Snack Pack! You're the coolest!

It happens to everyone. Any prolonged period of time in a foreign environment is bound to kindle a strong desire for foods available only in the civilized, Western world. Bill Bryson, though only a week into his excursion to hike the Appalachian Trail, begins thinking longingly of any food that has never seen the inside of a bag, while his partner, a rotund man named Stephen Katz, opines strongly for anything of the Little Debbie family.  African food, though filling, has done an excellent job of helping me to realize all of the excellent food I normally consume in large quantities back home. I wish I could say that the change in cuisine has helped me lose weight, but still evident by my belt shopping are the lingering effects of the “freshman fifteen,” or, in my case, the “first semester 25.” But I have found it quite possible to eat in equal proportions while still fueling the desire for Western food. I think the people that live with me have stopped using the word “cheese” in casual conversation, fearing the effect it will have on me: first comes the ethereal despondence, then the eyes start to glisten before I finally shake it off, realize where I am, and begin  rattling off abstract statements like “I remember eating cheese” or “There are some great cheeses at this one place, I went there one time.”

The absence of good food, unfortunately, has this sort of affect over me that doesn’t fade but only strengthens with time. For example, the sentence “Golly, Brad, I sure wish that this pizza had real tomato sauce on it instead of this radioactive ketchup!” becomes “Why can’t these darn Ugandans make a proper pizza!” My venting target has always been the British, who colonized the world with their vast empire, and brought parliamentary government and terrible food to new subjects around the world. Ketchup is put on everything, including rice, people think herbs and spices are for people who don’t like bland food, fish generally comes either dried or fried, meet is cooked and cooked until a chainsaw and filed incisors are needed to consume it, and the bread resembles a rugby ball in several different ways. I thank my lucky stars that mayonnaise is expensive and hard to get, but I also become jealous of all those NGO workers who chose countries formerly colonized by the French. Rwandans, I have heard, enjoy a variety of excellent cheeses.

Oddly enough, foods that I don’t normally crave back in the United States have dominated my my dreams and wishes. Sushi, I always felt, was just a failsafe way to impress a date with your worldliness and refined palate. Yet, the more I eat steamed plantains and boiled vegetables covered with fake beef seasoning, the more I crave the Japanese delicacy, perhaps because it is so completely different from African food. Vietnamese soup, also, keeps me awake at night tossing and turning.

Unsurprisingly,  it is the food from south of the order that I crave the most. Mexican food will be consumed in large quantities with my return to the United States. Slow roasted pork carnitas, fresh salsa, spicy barbecued beef, piping hot corn tortillas, all washed down with an ice cold glass of cinnamon accented horchata. I plan to drench my  food with hot sauces of every variety, for Ugandans fear hot and spicy things. I may even try to find a Mexican girlfriend with a Mexican mother who loves to cook. If you have anyone in mind, I’d love an introduction, you’ll find me at the taco cart on Division Street.

That is how I feel about food right now. And for your own sake, don’t ask me about African beer…