Food in Other Places, or the Tanzanian Hamburger
Since a typical bus journey began at 5:30 am with a hastily consumed breakfast of oatmeal or a banana in the dark before setting off to the bus stand, usually in the pouring rain, the first bus meal was always greatly anticipated. Unfortunately, it more often than not consisted of a pack of biscuits or a few grilled bananas sold from a grill on the side of the road (the green kind, served with pilipili and salt—not life changing, but better than nothing). Travel was a constant disappointment in this fashion: things weren’t bad, necessarily, but they sure could be one hell of a lot better. I was careful not to over-hydrate lest I had to use the facilities (read: wander to the side of the road and urinate nonchalantly), since I’d heard many stories of people running off into the underbrush to relieve themselves only to return to find the bus a few hundred yards down the road and gaining speed. I preferred to keep my seat, if I was lucky enough to have one, and risk with a broad smile any resulting sepsis or dehydration.
The best part about bus trips was that the destination city, as long as it was not Mahenge, promised ascending degrees culinary delights the further away I got. In Ifakara, the town across the Kilombero River, sat a small grocery store that stocked goods that no self-respecting African person would ever consume: artisanal breads; the kind of fancy multi-seeded crackers your grandmother might serve on Christmas eve; Pringles and other salty snacks with brand names I had actually heard of; a host of decadent chocolate bars, cakes, and cookies; real honest-to-goodness Italian olive oil; a cornucopia of sour and multicolored sugary candies; wine that was not made down the road, and, yes, cheese. It was what every volunteer craved more than anything else. And it was good, Swiss dairy-milk cheese.
The shop was clearly marketed toward whatever population of foreigners congregated in Ifakara, which was, as far as I knew, limited to the doctors and staff at the health clinic, volunteers like myself and my friends, and any foreign person who might have stumbled into town and had a thirst for a Slavic Cabernet and a hunk of smelly cheese. I only set foot in this store once, on the weekend of my birthday, during which time I stocked up on provisions for a small feast with my friends consisting of red wine made from actual grapes (I think it was from Croatia, which is not known for its oenological prowess, but no matter, it was strong), some kind of heavenly cheese, French bread (or let’s call it “French-inspired,” since I doubt it this grocery store employed its own resident boulanger), pretzels, several types of artificially yellow cheesy crackers, and chocolate cream cookies. I almost ended up falling in the empty swimming pool later that evening, so one can assume that it was an occasion to remember (if one had any memory of it, which I did not).
Past Ifakara, the next stop on the typical bus journey, the much larger city of Morogoro, boasted a similarly stocked white-people grocery store, as well as a sprawling city center containing hotels, guesthouses, and tea shops. It also had the usual array of small bars and restaurants like those in Mahenge, the sort that kill the chickens in front instead of discreetly in the back, and serve the beers warm and cheap.
On a journey back from Dar es Salaam, en route to Mahenge and its gastronomic deprivations, I decided to treat myself and dine at my hotel, which was rather large and fancy, though its proximity to the sprawling bus stand did little to increase its charm. My room had an actual wall-mounted television that got three international stations, promising an entertaining night of rugby, cricket, and news stories about places I’d never heard of, an ancient remote-controlled air-conditioning unit, and a balcony the size of a windowsill—in fact, I think it was a windowsill—with a beautiful view of the golden sun setting behind the distant Uluguru mountains. This spectacular panorama, for Morogoro sits in a particularly verdant and appealing corner of the region, was tempered in the foreground by my personal bird’s-eye view of hundreds of idling buses belching diesel fumes into the pristine African sky.
The dining room was in the basement, below the lobby, down a staircase that looked as if it led to some kind of detention facility. This should have been my first clue that what followed was not going to be luxurious. The room itself, sparsely decorated with fake flowers and hanging paper decorations reminiscent of a low-budget New Year’s Eve party, was arrayed with large, banquet-style round tables set for eight people, only a few of which were populated with businessmen (I guessed, since they were wearing suits) and one priest.
I chose a spot as far away from everyone as I could get while still being polite and waited with my hands in my lap (no smart phone to divert me, remember, no Facebook or Instagram or Snapchat—it’s amazing the mental weirdness that transpires when one is left with one’s own undivided attention) until my waitress, or the waitress, since there was just the one, appeared. She silently handed me a plastic-covered menu and strode off. After a few minutes spent weighing the options for my last meal in civilized society for a period of unknown months, I chose chicken curry with vegetables and rice. A conservative choice, but it sounded hearty and comforting. When the waitress reappeared empty-handed from the kitchen a quarter-hour later, a nearly inaudible sigh of disappointment rose from the other diners. Clearly, they had been neglected longer than I had. I hadn’t noticed until that point that the table in front of each of them was curiously empty. This did not bode well. “I’ll have the chicken curry with rice, please. Naomba chicken curry.” “Wali?” “Yes, please, with rice.” “We don’t have chicken curry. Choose again.” “You don’t have chicken curry or you don’t have rice?” “No chicken curry or rice. Choose again.” Never in my life have I witnessed or heard tell of a Tanzanian dining establishment that did not have a steaming pot of rice on the fire or the stove. It would be like McDonald’s not having French fries, or Ed Sheeran not having bad tattoos. It’s just what they do. Flustered and hoping not to annoy her to the point of disappearing again, I took another minute to review the menu. I turned it over multiple times to buy myself a few frantic seconds with the manner of someone who was dutifully prepared with the answer to a question but is struck by a momentary bout of amnesia. (Have you ever noticed that you instantly forget what you want to order when the server appears, even if you’ve spent the previous fifteen minutes memorizing the name of the meal?) Then, I saw it, and despite every atom in my body warning me against it, I said it before I could stop myself: “May I have a hamburger, please?” “Hamburger?” “Yes, please. Preferably with a bun. Mkate (bread).” I made a circular gesture with my hand. She moved her head slightly in a way that might have signaled acceptance of my order, or was perhaps it a sign to a henchman lurking in the corner to kill me that night as I slept, and strode off, disappearing once again into the kitchen. The problem with ordering a hamburger anywhere in the world outside the United States of America (and perhaps Canada, since they’re doing passably well up there) is that it will inevitably disappoint you. If you are in the appropriate state to order a hamburger—that is, human and hungry—you want it to be the biggest, juiciest, thickest (and other adjectives of a slightly salacious bent) hamburger ever created, then stacked with every topping available within a three-block radius. It’s just the proper method. I once ate a hamburger with peanut butter, hot dog pieces, blueberry barbeque sauce, and a fried egg on top, so don’t fuck with me on this.
Needless to say, my hamburger, when it arrived seven hours later after I’d begun gnawing hopefully on a corner of the plastic tablecloth, was not big, juicy, or thick. It was a hamburger, according to the definition of the word, but it lacked entirely the spirit of the endeavor. A grayish meat patty sat on a flat, rigid bun of questionable provenance (the cook probably found it abandoned on a bus seat) accompanied by a few thin, stringy slices of yellowish tomato and a limp lettuce leaf. I might have invented the lettuce leaf, actually—I’m not sure if it was actually there. Memory is a funny thing. Thankfully, the dish came with chips—a good French fry only enhances the glory of the burger it accompanies—but these were cold, chewy, and completely uninspiring. For condiments, my choices consisted of ketchup, which was actually a sweet red sauce made (I would guess) with refuse cooking oil, red dye, and a trace amount of real tomato, or a stack of paper napkins. I opted for the napkins for their protein content and dug in.
By that point in the evening, I was the only one left in the dining room and the cleaning crew was waiting to close up for the night. It was 7:45 pm. “It’s not my fault your guys can’t make a decent hamburger in under half a day,” I thought, then immediately felt guilty, for these people just wanted to clean up and go home. Hunger makes a monster out of a man. I consumed the whole thing in exactly six minutes and immediately wished for another, despite its general lack of taste or appeal, if only to line my stomach a bit further with food that someone else cooked. The waitress appeared smiling with the check as soon as I’d set my napkin down on the table, apparently now finished with the duties that had detained her for the bulk of the evening. “Where was that smile earlier?” I thought to myself, and immediately felt guilty again. She probably had an hour-long daladala ride to get back to a house that she shared with seven other people, and I could look forward to spending the night alone in an air-conditioned room, with breaks to observe the stars from my windowsill balcony, and trying to decipher whatever the fuck actually happens in a rugby match.
