Angola and the River Congo, vol. 1

by Joachim John Monteiro

Another very favourite way of cooking it is by boiling it to a thick paste with water, tomatoes, Chili pepper, and salt, with the addition of some oil or butter in which onions have been fried. This is called “pirão,” and a dish of it appears at table as regularly as potatoes do with us.

With cold meat, fish, &c., it is also eaten raw, moistened with water, oil, vinegar, pepper, and salt, or, better still, with orange or lemon juice, with pepper and salt. This is called “farofa,” and is an excellent accompaniment to a cold dinner. The natives generally eat it dry, or slightly moistened with water, and from its being carelessly prepared it is always very gritty with sand and earth, and is the cause of the molars of the natives being always ground very flat. A negro never makes any objection to grit in his food. Fish is always dried on the sandy beach; mandioca-roots or meal, if wet, are also spread on a clean bit of ground and swept up again when dry, and he crunches up his always sandy food with the most perfect indifference, his nervous system not being of a sufficiently delicate character to “set his teeth on edge” during the operation, as it would those of a white man.

Next to the mandioca-root, as an article of food among the blacks, is the small haricot bean; these are of various colours, the ordinary white bean being scarce. A species is much cultivated, not only for the beans, which are very small, but also for its long, thin, fleshy pods, which are excellent in their green state. Beans are boiled in water, with the addition of palm or ground-nut oil or other fat, salt, and Chili pepper. The leaves of the bean, mandioca, or pumpkin plants are sometimes added.

Chili pepper is the universal condiment of the natives of Angola, and it is only one species, with a small pointed fruit about half an inch long, that is used. It grows everywhere in the greatest luxuriance as a fine bush loaded with bunches of the pretty bright green and red berries. It seems to come up spontaneously around the huts and villages, and is not otherwise planted or cultivated. It is eaten either freshly-gathered or after being dried in the sun. It has a most violent hot taste, but the natives consume it in incredible quantities; their stews are generally of a bright-red colour from the quantity of this pepper added, previously ground on a hollow stone with another smaller round one. Their cookery is mostly a vehicle for conveying this Chili pepper, and the “infundi” is dipped into it for a flavour.

Eating such quantities of this hot pepper often affects the action of the heart, and I remember once having to hire a black to carry the load of one of my carriers, who was unable to bear it from strong palpitation of the heart, brought on from the quantity of Chili pepper he had eaten with his food.

In our garden at Bembe we grew some “Malagueta” peppers, a variety with a long pod, and perhaps even hotter than the Chilies. Our doctor’s cook, coming to me once for a supply of vegetables, was given a few of these, and commenced eating one. I asked him how he could bear to eat them alone? He laughed, and said he “liked them with rum early in the morning.” To try him, I gave him a couple and a glass of strong hollands gin, and he coolly chewed them up and drank the spirit without the slightest indication that he felt the pungency of the fiery mixture. A round and deliciously-scented variety, bearing pods the size of a small marble, is also grown, but is not commonly seen.

Bananas or plantains, grow magnificently, as might be expected, and without requiring the least trouble; yet, such is the stupid indolence of the natives that there is often a scarcity of them. They are principally grown in valleys and other places, where the rich, moist earth in which they delight is found, and where, protected by palm and other trees, they rear their magnificent leaves unbroken by a breath of air. A grove of banana-trees thus growing luxuriantly in a forest clearing is one of the most beautiful sights in nature;—the vast leaves, reflecting the rays of the hot sun from their bright-green surface, contrast vividly with the dark-hued foliage of the trees around, and show off the whorls of flowers with their fleshy, metallic, purple-red envelopes and the great bunches of green and ripe yellow fruit. Numbers of butterflies flit about the cool stems and moist earth, whilst the abundant flowers are surrounded by a busy crowd of bees and other flies, and by lovely sunbirds that, poised on the wing in the air, insert their long curved beaks into the petals in search of the small insects and perhaps honey that constitute their food.

The negroes of Angola always eat the banana raw, but it is roasted by the whites when green, when it becomes quite dry and a good substitute for bread, or boiled, to eat with meat instead of potatoes; and when ripe, roasted whole, or cut lengthways into thin slices and fried in batter and eaten with a little sugar and cinnamon or wine, forming a delicious dish for dessert. A very large plantain, growing as long as eighteen or twenty inches, is cultivated in the interior, and is brought down to the coast by the “Zombos” with their caravans of ivory. Indian corn is the only other plant that is grown and used as food by the negroes of Angola, except the ground-nut already described. It is sparingly cultivated, though bearing most productively, and is eaten in the green state, raw or roasted, and sometimes boiled. About Loanda the dry grain is occasionally pounded into meal and boiled into a stiff paste with water, and eaten in the same manner as the “infundi” from the mandioca-root.

Other edible plants, though not much cultivated by the natives, are the sweet potato; the common yam (which is very rarely seen, and I am quite unable to give a reason for its not being more commonly cultivated); the Cajanus indicus, a shrub bearing yellow pea-like flowers and a pod with a kind of flat pea, which is very good eating when young and green; the purple egg-plant, or “berenjela” of the Portuguese; the “ngilló” (Solanum sp.), bearing a round apple-like fruit, used as a vegetable; the ordinary pumpkin, and a species of small gourd; and, lastly, the “quiavo” or “quingombó” (Abelmoschus esculentus) of the Brazilians.

The Ambriz and Mushicongo natives make but little use of animal food, seldom killing a domestic animal, and of these the pig is the most esteemed by them. Very little trouble would enable them to rear any quantity of sheep, goats, and other live stock; but, such is their indolence, that, as I have already stated, these animals are quite scarce in the country, and are daily becoming more so.