A journalist from Sierra Leone has to teach himself to cook during lockdown in Johannesburg
Growing up in Sierra Leone, a small West African country of seven million people, I am used to eating very hot and spicy foods. We eat lots of leaves. Our best stews and sauces include cassava leaves, potato leaves, groundnut soup, beans, okra and crain crai, among others. All these are prepared with lots of ingredients, but the most important is hot pepper.
With Covid-19 lockdown measures in place, I can’t buy prepared food any more, and I am left with the grim prospect of cooking for myself, something I am very uncomfortable doing — in part, because I am so used to eating food prepared deliciously by my mother. My mother and I are very close. We are like best friends. When I finally moved to live on my own, it was a difficult moment for her. I could still remember her staying up late at night trying to discourage me from moving out. I could sense the uneasiness and pain inside her. But it was time to learn how to survive on my own.
Adapting to life here under the coronavirus lockdown makes me miss home even more. Managing to eat whatever I can has been very challenging, but I try to hide it from her. Despite my cooking adventures, I have mostly been eating bread, sardines and frozen food. I cannot eat cassava leaves here in South Africa, but I have managed to prepare groundnut soup, a popular sauce in Sierra Leone, by using peanut butter and other ingredients.
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