No Thanks, I’m Full
Tanzania
“This is going to be great“, I thought, grinning to myself as I cheerfully chopped up onions, mushrooms and green peppers. What better way to repay our adoptive family’s kindness than with a typical Canadian meal of spaghetti and garlic bread?
“Ummmmm, Steph?” The urgency in Anne’s voice made me lift my head quickly, and I narrowly missed my thumb with the cleaver. “The tomato sauce? Ummm, it seems to be…well…ketchup.”
We looked at each other. We looked at the pot. We looked at each other again. Perhaps this wouldn’t be the best way to thank our friends after all…
We had arrived in Morogoro four days earlier, dusty, sweaty and tired, our behinds aching from the long and bumpy bus ride. Morogoro is a cheerful and bustling town nestled in the mountains of central Tanzania, but Anne and I were unable to fully appreciate it that first afternoon. We had shouldered our packs, and staggered around town for about half an hour, searching for a guesthouse that no longer existed. Morogoro is not a big place, and we kept wandering down the same red streets over and over, much to the amusement of the men sitting outside the shops. Finally, we were approached by a man with sympathy in his eyes. “Are you lost?” he asked with a grin. We laughed and nodded, and shook hands with the man who had saved us from yet another fruitless circuit through the town.
Joe, feeling sorry for the two Canadian girls so far from home, insisted on having us join his family for supper. We accepted, and feasted that night on fish, tomatoes and fresh fruit with the happy and friendly family. What began as a supper invitation stretched into a five-day stay. Crouched on the kitchen floor, Mama taught us how to cook ugali and sing gospel songs in kiSwahili. Miri and Ed, the children, read for us in English and fired questions at us. Irene, who lived next door, giggled as she taught us how to tie head wraps. Everything was perfect.
Wanting to show our gratitude for their generosity and kindness, Anne and I decided to cook a typical “Canadian meal” for our adoptive family. Because we could never pass for gourmet chefs, we decided to stick with what we knew, and make spaghetti. We went to the local market with Joe, who introduced us to everyone he knew and announced that he would be eating Canadian food that night.
Which brings us to the ketchup. In Tanzania, “tomato sauce” is ketchup. Very sweet ketchup. By the time we had spooned the sticky paste into a black iron pot, it was too late to make something else for supper. We ran around the kitchen, searching desperately for spices, but the only spice in the pantry was ginger. We thought that it couldn’t hurt. We were wrong. Now the sauce tasted of sweet ketchup with a zing of ginger.
As we watched the pot of ketchup and vegetables bubble merrily on the stove, we consoled ourselves with the thought of the garlic bread, which was already buttered and waiting to be placed in the oven. That’s when Joe decided that he wanted to help, and he popped the plate of bread in the oven. Within seconds the sweet smell of boiling ketchup was joined by nauseating fumes. Anne gasped, and pulled a half-melted plastic plate out of the oven. “What happened?”, asked Joe, completely mystified.
We salvaged what we could of the bread, and considered the steaming mess that was waiting on the counter. It was a sad sight indeed: a large bowl of limp cooked noodles, a pot of the brightest, reddest spaghetti sauce I’d ever seen, and a half loaf of not-quite-warm and not-quite-safe-to-eat garlic bread. Anne and I looked at each other, and silently contemplated whether we should laugh, cry, or run away and never come back again.
We took a deep breath, squared our shoulders, picked up the dishes, and walked out into the dining area. Sitting there were twelve dinner guests, all of them eager to taste this exotic fare. We cringed as they looked at the food and then at each other. Joe bravely spooned some spaghetti into his dish. “Mmmm!”, he announced. “It’s…good”. Slowly, one by one, the guests served themselves and attempted to make conversation.
“This is what you eat in Canada?”
“It’s very different”
“No thank you, I’m full”
Anne and I winced and tried to explain what had happened, insisting that it was nothing like the meal we had intended to cook. The guests protested politely, insisting rather weakly that everything was absolutely delicious. When Anne and I were finally able to stop flinching, we burst into laughter and laughed until tears poured down our faces. Only then did our friends, one at a time, start to giggle and tell the truth: “I am so happy to know that you don’t eat this food at home!” Only the loyal and gallant Joe held his ground; he spooned out a generous second helping, all the while maintaining that everything was just fine.
Although we’d planned to leave the next day, Joe and Mama insisted that we stay for at least one more night. We ate delicious Swahili food: chapati, ugali, fish, mangoes. Every night, Anne and I would grin and offer to cook. And every night, our offer was met with a mixture of alarm and amusement. When we finally left, we were sent off with hugs and tears, smiles and exuberant waves, and promises that we would meet again one day.
Now that I am home in Canada, where everything on the grocery store shelves is familiar and exactly what I expect it to be, I miss the strangeness of Tanzania. I miss the constant surprises and unexpected twists. I miss the smell of the meat market, the cheerful sound of kiSwahili chatter, and the crunch of the red dirt roads beneath my feet. And more than anything, I miss the friends that I made, and the people who took me in and made me one of their own. Just yesterday I received a letter from Joe. It was signed “your family always who love you”.
I don’t know if I will ever sit at the table with my friends again, laughing and sharing stories. I like to think that I will, but Tanzania is very far away, and I simply don’t know when I will find myself there again. But I do know that my experiences in Morogoro will guide me in other situations. I won’t be afraid to meet people, and to allow them to get to know me. I will be open to new experiences. If I get lost, I will allow myself to be rescued by a friend. And most importantly, before I cook spaghetti sauce I will make sure that I’m not using ketchup, and I will never let a man named Joe help with the garlic bread.
About the Author
The travel bug bit Stephanie Lemieux at the tender age of two, during one of many family road trips. Since then, she’s studied in Brazil, fallen in love with Scotland, backpacked through Eastern Africa and worked for a non-profit organization in South Africa. She’s also travelled extensively in the US and in Canada, where there is – as her sister so eloquently put it – “a whole lot of damn trees”.
