What about the snack's then?

I’ve mentioned snacks before, and talked about the snack food available in Kinshasa. I made the point that each culture has it’s own snack food. I was wrong. There’s a town in the Congo, Likasi, which doesn’t even know what a snack is. OK, let’s exclude two things from this list – peanuts in their shells and maize: if that’s what you want for a snack you can get it, IF you go to the market. (Bananas – sorry, none.)

It’s a town with a population of about 420,000, in which you would expect quite a choice of eating places. Indeed many call themselves restaurants, but serve only basic things, and only in the evening. Eventually we find the only place which ostensibly serves lunch. We are given a neat menu, and ask for several things which turn out not to be available. OK, to save time, and because the waiter confirms that they have them, we choose simple things like chicken and chips. “How long will it take?” we ask, aware that we have a meeting in 1½ hours. “Oh, not long at all. We’ll start it straight away.” One hour later the waiter pops his head round the corner – “nearly ready”, he says. Forty minutes later the food arrives, not very hot, which makes one wonder what had been going on. Here’s my theory:

1. There’s no power in Likasi this particular day (a relatively normal phenonemon), so they have to cook on charcoal. That takes time to light and heat up.

2. Chicken and chips are on the menu, but not in the establishment. When they say “available” it means that they can go and buy it. So they send someone to the market to buy said items.

3. Someone has ordered the local staple – maize meal fufu. That takes almost 30 minutes to cook. However, since they only have one charcoal fire, they must first cook the chicken and chips, then cook the fufu, then try and warm up the chicken and chips.

Much the same had happened to us in Kalemie. There, they had no menu: “We only offer what’s fresh and available,” the waiter said, just like a top chef in Europe might do. Since we are on a massive lake, we order fish and chips. “That,” confirmed the waiter, “is definitely available. It’ll be ready in no time.” After an hour we call the waiter to ask what is happening. “Ah, you see,” he said, “ the cook has gone into town to buy what’s fresh and available. He’ll be back by 12.”

“That’s odd,” we point out, “it’s already 1.30.”

“Oh, really?” he says, “I thought it was about 11.”

The food came just over two hours after we had placed the order. Which brings me back to my original point – how come no snacks? Such as a sandwich, a burger, a pie, a kebab – or to spread the net a bit wider, a tortilla/chapati/wrap thing? Is it really necessary or desirable to go to such trouble when you could make some things quite quickly? And what we might call snack food is not necessarily less fun to eat – indeed it can be more fun.

Who knows? But I’ll say this for the Congo. Because everything takes so long to prepare, you know it is being cooked freshly for you. That’s something isn’t it? And you never hear of people getting food poisoning in spite of the apparently desperately unsanitary environments in which it is being cooked. So it’s not all bad.

Obviously I should be more adjustable. Talk of snacks is probably just another form of cultural imperialism.