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Bushnote: Expedition Chow

Bushnote: Expedition Chow

Author: Kingsley Holgate
Date: 2016-12-09
The Kingsley Holgate Foundation team as recently returned from A Journey to Chew Bahir Expedition - it's a story best told from the scribbles in Kingsley's expedition journal.

'What do you eat on expedition ' Is one of the most common questions asked of us. Jokingly we reply' Imodium and Goat' or blood and milk, with the Maasai.

But the truth is that over the years we've learnt to survive well and you don't have to bring a trailer full of supermarket supplies from South Africa. (Although some Mrs. Balls Chutney and hot Nando's sauce helps a lot with roadrunner chicken and goat curry.)

It's fun to shop at African markets or roadside stalls. The vendors, generally mamas, are super friendly. There are small red onions that make your eyes water, fresh sweet potatoes, roasted mealies and groundnuts and sweet tasting red tomatoes. On the nyama choma stakes, mbuzi (goat) is out clear favourite, roasted on the coals and served with some chopped chilies and fresh chapattis, (the bread of rural Africa) and when available maharagwe, red bean sauce and sukuma wiki (wild spinach) - the whole washed down with chai maziwa (tea made with boiled milk - a great favourite with the Maasai)....

Roadside butcheries are generally a carcass hanging from a tree (sorry about the flies) and if you lucky you get the fillet and some liver. Bye the way, it's not the meat that will kill you, it's the bone chips from where the carcass has been hacked apart with an axe, that could bloody choke you to death!!

Samburu Tribesman Lumbaye Lenguru has travelled with us for 24 years and is a fundi at ugali (pap), which you scoop up with thumb and forefingers to make a spoon. A recent expedition feast was camel meat bought off a freshly slaughtered carcass at a Dassanech village in the Omo Delta and another was chunks of a massive freshly-caught Nile perch, chili-hot 'wat' (spicy Ethiopian sauce) and small buns of freshly baked dabu, bread, which let me tell you is a damn sight better than the Ethiopian staple of injera, a large sour-tasting pancake-shaped, foam rubber-like substance made from fermented Tef dough.

All those who've travelled with us will know that' Tailgate Cafe Lunches' are a distinct Kingsley Holgate expedition tradition. It sounds grand but it's whatever you can fit on a dropped down Land Rover tailgate. By midday there'll always be a radio call from one of the Landies ' Look for a shady tree-it's Tailgate time'

In Ethiopia there were frequent stops at coffee houses to sip small China cups of buna (coffee) strong enough to blow the top of your head off. At night there was also local mead-like honey wine to consider. It's called Tej and can kick like a mule. Now if all this sounds confusing, imagine what goes on in our expedition stomachs - Pass the Imodium!! Keep you posted.