Huh
Posted By Sika on March 28, 2008
It’s interesting to watch the landscape change from the green and lush wonderland that has marked the rainy season to having areas of tawny, gold, and brown, as it becomes more and more like the country I flew into 10 months ago. Avocados are no longer expensive (MK10 now, instead of MK30-50); maize is piled in heaps, waiting to be shucked and stored in grass or mud silos; and certain crops that have been scarce are coming back into season.
So let me tell you about sugar cane. Sure, sugar cane can be processed into sugar, but it can also just be eaten. Y’know, ’cause you want to just eat it. Around town now, you can see people carrying these long tubes that look like fresh bamboo, except not. To eat the sugar cane, you don’t just pop the whole stick in your mouth, ’cause that would be silly: people walking around with 6 foot long sticks in their mouths. No, it’s a process.
1. Break off a piece of the sugar cane at one of the cross-wise bands (told you: kind of like bamboo, but not).
2. Peel off the thick, fibrous, outer layer
Most Malawians use their teeth to remove the outer skin. If you have weak azungu teeth, like I do, you have to borrow a Malawian and their teeth to peel the cane. The outer skin is variegated outside, shades of brown edging into black, and a yellowy ivory color inside. People are so excited to have the cane back that the red-brown dirt roads and the green-but-yellowing grass at the side of the tarmacked roads are littered with long triangular shards of sugar skin.
3. Bite off a chunk of the now exposed, thin, fibrous, inner stuff.
4. Chew
5. Chew
6. Chew
7. Swallow the sugar juice
8. Spit out the pulp.
A few days ago I had forgotten that sugar cane was back in season and was startled to find a mangled albino reptile at my feet. Eventually I realized it was just a wad of well-masticated sugar cane residue, and since then it has become something of a game, like looking for familiar shapes in clouds floating by overhead. Instead I look for dead animals in the spat-out white fibers at my feet.
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