Holy Ghost! Fyah!

While I was living in Washington DC, it suddenly became very important to “get in touch with my spirituality.” Maybe it was living in a new city or perhaps it was because I was still in the throes of culture shock after recently returning from my Peace Corps mission—but I had a feeling I needed some kind of “family.” Or maybe I just felt I was dropped into a den of vipers known as Law School and I needed some spiritual grounding to help me through the next few years. Whatever the reason, I took the advice of a neighbor: “Girl. You need a home church. There are plenty around here.” And she was not kidding.

DC has a church on about every corner, mostly the same denomination but just different enough that if you were to compare them somebody would give you a hearty verbal bitch slap as I was given by an older woman from my building one Sunday afternoon: “DAT aint MY church! WE so different from DAT church!” It looked like the same store/church with metal folding chairs, red carpet and banjo slapping church goers to me—especially if you share the same store/church. So was I really to be blamed for not knowing the difference between the Sunday group and the Wednesday night group?!?! Anyway. I ended up visiting a lot of churches. I mean A-LOOT of churches: Catholic churches, Adventist, Evangelical, Baptist and I even went to a gathering of Ba’hais. After one particular church scouting mission, I decided that perhaps quiet self-reflection with my maker inside of my apartment, to the sounds of drug dealer whistle calls and police sirens, would serve me best.

The church wasn’t far from my house so I ended up walking there and getting there on time for service which was really about 30 minutes early for the service. I decided to sit at the back alongside the only other very misplaced looking person: a tall and muscular man, wearing baggy pants, a marsh mellow puff jacket and Timbalands, hunched over with his elbows on his knees scouring the congregation with a scowl. Great. A church buddy for me. The service started out to meet my expectations. There were greetings, then everyone settling in, a hymn about 20 minutes long was sang by all in the church, I just hummed what I thought was the baseline rhythm and swayed side to side. However, unbeknownst to me, through all those greetings I was spotted as the newbie. And I was not going to---like I had thought and wanted---slide on through the service unnoticed. The pastor asked if there was any one new to the church that day. I slid lower in my seat and looked at my feet. A few people stood up. The pastor repeated it. And when I didn’t stand up, he repeated it again until finally the pressure of eyeballs piercing into my scalp made me look up. A granny two rows ahead of me, with her large black church hat and heavily made up face, yelled out “Pastor, this one here is new,” flapping her hand in my direction. I was forced to stand up. A back and forth conversation ensued between us, the newbies, and the pastor, where we were asked to come up front to “tell our story.” I didn’t have a story like the others who stood up, or as I suspected Timbaland next to me had one, so I shook my head no. The pastor asked me again, I shook my head no and we did this about three more times. I wasn’t giving into peer pressure, no matter how many people were looking at me and that my face turned a cherry red. It went all down-hill after that: a lot more singing with my grumbling tummy adding to the beat, a lot of saying “yes” and “Amen” but instead I just kept swaying side to side. At one point a woman started to run laps around the church half screaming and half singing. I wasn’t sure if she was possessed or happy or if she had “caught the spirit.” All I knew was that I wanted to get out of there. The pastor starts to conclude his sermon. But just before doing so he asks us to turn to the person sitting next to us. In my row it was just me and Timbaland so we turn to each other. And then he tells us to say to one another “God Loves You.” Timbaland opens his mouth and through a row of glittering diamond studded teeth tells me that God loves me with all the earnest sincerity that his heart and soul could muster. I didn’t say it to him right away as I had to do everything in my power not to laugh in his face. Are you kidding me? This guy definitely had a story because I could have sworn he was on my street corner the night before wheeling and dealing. But when he started frowning at me, I got nervous of what he would do to me if I didn’t say it. I did my best match his genuineness and he turned away smiling and happy. Mission accomplished! When I had arrived I had signed-in not really thinking about why they wanted my contact information, but I ended up, thankfully, just giving my email address. I discovered why they wanted that information about a month later. They wanted to send to my house the taped sermons because they saw that I was not attending church and didn’t want me to miss a thing. They also wanted to know if I was sick because the pastor could come visit me—and I’m sure he would visit the heck out of me if he knew where I lived.
Once going through this experience you would think I would have learned my lesson visiting a church like this. But once I was in Africa, I figured, no way, it is so different here, it can’t possibly be the same. Well, it is kind of the same. What I thought was a friend invited me to church about a million times when I was living in Botswana. And being that he was this funky cool chef with butt length dreadlocks and totally gay, I said yes, AND I was about to leave the country permanently. As we walked into the church I could tell that this was going to be a DC repeat performance but instead of Timbaland it was my Jah-Man sitting next to me. I’m not being an ass-- that is what people in the African countries I have visited call you on the street if you have dreadlocks: “Oi..Jah Man! (slight head nod follows).

I really suffered through the service. Especially since it was a Nigerian pastor and I could not make out what he was saying during the 5 hour sermon which was delivered in his high pitch scream way of preaching (“Jeee ZZZUUUzz, loves you!”). He wore what I call the African Church suit, basically a high glossed material in a bright green or yellow leaning toward neon bright, with traditional African cloth lining the lapel and inside jacket. He would run across the stage with a few emphatic mini-jumps inserted to emphasize the spirit of the Lord within him. He also carried a handkerchief to wipe away all the sweat generated by the running and jumping, which he wiped theatrically so that you could take a good look at the fancy bling shining off his fingers. Again, there was a point where we had to turn to each other, but I learned my lesson and as much as my Jah-Man friend tried to tell me God loved me, to the point where he was bending over to look me in my eye, I just kept finding something to keep my attention on—it was not hard with all the theatrics abounding all around me. After the service, we started to move outside, but my Jah-Man friend grabs my arm and started to introduce me to people, and by the starry eyed glances and dreamy smiles they were giving me coupled with “Are you married?” “How long have you been friends with Jah-Man?” I realized that Jah-Man was not “totally gay” and that he was presenting me to “his family” as a potential wifey. So when he asked me if I wanted to go to Fellowship, I overcame my deer in headlights look and said “No, thanks, need to be getting back home now,” and almost tripped over myself running for the nearest mini-bus through thick raindrops and muddy streets. I knew I couldn’t get ensnared into a fellowship meeting which is basically a three hour indoctrination process conducted by the pastor and his faithfuls who try to fool you into joining the church by tempting you with sweet tea or coffee and some Granny’s delicious baked good. As you can gather, I’ve been down that road before and I was too scared, and hungry, to go through it again.

I’ve pretty much stayed away from any kind of religious activity since then. Even when I lived in Zomba, which is the most religious city, I think, outside of Jerusalem. Every Friday night I was kept awake by the All Night Church party, which had very bad drumming and keyboard playing with someone who thought they could sing, non-stop from 7pm until 4am. Where the All Night Church Party ended, the Muslim call to prayer began. And it really was quite a call to prayer, as there are about 100 mosques (with attached megaphones) in the surrounding Zomba area--each with their separate call to prayer, one after the other. Until this day not one Muslim person in Zomba can tell me why the call to prayer needs to be conducted by each individual mosque if they each are within walking distance of one another. Then, right after the call, the nearby military training school would start their recruits’ morning run where they would sing what I thought was old Malawian church spirituals in Chichewa—as they were so soothing and melodic and beautifully harmonized sung in deep man-ly voices. But I found out they were singing songs about having sex--with each other’s sisters. How bloody disappointing. It didn’t end there, because on Sunday, there was a church that sang a call and response the whole day: “Holy Ghost!” (pastor) “Fyah!” (congregation) The. Whole.Day. The only variation would be the rhythm of the call and response. Why the whole day and only that particular call and response? I did not have the cojones to approach the church to find out, as I did not know what I could possibly be getting myself into.

I’ve done my best to stay away from actually going to church while here in Mozambique. There was a Catholic church in Zobue with a very young and handsome priest from Peru. We only got to know him as we were leaving so I didn’t get to find out about all the activities he was conducting for youth. B thinks that he was having sex with Dona Dents the local woman that lived on the church grounds and helped the priest with domestic chores. Dents means teeth--we christened her that because her teeth projected horizontally from her mouth, so B feels that it may be the priest who was actually being taken advantage of. I don’t think he was doing that at all and I hope all those young people at his house were truly there for good Christian reasons. There was another pastor in town who was part of a missionary family from the U.S.—but their religion prohibited girls from being educated after the age 13 and required women to wear long skirts and cover their heads. Yes, come to the African continent and proselytize such restrictions for African women. I think that is what more African nations need, fewer educated girls and women that are told how to dress and act. Umm, yup, that sounds right.
In Maputo I really do not need to go to church as there is one right in front of my house—if I stand at the edge of my property and the pastor of the church walks out of the church we can hold hands. So when they start singing every night of the week, I feel that I am sitting right next to them. B is not happy about the church being there as he says that the land on which the church was built on was obtained in an unscrupulous manner and so every time they begin their service he is reminded of it---he says they are disturbing his right to peaceful and private communion with God on his own terms. He is waiting for the day that we finish building the wall around our property as he wants to hook up huge speakers to his television and play, at the highest volume, pornographic films while service is in progress. I think his bark is stronger than his bite. Well, I hope it is.

My unusual and borderline traumatic experiences with churches, has not left me unappreciative of the attributes of what religion can bring to a community. I love hearing women going to work on their farm plots singing their church hymns as their voices are beautiful and harmonized or that the teenage girl who helps to braid neighborhood girls’ hair and who lives down the lane from us sings her church music with a voice like an angel. It is our bairro’s way of connecting to one another, even when there are other issues they can’t come together on.

I once read in an article that a soldier in Afghanistan hated the Muslim call to prayer as he associated it with ensuing attacks, gunfire and death. But for me, I love the call to prayer as it is a positive memory that I associate with living in Africa—and I miss it when I am back home in the U.S. I don’t understand the words, but what I take from the morning call, is that today is a new day for me to try again. A day that can be filled with love and forgiveness but also that among disappointments, injustices and heartbreak that life can bring beauty and laughter and most of all hope. Hope that today will be better than yesterday and that tomorrow, even better than today.

In all my scouting missions and the spiritual paths I have embarked on, they all have one thing in common it is just each individual faith, church or mosque expresses it in a different way. But I believe that S.N. Goenka, the guru of Vipassana meditation said it best: Be Happy. And that is exactly what I’m doing.

Fine Dining

I love food. I LOVE IT. If my mother is reading this she is shaking her head saying “You can’t love inanimate objects. You can only like food very much.” Umm, I’m going to have to disagree-I looooove it. What I am going to eat, how I am going to cook it and how delicious it will be takes up a disproportionate amount of EshaG’s brain space—and that has been the case wherever I have lived. So I’m pretty surprised it has taken me this long to post something on food. But I will have to say (and maybe others may say it too) Africa is not known for its culinary delights like say Peru, or India or Thailand. And that is probably the reason I haven’t focused on food as much as I usually do---my diet is pretty basic and has contributed, thankfully, to my weight loss. However that doesn’t mean that the African countries I have lived in don’t have their good eats.

I’m sure some of you think this is going to be something out of an Andrew Zimmerman Exotic Foods episode. Yes, “exotic” foods do exist here—but I haven’t had the opportunity to taste most of them. The most exotic things I have eaten were African game meat (gazelle) and dried mopane or caterpillar. Both were very tasty. In Botswana I ate cow intestine (pretty gritty) and chicken feet (with and without toenails). Chicken feet stew is a big part of my diet now, and I really like them---and yes, I’m an expert hand at removing the nails and rough calluses that form on the soles. In Malawi and northern Mozambique I witnessed the consumption of what most of us, and even some Mozambicans scrunch their noses at: like roasted field mice, fried grasshoppers and ants and snails the size of my hand! I regret not trying any of those foods—ESPECIALLY the field mice---who wouldn’t want some roasted mice hair sticking to their upper lip as they crunch down on it!?!? Yum, yum.

What some in the U.S. may think is exotic or weird or gross is part of the dietary staples in other places. In my own Guyanese culture we eat pig feet and ears, chicken gizzards and livers, tripe (cow stomach), and cow tongue—if it is prepared and seasoned correctly it tastes just like any other part of the cow except it is a lot more tender---just do your best to not think about the cow licking boogers out of its nose with that tongue. So I don’t necessarily see these foods as exotic as most countries go through their evolutions of being poor and therefore do not have the luxury of letting any protein go to waste and then getting richer where society begins to select only the choicest parts of the animal to consume. Most nations in Africa still have a majority of the population in poverty, a thin slice of super rich and a slowly growing middle class---so gastronomic fare is basic to meet dietary and budget needs.
Most of Southern Africa has the staple foods of maize and sorghum. I haven’t eaten too many dishes with sorghum--the one time I did it was in Botswana. The dish was sorghum porridge with sour milk with just a few dollops of condensed milk….but…I used most of the tin of Nestle condensed milk on my porridge. I haven’t eaten it again. The one staple you will find from South Africa to Malawi and even parts of west Africa is a plate of ground maize which is cooked by boiling until it forms a thick consistency and looks like mashed potatoes when still hot and steaming---it is eaten with, usually, stews. It is called pap in South Africa, Botswana and other English speaking countries, but most other southern and central African nations call it chima/nsima. In West Africa they make theirs with cassava and it is called fufu—you can also find this cassava chima in Northern parts of Malawi and Mozambique. In my parents country of Guyana we too eat foofoo but it is made of pounded plantain or yams.

I was never a fan of chima and lost a lot of love for it in Malawi as I ate it often during the office communal lunch with ----what many Malawians like very much and eat often---matemba—the worst smelling fish on the planet. It is a small fish the length of an index finger and it is dried out in the sun, it is something like codfish or as folks say in the Caribbean, salt-fish. It is then boiled where its malevolent odor lingers for many torturous minutes, sometimes hours. I often had a slight gag reflex when my domestic worker would cook it for my dogs. I’m not being a jerk. Even Malawians would tell me they didn’t like the cooking process because of the smell. Thereafter it is cooked as a stew with oil, tomato, and salt (sometimes onions). And that’s it. Malawi is a poor country and so innovations in Malawian cuisine in terms of spices and fusion is not high on the list—but I have to say my favorite Malawian dish that would be just about anyone’s comfort food was futali---boiled Irish and sweet potato in a thick, creamy sauce of groundnut (peanut) flour----absolutely heavenly!

In Botswana, meat is king. I cooked a vegetarian meal once for an all Tswana guest list. When I served the meal there was utter silence until someone quietly said “You know we are a meat eating culture, hei?” I told them yes, but an all veggie meal wouldn’t kill them. Needless to say, along with the many Savannah Dry beverages I guzzled during my time in Botswana, I also chowed down on some of the best meat on the planet—its only rival is probably Kobe beef. And as I have mentioned in a previous post—my body paid dearly for it. Botswana’s traditional meat dish, seswaa, is boiled beef with salt, and then it is shredded. And that’s it. Are you detecting a trend? Many things are boiled or fried. I eat a lot of boiled, and sometimes raw, provisions like cassava or here it is called mandioca and in Latin countries it is called yucca. But of course, along with their delicious meat which was usually braiied, or in U.S. lingo cooked on a barbecue pit, with only the slightest need of seasoning (yes, the meat was that naturally tasty!), I had some other favorites. I loved samp--- it is dried corn kernels that have been stamped and chopped until broken and cooked with beans and butter--- flour dumplings (boiled and huge like the size of your fist) with fried chicken and my all time most favorite, oxtail stew, which is a fav amongst Caribbean people as well.

Mozambique, of all the countries I have been in Southern Africa, has been my favorite country for delicious traditional food—like it makes me want to lick the plate but I control myself in fear of shaming my family. But I’m not gonna lie--- I’ll lick my plate and serving spoon while washing the dishes and no one can see me. Mozambican traditional foods are mostly coconut milk and ground nut (peanut) flour based. And part of the deliciousness is the time, and love, you have to put into cooking the dish —as you have to make your own coconut milk and then watch it carefully as it boils so that it does not over boil. Thereafter you add whatever it is you want to cook in it. Here, they add some sort of vegetable, or vegetable leaf like cassava leaves (matapa), pumpkin leaves (matsavo),collard greens(makofu), and the leaves of the string bean plant (nhangane)---you can also throw in a bit of dried shrimp to give all of these dishes an extra punch. On special occasions or in better off households, fried fish, shrimp and chicken can be added to this sauce. All are delicious in their unique ways. They also have a dish called mafura, which is a native African fruit of the mafureira tree. The mafura is plucked from the tree and soaked in tepid water for a few minutes and is then mashed with boiled sweet potato and sugar. I haven’t eaten yet but I inspect our tree every day for a ripened fruit like a begging dog so that I can make B cook it for me. One of my comfort foods here is pumpkin boiled with groundnut flour and sugar---so simple yet deliciously gratifying. As you can see our diet is full of veggies and the leaves of vegetable plants—when we are not cooking them in groundnut flour and coconut milk we are cooking them with oil, tomatoes, garlic, and onions eaten with rice. I am happy about my diet in Maputo as we are super healthy with a mostly veggie and fish/seafood diet. Although B is a pork fan, meat and chicken are more expensive down south as opposed to when we lived in central Mozambique and ate mostly pork and goat meat.

The Portuguese influence is strong here so Mozambican’s seasoning is wonderful when it comes to all sorts of guisados (stews), fried fish, as well as grilled chicken, fish or shrimp. Mozambicans usually use a Portuguese style marinade of lime juice, salt and lots of garlic before grilling but in the case of Chicken Zambeziano, they use a Mozambican style of marinade that consists of grilling chicken with a coconut milk, garlic and lemon juice baste---so finger licking good! The Portuguese have left a tradition of wonderful baked goods. We eat fresh baked Portuguese bread most days for breakfast, with tea or coffee as well as for lunch alongside a salad of tomato, onions, parsley, lime juice/vinegar, and a Benny packet (powered chicken stock and a primary Mozzie seasoning). My favorite appetizers/snacks are rissois (small croquettes): enclosed pastry rolled in breadcrumbs filled with cooked onions, beef, chicken or shrimp then baked or deep fried. Mozambicans have also adopted samosas into their cuisine and usually eat them stuffed inside of a Portuguese baguette. On the sweeter side there are delicious pastries filled with jams and puddings.

There are a growing number of European, Chinese, Middle Eastern and South Asian restaurants to meet the needs of not just those populations that have migrated to African countries but the increasingly globalized taste buds of nationals themselves. I probably have eaten the most authentic Indian and Chinese food I will ever eat outside of those countries right here on the African continent—and my belief in their authenticity was often proved by the menu,for example, mostly being in Chinese with dubious English translations like “Hairy Egg of the Duck”; “Ants Crawling Up Tree” ; “So Nice Sticky Bun.” Some of the best pizza and pasta I’ve eaten has also been in Africa-----actual homemade pizza crusts and pastas with fillings of fresh herbs, meats and tomato sauce.

But definitely, being part of a community of expats has been a great opportunity for me to learn about other cuisines. I’ve eaten French style beef “the way it should be eaten: nicely bloody” and fresh baked fruit tarts served by French acquaintances; delicious Brazilian banana bakes and the best German potato salad I’ve ever eaten by office colleagues; Louie, a former Peace Corps volunteer introduced me to Filipino beef stew with peanut sauce and my girl SarahWim welcomed me to the wonderful world of Sri Lankan curries. I’ve done my best to share Guyanese dishes like peas and rice (cooked in coconut milk), our style of curries, mettagee (coconut milk, salt-fish, provisions), and cooking my stews with a sort of molasses made from the cassava root called cassareep. I’ve also tried sharing with my host friends and family American favorites like fried chicken, mashed potatoes, mac n’cheese and pumpkin pie---all super hits my house: “comida Americana e doce!”

Of course, this post was inspired by a favorite American holiday, Thanksgiving. I cooked a Thanksgiving dinner once as a Peace Corps volunteer and my host family just stared at all the food on the table and asked “Why do you need to eat so much food?” So I casually mentioned the holiday to B a month ago to see if I would get the same reaction and if it would be something we could do. He looked at me for a moment and then responded “We are AF-RI-CANS. We can eat. If you cook a Thanksgiving dinner here, folks will want you to cook a Thanksgiving dinner every month and then they will never leave our house.” So. We’re holding out for the next time we are back States side.
I wish you all love and peace on this special day of grace and gratefulness! I hope you all are enjoying your Thanksgiving!