Lá Fhéile Pádraig…Cameroonian style!

“No electricity! What do you mean they’re cutting the electricity tomorrow? Well b@ll*x anyway; I still haven’t printed out the questions or answer sheets for the Paddy’s Day pub quiz tomorrow night!”

So it was with a mad rush that I jumped on the next passing moto last Friday night and hightailed it to the VSO office in an attempt to save the inaugural Soirée St. Patrick. I mightened have been so bothered only our plans would be plastered all over an Irish national newspaper on the following Tuesday.

On arriving at the office the side gate was locked so I hopped the wall and was greeted by two security guards who were none too pleased seeing as it was after 10pm. I explained my case and said that the work I’d to do was of the upmost national importance (ok, I didn’t use the word ‘upmost’ as I don’t know what it is in French, so I probably said « très »). They assented begrudgingly and after having a fight with the printer I successfully got the necessary “Top Secret” paperwork printed.

Having just read over this paragraph, this blog entry is beginning to sound like the opening chapter of a Tom Clancy novel…it wasn’t as frenetic as that…it was more John Grisham I think.

‘So what was so “Top Secret”?’ I hear you yawn. Well some of the questions posed were along the lines of: What is the longest river in Ireland?; St Patrick is said to have banished what from the shores of Ireland?; The Irish author Jonathan Swift wrote what literary classic?; The Irish Famine in 1845 was caused by the failure of what crop?

All very 3rd class stuff I admit but you have to remember who we were dealing with – a bunch of Canadian, French and English volunteers with a smattering of locals whose knowledge of Ireland is haphazard to say the least. Some Cameroonians think that Ireland is somewhere in North America yet others do remember Mattie Holland’s equaliser for Ireland in the 2002 World Cup match.

Apart from a couple of rounds of Irish questions there were also a few with a Cameroonian twist and, of course, the obligatory picture round. Rather than spend hours on the web searching for pictures of Brian Cowen, Brian O’Driscoll and Brian Bóru, I spent hours doctoring pictures of the other vols instead which was a big hit. The winning team were a bunch of vols who knew their local knowledge. Thankfully the usual pub quiz sharks from Ballaghaderreen never showed up so the round of drinks for the winners stayed locally.

To cap the night off there was a bit of brawl among the locals and we had a sing-song that didn’t last very long. Despite the best efforts of Lizzie on the guitar there wasn’t a sinner who could sing a decent Irish song even when the words of Fiddler’s Green were put in front of them. Mea Culpa. Always had a sneaky suspicion that my talents lay elsewhere…it’s no longer a suspicion.

So where do we take our St. Patrick’s Day celebrations from here? Well we’ve a year to give Kiltimagh and Boston a run for their money. The Cameroonians love a good parade so if I can convince the army to show up, throw in a few dodgy West African Presidents dressed in green and call the whole thing “Operation Pádraig - highly classified”; then I think we’d have the makings of a real Tom Clancy style St. Patrick’s Day.

GC

“Waiter, there’s no fly in my soup!”

The menu board on the wall of the Super Restaurant in Yagoua lists at least 25 different dishes. A great variety you may think but a closer inspection reveals there are actually a limited number of dishes available; the variety is all in the combinations. For instance, according to the menu, you can order beef and rice, beef and chips, beef and bread, beef and macaroni, beef and plantains – plantains being long green bananas that are delicious when fried. Apart from beef there is also (again, according to the menu) chicken, liver and kidneys with the same side combinations.

“Right,” I thought to myself last week as the boo-boo clad waiter approached, “what do I feel like?”
“Monsieur?”
“Je vais prendre poulet plantains, s’il vous plait!”
“Il n’y en a pas!”
“D’accord, poulet riz?”
“Il n’y en a pas!”
“Ahh! Foie pommes?”

And again, with his inscrutable face which suggested that he could keep this up all day, he answered “Il n’y en a pas!” Time to change tactic, I reckoned. “Alors, qu’est ce que vous’avez?” And so the secret to ordering in the Super Restaurant was discovered. Basically, you need to ignore the menu and just ask what they have. Last time out, it was beef and chips, beef and bread or an omelette, and that was it. Whoever neatly hand-painted the extensive menu on the huge blackboard was wasting their time.

The food here is pretty good and most of the time I’ll rustle up some concoction or other at home. There are only two restaurants and a plethora of chop houses in Yags. With the narrow variety available on the menus and the need to monitor the amount of barbecued beef I eat, I’m not left with much option but to cook. So what keeps me going? Well, it all depends on the season and what you can get at the market. Mostly you can get onions, tomatoes, chillis, rice, spuds (yes, real spuds), lots of different herbs and spices, kidney beans, carrots, cucumbers, lettuce, and different fruit depending on the season – oranges have just been replaced by mangos as the fruit of choice.

As the Grahame Cleary Cookbook could be written on the back of any parish newsletter, my culinary skills extend to about 4 different dishes. Stews, curries (same dish just different types of spices), stir fries, pasta, salads and pancakes are pretty much the staple. Cooking is done on my luxurious gas cooker though there are times when I crave lasagne and hanker after an oven. There are other vols who use what’s called a dutch oven; which involves putting sand in the bottom of a large saucepan together with empty tin cans though I haven’t gotten around to trying that yet.

I have ventured to add meat occasionally to the stews and curries but it took me four months before I took a trip to the butchers. The butchers here are not like any butchers you get at home. No aprons, no little sinks with notices warning “This sink is for washing hands only!” and no cold storage. The Yagoua victuallers hang out in the market with nothing more than a butcher’s block, a couple of knives, half a (dead) cow and half a (live) hundred flies. Something to bear in mind the next time you’re taking that cellophane wrapped t-bone steak from the freezer in Super-Valu.

What finally persuaded me to take the dead bull by the horns was that after a few months eating meat in restaurants and chop houses I had no ill effects; when I wondered where this meat came from I had only one logical answer…the meat market. Having gone there regularly now, I have developed a tactic whereby I’ll pass through the row of butchers and select one where there is a reasonably big slab of meat and a reasonably small number of flies. I’ll order my 500 frs worth of meat and then I’ll watch the butcher closely to check that the meat he puts on the battered scales is in fact meat. I’m not that knowledgeable about the different sides of beef you can get but I can tell the difference between meat, gristle and offal and it pays to check. Nothing is wasted and even Pedigree Chum would have trouble finding leftovers to include in their cans of dog food; incidentally, I’ve never seen hungrier dogs in my life.

So having honed my meat buying skills I now see nothing out of the ordinary in a butcher chopping up slabs of beef on the side of a log of timber with nothing but an axe. It’s what people do, it’s how they live and it doesn’t seem to do them (or me – touche le bois!) a bit of harm…provided the meat is cooked thoroughly – (just doing my bit for the Food Safety Authority in case they’re reading).

So, word is out – I’m not going hungry in Africa and I don’t think you would either. If you do happen to find yourself in Yagoua any time soon and are looking for somewhere to eat then you could do worse than calling into the Super Restaurant. It does a good beef and chips (when it’s on the menu) and thus far I’ve yet to find a fly in my soup!
GC