Eating in Gambia

Breakfast at our hotel is the Sunday buffet at the Hyatt every morning. It is quite a spread. Local food is “britainized” to create a very bland dish so I’m avoiding these as is Anita since she was here when the Gambian food was spicy and delicious. So each morning, we have a choice of custom made eggs, omelette, and pancakes from a man on a grill outside. He’s a farmer in his off time and seems quite anxious to go back to farming. The fresh papaya, mango, orange, pineapple, and mixed juices—whatever is fresh and in season—are made by a cute young women with a blender that doesn’t always work. One morning a Brit woman was yelling at her because she wasn’t getting her juice done fast enough-the blender had to be tipped to the side repeatedly to make electrical contact and pulverize the fruit. (There are days when you want to tell people they are idiots!) There is a table of fresh fruit, another of cereals, another of cold cuts, pastries and then the hot tables that hold bacon, sausage—not really edible—broiled tomatoes, potatoes, beans, and other hot dishes. Another section has several salads—it goes on and on. Like most buffets, it’s fun the first few times and I tended to overeat, then I started to pick the things that I especially liked. And now after 3+ weeks of exactly the same stuff, I’m a little tired of it and crave Fiber One with real milk! There is no fresh milk here--I'm sure there is no market or refrigeration outside of the tourist hotels.  Anita and I stop in every morning on our way to work, get a cup of coffee and come back from breakfast when the first patient goes to surgery.

Lunch is another story! Initially at breakfast, we made ourselves a sandwich from bread and cold cuts or tuna—stored them away in our room frig and when we got off work, we’d eat them. It’s hot outside and we weren’t very hungry, so that worked great. A new team of nurses arrived and a couple of them started bringing Tupperware, cutting up fruit, making sandwiches—you get the picture and spoiled for us who were discreet food-takers. In front of our entrance to the hospital are food vendors with a new sack of bread and they bring 3-4 pots of various foods to fill the bread. The first one I had was –I thought-spaghetti and meatballs, but was really spaghetti and fish. Other choices are lungs or lamb—I’ll ask “lung?” and she say yes. I’ll ask “lamb?” and she says yes. So it’s either lamb or lung!

Now for dinner. We have several places to choose from. Nefertiti is right on the beach, great view, close to the hotel and by US standards—cheap. Another, Bolangs is a seafood restaurant owned by a man who loves Mercy Ships and offered us any dinner on the menu and a drink for 150 dalasi. (He told us that the Gambian doctors said his younger daughter would die from a heart ailment. He took her to New Jersey and she had a 30 min. surgery for a patent ductus and she is now a 25 year old accountant here in Banjul.)  Bolangs a deal since some of the menu items, especially fish, are 300 dalasi ala carte. The hotel restaurant is just what you’d expect of a nice resort and the prices are reflective, but still cheap. 
There is a fine dining restaurant in the hotel that we treated ourselves to one night where it is peaceful, quiet, and one can have a relaxing dinner.  Anita had a pineapple that had been hollowed out to form a bowl for the curry with the pineapple mixed in and I had a sttuffed eggplant that we both thought ours was the best--that's successful ordering!  The Gambian dishes include chicken or lamb domodas (a stew with peanut sauce with rice), fish or chicken yasa (a stew with Gambian sauce with rice), casasava and beans (a stew with spicy sauce with rice). Anita said all of the Gambian food has become more bland since her last visit 2 years ago. Suppose that is to accommodate the taste of the Brits who can afford to eat in these restaurants. You can also have hamburger and fries, spaghetti bolognese, pizza and other American standard—haven’t had them so I can’t comment, but people continue to order them so guess they’re OK. My favorite is the fresh fish—don’t know if it has to do with being in season or if it’s available all the time, but lady fish, barracuda, and angelfishare on the menu now and I’ve tried all three. They are exceptional and cooked to perfection once in awhile. Last night, we were early for dinner, we ordered and went outside to watch the president arrive (more on that later). All dinners seem to take a couple hours and I just frustrate myself by thinking it will ever be different. I’ve also been in the kitchen of
Bolangs and know that everyone reading this has a better equipped kitchen—and much cleaner—than they are cooking multiple dishes for 10-20 people! Anyway, as we’re standing on the sidewalk in front of Bolangs, two people walked by carrying a fish that looked to be about three feet long. One grasp his tail and the other had the dead fish firmly gripped by the gill. Within minutes, we heard a cleaver hitting something and about 30 mins. later, our ladyfish was served. The waitress acknowledged that the fish traveling by us was indeed our dinner! That’s about as fresh as it comes and the fish last night was cooked perfectly and accompanied by a shrimp sauce. Yum, but that isn’t always the case.

All kinds of beer, wine, hard liquor are available—expensive and not always good. Jul Brew is the Gambian beer and is readily available in restaurants. I still haven’t figured out where to buy beer outside of the restaurants! I’ve discovered a new drink—a shandy—it’s half sprite and half beer—it’s refreshing and I like it. Other drinks include Fanta, Sprite, Coke, Malta (a vitamin rich drink that has a thick, sweet, malty taste), and lots of fruit juices that are more like smoothies than bottled drinks. The only diet drink I’ve seen is the Diet Coke in my mini bar that costs double what a regular Coke costs! I don’t think this is a place to worry about extra calories in your drink. In fact, during dinner at someone’s house, I swear we drank as many calories from various fruit drinks and soft drinks as we ate. 90% of the people are Muslim so drinking alcohol isn’t part of their culture. We are also around the Christian minority and drinking isn’t part of their culture either, so very little alcohol.

Even though it’s fun to try new foods and drinks and have someone else cook for you, I always get tired of eating out every meal and look forward to a sandwich or to cook something simple for myself!