Food

The cultivated land in Rwanda is very fertile with about 90% of the population being subsistence farmers. The food crops which are grown throughout the country are potatoes, cassava, sweet and cooking bananas, beans, rice, peas, maize, sorghum, sweet potatoes, soya beans, peanuts, a variety of fruit and veg, depending on location, and coffee, tea and sugar cane. Rwandans rarely drink coffee but absolutely love their tea, which is very milky and heaped with sugar! They find it hard to understand that I drink mine black and sugarless.

Here in Gatsibo District, the main crops are maize, beans and green bananas. The fruit here is limited to bananas and very occasionally a pineapple. The photo of the pineapple growing was taken in Matimba further north, near the Ugandan border and the gourds that were being sold in Matimba market are used for storing milk.

There is a market here in Kabarore twice a week on Tuesdays and Fridays and it is quite a social occasion to go along and purchase from the local traders, everything is sold in vast quantities, by the bucketful and they all find it very entertaining that I only want a small quantity to feed one person, not a concept they find easy to understand. I take along my empty water bottles to recycle which the local women then fill with cooking oil. More recently there has been the opportunity to buy tiny fish, which look like whitebait, but the flies which accompany them are a bit of a turn off and I haven’t been tempted to try them!

My usual shopping list consists of tomatoes, onions, bananas, a green pepper if I am lucky, some potatoes and an avocado, this will cost me in the region of 70p, a large bottle of water for 50p and at weekends I treat myself to a bottle of Primus (local beer) for 70p (this takes quite a lot of negotiating as bars are reluctant to see the bottle go out of their premises as the bottle is actually worth more to them than the contents). There is a local hooch made from bananas but I have never seen it let alone taste it and it is possible to buy Ugandan gin relatively cheaply-regrettably I can’t even bear the smell of it!

 I can occasionally buy a roll, which is fairly unpalatable, but fine when dunked in my soup. I took the photo of the toast and banana when I was staying with another volunteer in Kigali as it was such a treat to be served real bread!

In my kitchen food store, I have Blue Band margarine (used for spreading and cooking and doesn’t need to be in a fridge) instant milk powder, peanut butter, pasta, rice and lentils and I still have some of the spices and stock cubes I brought with me which can flavor my one pot meals. I am so grateful for the little pressure cooker I brought with me, it has proved to be invaluable.

I have also included a couple of photos of my attempts at growing some rocket and some sweet peas in the back yard, I have also planted some herbs so hopefully they will help to compliment the cordon bleu cooking.

At lunch in Rwandan restaurants it is common to find a “mélange” a buffet that includes rice, pasta, potatoes, cooked bananas, beans and if you are lucky-meat in a sauce ( for which you pay extra). The food is generally quite bland and stodgy but there is the option of adding chili sauce, which by contrast will blow your head off. Most of the restaurants will also serve up brochette (mainly goat ) and chips as long as you don’t mind waiting an hour or two to be served! With little or no refrigeration it is not unusual to see a member of staff nipping out to the market or shop to buy your order.

One Saturday I went to Kigali just for the day, a round trip of 6hours, to stock up on much needed supplies, I got so excited when I saw the choice of food available, although it is very expensive, and came home with a yogurt, some salami and some cheese and most exciting of all - a small carton of wine! Eat your heart out Martin Wishart!

I have included a poem that one of the other volunteers wrote about the market which sums up so much how it is. Enjoy.

Market

Unswayed by the wind, the market sellers
progress through the street, baskets on heads,
past open sacks of beans and sweetcorn
packed and golden under the sun,
and cabbages and sorghum laid out on canvas
where women in kangas nod and observe,
while three piglets squat in watery mud
half-dazed, then grunt and come to, as a kid
beats their backs and moves them on,
and a man with deep laughter-lines leads a goat
which, with the string tied to one leg,
tumbles and squeals, and the road doesn’t help,
being rutted with potholes; a drunk man staggers
with a bottle of Primus; a policeman stops him,
takes a sip and gives him a piece of brochette,
a man pushes a bicycle, sacks of charcoal
on pannier and saddle; the moto drivers
bask on terraces of drinking houses,
shout barbs and rebuffs across the street,
and I walk past, a minor celebrity,
as people pause and hail ‘muzungu!’
with strange jubilation, and kids run to hug me,
and the immediacy of every situation masks the way the wind rises
and banana trees respond unanimously
across the quiet enormity
of the hills.

Isabella Mead