Lunch time in the middle of Ramadan, in Tanga town. A huge amount of the inhabitants of this fun-deprived town are Muslims, and apparently that includes the restaurant owners and bar clientele. Hungry-looking, slow-moving, long-shirt-and-funny-little-hat-wearing types shuffle about, no doubt dreaming about mountains of grilled octopus, plates of steaming fragrant rice, cheeseburgers, chipati's and maybe here and there a bacon sarmie. The blood-curdling drone of starving Muslims fills the air, as they wail on the radio and from large, specially constructed towers using megaphones to make sure everyone knows its still Ramadan. Their message, I imagine, is probably something to do with not eating, and god being really fantastic. Its hard to find good food, or a busy bar, no matter how hard one tries. And believe me, I have tried.
We ask the curiously named Black Seed, the local "flycatcher" or tourist hustler, for a good, cheap local bar. No problem! Really good, super cheap place close by! We zoom off, on our spiffy new bicycles, overtaking women in full burqua's, sitting old-fashioned side-saddle on cheap chinese motorbikes, and the usual: chickens running through the streets, men with four hundred kilograms of charcoal on the back of their bicycles, bicycle-riding sugarcane vendors. Tanga is built on a grid, slightly unusually for this neck of the woods, I would think. But the overall effect of wandering through the streets is that everything looks the same- dusty, broken, fixed and then broken some more.
We arrive at our local restaurant. A large, freshly killed rat lies flattened in the road not ten steps from the front door. Our guide promises us that the local dish of plantain and beef stew will be not only delicious and easy on the pockets, but also a cultural experience to remember. Our mouths water at the thought of a hearty beef stew, even if we are slightly uncertain. We sit down at some cramped plastic tables, some chickens milling about and a fan blowing a cool breeze around the slightly squalid, dirty little room.
Cheap African restaurants, in my humble experience, are quite fascinating in their own way. I normally enjoy them thoroughly. Although I can understand why for many mzungus a large chunk of fresh goat meat, or some bits of an unfortunate chicken hanging from a piece of dirty wire over the bar counter, unrefrigerated and popular with flies might seem like dancing with gastroenteritis, I'm generally willing to try it out. Its true, noone uses fridges here, really. The lack of a reliable electricity supply makes long storage of perishables a challenge, and generally people don't bother. So animals are slaughtered in the morning, and the meat is used either that day, or the next. The thirty degree heat generally doesnt get much of a chance to spoil the meat, although its worth trusting your nose, and washing your hands. Besides, its free range! Its generally worth getting past the "why the fuck are you so far from your hotel, honky?" stares one occasionally encounters (very rarely indeed, but it does happen), and the fear so many mzungus have of ugali, or mielie-pap, and enjoying a fine, freshly prepared, locally sourced, home made meal. We're from South Africa! Not New Zealand, or some pussy country where they dont know how to eat with their hands and cook meat on fires!
So when our food arrived, some boiled meat and bits of bone floating in a stodgy paste with some chunks of banana, looking (and smelling) an awful lot like an omnivorous monkeys vomit, we did what I never thought I'd do.
We got up, paid, and left.
Our food untouched. Not a fucking mouthful. Chicken and chips at the hotel restaurant, five minutes later.
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