The African Expat

One of the reasons I love visiting Africa, apart from the fact that I was born there and I have plenty of family in various African countries is the fact that I can only truly appreciate some of my favourite things in life in Africa. On top of my favourite list of thing in life is the smell of the African rain when it touches the African soil, for those of you who have been to Africa, you will know that there is no other scent on God’s earth that beats this natural scent.

The other thing I love about Africa is the cuisine. The Caribbean, thank God, has similar cuisine to Africa but it is always better tasting for me at least when I am in Africa. Some of my favourite food include sadza (mealie meal), oxtail, cowfoot, tripe, karoo lamb chops and who can forget boerwors. Biltong is an institution, especially in South Africa and Zimbabwe, so much so that there are specialist biltong shops scattered all over South Africa. Nowhere else in the world do they make biltong like they do in South Africa.

The first restaurant or eating place I visit as soon as I land in South Africa is the Ocean Basket. Their seafood is to die for and as it is a franchise, their restaurants are situated in most major shopping mall in Johannesburg and other cities with the same quality of fresh seafood being served up at any one of the locations.

From a drinks perspective, I am absolutely in love with Cream Soda which is a fizzy drink (just like coca cola or fanta) and unfortunately I have only ever come across it in Southern Africa, but I just love it. In Zimbabwe, there is another wonderful drink called Cherry Plum which we grew up on, I may be wrong but I do not think that it is produced anywhere else in the world. Then you have Mazoe, which is a concentrate in various flavours, that you mix with water and this is now quite popular in Southern Africa, although for a long time it was only available in Zimbabwe.

I suppose as you grow older it is the simple things in life that make you happy, and these are a few of my favourite things…