Yaounde

I came to Yaounde last Sunday... thinking I would spend a few days down, take care of some medical stuff, talk to some admin. I came directly from Charles Norton's fondom where he (and Jessie Girl... not sure of her last name) was named prince or priest or something good. He got a plaque and we got to drink a lot of beer. Anyway, Bafoussam is already south of Bamenda, so I figured i would just continue in that direction... finish up by Tuesday and head out on Wednesday.

WELL, Peace Corps' transit house was a bit busy with people coming from the beach, and all of the admin was a plane ride away in the northern provinces. Monday and Tuesday went by... no unenventfully. Nate and I made white russians and brie sandwiches (yaounde has refrigeration!) after my 30-minute-long medical session. Wednesday I was sick because of the dairy in the white russians. I still hold that there is no difference between cream and whipping cream. Couldn't go home then. The admin person that was still around couldn't meet on Wednesday, so Thursday it is. Thursday I met with her for about an hour... and watched some more dvds. Thursday night my toenail ripped off (it was black already) when I hit it with my shoe. It didn't come all the way off, and Reese and Ingrid taped it back down because i couldn't look.

Friday we watched Aladdin and made mojitos.... tonight we make chicken breasts. Toenail came off all the way (I'll be very pretty for Katie's wedding. I wonder if I can wear gold clogs?).... and I will be here until next tuesday, it seems. Its just.... the motivation to get into a steaming hot bus with 69 other steaming hot people and lots of weird smelling foods and travel for 9 hours on a scary road... its not there.

Washing the Kitchen Floor

My Cameroon kitchen is probably where I spend half of my time in the country. Since food preparation is from scratch for the most part (see “Chimichungas in Africa”) and there are sanitary and cook-the-crap-out-of-it techniques to be taken into consideration, if one wants to eat well in Cameroon, he/she must spend a lot of time in the kitchen. So, voila. Spending a lot of time in the kitchen inevitably means that the kitchen will be filthy.

I don’t like a messy kitchen… but sometimes there is only so much a person can do. For instance, in the meat grinding process, oftentimes ground meat bits will fall to the cement floor. This is a space in between the water filter stand and the counter table… and often laden with spider webs. And since the meat grinding process involves cleaning more directly/regularly handled such as the grinder itself and the counter, those chunks are often forgotten… for a little while. They are too small to smell, so instead they form little dried-lava-like blisters on the floor.

One of the more frequent activities is bread making. Flour tends to fly in the process, landing on the floor around the counter… near the door…. On the window. You would be right to think that it could be easily swept up, but I have to wash my hands and get the bowl cleaned and greased and get the counter clean… and it just gets forgotten. For some reason, flour on a cement floor in Africa morphs into a paste which cannot be removed from the floor without sandpaper.

So, its not easy. I did make one enormous error not long after moving into the house that has added the the kitchen mess for some months. I had a bit of a rat problem for a few weeks, and tried a number of different traps. I discovered that “rat glue,” a non-poisonous ultra-strong rubber cement, was the best means of getting the little pooping terrors. You put the glue onto a piece of cardboard, the rats get stuck in it and then you throw their writhing little bodies out to the skinks. Worked great… except the glue changed properties after a little while on the cardboard and oozed off onto the cement. No big deal that I couldn’t get it off (they said kerosene works… but it doesn’t. Dang Nigerians.) as it was in places where I didn’t walk. But then the rats started glueing themselves to the floor. I have to scrape them off with a cutlass after waiting for them to die. It’s terrible, but that’s kind of the consequence for eating my boxes of jell-o pudding, huh? These patches also catch crickets, ants, enormous spiders and hornets.

Other things… if the power goes out for more than 6 hours, the freezer starts to melt a terrible gas or oil smelling water that ruins most things in the fridge and gets all over the floor. Coffee beans sometimes fly (look out!) of the hand grinder and land in places where I don’t notice them until I step on one. Tomatoes rot and bananas go bad and sometimes they hide from me… and sometimes they ooze. We Peace Corps and our gas plates use a huge number of matches each day, and you try to get them all in the trash… but. And I always have people over, and they never put the butter away. And of course, there is that minor detail of very frequently (like… 95% of the daytime), I don’t have running water.

Today (yes, this morning.) I washed my kitchen floor. I’m going to try to make it a more frequent practice… especially since the rains are back and things could potentially get really nasty. The soapy (bleachy) water ran brown out the back door, littered with cricket carcasses and njama njama leaves. But give me a little credit. I do make good bread (… and buttermilk fried chicken, meatball subs, artichoke dip... do you know what we’re up against? Pounded cocoyams and sauce made of limestone and orange oil).

(I’ve also started to regularly burn my kitchen garbage. The kids run to the pile while I pour on kerosene, begging me for “the container,” I say, “no… its trash” and light a match. As soon as I turn my back, they start pulling flaming tuna packets and buttery paper towels out.)

Chimichungas in Africa

I’m not sure I can adequately express my love for chimichungas. When I come home in June, it has been decided that that will be my first meal off the plane.

I had not realized that chimichungas were something a single person could actually produce… (single non-mexican person?) but I have been shown that just about anything can be deep fried, including burritos. I must say, it was such an enormous process that I feel I need to share the extent of it all with my readers.

Black Bean Chimichungas

Ingredients: black beans, Mexican rice, tortillas, cheese, tomatoes, ranch dressing, deep fried

Black beans: The beans come dry. I boiled for a minute in the morning, then let them soak for a few hours. Later, I pressure cooked (always a little bit frightening… especially when you’re pressure nozzle wont rock because you put it down in varnish one time and it likes to stick to the little hole) the beans for 50 minutes with a few cups of water, salt and a chicken boullion cube. My pressure cooker is like… 18 quarts or something. Thanks, mom for sending me such a practical pot.

Mexican rice: Seasoning packet, onion, tomato and rice for 20 minutes on a simmer. Made that in the morning.

Tortillas: Made fresh and thin and not cooked so long that they would be crisp and unrollable. I am a queen when it comes to tortilla making. My rolling pin is always dusted with flour and ready to go.

Cheese: I was out of cheese on chimichunga day. And a chimichunga needs some kind of dairy. So, we decided to make cheese. I dissolved about a cup of powdered milk in water, heated it to a boil… which takes a bit (so not to scald). Then added a few spoons of vinager to the hot milk to separate the curds from the whey. Then drain off the whey with two different sizes of strainers and voila, cottage cheese for chimichungas.

Tomatoes: More difficult than you would think. I scrubbed them with my brush then let them soak in bleach water for thirty minutes. Standard for raw, unpeelable veggies in Africa.

Ranch dressing: Delicious. Travelled a long way to arrive in Africa.

Deep Fried: Rolled them up and added a little egg wash to seal one side. Under the guidance of my deep frying mentor, I let them cook until golden brown, pulling them out with tongs before eating very hot off the blotting paper. And that is how you make a chimichunga in Africa.