We Africans like to eat FOOD

Our new pastor, his wife, her sister and their 4 children stayed with us recently whilst their house was being renovated. They were surprised we offered because they didn't think of British people as hospitable. We were able to give loads of examples from personal experience to disprove that, having just been put up by the Geddes family again, having stayed with loads of people in the past and having had plenty of offers for the future.

We found that the house is big enough that we spent lots of time without seeing most of our guests (except Grace who's 6 and Joel who's 3 who were always up for playing). At one point I didn't bump into the Pastor for several days! Mind you, I wasn't well at that point.

We soon discovered that food was going to be tricky, so we opted for Cameroonian food. Angele (the Mum) asked me about cereal and when I tried to explain it she told me 'we Africans like to eat food'.

I thought I'd write a bit about the food, as people often ask.

The speciality from Angel's village turned out to be fish in black sauce. This involved burning a piece of bark,

then grinding it up on a stone with some spices and cooking a strange looking fish (I think catfish) in it.

 This is Gaelle grinding the paste and Angele in the background

I decided not to tell Tim how it was made before he tasted it, but he guessed. He was quite surprised to be correct. I quite liked it, although however many photos I took of it each of them looked like this:

We had another dish made from grated cassava and a green leaf. It definitely looked like wallpaper paste, but it tasted OK.

We had ndole, which is the most common Cameroonian dish. It's made with a green leaf and ground peanuts.

We had fou fou (flour and water mixed to a white stodge). We had to buy a stick to stir it, since a wooden spoon just isn't up to the job. So we are now well equipped for all those dishes requiring a thick, metre long stick. Unfortunately was the wrong type of flour and therefore the wrong type of fou fou. I can't tell the difference myself.

We had Koki, which is beans mashed up with pepper, spices and dried crayfish, wrapped in green leaves. One of my favourite Cameroonian foods.

We had some good sauces - pistache (which has nothing to do with pistachios), made with ground squash seeds, okra, spices and dried crayfish. We also had chicken in garlic and ginger - mmmm.

What we didn't have, because I wouldn't taste it again however polite I was trying to be, was yellow soup - which is made from limestone, palm oil, dried fish and spices. I once had a mouthful and couldn't face eating anything else for the rest of the day!


Luckily for our kids we also had lots of plantains - fried and boiled and fried again.


I'm glad we were able to offer to put our guests up - particularly since they had already had 3 weeks with friends of ours who have a smallish flat with one bathroom. However, Angel did say she looked forward to cooking in her own pot, and I was pleased to be able to cook myself. I'd forgotten when I said we should eat Cameroonian food that some of it is a little challenging for us.