Africa Notebook: Food and drink

When I got my vaccine doses, that I wrote about earlier, I also got a booklet of recommendations for safe travelling. Nothing very unusual, but the fact that I was travelling for business, and a quite expensive trip, made me a bit more careful than usual with food and drink. So few uncooked vegetables, or fruit that I did not peel myself. The following meals may be painful for vegetarians...

The first surprise arrived already in the plane. After years of no (free) meals in planes, British Airways offered a quite nice BLT tortilla roll on the flight to London, and a very decent spicy chicken curry as late dinner. Breakfast was standard airfare molded cardboard, but bacon and eggs are just not suitable for airplane reheating.

After minimum rest, a quick shower and a change of clothes (weather was so nice I had to pick summer clothes intended for Angola) most of the commercial trip gathered at The Bull Run, a restaurant close by. Quite informatively they tell you how many units they have served through the years of each dish, and how just now they were the most expensive ever. Meat clearly dominated the menu, and as we were in a nice outside terrace I tried the Bull Run Burger and the ubiquitous Castle beer. The beer does its job, barely, being a forgettable lager, but the burger was excellent, even crowded with jalapeños. Those same jalapeños guaranteed more beer, so I had a nice nap before a planned meeting (on a Sunday) and then joining our companions who had taken a taxi tour of Soweto and Jo'burg.

We had planned on walking further, but we wanted to go to bed early, as we had an early start at the embassy, so we returned to The Bull Run. A nice South African merlot, springbok carpaccio (undistinguishable to my palate from veal) and Namibian king prawn curry. The curry was better but much hotter than the one in the plane. The Amarula pudding for dessert was wonderful, though the coffee was weak and too long for me.

Breakfast buffet at the Sandton Hilton was good, though too skewed towards the salty, warm end of things (noodles? pizza?). I am more of a pastry and fruit start to the day.

We skipped lunch, too busy meeting people, so we were quite hungry for the early (for Spain) dinner. This time it was at Mandela square, Lekgotla. Much more exotic menu, but too widespread in scope. I had excellent squid (Senegalese this time) and a very good Ethiopian coffee marinated beef sirloin, with Kahlua sauce. I was tempted by the crocodile curry, but that would have been one curry too many. The dessert was not well chosen, a honey pastry with English cream, but the local red (Cabernet this time, from Capetown) was once again very good.

The following we also skipped lunch but as we finished a bit earlier we had time for some Italian cake and Chocomoka shake. Dinner was at The Baron, another meat place. They are righly proud of their aged beef. I had a skewer of rump meat, with creamed spinach and carrot puree, much better than it sounds. We drank quite a lot (and this time I remembered to note the name of the wine, Tall Horse, thanks to its funny label) as we were leaving in the morning, so much that we got invited to Irish Coffee for everyone. The coffee was once again weak but the whiskey made up for it.

Breakfast at 6 is not fun, so yoghourt and milk products to balance out the anti-malaria medication. Lunch was typical airfare (South African Airlines), brown cubes with gravy and sticky rice. After hours stuck in the Luandan traffic, not to mention the steamy heat, we stayed at the hotel terrace, with a nice sea breeze keeping mosquitoes away. The cod salad (Portuguese heritage) tempted me, but the health warnings intervened, so I got a steak with fried egg. The beer (Cuca) felt like water, but at least it was cheaper than bottled water.

Breakfast at the Continental was excellent, and I could not get enough of the fresh papaya juice, the giant pineapple and the almost bigger bananas. Some unusual breakfast fare as well, but closer to home, like chorizo and croquettes. 

This time we did have some time for lunch, in the middle of the Viana industrial area, so we went to the Terraço to get a Portuguese style hot meal that we paid on weight with US dollars. I had forgotten how well beans and rice feel in a hot weather (you have to try it) so I got a "feijoada" and another Portuguese specialty, cod with cream. The meal I enjoyed the most in Luanda. As we were working, no alcohol.

We had planned a night out to some seafood restaurant. However we had to pack, be out before seven to beat the traffic jams and one of the taxis was missing... so we stayed at the hotel terrace, enjoying once again the breeze, another typical Portuguese dish,  Pica Pau, thin slices with lots of garlic, and a secret sauce that included beer and olives.

Early breakfast, so I focused on fresh fruit. Then lunch was at the restaurant of one of the best hotels, the Vitruvio. I was invited, or I would not have picked an overpriced Italian restaurant. It was painful to pay 5-10 times more than I would have paid in Italy. It was good, it was just that the price and the idea of bringing absolutely all the ingredients from Italy was ludicrous. Excellent, but distracting. Mozzarella salad and clam tagliatelle are not what I expected to eat in Angola. The wine was a good Portuguese red (Alentejo). At least the coffee was the best I had in the whole trip.

Dinner very late (2 am) in the plane, after eating all the remaining samples from one of the other travellers, for a chocolate and confectionery company. A sugar high is not good when you get taken one by one into a small room to be shaken down for money before leaving the country. It was something chickenish with brightly colored plastic vegetables. Iberia was the worst in that respect. Breakfast was even worse, a stale muffin and an almost empty ham sandwich. Fortunately in Madrid we had plenty of possibilities to tickle our taste and to find non-meat alternatives. My own favorite, potato onion omelette, rightly called a Spanish omelette.  ¶ 5:17 PM

 

Africa Notebook: Travelling companions

We had our own normalcy bubble in this trip. It was organized by the local chamber of commerce, so the other travellers were salespeople (and one owner turned salesman) from my own town. They were a bit special people,  but yet much closer to my reference frame than anything we were seeing, and the relaxed Spanish after lunch talk, once tiredness, food and beer loosened our tongues, became something like the typical war correspondent talk, comparing anecdotes, dangerous escapades and risky places.  It felt flattering to be among the "veterans" of difficult countries.

As I have a sheltered commercial experience, it was a crash course on what not to do, where not to go and what not to say in places I do not intend to go, from Lagos to Kinshasa passing by Medellin. It should not be surprising that someone who is willing to visit Georgia in the middle of a government clampdown, is one willing to wander the streets of Tblisi drunk looking for a party while avoiding armed patrols, only to find a competitor being arrested, and ending up both deported.

Yet I noticed a clear warmth when discussing people, contacts, agents, and even the places. Unlike a journalist a salesperson (we had two women, but only one was a pro, peddling chocolate and sugary products around the world) does not need to stay objective. You need to understand the other, like them (or fake that you like them, so you often end up believing it), get involved. Also you deal with those that try to keep things going when all else is failing, so the emphasis is also different. It was not surprising that the only one openly racist was the one who was not a real salesman, but the owner of a failing business that was trying to get more exports.

Because a foreign country, specially one so different from your normal situation, means you lack reference of what is expected behavior, or they are changed. The easy way is to impose your own references, apply your own prejudice, and dismiss all you do not understand. The hard way, but what sellers are already trying to do, is to understand what people want, and why, so you see their angle instead of yours.

It helped to see who was the only one to have trouble with his driver (besides the unavoidable delays and mix-ups in communication), with the service, and who usually found himself mysteriously separated from the group. A good negative example helps to notice the positives. He had some success with some Portuguese expatriates, but that also shows the advantages of finding a common ground, even if it is negative.

I tried, really, to see things from their side but the problem with prejudice is that you are almost blind to your own, while seeing the others. Using the other Spaniards as yardsticks, to make sure that we do not confuse dislike for the government or the circumstances (2 hours to get somewhere 17 km away, through the eternal traffic jams, runaway prices), or even the weather, from the people, who were always nice, always willing to do a little extra, within their own standards, of course, that are not ours.

In the end, as Aretha Franklin used to sing, it is a matter of respect. As she also sings in that song:

I'm about to give you all of my money
And all I'm askin' in return, honey
Is to give me my profits

A little respect (just a little bit.)
  ¶ 12:36 PM

 

Africa Notebook: Flying.

(I am slowly deciphering and digesting the chaotic notes I took in my last business trip. I am not sure how many small pieces will come out)


Rather than the flight in (flying at night in an almost fully caucasian plane also keeps you intellectually in Europe) it was the flight from Johannesburg to Luanda that highlighted the differences.

The first one is that you feel like a minority. Maybe only half were black people, but fully one third of the flight were Chinese. That is something that no matter what you think, hits you at an instinctive level, outnumbered by others. South Africa with money and business means you meet a skewed fraction of the population, mostly white. The plane was a first step in the right direction to see who are doing things in Africa, and it is not the old powers, except in the unbalanced powder keg that is SA.

But there is more. I got a window seat, and the land is still so empty, compared to what we are used to. In South Africa there were tarmac roads and isolated towns, with small green spots when water allows agriculture. But in Zambia and then Angola, besides the isolated dirt roads, you could find almost no trace of human presence. Maybe at night lights may pinpoint villages, but in this trip either they were not there or they meshed with land and grass to disappear. Later I found out that extensive minefields keep agriculture at a minimum, except in a few areas, a hard reminder of the Angolan civil war, but the view from the plane was of absence of human signs. All those familiar sights, even in remote areas.

However when you reach Luanda you find a sharp reminder of humanity, with a ring of shantytowns ten kilometer deep surrounding the new construction in the city. It is short, even in a sharply slowing plane, but for a while there is nothing else you can see, a labyrinth of small identical rectangles, with separations narrower than a car (to keep police and the army out, I suppose) and the few wider ways become open sewers and rubbish run offs. 

After that, the view of the beautiful Luanda bay, sheltered from the sea by the peninsula, “L’Illa”, and all the new skyscrapers, the busy port and the yachts, it leaves you a bitter taste.
  ¶ 10:03 AM