You Are What You Eat?

When I first heard the term "You are what you eat," I took it rather literally. I spent time fantasizing about what would really happen if a person literally WAS what they ate. The world would be populated with food. I actually imagined a city full of walking Snicker's bars, large cucumbers teaching school, and blocks of cheese driving cars. It was a fun day dream, I must admit. As I grew older and actually began to understand the meaning behind "You are what you eat" I still cling to my childhood dream, but South Africa has taught me to alter the dream somewhat- no longer is a city populated with my favorite foods and the foods are not longer animated. Instead, they are sitting on plates in the kitchen of my Maryland home, patiently waiting for me to return and indulge in them once more.

It may come as a surprise, but incidents involving food are a definite part of the cultural conflicts PCVs face between us and our counterparts. There are so many different tastes between us as Americans and our South African families and friends that there are bound to be clashes. For example, during our training my group all lived with home-stay families. As part of our cultural immersion, we were expected to eat our meals with our families and partake in South African rural cuisine. Many of us lost weight during training. Now, I am not saying all SA traditional food is bad- in fact, some of it is very good. But, there are still some food items that even after two years I still cannot stomach.

Basic South African rural cuisine revolves directly around "pap"- also knows as vuswa, bogobe, porridge, sadza and to some of the guys in my PC group, "God's gift to mankind." Pap is nothing really fancy. It is composed of only two ingredients: mielie (corn) meal and water, but then it is literally beaten as it is cooking to create a very stiff porridge. To eat pap, you break off a piece and roll it around in your hand, creating a ball, dipping it into some sort of gravy, then eating it. There really is not much taste to pap, but for some strange reason, it grows on you. I have a very good relationship with pap-I enjoy eating it very much. However, my fondness of pap ends at a reasonable level... Some of my friends take their pap enjoyment to the point of worshipful obsession. Songs and poems have been written to gush over pap's many wonderful qualities, new recipes are examined critically and exclaimed over, and a cartoon of "Pap-Man" and "Bogobe Boy" kept us all very much entertained during our training. Pap is the staple of South Africa; meaning that pap is on the menu basically every single day in rural homes. My host mother once told me that a "meal without pap is not a meal at all." Running out of mielie meal is synonymous to disaster. A normal South African rural meal consists of a plate of pap, and some side dishes. Now, like I said previously, I have a good relationship with pap... it is the side dishes that I do not have a good relationship with.

Meat, and I use this term loosely, is the first side dish. A normal meat side is chicken or boerworst (sausage). And when I say chicken, I mean the WHOLE chicken. Not just the breast and drumsticks, but the head, neck, thighs, innards and feet can be the side of choice for the meal. Now, I have tried all types of chicken with varying degrees of enthusiasm. The chicken breast, thighs and drumsticks are all good. The neck is not so bad. The head, innards and feet though are just plain unpalatable! The head normally still has eyes when put into the pot, and quite honestly I have a great aversion to eating things that are looking at me. The chicken innards- the intestines, liver, kidneys, stomach- I have tasted and opted to never taste again. The feet- well, I feel that chicken feet deserve some sort of tribute to how incredibly unappealing they are. Imagine a chicken (actually, any bird will do) and now imagine their feet- scaly skin, skinny bones, and claws. That is exactly what a chicken foot looks like when it comes out of the pot and put on a plate to eat. There is absolutely no meat-just skin, bones and claws. The one and only time I had a chicken foot was during training in my very first week. My training host mother put on my plate next to my pap this claw. I poked at it a bit to build up my nerve to actually eat it then took a tiny bite crunched down on a nail, and lost my appetite for the next day.

The vegetables that go with pap are normally all right. The cabbage, butternut, beetroot and salad are all wonderful additions to a pap meal. Normally though, the meal of choice is morogo- wild greens. I always find it amazing how many different types of morogo can be found in and around my village. My host mother always has me sample the morogo that she makes and for the most part I enjoy it- except for guswa. Guswa is morogo cooked with baking soda and I am afraid that I cannot handle it at all. The baking soda makes the morogo slippery so that it had the exact same consistency of mucus. I cannot even keep it on my pap long enough to get it to my mouth! I tend to shy away from it whatever the cost.

I have learned to appreciate food so much more since coming to PC. So many food items that I took for granted in the states I will never do so again- just like I will never take for granted running water, flush toilets and central heating. Occasionally I fall back into my old daydream of "you are what you eat"- but I imagine pap people and walking chicken feet parading through my village. I don't think I would like to turn into South African food items.