Bean Salad

On the average night that Chani and I haven’t arranged for someone to prepare us a meal, haven’t done grocery shopping to cook (this only happened once or twice so far) and we haven’t been invited by anyone, we fend for ourselves in Ogo farm. Since we’re watching our pennies we’ve adopted our local friend’s habit of the road side delicacy: bean salad. There are 2 places up in Ogo farm to eat your heart out and they’re run by brothers. One was known among some as the ‘dusty restaurant’ as both food and you sit outside catching all the dust from the main road onto your plate and into your mouth. The other place is slightly more expensive (less than 20 eurocents more per meal) but you get to sit inside at a table (no (dusty) breeze). Since there is currently a lot of construction going on, the dusty place has had to move back from the initial road but will still be very close to the road once all construction has completed. Soon the Freetown peninsula will have a ‘ring-road’: a high-quality highway all around the peninsula. Those that were living right next to the road have been paid to resettle elsewhere (usually that means 10 meters back).
So we go for the ‘restaurant’ version rather than the dusty snackbar. Our restaurant cooks big pots of spaghetti, beans and hard boiled eggs. Your plate is 50/50 beans and spaghetti, a chopped hard boiled egg on top, garnished with a spoon of mayonnaise and sprayed with ketchup. You get a white bread roll on top of that. First thing I do is spoon the mayonnaise to my neighbour, last thing I do is pass the leftovers on to a kid. What goes on in between....is rather unsophisticated. You’re supposed to stir everything in together and plop large portions on pieces of bread (your spoon). Writing this I realise the meal sounds much worse than it is. I love it actually. Not so much the feeling and smells you produce after (beans and egg, fatal combination) as it is a heavy meal. Anyway, we get this for Le3000 (Le52000 is 1 euro). Tea is 700 or 1000 depending on milk and sugar. And boy do they add sugar. The standard question for tea is “4 spoons ok?” We always sit in the ramshackle counting our blessings until the sweat kicks in. Our friends usually break out in a dripping sweat 3 minutes after finishing and have to stand outside. Chani and I last a little longer but we do start shining after a couple of minutes.
The place we sit is always busy. There’s electricity, benches, a table and people can buy (warm) soft drinks, cigarettes, bread, candy. The usual roadside joys. When you look up you see the ceiling (wood and tin) covered in spider webs. Red, dusty spiderwebs. So far none have dropped into our plates. There are a couple of macro sized mayonnaise tubs on the table filled with water. There’s 1 cup for all customers to share. So if you have a cold, you will never have to feel alone. Just have a drink in a public place and you’ll soon be able to whinge in good company.
Africa is famous for red dust and I always cringe when I read books about Africa that start by describing the red dustiness of it all. Unfortunately it has to be mentioned! It leaves a flip-flop dust patterns on your feet or leaves your shoes orange for eternity, you need to scrub yourself to get remotely clean (don’t think you’ve got a tan till you’ve scrubbed yourself properly!), you need to choose between circulating air (AC) in the car and stay clean with a sore throat or open the window and get your free African layer of foundation all over. Dusty choices to be made every single day. I even get warnings walking on the road at night: “watch the dust!” I wonder how I could possibly avoid it, or perhaps it really means ‘watch the dust (flying up...?)’
Sometimes, if we’re lucky, the ice cream wheelchair/pram passes by. Guys push different kinds of makeshift trolleys around carrying boxes with little bags filled with yoghurt ice cream. These guys also drag their trolleys over the beach during weekends (when the place is crowded) and master any kind of landscape you can imagine with the old fashioned baby prams. Makes you wonder why people back home get the kind of mountainbike (almost 4 wheel drive) baby vehicles in a flat country like Holland...
Anyway, let's get back to the essence of it all: ice cream. These little bags are simply divine in their simplicity. If only they came in biodegradable packets...Since I'm working for EFA I'm very conscious of wrapping and trashing and consequently behaving like a right old tart telling everyone off when they drop their litter, forget to say please and thank you and pull up people's pants with the argument that God certainly does not appreciate having to look down into everyone's bum (everyone is either Christian or Muslim). Yes, I am going a little too far but these guys did actually learn how to behave in school and can laugh about it so for now it's just a good joke.
Ok. Focus. Ice cream. You bite the corner of a bag and suck out the banana flavoured frozen yoghurt. I always wonder where these people freeze their ice cream as I haven’t seen 1 functioning freezer in Sierra Leone except for in supermarkets. These Le500 bags of refreshment are definitely the best discovery so far. And I recently discovered that they come in different flavours! Although there's no affordable yoghurt to be found I console myself with the frozen version that will remain a mystery to me...frozen...means cold...means...HOW?! I'm dripping all day!