Gutteral Rumblings

Being a Livetoeater, as opposed to its more emaciated step-sibling, it means that a large portion of my life is dedicated to the act and indeed art of eating, therefore, it shouldn’t come as a huge shock if a similarly large portion of my fast decomposing grey matter be dedicated likewise.

So, yes, more food!

This strained and bedraggled scotsman is now the proud owner of a solar drier which has, as you can imagine, brought no end of optional additions to the culinary experience in these sand rich parts of the globe. Fruit and veg has a habit of rotting in the space of about three and half minutes which, due to its organic nature, is hardly surprising. The problem isn’t the quality so much as the quantity. Buying a couple of onions isn’t an option. 100 Francs (10p) gets you about a dozen and the same goes for pretty much everything else. In a land of big families it makes sense to be able to buy in bulk but little ol’ me, cooking for little ol’ me, struggles to find a use for 38,629 tomatoes a week.

The fridge does its best, but with power being as sporadic as it is, it means that weekends can pass when food sits unchilled within it’s incongruously white walls. The solution: a solar drier. Met a man who made ‘em. Made ‘im make me one. Man made it. Man gave it. You name it I’m t/drying it.

It made its somewhatmoresubstantialthanIthoughtitwouldbe appearance a couple of weeks ago now and since then I’ve been able to add sundried tomatoes, sundried onions, sundried bananas and goat to my diet. The goat, incidentally, was a by-product of the drier and was not itself dried.

Being a goat and one of Insatiable Curiosity at that, it thought that it might try and scale the technically challenging partially glazed face of the contraption in question and in so doing placed a dainty hoof through the aforementioned glazing. This, seemingly, was the last in a long line of straws and when I got back from school I found that the neighbours had dispatched said goat and were in the process of readying it for consumption.

Guess it won’t be doing that again.

A lunch of barbecued goat ribs was followed by the presentation of a bowl of goat bits which defined the word ‘offal’. No idea what many of the bits are and even the resident biology teacher could only tell me that they were entrails. Yes, thanks for that. I realise that. Which ones is what I want to know. He shrugged. I thanked him and went on my way.

They were already cooked, I hasten to add. I wasn’t just presented with a bloody bowl of gore; Mrs Neighbour had prepared them in her own easily imitable style, which is to say, soaked in Maggi®. “You can cook them in the way you usually do,” she added ... Can’t admit to ever having cooked a bowl of goat entrails before but there was a challenge there so it would have been rude not to accept it.

Rifling through the bits I can say with some certainty that there was liver, kidney and something which I believe was stomach. There was a chunk of irregular shaped bone with an irregular covering of what I’d like to describe as meat of the common or garden variety. Then there was the wiggly bit and the bit with all the tubes. Haven’t the foggiest notion as to their origins, or indeed function, but as with most bits of animal, often it’s best not to know. And besides, they made a very tasty curry.

Time has huft’ighted it’s often ponderous way to well past my bedtime. There’s less than week twixt now and the oft mentioned end of term and the excitement that is the festive period. This, therefore, could easily be the last posting of 2007; a year that started incredibly and nearly ended inedibly. On Friday I’ll be starting the Christmas travelling, heading south on the train for a festive stint in Anglophone parts. A festive sojourn that could not be anticipated to a greater extent than is the case.

To say that I can’t wait would be the biggest of understatements but to try and put my anticipation into words would be an exercise in futility.

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And just before I sign off, a Christmas-from-this-end type online card to satiate the visual sorts among you. This last weekend was spent in the vicinity of Maga; a town that until 40 years ago was little more than a collection of mudhuts. These days it’s a sprawling metropolis of mudhuts and the Far North’s main source of all things pescatorial.

Spent a very pleasant time in the shade of a million trees, at the side of a perfectly chilled pool and took in a skimming ‘cross the 27km long artificial lake that 20 feet of dyking has spawned; a skimming to the natural waterways that feed its watery imensity to try and spot an aitch-eye-pee-pee-oh ... or five.

We mutually kept our distance and our engines running. The photo’s don’t do them justice but it did give me 280 opportunities to see what more my camera can do ... an edited samplet by way of a taster. I’ll try and be more visually stimulating in the new year but technology tends to hamper my attempts.



On that note, hoping that one and all, or one at least, have a splendid festive bit. I’ll give your eyes a rest and will be back with more on the other side.

Serving Suggestion
Alwiello recommends Mikelangelo and the Black Sea Gentlemen as the ideal accompaniment to the cranial feast that is alwiello.blogspot.com

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Cameroonian Cuisine. As I sit here killing the minutes or indeed hours before the next meal begins its Maggi® laced way through my digestive tract, it seems like a fitting occasion to expound on the gastronomic delights of Cameroonian cuisine.

This evening promises a pescatorial feast that is peculiarly common place in these landlocked sub-Saharan climes. A fish answering to the name of ‘capitaine’ barbecued by a woman answering to the name of Marie in a street answering to the name of Avion Me Laisse. The bombed out shell of a building that was formerly the venue for such exquisite sustenance has been replaced by an all-singing-all-dancing-pool-table-filled-semblance-of-a-bar that is wholly out of character with the generally bombed out look of the entire street and indeed quartier. In fact, if the truth be known, most of Maroua looks bombed out; the peculiar pattern of erosion that afflicts the buildings here bears a striking resemblance to bullet holes and the results of a sustained mortar attack.

The fish itself is presented on a tray with a dollop of green, a slop of red and a blob of white and the options of salad, fried plantains and the almost-entirely-indescribable flavour and texture that is ‘batons de manioc’. Cutlery is of the fingers and thumbs variety and invariable messy and the end of the meal is marked by the grabbing hands of a gaggle of hungry street kids determined to glean what they can from the clean-picked bones.

Manioc ... someone spent a lot of time working out how to eat manioc and if I’m totally honest, I’m not entirely sure why they bothered. To make it edible you have to wash and peel the toxic root, shred it, boil it, dry it, make it into a powder, soak it, wrap it in a leaf, steam it, let it cool and then eat it. It smells a little like vomit, has the texture of Pritt Stick and tastes of nothing at all. Not that that has ever stopped me ordering it.

In a typically Cameroonian demonstration of economic theory, the street itself is lined with about 20 women all selling exactly the same thing at the same price. Quite why Marie gets our trade is a mystery lost in the mists of time. Given her inability to serve you what you asked for, her tantalising people skills and her distinct lack of small change it’s a wonder that she continues to do business.

Just around the corner is Maroua’s main drag and pumping heart and soul; Boulevard de Renouveau de Domayo. Bars and clubs share the pavements with vendors of barbecued chicken and kebabs. Stacks of spatch-cocked chooks are sliced and diced into a jigsaw of gigots and served in a torn piece of cement bag with a side serving of potentially amoeba-laced salad, the ubiquitous pimant and perhaps a loaf of bread.

As with most places here, you find a place to sit, usually a bar, put your order in to the chicken/fish/goat/lamb/beef vendor and tell him where you’ll be. You can even sit in a restaurant, order a drink and then get your food brought from somewhere else entirely.

Bona fide eateries are hard to pick out amongst the debris of the sprawl that purports to be urban. Gloire de Dieu has become something of a favourite despite the ongoing attempts of Mama Magui to lure the unwary to the Evangelical Church. At 500 Francs (50p) for a portion that would silence even the most gluttonous of gourmands it won’t be winning any prizes but when it comes to Ndole and couscous it’s hard to beat. Cameroonian couscous, incidentally, is about as close to its Moroccan counterpart as I am to His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

Ndole is another Cameroonian staple that you have to spend three and a half years rendering palatable before you can consider eating it. What happens to it after it’s been detoxified is anyone’s guess but it looks a bit like spinach and if you close your eyes, hold your nose and think of nothing but spinach it could almost pass as something that’s a bit like spinach.

The Couscous is made of millet and is basically a large ball of an almost entirely tasteless, white, gelatinous gloop. Gombo takes the theme of gloop to a whole new level, having, as it does, the consistency, flavour and nutritional benefits of wallpaper paste. Folere is almost exactly like Ndole in every way imaginable except that it’s not Ndole. Legumes are almost exactly like Folere in every way imaginable except that they’re not Folere and also, despite being called vegetables, contain large chunks of something once living that often bears a remarkable, nay, uncanny resemblance to cow.

At the posh end of the scale are the hotels and guide-booked restaurants which invariably employ the more vivacious members of society whose incredible memories and puppy like enthusiasm are conspicuous in their complete absence. If you manage to get their attention and a menu, half of the things on the menu are invariably not actually available and if you manage to find something that is and that the chef can be bothered to cook, you quite frequently end up with something that is only partially what you wanted.

Pre-empting this intricate dance and asking the ‘waiter’ what’s available is an exercise in futility as the weakness of the connective tissue in the head and neck is so fragile and brittle that any expression in the affirmative or negative is potentially life threatening and so answers to questions tend to be based largely on guess work. Eyes rolled or a gurgling noise that could just as easily be trapped wind covers a multitude of bases which makes the ordering process just that little bit more interesting.

Paying is a pleasure on a whole new level. Entire new life forms could evolve, pick fights with one another and be consigned to the fossil record in the time it usually takes to get change.

Other succulent morsels to satiate the Lockhart hunger include beignet which is either made of black-eyed peas mushed into a pulp and deep fried, or what are basically doughnuts in everything but shape. Goat in its dismembered entirety grilled over a barrel and soaked in Maggi® and served with raw onions and the ubiquitous pimant. None of it’s likely to win any prizes or become the next big taste sensation but it fills a hole and you can’t ask for more than that.

And so to the star of the show: Maggi®. Cubes or Arome? The options are, well, two fold. It’s basically MSG in a liquid or stock cube form and is the essential ingredient in all Cameroonian cuisine. Nothing is cooked without it which means that everything tastes strangely similar. It does, admittedly, add a bit of flavour to what is occasionally quite bland food but the result is that everything ends up tasting the same, which is to say that chicken, fish, beef, goat, salad and vegetables all end up tasting almost exactly unlike what they are but almost entirely but not quite totally similar.

So there you go. Cameroonian cuisine. It’s not going to take the world by storm but it does all that can be hoped of it, albeit with the occasional but very real risk of intestinal invasion ... whoop whoop, as they say.

Here be monsters ...

It’s Thor’s day once again; that’s to say it’s 7/8ths of the way through Thor’s day and Freya is warming up in the wings. At least it looks like Freya but if the king of the giants can be fooled by a bearded Thor in drag then how can we mere mortals expect to fare any better?

Weeks - that’s to say two - have passed since I last walked the well-trodden streets of this bloggerhood and once again it is the T word that has been the pebble in the boots in which I wander. If rumours are to be believed then the T word was struck down by a dose of dolphinitis. The story goes that Cameroon’s sub-atlantic fibre-optic connection to the outside world was attacked and severed by a dolphin. Surreal enough in many ways and met with something much akin to incredulity in many circles, and for obvious reasons.

Here in sub-Sahel-type places the reasons are less obvious. The logic goes like this: It can’t have been a dolphin because nobody’s seen one and therefore they don’t exist; they can’t exist because if they did someone would have caught one and eaten it, therefore, QED, seeing as no one has eaten one they don’t exist.

You can see the kind of challenges I’m up against.

It’s probably a good thing in someways as it means that I’ve got something more insightful to say than the usual stream of consciousness drivel that spews in an unending torrent from my heat-dried brain via my chalk-dried fingers. If only it were true.

So term one is almost done. In fact there are only three weeks twixt now and its much heralded demise; three weeks of ever diminishing class sizes and the joys of report writing. Three weeks of mounting excitement at the onslaught of the festive period and all that it holds clasped in its clammy grip. Three weeks to endure before another three weeks away from the desert sands and the sub-Sahelian heat, swapped indeed for the sea and greenery of the south. Bliss. There’s no other word for it.

I just know that the three weeks away from the noise will make the blink of an eye look positively pedestrian but then that’s always the way.

On that note it’s time to part once more. Short and sweet? Not really. The blogging equivalent to a “Wham” bar me thinks, albeit without the need for ext/pensive dentistry and the sickly after taste, but then again ...

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Satur has replaced Thurs but as far as days go this one bears all the hallmarks of the 334 that preceded it although November has succumbed to the overwhelming and looming presence of 2007’s swan-song in the form of December.

Term, as I’ve said, has three weeks to go before it’s consigned to the “reduced to clear” shelves although for many of the students they’ve assumed that because the second mid-term exams have been completed there’s no more learning to be done and so have bogged off in an all too Cameroonian manner. Classes are emptying of bodies faster than rodent forms from scuppered schooners. Once again the good ship Cameroonia Educationia is listing although with the arrival of CES de Godola’s first government provided teacher, there’s a hope that it’s not terminal.

As for the Monthrufri’ety; The forthcoming Mon is going to be something of a watershed in many ways. Recent disillusionment at the worthiness of my being here has provoked a reaction of the ‘lay it on the line’ variety. There’s no way that I can do half the stuff I’d hoped I’d be able to do when I’m up to my oxters in teaching duties and so the D word’s going to be sat down and informed of my decision not to teach next year.

Whether I’m still in the ‘roon for ‘08-’09 is a little uncertain to say the least and if the current frame of mind is anything to go by then this country will be seeing the back of this Scotsman in the summer of ‘08. The proposal that I put together in an attempt to goad an element of longevity from VSO’s soon to expire stint in secondary education has been beset by what I suspect is an all to Cameroonian malaise. It’s gathering dust at the bottom of cupboard somewhere being reduced to such a state itself.

It’s hard to keep the motivation and enthusiasm going, and the cynicism in check when the harder you pound your head against the seemingly innocuous packed earth wall, the less effect you seem to have; especially when the local reaction is one of standing and gawping while pointing and invariably laughing at the strange white man.

Think I need a holiday.

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P.S. I've started sticking some photos on Flickr ... There aren't many at the moment but I'll keep adding as time goes on!