Food

The first thing I do when I get home is eat a steak. My mum fries up this monster T-bone and I finish it within five minutes, washed down with a splash of full bodied Merlot before sighing deeply at the sheer satisfaction of subduing three months of craving.

In Thailand, they don’t know a thing about beef. They cut it up into miniscule flecks, drown the flavour in streams of soy sauce and when they’re finally done with their unbridled contempt of cows; they charge you your life savings for what will be a completely miserable experience.

Even more so when you make the mistake of foaming at the mouth at an invite to an all-you-can-eat Thai barbeque and you agonise over how best to make room for all the steak you’re going to devour only to find yourself staring at a big metal boiling contraption with a deep bowl and a raised dome with no heifer in sight.

Instead there’s a square of pig’s fat.

A chunk of skin that you lather over a hot dome which serves as a place for you to only mildly fry scraps of pork and chicken while you and your buddies boil mushrooms, assorted plant life and eggs in the pot below so everything tastes like everything else and nothing tastes like what God intended.

The truth, if you want to hear it, is that I pretty much cried myself to sleep that night. Not so much for being taken in but for the Thai people at large who don’t understand that a barbeque involves hot coals, marinade and potato salad in a binge so shameless you fall asleep soon after.

So you won’t have to look your grease-stained self in the eye.

Or go anywhere that involves looking like you don’t have kwashiorkor.

Needless to say, in the beat before I demolish the great T-bone, I haven’t had any real meat in months except a sterling attempt by a friend in Malaysia who fired up a distant relative of Cowis Namibianis to pacifying effect.

Since then I’ve eaten little slivers of chicken floating in soups and vats of noodles, I’ve had the best nights of my life dreaming of Spur ribs or Leagues’ chicken wings and I’ve even woken up drooling at the thought of pan fried boerewors stuffed into a fresh Checkers brotchen drizzled with All Gold or a dollop of Mrs Balls.

Though it seems a little hyperbolic to say this, standing in front of that prime piece of Namibian beef is a dream come true and I feel a little sick before I take the first bite that becomes a quick succession of many that thoroughly convince the plate that the steak was a fine figment of its imagination.

When you can get it, the food in Africa is amazing.

The beef is out of this world. The tomatoes are blood red and far juicier than the anemic items I’ve seen abroad and just about anything that lends itself to chewing can be eaten simply and to satisfaction without being drowned in chilies and sauces to disguise the lack of flavour.

Maybe it’s the soil, perhaps it’s the effect of the ever-smiling sun but, whatever it is, it makes our food delicious and wholly incomparable to anything I ate in Asia.

Pure, simple and scrumptious, the food here is great when it’s available.

I guess that’s the thing I find most upsetting about being home.

In Thailand and Malaysia food is everywhere. From street vendors selling the national cuisine to restaurants to fruit sellers to bursting budget buffets, food is abundant, ubiquitous and seemingly accessible to all. For next to nothing.

But here in Africa, or at least in Namibia, food is this extravagant and enviable thing.

Secreted behind closed doors.

Jealously hoarded and hidden.

Like treasure.

This hits me the hardest when I’m walking past MTC in Klein Windhoek.

I can smell Steers, see Blue Olive and I’m making my way past O’Portuga when three street kids call out to me from the pavement.

I’m out for a walk and don’t have money or manna but I ask them what they need.

“Anything, madam. Anything. We’re hungry.”

Skinny as rakes, hands outstretched.

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