What’s In A Name?
It was Shakespeare who wrote, in Romeo and Juliet,” What’s in a name? That which we call a rose would smell as sweet if it were called by any other name.”
That’s what I recalled as I surveyed the lunch buffet on Sunday at Lake Victoria Resort in Entebbe, Uganda during my visit this summer.
I saw something that looked exactly like what we call dasheen at home, but it was labelled steamed arrowroot; and where I come from, arrowroot is that root crop used to make porridge fed especially to infants and convalescent persons. Of course, I knew that groundnut sauce was peanut sauce. I’d been used, from high school Biology classes to the African name. There were other familiar looking foods with unfamiliar names. Something called steamed matoke really invited me, but I had not a clue what food it really was.
I thought to myself, when I get to taste them, I shall really know what these provisions are, and if they are foods I’d eaten before. Given my penchant for adventure, even with foods (notwithstanding my digestive system and response to certain foods are both far from perfect) I looked forward to enjoying the novelties, if indeed they were.
Well, the arrowroot was exactly what I thought it was- dasheen in my home countries. Neither was I surprised by the hibiscus juice as, living in the Netherlands, I’ve gotten used to sorrel being referred to as hibiscus juice! What surprised me most that day, I believe, was the discovery that matoke is green bananas, or green figs as we call them in the Eastern Caribbean. Nearly everybody there knows that there are other fruits called figs. But bananas are figs in our terminology. I think we are very accommodating and for the sake of visitors, we also say green bananas or ripe bananas; but if you’re talking to a local, the name figs is more than enough.
When I got to my room, there was a complimentary bowl of fruit with something that looked like unripe passion fruit with variegated skins. (see them in the featured image). Why would they include something as acidic as passion fruit in that basket? My response was to expect something other than passion fruit. Indeed, they were- more like what we call honeysuckle, a sort of hybrid between passion fruit and honeysuckle. Given my digestive limitations though, I thought that they were still a bit too acidic and I left them alone.
I quickly cultivated a love for steamed matoke. Why did this taste so different to the pounded food we had at home? Ground provisions (not bananas) were usually given this treatment. I believe that every rural Dominican home had a mortar and pestle carved out of wood. My mother would certainly not have survived without hers. Every afternoon or evening meal had to include pounded dasheen if nothing else! But the steamed matoke had something extra to it. I later discovered that the crushed bananas were subjected to a steaming process while wrapped in banana leaves, pretty much like how we do pain-me at home. Don’t lose your head trying to figure out what this is. Think French instead and think of pain-mais and you’ll read cornbread; only that we didn’t do corn bread but a version of something like what Montserratians and Antiguans call dukna. But while Dominicans cook in banana leaves, Montserratians use something called chainy bush which has no resemblance to chains! Yes, names can be confusing if you expect them to mean exactly what you’re used to them referring to as. You learn one name growing up and later must transfer to another system of nomenclature.
Another surprise was African coffee. When our waitress at Entikko Lodge remarked, “So you want African coffee!” I had to check my thought processes. I had always though that it was French thing. I grew up liking plenty milk in my coffee or tea; but I thought that it was a French thing; and since, I grew up in a French creole culture, that was how I liked coffee until I started to follow the Euro-American way and use only a touch of ‘cream’ in my coffee.
Well the rediscovery of proper coffee and guess what? African bush tea or ‘African herbal tea’ was rewarding. My travel partners and I used African herbal tea to relieve the cold we’d caught on our hectic safari routine. We were ever so open to trying new things that we had Ugandan breakfast which turned out to be steamed matoke and stewed chicken and vegetable melange. Wow! That was lunch at breakfast time!
But who cares whether you call it either name. What’s in a name anyway?