In rural Tanzania, I ate the same lunch every workday when I went to the villages. It was a combination of rice, boiled beans, boil vegetables, and beef chunks stewed in tomato sauce. In this little local street-side eatery in the rural village where I went to work, this combo plate is the only thing on the menu. The young owner of the shop makes the exact same thing for lunch and dinner every day, day in and day out. Interestingly enough, her eatery is sustained by the same customers who work in the area, who come to eat the exact same thing, day in and day out. I was one of them.
The food does not taste bad at all. In fact, I tolerated having the exact same thing for lunch, for three months continuously, is because I thought the food fits the stomach pretty adequately when I was hungry. Usually having no tempering aside from adding a bit of salt, the cooking presents the tastes of individual ingredients in the most natural way. Given just how mundane the ingredients are, there really are no surprises in taste that can potentially irritate the eater who is having it for the first time.
But still, having the exact same thing every day for the same meal is not something that I am used to. Even in the most dinghy of hole-in-the-walls in rural Southeast Asia where I used to reside, the chef can offer up at least four or five permutations based on availability of supplies. But in rural Tanzania, even the most well-frequented local eateries do not really go beyond four or five permutations, with different main staples and meats, but the identical seasoning and cooking methods. This is all despite the fact that markets here offer quite reasonable varieties of meats, vegetables, and condiments.
It seems the issue is with demand, not supply. Many locals here seem to be quite used to having similar things for every meal. Indeed, past observations dining with locals have shown that even when more international choices are offered, locals tend to order pretty much what they have on a daily basis. Probably the only exception is grilled meats, which in a splurging meal, replace carbohydrates as the main staple food. Even then, the grilled meats do not get seasoned beyond salt and mildly spicy chili peppers, not any different from a regular meal.
Lack of exposure to outside culinary influences could be a reason for contentment with sameness. After all, when having enough food is already a challenge, asking for variety is an unfathomable luxury. Not all of the local population is in such dire straits, however. Higher-end local eateries do charge equivalent of 4 USD a plate for the usual combination of rice, vegetable, and stewed meat and get plenty of customers. Certainly, dishes from other cuisines can be sold at similar prices for healthy profits. Why these cheap foreign dishes do not exist may have more to do with a learned unwillingness to try new foods.
Perhaps the extrapolation is a bit too far, but the stubborn adherence to a stubbornly monotonous culinary repertoire may have something to do with identity. It is the thought that "Africans will only eat the African way," or worse, "if one eats foreign food, one will no longer be purely African," that creates a natural reflex for the locals to automatically refuse to dip their toes into the world of foreign culinary traditions. Such social norms, if really are established and widespread, can only be changed with more and more locals partaking in the sampling of foreign foods.
Yet, plenty of foreign foods have already become established out here in rural Tanzania, from samosas to soy sauce, to ubiquitous Coca-Cola products. Why not speed up this local adoption of foreign foods? Sure, everyone is skeptical of foreign foods when they first arrive, but once a few brave souls curiously try out exotic foods, and positive words of mouth spreads, a bit of localization will easily put the foreign foods in the local market. If this were not the case, those first Chinese immigrants in every country in the world, so dependent on income from peddling Chinese food to the local population, would have never survived.
The only worry should be to price the foods competitively. Locals already know foreigners are above them economically. If foreign foods are also economically above them, it will only reinforce the concept that foreigners are elitists with a lifestyle that locals cannot possibly acquire. But if a plate of Chinese beef fried rice can be sold cheaper than the usual Tanzanian beans-and-veg rice plate, there should not be any reason for at least one brave local to give it a try. As long as the food stays filling and cheap, the taste will be acquired and some locals will start calling those foreign foods delicious.
The food does not taste bad at all. In fact, I tolerated having the exact same thing for lunch, for three months continuously, is because I thought the food fits the stomach pretty adequately when I was hungry. Usually having no tempering aside from adding a bit of salt, the cooking presents the tastes of individual ingredients in the most natural way. Given just how mundane the ingredients are, there really are no surprises in taste that can potentially irritate the eater who is having it for the first time.
But still, having the exact same thing every day for the same meal is not something that I am used to. Even in the most dinghy of hole-in-the-walls in rural Southeast Asia where I used to reside, the chef can offer up at least four or five permutations based on availability of supplies. But in rural Tanzania, even the most well-frequented local eateries do not really go beyond four or five permutations, with different main staples and meats, but the identical seasoning and cooking methods. This is all despite the fact that markets here offer quite reasonable varieties of meats, vegetables, and condiments.
It seems the issue is with demand, not supply. Many locals here seem to be quite used to having similar things for every meal. Indeed, past observations dining with locals have shown that even when more international choices are offered, locals tend to order pretty much what they have on a daily basis. Probably the only exception is grilled meats, which in a splurging meal, replace carbohydrates as the main staple food. Even then, the grilled meats do not get seasoned beyond salt and mildly spicy chili peppers, not any different from a regular meal.
Lack of exposure to outside culinary influences could be a reason for contentment with sameness. After all, when having enough food is already a challenge, asking for variety is an unfathomable luxury. Not all of the local population is in such dire straits, however. Higher-end local eateries do charge equivalent of 4 USD a plate for the usual combination of rice, vegetable, and stewed meat and get plenty of customers. Certainly, dishes from other cuisines can be sold at similar prices for healthy profits. Why these cheap foreign dishes do not exist may have more to do with a learned unwillingness to try new foods.
Perhaps the extrapolation is a bit too far, but the stubborn adherence to a stubbornly monotonous culinary repertoire may have something to do with identity. It is the thought that "Africans will only eat the African way," or worse, "if one eats foreign food, one will no longer be purely African," that creates a natural reflex for the locals to automatically refuse to dip their toes into the world of foreign culinary traditions. Such social norms, if really are established and widespread, can only be changed with more and more locals partaking in the sampling of foreign foods.
Yet, plenty of foreign foods have already become established out here in rural Tanzania, from samosas to soy sauce, to ubiquitous Coca-Cola products. Why not speed up this local adoption of foreign foods? Sure, everyone is skeptical of foreign foods when they first arrive, but once a few brave souls curiously try out exotic foods, and positive words of mouth spreads, a bit of localization will easily put the foreign foods in the local market. If this were not the case, those first Chinese immigrants in every country in the world, so dependent on income from peddling Chinese food to the local population, would have never survived.
The only worry should be to price the foods competitively. Locals already know foreigners are above them economically. If foreign foods are also economically above them, it will only reinforce the concept that foreigners are elitists with a lifestyle that locals cannot possibly acquire. But if a plate of Chinese beef fried rice can be sold cheaper than the usual Tanzanian beans-and-veg rice plate, there should not be any reason for at least one brave local to give it a try. As long as the food stays filling and cheap, the taste will be acquired and some locals will start calling those foreign foods delicious.
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