Beans, beignets, brochettes...foods of Cameroon and Gabon

First, a food picture we missed uploading from Nigeria. Who wouldn't like a little goat-head flavor in their soup?
OK, on to central Africa--Cameroon and Gabon! Andy and I ate in a restaurant on our first night in Cameroon, but then never again, and we were there for two weeks. There was just all this tasty street food to be had, and for so darn cheap, too!

All over Cameroon, you see these little purple fruits for sale (and when you're in rainforesty areas, you see them growing on the trees). Depending on who you talk to, they may be called African pears or plums. However, they have the consistency of an avocado and the taste of an olive, and have to be grilled before eating. (I liked them, Andy did not.) Thanks to Melissa and Jessica, the PCVs we met in Mamfe, for clueing us in about them.

OK, this is the magical trifecta of Cameroonian street food that was our dinner almost every night. Clockwise from the top, you have beignets (sweetish fried dough, 5 cents US per ball); sweet porridge (not sure what it's made of, probably a grain, definitely sugar, and maybe there's some juice or milk in it?) for 10 cents a bowl; and nicely spiced beans for 20 cents a bowl. So you see in front of you a delicious three-course, vegetarian meal for 50 cents. Order, eat, repeat.

This meal was often supplemented with Cameroonian suya, which is a bit different from the Nigerian version. In Cameroon, big hunks of fatty, pastrami-like beef are slow-cooked, then the guy slices it up for you. You always get a free sample before you decide to buy. (The best suya vendor in the country is in Bamenda, opposite Dreamland Restaurant, in case you are heading that way.) The amount you see here costs about $1.

Continuing our Ph.D. studies in fried-ball identification, Andy and I identify these balls as a cornmeal and banana mixture. Yum.
We also found real live French fries on the street in Bamenda. You don't often see fried potatoes, more often plantains, yucca, or beignets, so these were a treat.
Rats, I don't remember the name of this Cameroonian dish, but it's made of a spinach-like green leaf, some smoked fish, and a lot of palm oil. Served with a big long piece of fufu (grab piece with hand, roll into ball, dip in veggie goop, eat). I think that 14-year-old Tara, who hated spinach, fish, and getting her hands greasy, would be really proud of 30-year-old Tara, who not only ate this whole thing, but enjoyed it! Another reason to like Cameroon--they make yogurt. My favorite of the industrial variety was this little cup, though I liked the apricot better than the fruit cocktail flavor.
A popular side dish in Cameroon is the baton, or stick, of steamed manioc in a banana leaf. Not much taste, but it sure is long. 10 cents.
We discovered these yummy cardamom sandwich cookies from India in a shop in Limbe. We look forward to eating more of them in India.

Ahhh, the Limbe fish grills. They've got the catch of the day all out on tables, you go point to what you want,and they bring it to you. Thanks to Andrea, another PCV in Cameroon, I knew to look out for the calamari on a stick (right), and it was out-of-this-world amazing. I had to come back the next night for three more. The grilled plantain was also incredible, and the giant prawn that I mistook for a lobster because I am dumb about fish was not bad, either.

Beers in Africa only seem to come in giant size, which is about three times the ideal Tara-size, but somehow I manage.
Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon, is filled with great patisseries. Our favorites were Patisserie Selecte and Calafata's, and we visited both daily. Here is Andy enjoying a "beignet Americain" (what exactly makes it American we're not sure, but it was filled with jam and tasty) at Selecte.
A popular bus snack--raw coconut. A little monotonous after a few bites, but filling.

Beans and beignets from my favorite street vendor in Yaounde. She made mini-beignets that cost 2 cents apiece, and you had your choice of wheat-flour or corn-flour/banana. Andy and I usually got a combo of five of each type to supplement our beans.
Backstory: Almost a year ago, in French Guyana, we stayed with some terrific Italians, Manuela and Max. When they brought out glasses of water, they also brought a bottle of Italian mint syrup. This was a revelation to Andy, who immediately fell in love with the minty water. Since then, we have seen this mint syrup for sale in so many countries, and it is usually not even expensive, but it comes in a giant glass bottle, so we've never bought any while traveling.

Suddenly, in a supermarket in Yaounde of all places, Andy comes across a small, plastic bottle of mint syrup for $1.50. He was so excited to finally possess the syrup of his dreams!

We barely made it out to the parking lot before he had to mint up one of his Nalgenes.
My prefered beverage in Yaounde was yogurt on the street. Guys with pushcarts that store large bottles of fresh vanilla yogurt pour you a little cup for 2o cents.

Here's one such cart. I call it the MYU (mobile yogurt unit).
Snack time: A sachet of drinkable yogurt for me and a cheap knockoff Bounty bar for Andy from a gas station in Yaounde.

At another gas station, this time in the beach town of Kribi, we tried a Cameroon-made fruity soy drink (it was OK) and were really excited to find strawberry tortinha cookies all the way from Brazil! No idea how they ended up there, but we loved them in Brazil and they were cheap, so we loaded up.

The other cookies we bought in Kribi were chocolate sandwich cookies from Tunisia that had these happy faces on them. How could eating one not make you happy?

On to Gabon! Gabon has an expensive reputation, so we didn't know if we'd be able to find cheap street food there, but we didn't have all that much trouble. For our first dinner in the country, in Oyem not far from the border, we got suya and delicious fried plantains for about $1.50. We also learned that in Gabon, people like to slather mayonnaise on everything.

In Lope, the small Gabonese village near a national park where we stayed for a few days, we had to break our no-restaurant streak because there just wasn't street food (maybe since there are no real streets?). Here's the chicken in "local chocolate sauce" that didn't really taste like chocolate and steamed plantains we found at a little restaurant.
I had a beer in Lope and learned that Gabonese Regab comes in bottles just as giant as Cameroonian Castel! I swear these are the only two beers I had in three weeks...

These little wild guavas grow in Lope National Park. Elephants like to eat them, but they taste good to people, too! Andy and I decided that since we didn't see as many elephants as we'd hoped that we would steal all their food.
D'jino is a popular brand of soda in Cameroon and Gabon. Their most common flavor seems to be pamplemousse (grapefruit), but we found a bottle of pineapple and it was very refreshing after a long day in the park.
At the Casino supermarket in Gabon's capital, Libreville, Andy and I each got a treat. For Andy, white chocolate with coconut pieces; for me, a mini yogurt with cous cous in it called Doudou. Both were very nice.
Favorite Gabonese breakfast: baguette with tasty beans and, of course, mayonnaise. Costs around 50 cents.
I can't tell you how long I have been craving a hamburger. I finally got one in Libreville, at a little fast-food joint called Kass'Kroute in a mini-mall, and it was amazing! Note that fries are served with ketchup and, of course, mayo as well.
Yoplait has a factory in Gabon and produces some cheap yogurts here. My favorite is the "fruits exotiques" flavor.
For our one-year anniversary (happy anniversary!), Andy and I went to an Italian restaurant on the docks in Libreville and both had gnocchi. His had a nice meat sauce and mine had a rather salty pesto, so he was a gentleman and swapped me half and half. Good times.

We had some free time in Libreville, so we went to a cafe where I could do a little work on my novel over an overpriced hot chocolate ($3). Better deal than the cafe in Yaounde, though, where I paid $4! The price of creativity...

Our lunch on the street yesterday in Libreville. Chicken grilled on a stick, loads of fried plantains, and of course, mayo!
We had dinner last night with a lovely new friend named Sarah who works at the American School. She took us to a great place with tasty brochettes (meat on a stick) and sides, and that is also where I had my first ever Orangina--a drink that seems to be popular, or at least heavily advertised, in this country. I loved it! Up there with lemon Fanta, and much more natural-tasting than nasty orange Fanta...

Here's Andy's dinner--chicken and beef brochettes, rice, and a side of aloko (fried plantains). Yum yum yum.
All right, that should wrap up foods of central Africa. Good stuff. I could eat Cameroonian beans and beignets every day (and did!), and Gabon also came through with some very tasty meals and snacks. We are supposed to cook an American-style meal tonight for our couchsurfing host (we're going to attempt chili), so maybe we'll post a snap of that in our next food entry...which should be foods of Madagascar! Yup, we fly out tonight at midnight to the land of the lemur. Can't wait.

Our camera goes to Cameroon

Our entrance to Cameroon (Cameroun if you are French speaking) was relatively straight-forward: take a shared taxi down a bad road to the border town, walk across the border, take a taxi down an even worse road to our destination for the day. The woman at the Cameroon crossing made the saddest attempt ever to collect a bribe when she said to Tara: "Looks like those mosquitoes have bitten you a lot. For a small bribe, I could make that stop." In the meantime, she was processing our papers with efficiency, so maybe she was just joking. Then again, this was Cameroon, where nearly all the local police are corrupt...

Now, to the pictures. In the North of Cameroon, we went to the area called Ring Road, which is a bit of misnomer since it has probably been at least 10 years since the road actually went in a complete ring. We got a driver for the day, which wasn't much more than unreliable public transport, and were off to see the famed waterfalls near Wa. The area is all very green grasslands. Here is a picture from the road.

Our driver had driven between cities many times, but had never actually stopped at any tourist spots, so he got to see some new places. It meant that when we got close, he would have to start asking locals where to go. In this case, he paid some woman with three small kids to get in the car with us and show us the way. Funny since you walk 10 feet off the road and then see the huge overlook and falls.

Much of the area is used for farming, with the lowest, wettest parts of the valley used for growing rice during wet season. Some of the valleys are just overrun with beautiful grass, though. This valley had a mix of both.

After the Falls, our next stop was palace of the Fon of Bali. A Fon is basically a king with additional magical powers. Namely, he can become any animal he wants, can send magical forces to fight or kill others, and is nearly omnipotent (though not omniscient). He has dozens of wives, and inherits the wives of his father, though his mother becomes essentially the queen if alive rather than a wife of her son... They wouldn't let us take pictures in the palace, but it was really more like 100 huts for all the wives surrounded by a wall. Outside was this "talking drum", which is used even today to send messages over long distances to neighboring villages, which can then retransmit them as needed. Much like telegraph operators.

Our taxi driver liked us so much (or was fishing for a tip) that he took us to a lovely lookout over Bamenda, the city where we were staying. Here we are with the city in the background. The sun is bright--thus my squintiness. After this, he also took us to meet his sons and see his house. Like so many places in the world, he lived in a tiny, two-room, cinder block house, but somehow can afford satellite television.

As it turned out, the taxi driver told us that it was Independence Day. The 50th, in fact. We missed some of the pageantry while at the Falls, but did catch the fireworks that night.

Next, we made our way to Limbe, a beach city on the coast. We had thought about hiking Mt. Cameroon, but it was rainy and we weren't really up to a multi-day hike. In a moment of sunshine, we visited the local zoo, which is run by the Pandrillus organization that we visited in Nigeria. They do a good job. Here is a mandrill, which is doesn't look like we will see in nature. Looks like a drill with more color.

The tourism office in Limbe is called the Fako Tourism Office. Would you use the Fako office to book your travels? We might have had they actually been open.

While visiting the botanical gardens, where we refused to pay extra to take pictures, I managed to discreetly take a picture of this lovely bird. Can't tell you what it might be, so we'll call it a robin redbreast. Hey, it definitely has a red breast.

The coast of Limbe looks out towards Equatorial Guinea. I had dreams of visiting, but these dreams were quashed when we discovered that the National Park has been closed and that having a map in the country can land you in jail.

In Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon, and a nice city other than that it was without running water for the entire time that we were there, the Social Security building seems to have cancer. I take it to be a political statement about the cancer that Social Security is on the system.

Across from that building is the bank building with African themed murals covering it. Very interesting to look at, but we would have never trusted them enough to use the ATM there.

From Yaounde, we continued to Kribi, another beach town. They have a waterfall that they claim is the only waterfall to empty directly into the ocean. Unfortunately, it actually empties into a river several hundred feet from the ocean and we have been to other falls that do empty into the ocean, but a nice thought.

Cameroon is a bilingual country with part of the country speaking English, but most speaking French. This often leads to funny translations like this sign. We couldn't agree more, though we aren't really sure what a canker worm looks like.

From the Kribi Falls (called Lobe Falls), we took a boat ride to go to the local Pygmy village. I had been getting excited about seeing Pygmies for at least a month. Unfortunately, when we showed up, rather than being greeted by Munchkins with spears, we were greeted by some people about Tara's height who were really angry that our guide didn't bring them any cigarettes and wouldn't give them money because the chief was away. At one point, a guy did hold a spear threateningly at the throat of the guide. At this point, we had to run away, jumping in our boat as the guide pushed it offshore and started paddling quickly while looking back to see if they were following. Sadly, that meant no pictures, but it would not have been a good picture in any case.

We walked the 5 miles back from the waterfalls to our hotel along the beach. Most of it had nothing around and made for a pleasant swim.

From Kribi, we decided to go south to Campo-Ma'an National Park, where we would pay motorcycle drivers to drive us many hours across the park, from where we could get transport to Gabon. This was based on my conversations in Yaounde with the Communications Director for the park. Only later did we learn that Communications Director is really just a propaganda minister. We did convince two of the official park guide/motorcycle drivers that this was a good idea,though. The first day, we drove about 90 minutes to a eco-lodge, where they told us they had people all the time, only to confide that this meant at least once a month. On my night walk around the lodge, I found this praying mantis.

And this cicada.

And this gecko.

This is what the path looked like in good condition. Unfortunately, the torrential downfall that began shortly after this prevents me from showing you what the "trail" looked like when it consisted entirely of 8 foot tall weeds and no visible path. What to do but drive the motorcycles right at them? Tara and I cowered behind the drivers to avoid being hit in the face, but nothing could prevent the deluge from soaking us (and most of our stuff). After about 7 hours, we made it, having heard many animals, but seen only animal poop. Because of this, Tara now supports the burning of the rainforest.

In southern Cameroon, the police are very corrupt, with all the local police examining the smallest details of our documents looking for things that could create "fines". We never paid any, but it was a real pain. The national police at the border were very friendly, though, and spoke good English.

Cameroon was a very green country, and we generally enjoyed it. The people aren't quite as friendly as Nigeria, but were mostly nice. Kribi had nice beaches, and Yaounde was a lovely city. Worth the visit, and some people even speak English!

Nigeria's food: It's all about the suya

The food of Nigeria is good, but expensive. Street food is severly lacking, maybe because people demand higher standards of hygiene, because police shake-down roadside food salespeople, or for other reasons that we do not understand. In any case, we now present some food of Nigeria.

If we had to choose one contribution of Nigeria to the global food scene, it would be suya. Suya is thinly sliced beef, marinated, grilled, and cut into small, bite-size pieces. Most often it is served with onion and toothpicks for eating. This picture is not great, but is typical suya. This one is from a fancy bar, but our favorite suya vendor was an old Muslim man cooking it over a fire made of two-by-fours from a scrap heap. His was excellent.
Like most of the surrounding coutries, typical Nigerian food consists of a ball of starch and then a sauce. This one is called ebe, and we can't really tell you how it differs from most of the other similar things we have eaten. This sauce had some secret fish that they didn't tell us about, but was otherwise not bad.
While staying with Ashraf in Lagos (who was awesome), we explored his neighborhood and discovered a guy selling food down the road to construction workers and guards in the posh neighborhood. He was very happy to have us and we liked the beans and rice so much that we came back later for more. Unfortunately, we think that it made us sick, as our digestive systems were unhappy for a couple of days.
A popular maker of dairy products in Nigeria is Dudu. The name alone amuses me, but they also make some crazy products. Here is an aloe milk that Tara had. Pretty good, but a bit weird.
I also got a fruit cocktail milk, which was super sweet and, therefore, gets high marks from me. Tara made me hold her Hollandia blueberry yogurt, which I would never drink. She thought it was decent and it is shelf-stable, so no refridgeration needed.
Lagos had ice cream vendors on the street who make these tiny one-bite ice cream cones for about 7 cents. But the funny part is that the guy uses one of those tiny sample spoons to dip it out of a big box, so this cone is really like 50 scoops with his tiny spoon.
We have found some good meat pies in various former British places, but the "meat" pies of Nigeria did not stack up. The primary problem is that they never seemed to have meat. Sometimes flavored potatoes, sometimes macaroni (weird), but we must have bought five meat pies and not one had meat. I finally started asking people if their meat pies had meat, and most would just laugh.
While in Lagos, we went to a real, American-style barbecue complete with hamburgers, hotdogs, and chicken. Thanks to all of Ashraf's friends for making it a great experience! The hotdogs were especially good.
A pastor and his wife were very kind to us and shared a taxi. While waiting on a taxi, the woman bought these leaf steamed things and was kind enough to give us one. They are corn and taste like a decent corn mush.
Tara wasn't feeling great, so I bought her a Lucozade Boost, which I thought was like Gatorade, but is apparently more like Red Bull. It didn't help her.
Tara had one taste of a malt beverage and decided that she liked it. In this picture, she has bought one of her own along with a donut. She realized about 30 seconds after this that malted beverages (which taste mostly of molasses) are gross. But donuts are still good.
In Nigeria, FanIce is expensive and harder to find, but we found this knock-off ice cream for less. It probably didn't actually have any dairy in it, but it was not the worst frozen liquid that I have ever tasted.
Sometimes while in a taxi or bus, the taxi/bus slows down at a police roadblock, and you reach out the window and buy something that you don't know what it is from a woman who throws it at you while you throw money back at her. These turned out to be bean beignets with a slice of hot pepper on top. Not bad.
I was happy to find a liter of FanIce in the fancy supermarket when I was hungry one night. Unfortunately, it had separated and refrozen, which meant a crazy unsweetened Coolwhip-like stuff on the top layer and a sweet, icy layer on bottom. The last time that we buy a big thing of FanIce.
We then found a good softserve place in Calabar. The ice cream you see, it was about $1.50, which is expensive, but it was good. The funny thing is that we came back the next day and they guy said the price was now $2. We questioned it and he said that his boss decided that too many people were getting that size, so he raised the price. We then left without our day's ice cream.
While at Afi Mountain, we cooked for the first (and second) times in all of Africa. Not very exciting--pasta with chickpeas and onions--but we ate a pound of pasta between the two of us, so at least we had a lot of it.
Foods of Nigeria are now complete. We did not bring you any pictures from expensive restaurants because we did not eat in any expensive restaurants. Most food in Nigerian restaurants costs about the same as American restaurants for those who are curious. That was too much for our wallets.

Nigerian food definitely continues on the West African continuum, but by the time we got to southern Nigeria, there was starting to be less manioc/yam. That carries on through Cameroon. The meat on a stick changes a bit, but the grilled meat also starts becoming more popular.