My coffee mate

Thus far in my experience of Tanzanian culture I’ve noticed a tendency to strive for sameness (not to be taken negatively).

Let me explain.

The staples of the Tanzanian diet are fish, rice, ugali (a thick cornflour paste), mchicha (spinach), pilau (spiced rice with meat), maharage (beans), and various other dishes and side dishes. When visiting different restaurants you tend to find the same dishes, prepared the same way. My limited exposure leads me to believe that a good cook is one who can prepare the staple foods in the way that everyone expects and loves. Deviating from the ‘proper’ way to prepare those foods is considered poor cooking.

That somewhat contrasts with my own culture, which always strives to put a personal, new, creative twist on everything – ’secret family recipe’ and ‘our own unique sauce’ are phrases that come to mind.

Here, tea and coffee are drunk the same way by just about everyone – tea with milk and lots of sugar, and instant coffee with lots of sugar.

One day I took my little Italian espresso maker to the office so that I could make myself some ‘real’ coffee with some Starbucks French Roast beans that I brought out. While I was in the store room making a shot of liquid gold, Mama Richard, the Tanzanian lady who cleans the office and prepares morning tea, came in and asked what the smell was. I said it was coffee, but she didn’t understand how that could be coffee since it smelled so different from the old brown powder you find in small tins, lovingly known as Africafe. I explained to her the difference between instant coffee and real coffee – that real coffee came from coffee plant beans which you ground up, but instant coffee came from the dried soluble leftovers of preboiled coffee. She said it smelled wonderful, so I asked her if she wanted to try it. I was pretty skeptical, since even in Australia/America very strong black coffee is a fairly acquired taste.

Well, she loved it. She said she never knew that that’s what coffee was supposed to taste like, and she’d never liked coffee before since she’d only tried instant coffee.

I showed her how to use the Italian espresso maker, and now she brings me fresh coffee in the morning and afternoon. To return the favour, I let her make herself a cup whenever she makes me one. It’s a pretty ideal situation, and I still get a kick out of it when I think that the Tanzanian cleaning lady at our office was a coffee connoisseur waiting to be introduced to coffee. None of the other Tanzanians in the office will dare try it without at least 3 or 4 spoons of sugar, and Mama Richard is simply adamant that they not  ‘ruin’ good coffee, so she won’t make it for them.

I wonder what other kinds of aficionados are here, waiting to be discovered.

I’m not sharing my M&Ms though.

Mama Richard