adminTawanda Musarurwa
The thing about travelling is that you get to find out about other people, the way they live, the food they eat.
Having traversed the community of Vhimba, a remote rural area in south-east Zimbabwe (Chimanimani) near the border with Mozambique, I can safely say this territory is “Banana Republic”.
We all eat bananas, but not quite like this community. A staple dish in this area is boiled banana.
I never thought it possible, but boiled banana can be a hearty meal.
Enthusiastic to try out the taste of a boiled banana Rachel Mbiya (not her real name) reaches into a steaming pot with a wooden spoon and draws a warm banana and serves it on a metal plate.
I touch it, and it feels firm like a boiled potato.
I peel it and take a bite, it tastes like sweet potato without the sweetness, of course. Similar to the boiled sweet potato, the boiled banana is here taken with tea.
“How do you cook these?” I ask.
“Well, we simply boil them for several minutes until they are firm, adding a bit of salt for taste,” said Rachel.
Besides boiling bananas, Rachel says they can also use them to make pap (sadza).
This is done by peeling and drying out bananas and then grinding them into fine powder, which is then used to
make the pap in much the same way as mealie-meal pap is made across the country.
The Vhimba area probably has the last sun-tropical lowland forests in Zimbabwe, which makes it ideal for banana plantations, which are aplenty in this area.
I recently read an internet catalogue entitled “100 things to do with a banana” without going much into it.
Having visited Vhimba I’m now left with finding out the remaining 98.
According to Rachel another common plate in the area, especially during this rainy season, is mushroom, mainly the utali, which is white in colour and is basically tasteless, but can be flavoured in soups.
I can only imagine eating banana sadza and utali relish.
Bongani Ndlovu