Nsima and Finger Bowls—An Inadvertent Compliment?

I noticed it first in the gas station. I’d gone in to buy water while adding a little diesel to the truck’s tank (yes, large bottles of potable water are sold in the gas station next to our favorite spot for doing internet), and the clerk stood up with an ear-to-ear grin to ask me in Chichewa if I wanted to buy water. Then at the airport the next afternoon, the agent at the fee booth rattled off a string of Chichewa phrases when I walked up to pay. In both cases I’d told them at a previous time that I was studying Chichewa and asked them to correct me if I made a mistake. I’d even carried on a considerable conversation at the fee booth at the airport, telling Joram (I remember his name after the third or fourth time) a little about my children, grandchildren and wife. Both had remembered me the next time I returned, and were taking me up on my implicit offer. I was studying Chichewa, and they were going to take their chance to teach me a thing or two. They both stretched me, and that was good. Thanks to the LAMP system devised by Dr. Betty Brewster of Fuller Theological Seminary, and her now deceased husband, the world is becoming my teacher, and the rest of them are enjoying it a little more than I am. But this is good.

The supreme compliment came at the airport restaurant, however, a place we’d also frequented to send an e-mail or two (no, we don’t have any internet access at our house). We’d also talked with the waitress a time or two, and she probably also remembered that I was studying Chichewa. I had ordered a vegetable curry with Nsima (a large patty of finely ground corn meal mush boiled down to a solid), while my friend had ordered the same curry with rice. When the two came, they didn’t look much alike at all. On his plate the curry was on a bed of rice which rose around the curry in a protective surrounding mound with cole slaw sprinkled around the outside. My vegetable curry came as a stew-like dish laid to one side of a normal dinner plate, with a relatively small amount of broth. On the other half of the plate were two slightly overlapping mattress-shaped patties of nsima. But the big surprise was that my friend had a fork and knife wrapped with a napkin, while I was brought only a rather large fingerbowl. I was expected to eat with my fingers.

Traditionally, nsima is eaten with the bare right hand, scraping off a small portion from the patty on one’s plate (or in the large central common bowl for the table) rolling it around the hand into the correct shape (or until it loses enough temperature to hold still, at least in my case), then opening a hollow in the ball with the thumb into which the vegetables and sauce of the curry are pushed before shepherding the whole mess to your mouth. Every three of four morsels it is necessary (for me) to rinse my hand in the bowl that is provided, or lick my fingers, though finger-licking is probably less acceptable in Malawi than in the US—I’ve never seen anyone else do it.

I’ve eaten nsima with a fork before, just last week at a banquet at a hotel was the last time, and I think all the others at the table ate it with their forks also. And while the airport restaurant is not quite as nice as that at the hotel where the banquet was held, “niceness” wasn’t the point. Nsima is a finger food, just like fried chicken is in the south and much of the rest of the U.S.A. So my waitress had assumed that if I wanted nsima that I would want to eat it the normal way, with my fingers.

We actually don’t eat that much nsima. This is only the third time I’ve had it since I’ve been here, which would say to most Malawians that I am extremely deficient somewhere, perhaps between the ears: nsima is eaten at every typical meal. Malawians often say, “Nsima is food. Whatever else you have is just relish." If you haven’t had nsima, you haven’t eaten.

I really can’t say for sure whether the absence of a fork and knife had anything to do with my language learning, but I like to think it did, that as the others have appreciated my efforts, were willing to include me, to stretch me, this waitress was also willing to include me, to treat me “normally” to serve me nsima without a fork. I would eat with my hands just like her father, her brother, her husband, and her sons. Just like she would. And that in itself is a little encouragement (I’ll take it where I can get it) to get back out there and play the two year old in the community, stumbling over words and laughing with all the others at who-knows-what I’ve just said. And, God willing, it will come.

Tiwonana (See you later!)