So, both Jenna and I got sick this weekend. Basically the long and short of it is that we bought peanuts by the side of the road (peanuts being one of the few things that CAR actually has in quantity) and ate WAY too many of them. I didn’t realize this, but you can actually have too many peanuts. Apparently everyone else knew this but me.
Anyway, they sell boiled peanuts in the shell and liquor bottles (used) full of peanuts by the side of the road pretty much everywhere around here. I just thought I was doing my part to support the local economy. Knowing what I know now, I will never support the local economy ever again.
That said, we did end up going to this place called the “Rock Club” this weekend. It’s basically a pool/health club that looks out over the Oubangui river, into the Democratic Republic of Congo. It’s a really beautiful view (if you don’t count the smell of the Oubangui river and the fact that the pool was mobbed with about 10,000 unsupervised kids). One of the more unexpected things we saw while we were there, was a huge crowd of Lebanese men smoking hookah and playing dominoes or something.
I’ve been told that there’s a fairly large contingent of business owning Lebanese people here. It’s not really clear why this community has sprouted up, but they’ve apparently taken to the place. In fact, it seems like most of the businesses in town are run by expats of one kind or another: the aptly named “Chinese Restaurant” is run by a Chinese family, the Grand Cafe is run by a Lebanese family, the “Relais de Chasse” is run by a Frenchmen, Chez Fatou (a Senegalese restaurant) is run by a Senegalese woman out of her house, the grocery stores are all run by expats.
One wouldn’t be totally wrong to feel like some of the more prominent aspects of daily life for an expat in CAR weren’t very Central African at all.
We got sick because the peanuts were coated in dirt, not because we ate to many of them. You could feel it crunching in your teeth as you ate; we really should have known better.
What else do you eat there? I’m very curious.