My Canadian cousin Rita (Happy Thanksgiving on Monday!) asked what things I ate here in Malawi. Having never been to Africa before, I really didn’t know what to expect when I came here, but I have been pleasantly surprised. Because I am in the capital city, I have access to almost anything I would like to eat. However, American foods and spices at the grocery store come at a price... which is an issue when it comes to my goal of staying within my Peace Corps Malawian budget this year. Don’t get me wrong, I am definitely not starving…although many of the Malawians around me are. At 61 I am now eating Indian food (the bead Indian and not the feather one). There are some great Indian restaurants in Malawi and I cannot believe I have waited this long to enjoy foods in this cuisine! Mostly my roommate and I eat at home (she is an excellent cook who bakes bread and cautiously experiments with new foods). We do eat a lot of pasta and rice dishes combined with soy, tuna, chicken, or fish. Nasima is the traditional starch component in the Malawian diet. It is corn flour and water boiled and constantly stirred until it becomes a paste and then a hardened lump (it is like hard cream of wheat) that people eat with their hands. They roll it into balls before eating it. It is eaten alone or in combination with meat, sauces, or vegetables (kinda sops the juices up). I do not particularly like it (see photo) I also try to stay away from beef or pork here because there is no guarantee that what youre eating is really beef or pork (I have yet to see any cows or pigs here or in the villages). We get our eggs from a secretary at the university who sells farm fresh eggs to us…there is also a lady who comes in to sell bananas (both high quality and at reasonable prices). If not from our own garden (see photo), we get our vegetables from the markets (see photo) where we get tomatoes, peppers, potatoes (which are both sweet potatoes and white “irish” potatoes…which is what the Malawians call them), carrots, cassava (which is potato-like but very starchy... and not a favorite of mine), green beens, peas, eggplant, avocado, beets, peppers, onion, garlic, kale, greens (like collards), squash, cabbage, and the like. I have not been able to find celery here but know you can probably get it at a grocery store somewhere if you really wanted it and were willing to pay the price (imported from South Africa). We try to buy our fruits locally at the market where our skin tax has us paying double what Malawians pay (so now I try to go there with Malawian friends). Besides bananas, there are papaya, watermelon, pineapple, oranges, mango (in season soon), lemons/limes, litchi, and strawberries. Apples and grapes are available at the supermarket store from South Africa again if you want to pay the price. I do get apples pretty regularly. I eat a lot of peanuts here (which my roommate gets from her Malawian office mates and then roasts them in the oven). I really haven’t eaten many desserts since here…donuts and sweet breads tend to be very greasy for my taste. We do use honey, butter, and a cane type of sugar on occasion. As roommates, we have two water filters from the Peace Corps. I also boil my water after it gets filtered before I drink it. I buy milk and eat South African yogurt. Milk has a long shelf life here. I use it mostly for tea and oatmeal at breakfast time. I drink Carlsberg beer and believe it or not, Coke products are everywhere here and are sweeter than they are at home. I am back to my teenage self occasionally drinking Orange Fanta. They also have a Pineapple Fanta soda which is quite good. Malawian’s make their own beer, vodka, and gin. I have had a couple gin and tonics which were really good but have passed on the home brewed beer and vodka. Wine is very expensive as it is imported from South Africa…most days I am totally satisfied with a cold glass of water or iced tea. So I am happy and healthy and enjoying my food in Malawi. Other traditional foods I will NOT be eating here are fried locusts/ grasshoppers, cooked termites/other bugs, seared mice or birds on a stick (like a kebab), and the chicken liver pattay my roommate made yesterday. Until next week. MaryAnne
Posted on: Sat, 11 Oct 2014 07:29:25 +0000
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