The Foods of My Umudugudu (Village)

There is not a day that passes when I do not miss McDonald's and Taco Bell, but I have to say that the food in Rwanda is pretty damn good. Typically a meal might include tea, bread, rice, beans, potatoes, macaroni if your chef is feeling adventurous, plantains or bananas, and maybe eggs. There is usually a sauce made out of veggies (like mashed cassava leaves), meat (which has a broth-like consistency), or peanuts. As far as fruits are concerned I’ve had pineapples that taste way fresher than anything in the states. You don’t have to even take the core out! In the capital you can get passion fruit, mangoes, and something called tree tomatoes, which are all quite tasty. And for veggies I’ve had cabbage, corn, avocados that are 3 times the size of the U.S. kind, and onions.

As part of our Peace Corps training they gave us some info on what to expect for foods available in the local markets depending on what region of the country we’re placed in. Although I wouldn’t want to be limited in my food choices forever, I have to say that it’s pretty baller to think that we’re mostly just eating whatever grows around us and is in season. My host family farms corn, sorghum, beans, sweet potatoes, bananas, sugar cane, peanuts, and soy.

The cooking process is hardcore. My host family has a wood-burning stove built into their enclosed/outdoor kitchen, and a small charcoal stove as well. Getting either one hot is no easy task. I’ve actually sat in awe watching while Mama hacks apart a big tree limb with an axe to throw in the wood stove, and then lights it with a bit of hay, 1 match, and some fanning motions. Pretty impressive stuff. It gets very smoky in the “kitchen” though, and there isn’t really any space to cut anything because they don’t have counters, let alone a cutting board. I think they mostly just chop ingredients right into the pot. And they still have all their fingers!

Inside my host family's kitchen

Wednesday my Peace Corps training assignment was to cook an American dish for the family. In the afternoon, I went with my language instructor, Liliose, to the weekly market and bought garlic, onions, green peppers, tomatoes, tomato paste, corn, and spaghetti. After class I explained to Mama that I was going to cook them some “macaroni and isosi (sauce).” So they gave me a knife and a couple of bowls and 7 people watched intently as the weirdo American fumbled to cut some vegetables. I’m sure it was a good show. To keep expectations low, and since I have never previously made spaghetti sauce using only tomato paste, salt, and water, I repeatedly stated in Kinyarwanda that I was a bad cook and that no one in America likes to eat my food. Haha! Luckily no one died after consuming my ad-hoc American meal. They even seemed to like it, which was a relief.

Some other interesting factoids: Rwandans just don’t have snack attacks. If you go into a local shop the only options you’re really going to see in the light snack realm are a few different bread options, maybe one type of fruit, or some candies that look like Jolly Ranchers but taste like cough drops. You can also buy these packages of plain cookies called biscuits, but if I eat more than 3 at a time I tend to get sick. Oh and there’s also one shop that has a popcorn machine they fire up once in a while, but apparently this is a novelty. I’ve heard there are restaurants galore in Kigali and some other big cities, and that you can purchase all sorts of goodies like chocolate and peanut butter, but just not here on the village level. What I wouldn’t do for a bag of Cheetos right now!

Even stranger than not snacking (by American standards), is the fact that people rarely eat on the street. I’ve heard this is taboo because in Rwandan culture they share everything. So if you’re eating a banana, it would not be out of line for a stranger to come up to you and ask you for a piece of it. And you’d be like, “Oh sure, here you go dude, I wasn’t going to eat this WHOLE banana anyway.” And if a woman is carrying a jug of water on her head, any random person walking by can be like, “Hey there, I’m thirsty,” and she will have her child run home to fetch a cup that she can then fill with water and give to this no-name passerby. In America, if you walked up to someone on the street and asked them for some of their food or beverage you’d likely get a solid “eff off” in response. Just goes to show how generous Rwandans can be.

Ok, one last thought on food: in case you’re wondering, the major meats of choice I’ve seen thus far are goat and cow. On Thursday I ate what I believe to have been some BBQ skewered goat liver called “brochette”—a bit chewy but not terrible. For chicken, as far as I know you to need to buy that clucker and slaughter it yourself—which isn’t really on my bucket list. I think meat is fairly expensive, so I was confused when my family served it to me every night my first week. Then through some miming and extensive use of a translation dictionary, I was able to figure out that my Papa is actually an owner of the local butchery cooperative. Super cool! So I’ll enjoy the beef for now, as I probably will be too grossed out at my own village by the lack of meat refrigeration to buy some on my own. On that note I will leave you, my dear American friends, to your delicious fast food and “never ending salad and bread sticks.” Bon appetite!

SPECIAL ALERT!: After writing this post I was informed that a local store carries chocolate bars called “Gotcha: Big Taste!” I immediately purchased 2 and was elated to find that they are basically Kit Kat bars covered in some other mysterious crunchy goodness. Imma need to buy about 50 more of these, stat.