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What Everyone Wants to Know

 

Food!

We will break from the narrative to address the three questions I get asked most frequently about my time in Gabon: what was a regular day like, what did you eat, and am I going back. 

I will answer the last question first: I would love to go back to the Mission. It hasn't worked out yet, but if the opportunity presents itself, I would be happy to take it. 

Bien! Moving on. 

A Day in the Life:

06h30: My alarm goes off. I get up, say my prayers, get dressed and washed up and hike 100 yards to the little chapel.

07h00: Meditation in the chapel

07h30: Mass (followed by Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament on Thursday)

08h00: Breakfast

09h00: French Class (death by grammar...)

10h00: Work: usually in the dispensary, but if there were no patients, I would see of there was anything to do in the kitchen. Once all the patients were gone or at 12h30, I would go help get ready for lunch.

13h00: Lunch

13h30: Siesta, personal time

17h00 on Wednesday: Choir Practice

18h00 on Thursday: Benediction

19h00 on Sunday, Monday, Thursday and Saturday: Aperitif

19h30: Dinner

After dinner (most days): Clean up, hang around and usually goof off until evening prayer. Movie (or professional soccer) on Fridays and some feasts/non-school nights (evening prayer was en privée those nights). 

Around 21h00 or so: Wash the Gabonese dirt off and to bed!

Saturdays were a little different (Mass was later, there was no French class and we had catechism at 4 p.m., plus the dispensary was closed so I would clean my room), and of course Sundays were entirely different. It was a very good schedule with plenty of time for everything. 

Now, what everyone really wants to know: FOOD!

I believe we ate better than the typical people living around us. We bought our meat in Libreville (kilos upon kilos at a time) and had ground beef or chicken (leg quarters, breast or chicken franks) for most meals. We also had fish (fresh and tinned), beans and eggs. We had mountains of rice, as well as pasta and couscous and occasionally, potatoes and yams (real yams, not sweet potatoes). We had vegetables, mostly from cans at first (peas and carrots, ratatouille, tomatoes, spinach), but later on the garden gave us fresh tomatoes, eggplant, okra, hot peppers and basil. The only thing I ate that I didn't like (except calabash, which is another story) was feuille de manioc, a green leaf that is simply too bitter. We had lots of dried herbs, spices, mayonnaise (with just about everything...) and Maggi (bullion cubes in one form, salty liquid MSG, sort of like soy sauce, in another).    

There were lots of fruits, which we would have as dessert: bananas, papaya, mangoes, watermelon, apples, oranges. We also had ice cream, yogurt, cakes (usually yellow cupcakes or apple cake, or fancier ones for birthdays) and crepes (the great joy of our very French Canon Sigros; if you've never had a crepe filled with Nutella, you have missed a great happiness). There were guavas to be had at will off the tree in February and March, dragonfruit after Mass on a couple occasions, and starfruit.

Dragonfruit


Starfruit

Guava

Home-grown bananas

Papaya

Fruits of the garden

Breakfast was fresh bread, butter, jam, coffee/hot chocolate and scrambled eggs-- until the price of eggs went up and our finances got a little tight. 

Waiting to be baked... 

A couple times, we had roasted palm pear for aperitif (flavor profile: indescribable cross between a potato and a lemon). Everyone's favorite, which we had on many occasions, was deep fried plantain chips.

Palm Pear

The gardener brought this load of plantains up to the kitchen in a wheelbarrow

But even that isn't what you really care about, is it? You wanted to know about this:

Yes, we ate it. As well as these:

Python

Owl (I never got to try that one, but I did have hawk)

Cobra

And of course, everyone asks if snake tastes like chicken. The answer is no. The python and the lizard (which we had twice) were very similar, with no strong flavor, but cooked in lots of seasoning and tomato sauce. I call it a cross between fish and pork in texture. The skin was mostly descaled and chewy (and delicious).

The cobra flesh was similar to the others, though it was cooked differently (lots of vegetables and greens) and the skin was much smoother. I learned that they recently had tortoise at the Mission, which is of course part of why I have to go back. 

Then there was "Nigerian Lunch Friday". I don't know how it got started, but our Nigerian postulant took to making lunch for us on Fridays. The seminary candidates (two Nigerians, a Beninoise and a Congolese) were thrilled; I was unwilling to pass up anything. The first one was fish and okra stew with fufu gari (gari is the raw material; fufu is the finished product. They called it both.):



The flavor wasn't bad, although the fufu (which is a dense, heavy ball of paste) has a rather strange sour undertone. 

Then there was moin-moin, or what the Gabonese call haricots blancs, white beans:




Does it look strange? Here's the recipe as it ended up in my journal:

  • 1 kilo haricots blancs [black-eyed peas]
  • huile (200 cL) [200 centiliters, or 8.5 cups, of oil, in this case, red palm oil]
  • 2 oignons [onions]
  • pimont (rouge ou verte) [red or green hot pepper]
  • sel, Maggi [salt and Maggi cube]
  • 0.5 kilo sechs crevettes [dried crawfish]
  • poisson, poulet ou oeufs cuisinés [cooked fish, chicken or eggs]  
     Soak beans until skins can be rubbed off; remove skins. Grind beans, onions and pimont together. Add salt, fish/chicken/eggs, Maggi and hot oil. Put mixture into bags and tie shut, or [put into] empty cans.
     Boil water in a large pot. If using cans, do not allow water to come beyond the top of the can. Boil until beans are softened-- if using bags, until bags begin to swell.
     Remove from water and cool. Serve.

In the event you decide to try making it, be forewarned that it is very dense; I wasn't able to eat an entire bag. It was actually pretty good, though, and I liked it more than I was anticipating. 

And there you have it: a day in the life, complete with culinary adventures!

The pictures used for the memes are from L'Aile ou La Cuisse, staring Louis de Funes. 

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