Lunch of Champions

I have already told you about my typical Ghanaian breakfast (Hausa Cocoa and Kose). Since then, I have also established my lunch option of choice: grilled plantain and fried yam. There are two women who set up shop next to each other on the roadside about ½ a mile from our office and cook them both for the lunch rush: one specializes in grilling the plantain over a charcoal grill and sells it with little bags of peanuts (called groundnuts here), while the other fries the yams in a big vat of vegetable oil and sells it with red or black pepper sauce for dipping. The latter also fries whole tilapia, but I stick with the yams. As I am a very good repeat customer, coming back anywhere from 2-4 times a week, and surely the only white person who tries to greet them in their native tongue, they always have big smiles and waves for me when they see me coming up the road on my midday stroll.

There isn’t really a standard time when the food is ready, so sometimes I get there and they are just getting going. The grilled plantain is pretty standard. Very similar to banana, she simply peels the fruit and then just throws it on the open-face grill. I watch eagerly, her hands jetting in and out of the heat as she turns the plantain with nimble fingers. When they are good and done (brown and crispy on the outside, hot and soft on the inside), she stacks them in a pile on a corner of the grill away from the most intense heat but still staying warm. I select two good ones just in time to hear the sizzle as the first of the yams are thrust into a large vat of oil on the ground about 10 yards away. As the yam slices settle at the bottom of the basin, I watch the translucent surface bubbling over with intense escaping heat and can’t help but think of Harry Potter (never far from my thoughts). It reminds me of a cauldron in Snape’s dungeon during Potions lessons. It’s not long before the yams are being fished out of the oil with a long black spatula, ready to take their place next to the tilapia in a glass display case on top of the wooden table that faces the road and the customers.

my two lunch-time buddies, grilling plantains at front

yams frying in the vat of oil

I should say that yams in Africa are quite different than what we know as yams – the orange-fleshed sweet potato – in the U.S. The best way that I can describe African yam is to say that it is almost identical to yuca, a dish native to Latin America, which you may have encountered at Caribbean or South American restaurants in the U.S. (There is a Cuban restaurant in Arlington, VA I used to frequent that serves yuca with a terrifically spicy green sauce.) Like yuca, the fleshy, edible part of an African yam is much denser and starchier than potatoes. A full yam is large and tubular, usually over two feet in length and weighing about 10 pounds. Its skin is much rougher than a potato, almost more like tree bark. African yam is almost always prepared by peeling off the skin and cutting it into smaller pieces to be boiled or fried. The end result of the fried yams is that they resemble very large steak fries. Dip them in spicy black pepper sauce and pair them with plantain hot off the grill and you’ve got a nice little lunch. Not only are the yams and plantain delicious, but they are really cheap, too. I can get more than I can (or should) eat for the equivalent of about $1.

table-top glass case with fried yams top left and fried tilapia top right

a typical road-side produce stand: unripe plantains front left, ripe plantains right, yams center left and bananas far left

I have discovered that if I want to eat and live like a Ghanaian, then it is generally very affordable to do so. On the other hand, the second that I have “Western” cravings that require addressing, I better be ready to pay for it, because everything is imported. American/European food is usually at least twice as expensive as it should be, while toiletries can simply be laughably expensive. Last week, I went into a western shop to see how much my shampoo (Head and Shoulders) costs in Ghana. I walked back to the hair care section and found my shampoo in the middle of the shelf next to other standard fare. If you just took a snapshot of the products on the shelf, you could have been anywhere in America, but as soon as you look under those products to see the price labels, you realize that you are definitely not. For a standard bottle (not like a huge Costco bulk size), it was about $15. I just laughed audibly, thought about asking one of the workers if anyone actually buys this stuff for this price, thought better of it, and walked out the door. Luckily I have some people visiting me in the coming weeks who will be kind enough to indulge me a shopping list!

PS: If anyone was wondering, Everton just got through beating Chelsea and Manchester United (the two top teams in the league) in back-to-back matches. It's more of less the equivalent of sweeping the Yankees and Red Sox in back to back series. On top of that, Landon Donovan is tearing it up, especially considering that many of the defenders he's played against in recent weeks are first stringers for the English national team that he and Team USA will face in the first game of the World Cup. Everton have not lost a league match in months, as they continue their climb up the ranks of the Premier league. Since I declared my fandom, the have gone from 11th place to 8th. And the fans love Donovan; unfortunately, it seems like he will be headed back to the LA Galaxy when his loan is over, but many are saying that he will be signed permanently next year.

Football and More Football

For those of you who were worried about my ability to watch the Super Bowl this past weekend, fear not; I was successful in finding a place. There is a local sports bar called Champs, which is a favorite among expats for its nightly specials (Tuesday is ½ price kebobs, Wednesday is wing night, Thursday is trivia, Friday is karaoke, Saturday is an all-you-can drink special, Sunday is movie night, etc.), its plethora of flat screen TVs, and its satellite subscriptions showing any sporting event around the world that you would ever want to see. You can see why it is slowly becoming my go-to spot. The first night I hung out there was actually on New Year’s Eve, and I haven’t looked back. Champs happily stayed open until 3am to cater for all the rowdy Americans wanting to see the big game, myself amongst them.

sign outside Champs

the back of the Champs menu outlining the daily specials

In other football news, you will all be happy to know that I have decided to become a full-fledged supporter of the English Premier League team Everton. (That's a soccer team; or, as the rest of the world calls it: football.) I spent the first few months here just happily enjoying all the games (matches) allegiance-free, but something was definitely missing. It was really easy for me to tease Dennis when his team, Chelsea, lost, or to give Desmond a hard time when his team, Manchester United, did. But they couldn’t give it back to me, because I did not support a team. This situation was pretty unfair to them. And since I have already resigned myself to probably not being able to watch a single White Sox game all season, it was also necessary for me to find another team to root for.

And so, I had the task of picking a team. For those of you who don’t know, there are 20 teams in the English Premier League. Every season, the bottom 2 or 3 teams get relegated to the second division for the next season, while the top 2 or 3 teams in the second division get bumped up into the Premiership. I didn’t go through a long process like ESPN writer Bill Simmons did when he picked a team (Tottenham Hotspur) to support back in 2006, but I had already watched enough games to know which teams were fun to watch. While Simmons based his pick on things like the owner, jersey color, and team nickname, my criteria were a little less defined. I had already narrowed it down to half a dozen potential teams back in December, and then Everton announced that they were picking up USA captain Landon Donovan on loan from the LA Galaxy. Everton was already in my top six, because I liked the coach, fans (a lot like White Sox fans), style of play and general vibe I got from their club. Not to mention their goalie, Tim Howard, is also the starting goalie on the USA national team. (For some reason, all the Premiership teams with Americans on them had made my cut.) When Donovan came in January, I anxiously watched his first few games to see how he would fit in, and he delivered in a big way. What sealed the deal for me is that their center midfielder is this tall, lanky Belgian guy named Fellaini who sports the biggest afro I have ever seen. And so it is, that I am now an Everton fan.

This is how I roll now.

The reason I mention my Everton fandom here is because I was headed to Champs on Saturday to both watch their match against archrivals Liverpool and see if they would be showing the Super Bowl the next day. While Everton unfortunately lost their game, I learned that not only would they be staying open late to show the Super Bowl, but also that Sunday night is movie night and they would be showing (a bootlegged copy of) “Up in the Air,” a movie that I really wanted to see.

When Sunday night rolled around, I made my way over to Champs for the Super Bowl and what was my first of probably many movie nights there. Sitting in fairly comfy booths with all the lights off, we watched George Clooney, projected on a good sized screen, as he fired hundreds of employees he did not employ for the next two hours. Watching a movie in a sports bar, I have to say, was quite interesting.

3 quick pros and cons:

pros:
1.) the movie was free
2.) no commercials beforehand
3.) the movie was free

cons:
1.) a few times some guys playing pool in the back room would yell and you would miss lines
2.) no previews
3.) no popcorn

Either way, the movie was pretty entertaining, and when the lights came back on, it was game time.

About an hour before kickoff, the place was filling up, and I could no longer have the booth to myself. Fortunately, a very nice couple from Atlanta sat next to me. The woman, Ashowa, had grown up in Ghana, but been in the US for most of her life and was back visiting her mother for a few weeks. About that same time, a half-dozen teenage-looking kids (I swear one girl looked like she was 13, but they were probably in some sort study abroad or exchange program.) rolled in and took the table right in front of the projection screen. Another of their group was a skinny blonde girl with a pony tail wearing a Drew Brees jersey. She quickly made sure that everyone in the bar knew she was from NOLA and led the first of about 4 dozen WHO DAT chants. I was pulling for the Saints because of two good college friends who are from NOLA and love their Saints, but honestly, this girl was so annoying (and completely wasted even before The Who stepped on stage) that I almost changed allegiances. But then I remembered Dave and Chelsey and continued rooting for the Saints.

projection screen and other TVs; loud blonde girl on the right

Ashowa, her husband and I endured the endless pregame babble from the Chris Berman, Mike Ditka and the other monkeys who never fail to look like blind people helped them in their wardrobe selections. They finally gave their picks for who was going to win, but astonishingly, none of these “experts” predicted a double-digit Saints victory or for the Colts to score less than 20 points….and Robert Meachem certainly did not have a big game, as one of them boldly stated. After the completely unnecessary God Bless America (was Rupert Murdock running the show?), it was time for the National Anthem, the coin toss and kickoff!

another view of the great Champs ambiance

All in all, it was more than I could have asked for. I got to watch the Super Bowl live at a really fun bar and have a comfy place to sit in front of several big TVs, not to mention that is was a really good game and my team won. The main/only drawback to my Ghanaian Super Bowl experience was the lack of commercials: something I look forward to almost as much as the game itself. The bar got the game on a direct ESPN feed, so all we had for 4 hours were commercials about ESPN 360 and ESPN Deportes. And the only "This is Sports Center” commercial (which are consistently hilarious) aired was the one where Drew Brees is driving a big Mardi Gras float and can’t get it through the main gates at ESPN, which we saw no less than 12 times.

When the game was finally over, the rowdy, now-drunk, blond girl led her last WHO DAT cheer and almost fell backward into the projection screen after an overly-enthusiastic jump. Looking at my watch, I saw that it was past 3am. I bid adieu to the nice couple from Atlanta and followed the crowd outside. I flagged down a cab, and quickly made my way home, where I was able to sleep almost a full 3.5 hours before my 6:59 alarm reminded me that it was Monday morning: time for work.