Cooking with Fire

I know I’ve talked about food before but I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned just how exactly people go about cooking their food. Most volunteers cook with gas which means when we first move to our post, we have to search for a gas bottle to buy in a big city, transport the bottle to our village and attach to a ‘stove’ which usually has just 2 burners, maybe a small third one if it’s fancy. The gas bottle can last anyway from a few months to over half a year depending on how much cooking you do. When it runs out, you hope there’s gas available in town so you can exchange the empty bottle for a new one otherwise you’re stuck waiting with no way to cook or heat water for a warm bucket bath. Well this was the case for me a few months ago and I waited but apparently the whole country was out of gas (still don’t quite believe that) so I had to turn to more traditional ways of cooking….

Cameroonians do cook with gas but most find it expensive for the kind of cooking they do so they prefer to cook with wood. Just set up a few rocks to put a pot on top of. Place a few logs underneath and start a fire. Well at first I thought I would try this after I failed to find gas but one of my friends who I asked to help me get started advised me or more so gave me a reality check and told me that would be too difficult for me to do. However, he suggested a different method that would be a little easy. Here’s what I got: a metal cylinder, wood chips and wood. Here’s how it works: use an empty bottle and place in the center while you pack in wood chips then take the bottle out leaving an open hole in the center. The wood goes in a little opening on the bottom and put some petrol on it all to start the fire. Then get a cooking. Now my friend after buying everything did explain and show me (while almost starting a fire in my house as he told me it would be no problem to cook with inside – not true) and I have seen Cameroonians using them all the time particular at night cooking beignets, omelettes, etc. Well here’s what happened the first time I tried to use it (fortunately I had a fellow volunteer with me to help so she can attest to the story and could probably tell it much better)

Well we wanted to cook French toast and some tea. We set up the cylinder outside my back door and the volunteer got a stool to sit on so she could cook and fan the fire. We also decided that we had way to many things to do at once so we brought out my living room table to put the bread and everything on. Thing started okay but then… well we had a difficult time fighting off my neighbor’s chickens while also keeping the fire under control and in the madness I knocked over the petrol bottle and almost got both of us burnt. And we ended up eating burnt French toast. It was rough but I eventually got gas a few days later and it was like back to living in luxury.

The first morning cooking with wood...stressful

I will say though since this experience months ago, I have continued to use the wood fire and for the most part have gotten the hang of it. I heat water, make cakes – it’s not that bad, kind of fun sometimes when I don’t mess it up.