Luanshya Restaurants

One of the great things about having my household helper James prepare my meals was that I got to sample how the local Zambians ate. Here (in my local 'chitenge' shirt), I've returned home for a simple lunch called 'nshima', prepared by James . This is a traditional Zambian (and East/West African) dish made from ground maize (corn) flour known locally as 'mealie meal'. Although maize was not introduced to Africa until the mid-1500s, thanks to its importation from America by Portugese and other explorers, it soon took a very strong foothold with the locals due to its yields as compared to the previously used sorghum. It is a good thing that I had James doing the cooking, because preparation of nshima requires expert paddling of the boiled maize flour into a sticky paste. Once this is prepared (my left dish here), it is eaten without using implements by dipping a ball of this paste into a side dish of 'relish', which can be made of meat, poultry, fish or nuts and/or a vegetable such as rapeseed or cabbage. As you would expect, the flavour is really dependent on what is in the relish and how you want to 'spice' it up a bit. I am not a fussy eater, so found it to be a great meal the way James prepared it!

By the way, the triganglar carton on the table was how the milk was locally delivered to your door - it was UHT treated so it would not spoil. It had been a long time since I had ever seen home delivery of milk, and I certainly was not expecting it in Zambia! The Chess set on the table was one of the things I used to help pass my time in Luanshya, having a couple of regular foes in those pre-internet days.

Favorite Dish: My cooking skills were basically non-existant when I arrived in Zambia, but I was lucky that one of the local women Volunteers from Canada, Helen, took me under her wing and tried to teach me a bit of self-sufficiency! I had a lot of great meals eating-out at functions hosted by other volunteers or married couples and I think they really kept me going! All of the cities and towns on the Copperbelt had a great mixture of restaurants (especially Chinese) so I also enjoyed those few times eating-out under more expensive conditions than normal for a 'poor' Volunteer.