Ahem.

I've been trying to think of a good way to write a "development" post for days.  But, instead, I'm going to link you to one of my PCV trainee buddies who is far more articulate about it than I.  I will try to continue the discussion in a later post.

http://little-emmaline.blogspot.com/2010/08/slippery-slope-you-can-chew-on.html#comment-form

Channeling Anthony Bourdain and Andrew Zimmerman---No Reservations for Bizarre Foods?

There is a certain, probably scientifically predictable, time that every Peace Corps group will experience.  There is a threshold which we all cross, somewhat unobtrusively, into the time when half of all our conversations revolve around food.  Usually they take the form of our current cravings—ranch dressing, Dairy Queen blizzards, red wine, pretzels, sushi, BLTs, guacamole, tortilla chips, CHEESE—but they all inevitably end up there.  “God, what I wouldn’t give for a (insert random grocery store item here) with some (add appropriate condiment),” or “I used to cook (blank) with (blank blank).  Man I would kill to have that now.” “Dude, I really want a burrito!”  Etc etc.  One of the institutionalized systems of culture shock, I can assure you.  As most of my friends will tell you, I quite enjoy my cross-cultural culinary excursions.  I kind of made it a hobby.  I looked forward to Friday nights the last couple years as they eventually became our ritual Ethnic Food Night.  After a week of sitting through classes, working on projects, reading articles that just went on for pages, my roommate and my friend down the hall and I would head out to one of our favorite non-American restaurants in the greater DC area.  Our favorites were the ones where we were the only white people in the place.  DC is a Mecca for every immigrant group in America, which essentially means you can find food from anywhere in the world—I mean literally.  I’m sure if you searched, you could find food from Greenland.  If someone immigrated to America from another country, there is probably a restaurant in DC that serves food from there.  The three of us would make the rounds between our Japanese, Vietnamese pho, Thai, Korean, Ethiopian, Caribbean, Lebanese, or Indian.  I’ve also had Moroccan, El Salvadorian, and Peruvian chicken.  Allison and I would sometimes head to Silver Spring for Ethiopian food and a film at the cultural center across the street.  I love DC for its variety.  You can find any kind of food from anywhere in the world—even Ghanaian.  There is a Ghanaian restaurant in DC.  I am no stranger to trying, adventuring, acclimating, and desiring food / meals / eating from cultures that exist in the world.  As feminist bell hooks has said, I quite enjoy “eating the Other.”  But it is the access to this constant variety that I became used to that is stressing me now, and the source, I think, of our expressions of the foods we miss.  It’s very difficult for many of us having a large menu of things we can cook, to having stewed vegetables and yams always.  I always thought I had a small menu to cook, because I can’t cook any of the ethnic dishes I named above, but at least one dish was vastly different from the other.  At its most basic level, 90% of Ghanaian food is oriented like this:  stewed vegetables in a sauce (usually tomato-based with lots of “peppe”) with meat + something starchy—yams, rice, noodles.  OR, one can make soup (palm nut or groundnut, for a couple of examples) with a chunk of meat and poured over something starchy that has been molded into a dough-like thing—fufu, riceballs, banku, kenkey, or T-Zet.  Fufu and banku function as unofficial (or maybe official—fact check, please) national dishes.  Fufu, as I described in a previous post, is made with cassava and plantains, or, if you’re in the North, yams and plantains pounded into a dough-like element.  Banku is essentially pounded or ground up fermented corn.  It may sound unpleasant but it tastes better than it sounds—much like boiled custard in Appalachian Virginia that actually tastes like non alcoholic eggnog.   Banku actually tastes a lot like sourdough bread.  Both fufu and banku are eaten in a bowl with the soup + meat (which for me is usually fish, but most often its beef and taken from just about any part of the cow) mixture poured over them.  As in most places in Africa, you eat with your hands, so you tear off a piece of fufu or banku, dip it in the soup and voila!—oh yeah, and, for some reason, you swallow it whole.  There is also jollof rice and fried chicken, waakye (rice and beans + pepper sauce + noodles + boiled egg), but these are really the bulk of the meal choices.  Other food exists—chop (or street food, “fast food”) other food made by women and sold from trays on their heads or from their stands such as boiled eggs, fried fish, coconuts, fried donuts, etc. 

So again, the hardest adjustment is the lack of variety.  There’s essentially no dairy and without cheese, that cuts out a significant amount of dishes we can create here that resembles American food.  Laughing Cow has the market, evidently.  I like the taste of all the Ghanaian dishes alright (though I’ve learned the hard way that my body outright rejects a certain kind of yam—at least that’s the working theory from that one night at Bunso….), it’s just hard to have stew or soup every night—even if the ingredients are different.  I guess that is why I look forward to my everyday lunch of cheese-less omelet sandwich.  It’s just something sooooo familiar.  Eggs, with onion, pepper, tomatoes, and even some lettuce, then put on some bread.  Plus it caters to my well honed daily habit since childhood of having a sandwich every single day for lunch.  Who would have thought an egg sandwich would be so comforting?

While we were at technical training, a couple of our trainers who are current volunteers and had been here at least a year, made a couple of American meals.  One night was spaghetti and garlic bread, which can be made from stuff that’s really easy to get here (well, minus the cheese).  It was probably the best spaghetti I ever had.  The last night we actually devised a way to make cheeseburgers.  The key is the meat grinder, well, and the cheese.  We were in a place near Tamale which is a big city in the Northern Region and very cosmopolitan, and a place where one can find an “obroni” store (a store where they sell things white people like—catch the reference?) and the Peace Corps sub office there has a meat grinder.  So we ground up the beef, bought some cheese and ketchup, and threw the meat on the grill.  We had vegetable and fruit salad (FRESH veggies, with the exception of corn, are eaten rarely here and must be washed really really well).  We even bought bagged and frozen French fries!   You would have thought the 15 of us would have died and gone to heaven.  Shawn even cooked brownies.

So I challenge you, Anthony or Andrew, to come here and pound some fufu, stew some groundnut soup, and swallow all of it.  Every last bit.  Because it is huge.

Note about my new feature

So you may have noticed the new list to the right of this blog (or you may not).  I have created a list of things that would just blow my mind to see in a package.  But, I must explain about the food items.  You see, after about two months in country, it's amazing how half of our conversations revolve around food.  Ghanaian food is good, but it's biggest problem (for me) is it provides a lack of variety.  I miss not just American food, but ethnic food like crazy.  So, I know many prepackaged or otherwise vacuum sealed foods exist in America (even tuna and chicken from Chicken of the Sea--yes, volunteers do get them shipped over), so if any of you feel compelled to send me some fake cheese (like Velveeta or something) or Taste of Thai Peanut Sauce, you will get many good thoughts sent your way from Ghana.  Just PLEASE! don't send things that will go bad.  The other non-food items on the list are excellent for working with the kids and giving out as small gifts or prizes.

Another note on pricing.  If you use the cheapest USPS flat-rate box, it will cost $56 for up to 20 lbs.  If, however, you don't want to send enough to fill up a box, my dad sent a bubble envelope with light things for $12.

So that was my shameless plug.  But also, none of these packages would complete without a note or pictures from you!  I miss your personal connections more than the stuff!

Kristi

Some small life details:

This morning I woke up to a crowing rooster and a neighbor blasting Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On.”  Old 90’s pop music is very popular here.

Cars run on duct tape and miracles.

This is where Good Will clothes come for their last rites.  All those clothes you throw in a donation pile?  Yeah, they end up here.  That’s how you get five-year-olds with shirts that say “Fuck the Clock” and Mitt Romney for President.  It provides endless entertainment.

I picked up a worm yesterday and chased my sisters out of the compound with it.  That was fun.

The head is your basic carry-all.  Yesterday, my host mother needed both her hands to hang the laundry, so she put the wet clothes she was hanging on her head to hold them.  

All the dogs look the same, but I don't really want to touch them.

I have inherited a cat with my house in Damanko.  I decided that her name will be Starbucks.