You know, I always thought parentheses were the same thing as quotation marks, but it turns out they are actually brackets. That means I already made my foray into the world of parentheses in my last journal entry, so we’ll have to take a new approach this time around.
Isn’t that just the nuts??
Serves me right for using words I don’t know the meaning of, which I imagine you’ve noticed I do fairly regularly.
I finally had a chance to snap and upload a few photos of someone tapping a palm tree, which made me realize I haven’t said much about one of the great pastimes here in Cameroon – hanging out in mimbo houses and drinking the ‘white stuff’.
I’ll start with a description of a typical mimbo house. Usually about the size of your living room (some are no larger than your washroom), Spartan decor, with several wooden benches around the perimeter of the room, a few posters taped to the walls (advertising the local beers), a dozen plastic beer crates filled with empty bottles lining one of the walls, and a single light bulb illuminating the room. The clientele is often almost entirely male. I’d take a photo, but usually the rooms are too small to do it justice. That, and I tend not to take my camera with me when I go drinking.
I know I’ve been in Cameroon for a while, because I don’t even notice anymore that the servers of both of my favourite local drinking spots in Santa are 12 and 13 years old. Both mimbo houses are owned by their mothers, but they regularly leave the kids on their own to run the show. And a fine job, they do. Not tall enough to see over the front counter, but they can reach the beer, and that’s what counts.
With the exception of the nightclubs and larger mimbo houses, very few of the drinking establishments have names. When you want to meet someone for mimbo, you refer to the place by the owner’s name. The sign in front of one of the places I go to is ‘Ader Cameroon’. For the longest time, I would tell people I would be at ‘Ader Cameroon’. No one knew what I was talking about, until I eventually came to realize the sign was a remnant of the former fertilizer store that closed down years ago.
A side note: when people meet for drinks here, they do not split the cost. Ever. The person who did the inviting pays…always. I tend to feel an inkling of guilt when someone who’s barely getting by takes me out for a beer. But then I drink the beer, and the guilt goes away. You’ll hear Cameroonians tell stories about how Europeans (by the way, my Canadian and American friends, in Cameroon, you are European) will go out for dinner or a drink, and everyone will pay for their own. That’s just crazy talk!!
The most popular drink in Cameroon is palm wine, also known as white wine, white stuff or white mimbo (regular mimbo is good ol’ beer). The best way to describe it is to advise you to forget everything you know about wine. Palm wine is the juice (sap? guts? innards?), tapped from the Raffia Palm tree (bush? weed? really big houseplant?). It is a murky white, watery fluid, and you know immediately when you’ve entered a place that is serving it, because of the very strong odour. The amazing thing about palm wine is how rapidly it ferments. When it is first tapped early in the morning, it has no alcohol, but by the end of the day, it is already around 3% or 4%. By the second or third day, it is stronger than beer. Apparently the shelf life of palm wine is quite short, only a week or so. That is only theory, though, since I don’t think anyone has ever kept it around for that long.
The flavour of palm wine can best be described as…umm…it tastes…like…….
….wack!!!!
Sorry, I just couldn’t find the word. The taste, fortunately, is not as strong as the odour, but it does kinda stay with you for a while after consumption. Definitely an acquired taste. Only a handful of my colleagues enjoy drinking it, but most Cameroonians are quite fond of it. Personally, I prefer good ol’ beer (that’s the second time I’ve referred to beer as “good ol’” in this write-up). Consumption of palm wine is not easily avoidable; it is always offered when visiting a Fon’s palace, and often is the only beverage available at most ‘house visits’. I’ll drink it when offered to me, but usually don’t take more than one or two cups.
One of the reasons palm wine is so popular is because of its affordability. A one-litre bottle costs only 100 CFA, which is about 20 cents (US), and usually 2 or 3 people will share a bottle. A 0.65 litre bottle of beer costs about 5 times that, which is obviously still not expensive, but adds up if one plans to spend a fine Saturday as a patron of one of Santa’s exclusive mimbo houses.
The write-up in my travel guide warns that palm wine can be ‘lethal stuff’, and travelers are advised to be cautious about drinking it. Apparently, there’s a risk that vendors will mix other things in to dilute it, sweeten it, or lengthen the shelf life. That is definitely not the case in the rural areas, where vendors take a lot of pride in the quality of their mimbo, and drink it themselves. Pure palm tree juice, yum!!
To keep one’s taste buds on the go, the common treat that accompanies palm wine is kola nut. As with palm wine, I find it fascinating that someone out there, years ago, concluded that this stuff was palatable. However, given that I am a product of the North American fixation with fast food restaurants, I guess I shouldn’t be one to speak.
I can recall when I was a kid, sneaking some chocolate chips from the kitchen while my mother had her back turned when she was making a chocolate cake (it didn’t really happen, Dad, I’m just embellishing to keep everyone on the edges of their seats). Turns out is was unsweetened chocolate. Nearly made me submit defeat to my Corn Flakes, it was so bitter. Kola nut is even more so. As with palm wine, only a select few of my non-Cameroonian friends find it manageable.
My friend Rachel is a Peace Corps volunteer from Virginia, who also lives in Santa. I doubt she weighs even 100 pounds, but she can knock back palm wine and kola nut like it’s the Next Big Thing. Her parents are very proud of her.
The other local delicacy I should mention is achu, which is also a place, a surname, and a given name. It will also likely be the name of my next pet (or possibly ‘Captain’ - see attached photos). As far as the food goes, achu can be found in several areas in Cameroon, but it is the pride of the NW Province, as anyone living in this area will tell you that achu originated in Pinyin or Awing (depending on whether you’re speaking someone from Pinyin or Awing), both villages in the Santa subdivision. It is made from mashed cocoa yams, formed into the shape of a bowl, with a yellowish soup poured inside. The main ingredients of the soup are palm oil and crushed limestone (no kidding). It is served with a couple of pieces of meat, fish, or cow skin, and is eaten without utensils. Again, an acquired taste.
Speaking of cow skin, I’m sure you’re aware that Africans let very little go to waste, when it comes to carnivorous intake. Several people here will eat an entire chicken or fish, including the bones. I watched a man eat the brains and eyeballs of a goat the other day. Arguably, the weirdness may be more the part of us westerners, who only eat the flesh of an animal, and let the rest get turned into pet food, or dumped in a landfill. On my side of the field, I’ve ingested various intestinal parts of cows and goats, as well as cow skin (one of the most common staples here), and finally gave in to someone’s polite offering of a fish’s head (although I was too full to eat the eyeballs).
Take a close look at one of the photos I recently added, and you’ll see that it is a chicken’s head with one of the legs stuffed down the throat (foot sticking out of the mouth), all tied up with the intestines, just like a wedding gift. It was a work of art. So beautiful, I just couldn’t bring myself to eat it.
I think I’ll leave you with that visual. There’s lots more to say about booze and food (on review of this entry, I see I’ve written next to nothing on food, but heaps on white mimbo….just the way it should be), but this entry is getting a bit long, so I’ll stop here.
By the way, for you movie buffs out there, I watched a film the other day called “Bikini Bloodbath”. It was every bit as good as the title would indicate.
Bon apétite!!!
eb
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