Rub-a-dub-dub, (no) thanks for the grubs

Friday, 4 September 2010

When I was invited to serve Peace Corps in West Africa, my mouth watered. I already knew I loved some of the food. Thanks to my West African friends in college, I had already been introduced to such tasty fare as fried plantains, fish-and-piment (hot pepper) paste, unusual leafy greens cooked in palm oil, okra stew and fufu, and goat-and-pepper soup. I couldn’t wait to try more.

Still, I realized the Cameroonian cuisine scene would also offer dishes I did not find so delectable. I hadn’t really thought about eating cat here (see blog post, “Cat on a hot tin plate”). Cat as food was something I associated more with Asia. I had, however, thought of grubs. I’m an adventurous eater, but these wriggly, wormy larvae were one thing I knew I’d have a hard time swallowing. I actually wrote on part of my Peace Corps application that I feared the possibility of being served grubs by any of my new Cameroonian friends or acquaintances. So far, I’ve avoided the popping and squishing sensation that biting into this snack would surely bring.

Nevertheless, I’m determined to work up the nerve to try the maggoty pests. Another American I know in my town says the big, fat ones that live in the hearts of palm trees are delicious – like eating giant prawns. If someone serves me such a delicacy, I certainly won’t refuse. And anyway, it’s caterpillar season, too, after all. Maybe one day I’ll have the guts (pun intended) to buy and cook some myself. Every morning, at least a dozen Kako “market mommies” hock their baby butterflies by the handful. I’ve seen short, skinny red ones and long, fat black ones as big around as my thumb. Mostly they’re sold dead, in small piles. But I’ve also seen bowls of live ones inching over one another, pulsating as if one large organism. Given a choice between the two, I’d go for the live ones any day. At least I know they’re fresh. Same goes for the live snails I spotted a few days ago.

The Kako people of eastern Cameroon are known for making meals of whatever protein sources they can find. The other day, instead of caterpillars, I found mounds of what appeared to be toasted cockroaches. They could have been some other kind of beetle-like creature, but they sure looked like the same bugs that love to crawl all over my (well-sealed) cans of Ovaltine and Nido and that feel right at home in the cubby on my knife block where my kitchen shears reside. (Thank goodness for Moon Tiger (an aerosol insecticide that I hear is banned in the States).)

Another thing I haven’t learned to love: manioc. I’d had fufu before in the US, but I didn’t remember it tasting the way it does here. Fufu is a glutinous mass of mush made of pounded manioc, a vitamin-free tuber that is one of the main staples of the Cameroonian diet. Except “fufu” is an Anglophone word I learned from my Ghanaian and Nigerian friends back home. The East is a Francophone region, and here, “fufu” is known instead as “couscous” (but couscous it is definitely not). “Couscous” can be made of manioc or white or yellow corn flour. The former version tastes putrid; the latter has no taste at all; and neither has any nutritional value.

Manioc comes not only in mush form; there is also boiled manioc and my least favorite, baton de manioc. Baton is made like couscous but with less water, so it’s less like mush and more like rubber. It’s called “baton” because the final product is rolled into stick-like cylinders, which are then wrapped in banana leaves and tied up with cord. I walked into my home stay house one day, and the smell made me wonder who had gotten sick all over the living room floor. I looked around but saw nothing that could have created the stench. Then I stepped out back into the outdoor kitchen. Malodorous mystery solved: Everyone was in perfect health; my family had just made baton de manioc for dinner. I ate what I could and gave away the rest to my eager little brothers and sisters. I’ll keep trying baton de manioc in hopes of building up a tolerance for it. But I don’t think it’s a culinary tradition I’ll carry back to the States.

I will, however, bring home the practice of eating whole fish. It’s the only way fish is done in this country. We nine volunteers in the East region are all women, and we all have to travel from our villages once a month to the regional capital to do our banking. For me and my two post mates, the journey is a harrowing four hours each way on what we loathingly refer to as prison buses. To make up for roughing it on the road, every trip, without fail, we all go for fish dinner in the capital’s Quartier Latin. Here, we get to choose our own fish (mackerel or carp) from one of two mommies whose platters are piled high. I shine a flashlight on all their wares, looking for a specimen with clear eyes.

Americans don’t know what they’re missing eating only neatly shrink-wrapped fish filets. There are two indentations in the little skulls out of which one can scoop succulent meat. I haven’t worked up the nerve to try the eyes (I’m afraid of what it would be like to bite into the pebble-like lens), but the meat on the rest of the fish head is scrumptious. And fish dinner always comes with onions, piment, green sauce (mashed, spiced parsley and basil), and my new favorite condiment: mayonnaise. I get fried plantains, too, to go with it. What the meal lacks is utensils. But no matter; the cooks always bring us bowls of water in which to rinse our fishy fingers. A fitting end to a fabulous feast.