Happy Birthday, America!

4-7-2012

Happy Birthday, America! You’re growing into your age with grace, and, I’ve gotta say, I appreciate you more and more every year. Sweet land of liberty and all that jazz, sure, but you’re a land where corruption is not tolerated, where courts uphold the principles of our founders for the betterment of all peoples, a land supportive of creativity and innovation, and a place where being an individual is respected and encouraged. America, you’ve got a place for farmers, business executives, stay-at-home fathers, and young women putting themselves through medical school; we crazy, complicated Americans are united by a desire to push towards being our best in keeping with our own individual principles. We’re a group of many colors, opinions, faith backgrounds, livelihoods, and ethnicities, but you’ve brought us together and given us a common identity to uphold: American. This is one girl who is proud of that identity; keep up the good work, America.

How exactly does one celebrate Independence Day abroad? In true American style: with hamburgers and French fries. If you ever read any food-related literature in the US (the locavore movement in particular, but most eloquent cookbooks tend to romanticize this, too,) you hear a lot about how every meal deserves to have a story behind it, a story more complex than opening a box from the freezer and throwing it in the microwave. In general, I think reality is a more complicated than that, but, hey, it’s a good thinking point. Quite frankly, this Fourth of July meal DID have an adventure attached to it, and I was struggling to think of a blog topic, so this entry pretty much decided itself.

Background: sitting at an office in Alliance with Idrissou chatting about life in Batouri, corruption, development, and bushmeat, when all of a sudden he asks if he can ask me an important question. About 99% of the time when people ask me if they can ask a question, the question is if they can marry me. Luckily, I have more faith in Idrissou than that, and even more luckily, his question has nothing to do with marriage, but with hamburgers.

“Stephanie, do you know how to make hamburgers? Can we make them together sometime?”

Do my ears deceive me? Somebody WANTS to eat American food? Mind you, this is a man with a photo album and many cell phone photos of himself and various former Peace Corps volunteers eating hamburgers together, but, the fact remains: a Cameroonian asked to eat American food. Have I ever actually made a hamburger before? No, but there’s no better time than the present, right?

Day Of: I wake up at 7 and the sun is so blazingly bright that I am positive that it’s going to be the greatest day and these hamburgers that I’m going to construct are God’s gifts to all other hamburgers. I’m definitely going to be able to return to the US and open a diner with hamburgers that are so famous that people will travel across the country to eat them and food spies will constantly be there trying to divine my secrets à la Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I drink my tea, get dressed in a kaaba (big like a muumuu but far uglier) since the market will only be like 40 minutes max, and hustle out my door to catch a moto to the market.

I’m lucky enough to have an everyday market, but normally our produce isn’t too great since very few people actually grow food out East; by the time the majority of our vegetables make it out to us, they’re on their last legs. But, hey, I’m a hamburger goddess, and the world seems to be cooperating: all these veggies look fresh and beautiful today! Forty minutes later, my market bag is totally full and I’m still missing a number of the most important items on my list, most importantly: the meat.

Since I live in a Muslim area, it’s easy to buy cow meat, as a few cows are slaughtered every day. I visit the usual meat guy of the volunteers, and he cuts me my kilo of fillet, surprising me by being nice enough to get some of the fat off. Upon asking him to get the meat ground, his face falls…the grinder isn’t there today, it’s not going to be arriving at all today, and, no, he doesn’t know where else I can go get it ground. Panic sets in. I visit the peanut paste Mommas to see if I can use their grinders at their houses—these Mommas know everything, of course, and inform me that the grinder has to be there and I just haven’t looked. Panic sets in harder, and I trek over to another volunteer’s house to drop off the veggies so that I can lighten my load and continue my epic search for a meat grinder. On the way, a moto driver finds it necessary to point out the color of my skin and to almost hit me in the process, but to my surprise, random Cameroonian woman comes to my defense. What is this ridiculous world in which grinders don’t exist but feisty women defending my honor (okay, fine, my skin color) do?

Trekking back to the market, I get a phone call from another volunteer, the new Kentzou volunteer is in town on his layover, can I come hang out? I’m unshowered, wearing a muumuu, carrying around raw meat, and this endeavor is already far longer than the forty minutes I expected: hamburger goddess is frazzled. New volunteer leaves an hour later, so I check with two friends to see about using grinders at their houses. Nope. I check the market again to see if the grinder has returned. Nope. Full blown panic ensues. Favorite market Momma sees hamburger goddess on her third tour of market of the day:

“You’ve been doing the market a long time today.”

“Well, yes. I need to get this meat ground and the grinder is nowhere and no one will help me.”

“It’s not here?”

“No. I’ve checked already. Many times. I need this meat by tonight.”

Momma takes charge and explains the sitch to the meat-men, earning my business probably for forever, as she saves my hamburgers from certain doom. Meat-man whips out his machete and proceeds to “grind” my meat by chopping it over and over and over and over; a little less beautiful than the pre-packaged hamburger meat you get in your local grocery store, but, hey, I’m not picky. Besides, by now, I had almost resigned myself to making “Steak Burgers” for dinner. Hamburgers > Steak Burgers.  Total time of the adventure: three and a half hours. Total damage to the pocket book: 8,000CFA.

Hamburger goddess stocks up on candles just in case, drinks a Diet Coke at friends’ boutique (nothing quite like the splurge of a Diet Coke on a stressful day,) and returns home to prepare for what is shaping up to be a truly interesting dinner party with volunteers and #1 Hamburger Enthusiast.

Dinner-Making Commences: All is going well in the magical land of hamburger creation; lady liberty is clearly smiling from abroad on my fantastic efforts to honor her birthday. I may have accidentally bought cabbage instead of lettuce, but who eats those weird green leaves anyways? The French fries are cooking, all the vegetables are cut, I’ve prepped the meat, and just as I get ready to light the oven, the power goes out, and stays out for the next three hours. Luckily I had bought those “just in case” candles, right? This is an inevitable part of every dinner party I host; thanks, Janelle, for passing down this tradition ;) There is nothing quite so fun as inspecting a hamburger by candlelight to see if you’ve managed to get it cooked all the way through or if you’re going to be at dire risk of Salmonella.

More fortunately, it was a lovely dinner in the company of friends and food. You can’t put a price on a good dinner party, and it turns out that may be the one big skill I’ve picked up in Peace Corps. Cheesily enough, maybe it’s true that good food nourishes the soul. We had great conversation about politics and religion (aren’t those supposed to be two things you never talk about with people if you want to retain their friendship?) And, perhaps most importantly, it turns out that maybe I DO know how to make a pretty solid burger. As for the future of hamburger goddess, she’s soon going to teach the boys how to make hamburgers with the important caveat that they cook burgers for her: making feminism happen one burger at a time. End of story.

Happy belated America Day, everyone!