Noodles and Black Bean Sauce
Well I’m hardly going to miss the opportunity to trot out another African tale am I?

Once you’ve got used to eating gristle African street food isn’t really that bad – boring maybe, but not really offensive, and in fact the area around Niamey seems to be a centre of culinary excellence where the salad stalls knock up fantastic egg salads with ace dressing.

Things got a little dodgy in the upper reaches of the French Congo as the meat came courtesy of the pygmies who would have to carry the carcasses though the bush for several days before selling it in Pokola market. The women who worked the big iron pots along the airstrip used to knock up some seriously high meat stews, and when you enquired as to the content of said stew the answer was always the same – “Viande de brusque” (bush meat). While there I saw, and probably ate, crocodile, elephant, a smoked monkey split vertically à la Damien Hurst, and a strange animal that I photographed in pieces that nobody has ever been able to identify:


One of the ladies was getting pissed off with the local scallys not paying her so one evening she spiked her pots with poison – she meant to make them sick as a punishment but a dozen people died and I learned about this when I asked about the lynch mob that had gathered around the local gendarmerie – I’m glad I wasn’t at her pots that night.


But the strangest meal of all was one I cooked myself in the Kalahari desert. I was on my own and had spent a hard day slogging up the Trans-Kalahari highway, and at dusk I turned off the deserted road to find a quiet spot for the night. As I didn’t have anything fresh too cook, and I was out of corned beef, I cracked open a bag of Chinese instant noodles and dumped the contents into the pot of water that I’d boiled on the open fire.

It’s always a good idea to show as little light as possible as you never know who might be lurking in the desert darkness, so I kept the fire small, and ate in the dark. It certainly wasn’t my finest culinary effort – the black bean sauce was tasteless and the black beans themselves were bitter and crunchy, so after eating about half the bowl I packed up the camp kitchen, stowed it in the back of the Land Rover (otherwise jackals and hyenas will chew right through your pots and pans) and retired to my roof tent to listen to the scavengers yapping away before dropping off into a deep tranquil sleep.

In the morning I opened the boot to make some coffee, and do my washing up. It turned out that the black beans were in fact small beetles that had been attracted by the water in my pot (they won’t see much water in the Kalhari so I guess they wanted to make the most of it). As it boiled they curled up and died, and then I scoffed them down with black bean sauce. Still, think of the protein.

Length? 18 months and 70,000km
(strongp, Thu 26 May 2011, 18:34, 7 replies)

Have you come to a conclusion
in your own head about what the animal might be? If it was in a different part of the world entirely I might say aardvark.
(muzzvsworld, Thu 26 May 2011, 19:13, closed)

pssst ... aardvarks live in africa

( Dr. Shambolic je suis charlie, Thu 26 May 2011, 19:33, closed)

Balls
So they do, in my defence they're not everywhere in Africa.

*runs off*
(muzzvsworld, Thu 26 May 2011, 19:44, closed)

Aardvark balls are probably delicious.

( Dr. Shambolic je suis charlie, Thu 26 May 2011, 19:59, closed)

I read a book about an aardvark once
He was called Aaron the aardvark, and ended up playing the xylophone at the zoo.

No, wait, that was a dictionary.

.
(moon monkey is busy making memories worth repressing, Fri 27 May 2011, 13:13, closed)

they do live in Africa, but not around that area - this is the closest I can find to them in head shape, though tye aren't hairly like these. I think these were more like some sort of tapir. I saw one hanging by the side of the road but couldn't stop to get a closer look - it was a very strange animal about 1.5m long. These two were probably the last breeding pair in the world.
(strongp, Fri 27 May 2011, 13:49, closed)

From the looks of that picture...
I think that is a black person. They are just like us.

Mystery solved, no need to thank me.
(The Kwyjibo A big, dumb, balding North American ape., Fri 27 May 2011, 15:46, closed)