Actually, that last sentence is a lie. It just sounded good. I have to be honest and admit that my diet here is pretty similar to the one I enjoyed back in the UK. Today, for instance, I’ve enjoyed cornflakes for breakfast, followed by cheese on toast for lunch and I just made a pretty tasty sausage casserole for my dinner. Not exactly stuff which makes for the witty, original and wild musings to which you are accustomed from these blog pages (though I did add a bit too much Cayenne pepper to my casserole and I’m half expecting some pretty wild and exciting bowel action over the next 24 hours. I’ll keep you posted).
Fear not though, help is at hand. Whilst on the whole I eat a plain ordinary diet, I have partaken in the consumption of local foodstuffs here which have left me a mixture of disturbed, non-plussed and sometimes smitten.
Food seems to be a key ingredient, if you’ll excuse the pun, of any worldwide travel experience. I don’t think I can recall anyone who has returned from a distant (or not so distant) country not having at least one culinary related story to tell.
My first “story to write home about” was probably the mopane worms I ate in week 2. They call them worms, but actually they’re more like fat caterpillars in a cocoon. So that’s alright then. Not bad – a bit salty – apparently very good fried with peanut butter. Mine were served with extra salt.
A standard local northern Namibian meal will always consist of a number of certainties – oshithima, meat, oshikundu and sand. I’ll take each one in turn.
Oshithima is a porridge made from the flour of the local wheat grown here – Omahangu. It’s a little bit bitter, really rather sticky and an acquired taste. But I’ve acquired it and do enjoy a good plate of the stuff from time to time (though eating it as the sole ingredient for meals on end, as many people here do, may get a bit much. Then again so might strawberries). What really gets me about oshimthima though is the incredible process it takes to get a plate of it. To understand that, we have to go back to the beginning and to something which is happening about this time – cultivating the land. Mahangu is not bought in shops, you see, people grow it themselves. Lots of it. And then store it in giant baskets at their homes to sustain them for a year. In order to do that, many days of backbreaking (as a physio I can vouch for this – January is one of my busiest months) cultivation is performed – all by hand – to prepare the land for planting. Planting is then done followed by an agonising wait for the perfect rains – too much and the crop drowns, too little and not enough grows and is taken by birds. Eventually picking can be done – again by hand with machetes or pangas as they are known here. The seeds are pulled off manually and then need to be crushed into flour – you’ve guessed it, by hand again. To crush the seeds requires a thick wood or metal pole (I guess about 10-15 kg in weight) and two people who take turns in lifting said pole and pounding it into the seeds. For hours on end. The “pounders” are often children once they have finished school. That yields the flour and from there you’d think it was easy – add some water, boil it up and bish, bash, bosh. Alas no, this method doesn’t work. Believe me I’ve tried. The cooking process is a bit of a guarded secret but involves hot and cold water at the right times in the right amount and a LOT of elbow grease for the 20 minute stirring process. Then, and only, then can you put a large dollop of off-white porridge onto your plate and call it oshithima.
Meat is inherently Namibian. A country which has had such divisions over the years seems to have total harmony in their love for meat. In the North the choice is largely chicken (isn’t it everywhere?), goat or, on special occasions like weddings, beef. The chickens are about as free range as it gets which means they are lean, tough but highly flavoursome. Goat is like mutton and beef is like, errm, beef. The choice cuts for Namibians are the innards and I learned that the hard way. Interestingly though, whilst an Ovambo likes nothing more than gorging on tripe or stomach, when it comes to the classic meat pieces to which we are more accustomed, rare is not an option. I love a good bloody steak, but found that they are difficult to come by in local circles – you really have to do your own.
Oshikundu is a drink made from mahangu and sorghum and omulovu is its alcoholic brother. Thick in consistency with bits floating around (not too infrequently bugs), this is the “Slimfast™” of Namibia in that you can take it as a meal and it keeps you full all day. And it really does fill you up to. Namibian culture seems to dictate that any visitor to your home must be given refreshment and more often than not that refreshment comes in the form of oshikundu. And its great. Simple as that.
Sand is sand. And it really does get everywhere.
Only one other item is essential – a toothpick. Never go anywhere without it.
