Go indigenous, go healthy

(OUT & ABOUT )
What a lovely event was the inaugural Zimbabwe Traditional and Organic Food Festival. Organised by FoodMatters, a loose grouping of individuals and organisations concerned about the quality of the food we grow and eat, this festival brought together community- based organisations, individuals, private companies, NGOs, schools, government and local authorities  to offer a wide variety of foods  both for tasting and for sale. The National Botanic Gardens in Alex Park was the perfect setting — with stall holders under tents, a stage for entertainment and cooking demonstrations on the restaurant verandah.
In spite of the burgeoning of traditional restaurants in Harare there is still a lack of variety in local trad food outlets. Sadza ne nyama is pretty much it. Sure the nyama varies but the sadza is almost always maize, and the vegetables usually rape, sometimes with peanut butter.

So it is refreshing to realise what variety does exist and that people are taking pride in the diversity of traditional food, remembering old recipes from grandmothers and celebrating wild and local ingredients. FoodMatters are concerned about the way in which people at all socio economic levels and especially in cities, tend to reject healthy, wholesome food for junk food (from cokes, to refined grains and fast foods).

No fizzy soft drinks were on sale at the festival — but a variety of drinks including natural juices, herbal teas, homemade cordials and maheu were on offer demonstrating how easy it is to make a refreshing, healthy drink without resorting to over sugared commercial sodas. Bees were plentiful though — clustering thickly on  bottles of raw Nyanga honey, sweet jams and preserves from wild fruits — and hovering around stall holders who all remained surprisingly calm! Luckily one honey seller had his smoker with him and puffed it around the stalls to settle them. 

BIZ (Bio-Innovation-Zimbabwe), which specialize in supporting smallholders to use under-utilised plants  were selling different baobab products — sweet jams and preserves including baobab and ginger, baobab and orange and baobab and lemon marmalade — like lemon crud without the eggs. Crunchy baobab biscotti and amaranth biscuits were delicious.
New snacks for me included marula nuts, marula nut butter and masau sticks. I bought marula oil to test out as a body lotion.

Visitors were excited by the variety. I counted more than 30 types of legumes and gourd seeds at one stall — black beans, red beans, sugar beans, butter beans, broad beans, cow peas of various sorts, different nyimos and peanut varieties. Stallholders were reluctant to sell all their seed stock — they know what a treasure they have — but I managed to beg a few to plant.

A group from Chimanimani were doling out delicious zviyo porridge. Another group were selling nutritious mixtures of grain, nuts and legumes.  Many kinds of meal and flours were for sale as well as the products made from them — cakes, biscuits, muffins, porridge, sadza. Domestic Science department from Girls High School laid out a lovely meal with a carved watermelon containing fruit salad, kapenta, pumpkin fritters, pumpkin leaves and local brown rice. Good to see this knowledge being celebrated in city schools.

Congolese cooks were serving rich fish dishes, yams, chicken and beer.  Ethiopians had coffee on the go on a tiny charcoal burner and hot dishes for sale — beef, chicken, vegetable tagine served with spongy injera — Ethiopian bread.

FoodMatters plans to make this an annual event, part of building a strong food/consumer/producers movement — which puts emphasis on local solutions, recognises the value of indigenous knowledge and promotes a healthier and more sustainable food culture.
You can sign up to the email list at foodmatterszimbabwe@gmail.com for more information.
– g.jeke@yahoo.com