guy who REALLY enjoyed and appreciated that meal.

SUGARCANE
Anytime something special happens, there's gotta be sugarcane. Wedding, celebration, holidays, the weekly markets. Invariably there are piles of sugarcane, people walking home with canes taller than they are, and the ground is littered with the spat-out, dried-up remnants.

For anyone who has never seen someone eat sugarcane, it is really a spectacle that needs to be seen to understand. It is hilarious.

I was given some the other day when I went with those Arabs to the weekly market. I brought it home and gave it to the neighbor kids. They immediately went to town, using their teeth to first RIP off the outer shell, then BITE off a big chunk of the flesh, suck on it, and spit it out. The room got quite, and the only sounds that could be heard were slobbering, gasping for air, and the RIPGNAWBITE onomatopoeia that are inadequate to fully describe the pure rapture of sugarcane consumption.


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I'm hungry. All I had for breakfast were more sweet potatoes and chunky milk. As per routine, will now head to town restaurant, probably for roast liver, cooked spinach, beans, and rice, spiced with some hot pepper....