An Open Letter to Ghanaians Who Eat

Dear Ghanaians,

Since coming to your wonderful country and meeting you wonderful people, it has been brought to my attention in an overwhelming number of ways how little I understand you. My best efforts have yielded small victories, and I continue in the fight to reach even a meagre level of comprehension of the way you think, work and live, but there is one facet of your life that, try as I may, I do not think I will ever understand.

Ghanaians, you eat like crazy people.

Let me explain. In Canada, I am rarely referred to as a big eater; there are a few dishes on a few occassions that prompt me to pile a plate and a half of food into my digestive system in less than an hour, groan at my own gastronomical hubris, and go have a nap, but in general I tend to respect the fact that the human stomach is only as big as a fist. Stupidly, I assumed this was less of a cultural thing than a humanity thing, and that eating what I would consider sane amounts of food was fairly standard issue all over the world. Ghanaians, I'm sorry for my Western-centric stupidity, but the fact that I'm so terribly, terribly wrong does not help me reconcile that on a thrice-daily basis I see portions bigger than my whole head being shoveled into skinnier people than I've ever seen off a runway in Paris. I would give my left leg for one-tenth of your metabolism, especially in light of the fact that in addition to centering on gargantuan portions, the overwhelming majority of your diet consists of carbs and water. I, the struggling vegetarian, am staring at an entire culture of people being pleaded with to eat their vegetables, because no one has managed to engineer an ear of corn or a yam tuber with the vitamins, minerals and fibre that people need to survive on only yams or corn, the way you're trying to. And you must know it somewhere in your minds, too, because you don't let yourself eat without putting yourself through a certain degree of torture and punishment for not having the salad. Whether it's stirring TZ thicker than molasses over a roaring charcoal fire in 45 degree weather, or systemically pulverizing yams into fufu like you're working on a chain gang, there's really no such thing as an easy meal here, is there? Who first looked at a yam and said "Hey, lets peel this, boil it, beat the living crap out of it for no less than three hours, pour boiled hot peppers all over it, and put it in our mouths every day for the rest of our lives"? And how do you eat the same meal, multiple times every day, for twenty eight years, and still miss it when one day someone passes you some rice and beans and reminds you there is food in the world that is not TZ?

Not that the other food strays very far from what you're used to. Every single Ghanaian dish I have ever had fell into one of four flavour categories: hot pepper, peanut, okra, and/or fish. Most things you like to put in your mouth for a meal fall into a number of these categories at once. And when you cook anything else, somehow they still wind up tasting like one of the Big Four. Never in my wildest dreams did I anticipate shrimp-flavoured chicken, but Ghanaians, you delivered. And when I say "chicken", I mean -a chicken-: for you, Ghanaians, the whole animal is meat. Opening up the compound freezer, I was mistakenly surprised to see that the "meat" that was fulfilling my protein requirement later in the day was actually the slack-jawed, scream-of-avian-terror face of a rooster's still-feathered head staring at his own dismembered feet. Well, waste not, want not, right Ghanaians? There's gotta be at least flavour value in muscles, veins, bones, face, extremities, skin, hair and horns, which is why it all winds up from the soup pot to my plate. Hey, and it removes the necessity for subtle work when lopping through an entire pig/cow/goat/donkey/fruit bat/dog/pigeon/fire-licked roasted trout with a machete, as "meat" of varying sorts tends to be dealt with. I guess any animal is meat, too--why, just today, one of you told me that eating dog meat adds 5 years to your life.

I'm really trying to get it, Ghanians, please believe me, I am. Every day I eat the TZ, I pound the peanuts, I try to fan the charcoal fire, cover my hands with food and shove them in my mouth to the knuckles like I have seen so many of you do. And there are some foods you've cooked up that I actually really enjoy--your palm nut soup and rice balls are fantastic, really, they are! But I still manage to disappoint you by being incapable of consuming the amount of food put in front of me, even when pared down in anticipation of the fact that you're feeding the Salaminga, and she doesnt eat.

So Ghanaians, what I'm trying to say is I'm sorry, but no matter how guilty I feel about it, I'm of pretty solid certainty that I'm physically, mentally and emotionally incapable of eating like you do.

But hey, food prices keep going up... so at least I'm cheap to feed!

Sincerely,
-Ash