Hola from Machinga!

A few days ago, I promised my current host family that I would take care of lunch today. (Sunday) Conveniently, Everence’s sister and a few of her female in-laws were at our place that night and overheard my plans. (even though they don’t speak English...) Laughter followed. An azungu cooking for an African family? Yeah right! Azungus can’t cook! ... was the general reaction that night. And so, it was up to me to impress several Malawian women with my cooking today.

Avocados are still readily available here, so I opted for a Mexican theme. You would think that I should take the opportunity to show Malawians some traditional Canadian food, (is there such a thing?) but no, I went for Mexican. The plan was to prepare a huge bowl of fresh guacamole with avocados, tomatoes, onion, garlic, lime, and a bit of salt. As an alternative to the guac, I would cook a pot of fresh kidney beans as well. Now what to eat it with? I decided on the rather ambitious idea of making a pile of tortillas from scratch. There is no shortage of maize flour around here, so I used lots of it.

When the parents left for church I dove right into the cooking. Within minutes, I had a crowd of five or six kids watching my every move. Naturally, they should get bored pretty soon and go play football... but no, they stayed put for the three or four hour duration of my lunch making, laughing hysterically if I so much as fumbled a tomato for half of a second. I mixed up some dough with flour, water, oil, and a pinch-o-salt, then flattened balls into little mini tortillas. One by one, I cooked them in a shabby old pan over a few chunks of charcoal. It took a ridonculously long time, but they turned out well. The kids couldn’t even fathom the fact that I was making something other than nsima with maize flour.

 

The guacamole making went pretty smoothly too. Though the family seems to have only one knife, and it’s approximately as sharp as the side of my hand. After lots of cutting and grating, (with no cutting board) the guac was done. Again, the kids were all shocked at the sight of this stuff.

 
Beans are beans. They turned out alright.

The parents came home from church and it was time to eat. For some reason, people couldn’t stop giggling at this whole concept. When I put the food out, random ladies that I had never even seen before crept into the scene from out of nowhere. All the ladies and kids took some food on their plates and went into the backyard to eat it (they never eat breakfast or lunch with men inside the house.) When I went to go see if they were enjoying it, the reaction was a little bit lame... perhaps the guacamole had too many flavours, or was not salty enough. (traditional food here is good, don’t get me wrong, but it is slightly bland sometimes, and it is very salty) The final consensus was that it was somewhere between “good” and “very good,” but they clearly didn’t love it. It was no nsima... they ate it all though! If I might say so myself, it was some of the most ballin guac I’ve had in a while, and the tortillas were a really nice fit. But no sustainable behaviour change in the realm of Malawian food today!

Take er easy,

Ian