Before this trip, I honestly didn’t know too much about Rwanda except that they have consistently good coffee. So you can imagine my surprise when Giosue and I were getting breakfast and he ordered a coffee and they brought out Nescafe instant coffee. That’s what you find in countries where they don’t do coffee. But this is Rwanda! Turns out they have a tea culture and just export coffee.
I tried their tea the first morning based on Giosue’s suggestion and I got it every chance I could after. I’m not really a tea drinker but their tea is amazing.
Other foods I saw and ate a lot of include pasta (which is literally just pasta noodles. They don’t do the sauce thing – just mix it with stuff on your plate), rice, plantains (which I don’t do well), boiled eggs (they always eat that at the end of a meal with super hot sauce), and french fries. Ah I love their french fries. By the end of the week I was ordering my food based on what would go with french fries (and by end of the week I mean 2 days in).
A boxed meal like the one above is considered fast food. And of course they have a lot of fruits. I got to eat one of my favorites – passion fruit.
My favorite meals, however, were shared with Rwandans. We were able to eat with them several times and they were always special times – not just because we were able to eat home made meals but because we were able to actually sit and be with people – even if we were only communicating through smiles, full mouths and empty plates.
One of the snacks I was offered on more than one occassion because I made it obvious how much I love it was corn on the cob. But their corn isn’t like it is in the States. It’s a bit harder, firmer. It is very much like corn in Albania except they boil theirs in Rwanda (vs grilling it in Albania). Another foreigner who shall remain nameless but speaks Italian didn’t know how to eat it so when they saw me shuck the corn and then eat it correctly, they told me I must be African. I told them maybe but also my parents have a garden so I grew up eating corn and I guess we eat it the same way!
Avocados were my other favorite thing there. They were about the size of my head I felt like. And they were so good! I tried to show self control but well – avocados.
By the end of the week though, I was getting a little tired of eating what felt like the same foods plus my travel stomach and lack of consistent eating schedule was starting to catch up with me. So the last night I just couldn’t find anything to go with my french fries and I ended up ordering breakfast for dinner. Surprisingly the waitress didn’t say anything. I think because she knew we were crazy at this point.
The last day, Fredo took me to the market so I could get that experience. I did my best to blend in but let’s be honest. I made friends rather quickly. One guy started talking to me in English and was trying to push all his produce on me. Eventually convincing me to break the first rule of fresh food consumption abroad. (If you can’t peel it, don’t eat it)
But he was offering me passion fruit for free. He cut it open, basically forced it into my hand. I looked at it and knew I would be getting on a plane in a few hours and would be home by the time any side affects happened. So I did it. I ate it. And it was totally worth it.