Another food tasting

As my friend and I have agreed, every second Saturday, when we work till noon, is the day when we're gonna eat something new.


This week's menu item was marmot. I was surprised to hear that not a lot of people know what marmot is, how it looks like and so on - like they've never watched Milka chocolate commercials ;)
Just like the other dishes here, this one is not eye-pleasing at all. But the meat is tasty, the texture resembles beef and is much stronger, given it's a wild animal. The smell is very strong - the most discouraging part of the dish. We ate it, drowned it in a couple of Guinness beers and survived African cuisine once again.

Just like the one in the commercial :) 

Funny story on our way back: We met a friend from other company in the bar were we were eating and went together to buy some pants at a nearby market. There we've bumped into a guy who's a bit crazy, demented, not completely well. He started talking nonsense, like he's a Tyson's teacher, he's Bruce Lee, he wants to go to California with us and so on. We went to our cars, with the intention on going back to camp, but he'd climbed at the back of our car and didn't want to climb down. We've tried speaking to him nicely, persuading him with arguments and kind words - it didn't work. Than we started shouting and yelling - didn't work. People were passing-by and were laughing at us cos they probably knew the guy and saw that he was giving us his usual "treatment". If we'd tried to physically remove him out of our car, he could have said that we molested him, beat him or something similar. We decided to drive one circle around the town in the other car, hoping he'd leave when we're not around - didn't work. Finally, we got in our car and went back to our camp. On a military road-block we've asked those persons to help us out and they forced the looney out of our car.  

All in all, an unusual day.

A dam

In the current week we haven't worked much - Tuesday was a president's birthday and Thursday's some religious holiday. We've used these days-off to relax, cook and drive around the country.


On Tuesday we cooked - a beef under the bell (govedina ispod sača). Improvised the whole thing to perfection. Spent the whole day outside, on the terrace, enjoying the sun and a music. Afterwards a movie and my battery was full. 

Colorful

I wanted to to do something different on Thursday, wanted to see something else. That day was my friend's birthday and he wanted to celebrate it on a field in a nearby village. He wanted to go out of the camp, to escape all those unwanted guests, so he invited just a few of us for a beer, a bbq and a cooked beans. I announced my arrival in the afternoon. 

For the morning I organized a little trip to a nearby river and a dam. It's about 70km from our camp so my Spanish friend and I had breakfast (specialty from El Salvador - fried platana and frijoles, his wife made it) and left the camp around 9am. We didn't have a map, only a story of a friend who was there 6 months ago - and six months here is a long period of time keeping in mind that the whole country in constantly building and the roads are changing all the time, so an adventure was ahead of us. 

After an hour drive we've reached a river. On the left-hand side was a wooden bridge and the mountains from which the river was coming. The river was so fast and the rocks looked sharp that if you fell in, you'd hardly survive. We've walked across the bridge, took a few photos and returned to our car from the other side of the bridge. 

Wooden bridge

On the right-hand side, some 500m from the spot where we parked the car, was a kind of a hydroelectric power plant. There were signs in Chinese and a workshop in that area. When we asked a guy who was exiting from there is that the dam, he said no. Given that not all Guineanos speak Spanish, and this guy looked like one of them, we decided to drive around and see for ourselves. And it was a small dam, really small. What a contrast it was - a still stream vs a wild river.

We've decided to take a stroll and see where the two connects. Oh, what a sight it was - on the left a raging cascades, a small waterfall, water splashing wildly and creating a mist and a foam, and on the right a steady stream of water coming from the dam.

It was spectacular. The power of nature always amaze me. We've enjoyed the view for a while but the hunger forced us to head back to the birthday celebration. An unpleasant surprise awaited - a battery of the car was dead, we couldn't start a car. But we were lucky, some Chinese workers were just returning from their job and one of them, who speaks Spanish, helped us get the cables and start our car. 


The rest of the day we've spent on one field, catching frisbee, preparing food and relaxing. 

Food tasting

This Saturday I went to Mongomo with my Spanish-Salvador friends. (These guys are a fantastic couple that work for a supervising company at our camp. They are my age and we spend a lot of time together - watching movies, jogging, preparing food. My Spanish benefits a lot from this friendship.) We wanted to visit a local markets.


The first one was oriented mostly on food. There's a variety of vegetables and fruits available at reasonable prices. You can also buy different types of dresses and other garments and jewelry for women. The atmosphere at the market is typical for this part of the world - loud African music, strong odors, people talking loud, bargaining...I love it.


On the other market is a wider selection of clothes, shoes, CD's. This one is not as live as the first one.


After finishing our market tour, we've decided to try some of the Guinean cuisine. Finally I've found a person crazy enough to do this with me. My Serbian friends here don't like to experiment with food - they stick with a traditional Serbian/USA food. We've found a restaurant ran by our friend's mom - couldn't just eat at a random place, cos we had to be sure we won't end up with a food poisoning. The menu was, hm, lets say interesting. We could choose from a mountain cat, a turtle, a pangolin (scaly anteater) and one type of fish. The first item on the menu seemed a bit too much for the first time and the fish was to "mainstream", so the two of us (the female part of a couple didn't want to participate in our feast) decided to share a portion of a turtle and a pangolin. 

  


The first dish was the pangolin. It looks strange, maybe frightening as you can still see dents where the scales were. You only live once - I took a first bite and it tasted good. It reassembles a rooster meat but more gamy. The meat was in a spicy, hot sauce, typical for Guinea as they love their food very spicy. The only past of the pangolin that I didn't like was it's skin - it's just too gummy. The story here is that the meat of pangolin is some sort of aphrodisiac, but I didn't notice the effect :)

Pangolin

The second course of the day, the turtle, was surprisingly good. The look of the plate was, of course, discouraging (feet still had claws on them and all that), but the taste surprised me in a positive way. It was more or less like a chicken - tender and dry, but good. In both dishes meat consists only of muscles and bones, no fat, so it's healthy.

Turtle

In the end, we've agreed that the turtle wins and that we'll return here some other day to try something else, maybe a crocodile or a snake.


A part of me feels like Bear Grylls.