Thursday, September 09, 2004
I spent yesterday evening cleaning fish. Nsumba is right next to Lake Victoria, which is the second biggest fresh water lake in the world and is the start of the Nile river. The Tz Gov’t has a big Fisheries Research Center nearby, and every now and then they give the school oodles of fresh fish. So this afternoon a guy showed up at my house and said “There are fish for you over at the school.” So I walked over there with a plastic shopping bag and sure enough, there on the concrete patio of the dining hall was a pile of at least a hundred big fish, surrounded by all kinds of people with buckets already full of fish. A woman grabbed my bag and started stuffing fish into it until I shouted “Enough, enough already!”
So I brought home seven beautiful fish, every one about 14” long – no fish story! I was glad my house boy Hasson wasn’t here. He would have taken over the fish preparation. He does his fish the African way which is good, but always the same – deep fried.
While I was scaling and cleaning them I called all my PCV friends to come over for fresh fish, but on such short notice everybody was busy. What to do with such a surplus of fish and only one mouth to stuff them into? Ryan teaches at Ngonza, only a mile away, and he has a refrigerator. So I took four of the fish over to him to stuff in his refrigerator. Then I fired up my charcoal burner and got two of the remaining fish ready to grill, wrapped in tinfoil with vegetables and scallions, some salt, pepper, and Cajon spices that a departing PCV gave me, with a glob of what passes for butter here. Figured I would have to eat one right away, hungry or not, since I just had fish and rice for lunch at a cafe on the way home from town, and store the other for tomorrow.
Hasson appeared while this preparation was in progress, and just kind of shook his head. I think he doesn’t believe that an American actually knows how to take care of himself, or prepare a fish. He put the last fish on a rack to drain overnight so he can do his thing with it tomorrow. OK by me.
Right now I really feel stuffed, but that grilled fish was fabulous. Spicy, not greasy, flaky and tender.
So I brought home seven beautiful fish, every one about 14” long – no fish story! I was glad my house boy Hasson wasn’t here. He would have taken over the fish preparation. He does his fish the African way which is good, but always the same – deep fried.
While I was scaling and cleaning them I called all my PCV friends to come over for fresh fish, but on such short notice everybody was busy. What to do with such a surplus of fish and only one mouth to stuff them into? Ryan teaches at Ngonza, only a mile away, and he has a refrigerator. So I took four of the fish over to him to stuff in his refrigerator. Then I fired up my charcoal burner and got two of the remaining fish ready to grill, wrapped in tinfoil with vegetables and scallions, some salt, pepper, and Cajon spices that a departing PCV gave me, with a glob of what passes for butter here. Figured I would have to eat one right away, hungry or not, since I just had fish and rice for lunch at a cafe on the way home from town, and store the other for tomorrow.
Hasson appeared while this preparation was in progress, and just kind of shook his head. I think he doesn’t believe that an American actually knows how to take care of himself, or prepare a fish. He put the last fish on a rack to drain overnight so he can do his thing with it tomorrow. OK by me.
Right now I really feel stuffed, but that grilled fish was fabulous. Spicy, not greasy, flaky and tender.
