A Lunch without 'Cassava Food'

Mark is gone this afternoon to worship team practice. He’ll be playing piano on a worship team at a local church tomorrow. Apparently, the previous keyboardist died suddenly from malaria about two weeks ago. Death seems so much closer here sometimes, which is a little unsettling.

Anyway, for lunch today we were invited to a local pastor’s house. Pastor Carmona stopped us on Thursday and said he wanted to have us to his house on Saturday for lunch to meet his family. He said we would eat ‘cassava food,’ which is real Nampula food. Today he showed up at our door around noon to walk us over to his home, about a five or ten minute walk from the compound we’re living in.

Pastor Carmona’s property is surrounded by a 6-foot high grass (or bamboo?) fence. He pulled the grass gate aside for us, and let us into his yard. We were ushered under a pavilion with a woven grass roof and an underlay of plastic. We sat in the two blue plastic chairs and Pastor Carmona sat on a sunken couch. I noticed that most of the property was sandy ground, dotted with trees. A big cement house with a grass roof was in the center of the property (later we learned this is his home), and a red brick house was next to the shelter we were sitting under (his other house, apparently; two of his four children sleep there currently and when guests come, they stay in that house).

Pastor Carmona really wants to learn English. And his English is really very good. However, conversation was still a little slow. His wife doesn’t speak English other than greetings, and our Portuguese is at this point limited to, “Where’s the bathroom?” “How much does it cost?” “I don’t speak much Portuguese but I want to learn.” I didn’t really want to use those first two phrases, and the last could only get a conversation so far.

We had a really nice lunch, though. We got to meet all their kids: Luisa, Jemima, Kezia, and Elias. There was no cassava food, Pastor Carmona said apologetically. There was, however, coconut rice, a bean-rice dish, and a bean and cabbage stew to ladle over the rice. There was also a little fried chicken and Coca-cola or Fanta to drink.

Before we ate, Lucia, Carmona’s wife brought around two basins. One had water in it, and she poured the water from this basin over our hands into the other basin. Then she handed us a towel to dry our hands off. This ritual was enacted between each course of the meal.

Lucia is a beautiful lady. She’s tall, and though she’s not overweight, she waddles, like her back hurts her a great deal. Her head was wrapped in a scarf, and she had a beautiful capulana wrapped around her waist. (Sometime I’ll write more about capulanas. They’re all the rage among women in Nampula. Pretty much 85% of the women I see outside are wearing these lovely colorful cloths wrapped around their waists, wrapped around bundles on their heads, or slung over their shoulders to carry infants.)

Kezia and Elias unrolled a bamboo mat under the shade of a tree. Elias came to borrow his dad’s phone, so our whole time there was accompanied by the electronic jingle of a cell phone game being played. I kept shaking my head over the mix of modern and traditional elements in the lives of this family.

The food was delicious, so delicious that when Pastor Carmona urged us to take seconds, I did. I was a little sorry that I took seconds when one of the daughters brought out a papaya. Lucia cut the papaya into four sections, after scraping out the seeds, and gave us each a fourth of a papaya in a bowl with a spoon. The papaya was delicious, but I thought I was going to burst!

While we were eating papaya, one of the daughters brought out a prickly looking fruit that I have never seen before. When cut open, the fruit was milky white with big smooth black seeds. Honestly, it put me in mind of a giant eyeball. We got to try this fruit too, which Carmona called corazon de---, or ‘heart of cow.’ Yes, I agree—that is an odd name for a fruit. The juice of this fruit was kind of a milky white, and it felt a little slimy in my mouth… it tasted mildly sweet but a little sour, and definitely like fake tropical fruit flavoring, like a tropical Starburst. All in all, very weird, but I want to try it again!

I really want to find a picture to show you this odd-looking fruit, but right now I can't even find it online. The inside looks a lot like the cherymoya (pictured below) but the outside is very different.

After all of this food, Luisa, the oldest daughter, brought out ‘cassava food.’ Apparently there was cassava, but Lucia was afraid to serve it to us. She ate a big portion of it while Carmona tried to encourage her to let us try it. He finally said, “You see, we are afraid to serve you cassava food. We think you won’t like.” Then Lucia said she was afraid it wouldn’t agree with our stomachs. Finally, she did let us try it. Or rather, she didn’t stop Carmona when he got up and brought the serving plate over to us.

I carved off a small portion (because, remember, I was absolutely full of fruit at that point). It was hot, like it had just come out of the oven and had a texture like a heavy dumpling. By itself it tasted like Cream of Wheat. After we had both popped a chunk in our mouths and were chewing, Lucia suddenly seemed embarrassed and said something to Carmona. I think she was embarrassed that he hadn’t served us the sauce with the cassava. She was eating her cassava by pulling off a small chunk and dipping it into a sauce.

After we had eaten and sat in a somewhat awkward silence for a while, Pastor Carmona walked us back to his house. As we stood up, we thanked him and Lucia for inviting us. They thanked us for accepting the invitation.

I had the sudden impulse to invite them over for a meal sometime. I would just love to cook macaroni and cheese for them. Or spaghetti. But I didn’t because I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to. Or if it would be polite. And then I started wondering, were we rude to leave right after the meal? Was there something else we should have done to show our appreciation? Should we have brought a gift to their family for inviting us over? And I really did enjoy the cassava, even though Lucia was afraid to serve it to us. I wanted to ask her if she would show me how to make it sometime. But is that polite?

I’ve been trying to tamp down all of these anxious questions as I write. All in all, we had a lovely lunch and observed and learned a great deal. And hopefully Pastor Carmona is glad that we did get to try ‘cassava food.’