Food

This post is dedicated to my mother, who was worried what one can eat in Lusaka, especially if one is a picky vegetarian. She's not reading this, but she can see herself when she comes for a visit.

I actually thought that eating meat is inevitable here since there would be no choice. Well, products I can't get here include ruisleipä, dried basilica and possibly a high quality non-sticky frying pan. Products I can get here include Indian pickles, chutney, pesto, halloumi, vegetarian cutlets and sausages, olive oil, red wine, vinegar chips, marmite, tofu, ... , you get the drift. Food supply for a comfort-seeking expat comes from huge South African supermarket chains like Shoprite and Spar. They stock everything you would have in South Africa, therefore in Europe. Trucking it all overland does not come cheap, but shopping in the local markets is not really a practical choice. There's a vegetable guy bicycling to my apartment occasionally though.

Local specialities include things like termites and caterpillars, but really, what this country lives on is maize, corn, mealie-meal, nshima, ugali. White flour cooked into a sticky white chunk, that is. If Zambian hasn't eaten nshima he does not consider to have eaten at all. There's a good selection of different spinach-like greens to go with that, but a local restaurant usually have a menu of meat & nshima, chicken & nshima, and possibly, fish & nshima. Here's a picture to prove that I've tried local food, even cooked some nshima myself.

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Nshima facts:

- Zambian family can presumably consume two sacks of mealie-meal (maize flour) in a month. One sack is 25 kg.
- The price of mealie-meal has doubled in a few months to about 10 euros a sack, amounting to a Zambian equivalent of the financial crisis.
- Zambia has ample farmland and plenty of water, some say a great potential for farming even for export. The domestic supply of mealie-meal is now estimated to run out in 2 months. Next crops will be harvested in May.