Cookin’ Up Something Good

By Mary Kuehl of University of Vermont

We somehow only have one more month left here in Botswana. The time has been flying by because we have been busy doing transects and classes, playing cards, birding, fishing, and making gourmet meals. One night Rose and I decided to make pizzas for dinner, which was fun but exhausting.

However, it was worth it to hear everyone say how delicious they were.

One of my favorite dinners to have is falafel with rice, flatbread, or sautéed veggies. Even when we are running low on supplies we manage to make something amazing, like fresh baked garlic bread, spaghetti, and chicken thighs. Everyone here has something to bring to the table that we can all learn from. Fiona makes a mean peanut sauce and Jess makes us amazing rolls cooked on the coals from the fire. Hailey and Elyse made chocolate chip cookies that were better than your grandma’s.

Curry and bean burgers are some of our other favorite meals. Maybe everything just tastes better when you are starving at the end of a long day, or maybe Botswana has transformed us into master chefs. Either way, I am coming home a bit plumper than when I left. 

Knowing that I would be cooking dinner for everyone made me a little nervous before I got here. It is a lot of pressure to make something good, especially when the people who cooked the day before you made amazing mashed potatoes. I have had so much fun cooking because it feels like being on Chopped when you get a basket of random ingredients and have to impress the judges. The catch is that the judges are also grading your midterms. However, we have not had any bad meals yet and it feels good to hear everyone say how much they enjoyed the food you cooked for them. I am so excited to go home and make some of my new favorite camp dishes for my family. I also obtained some new skills on catching our own dinner, which I am especially excited to do with my dad. 

While at our third campsite, Dizhana, in Mababe, we had the opportunity to go fishing a couple of nights in the Khwai River. We all piled into the vehicles and drove a few minutes down to the fishing spot at the river. Our instructor Dix showed us how he fishes using a hook, some fishing line, and a short stick.

The line is wrapped around the stick to keep it untangled, and the hook and bait is attached to the end. We used termites, chicken, or small fish that we caught as bait. Once we all had our gear set up, we walked down to the bank of the river and started fishing. To cast, you just swing the bait around like a lasso and fling it into the water. It can be either really easy or really challenging if you have no coordination, like myself.

Elyse had fished the night before when I was back at camp, so she showed me what to do. On my first cast, I got a bite. We pulled the line back quickly in order to hook the fish. Then I pulled a huge catfish out of the river. Since it was so big, we decided to take it back to camp and cook it for dinner.

Hailey, our expert angler, showed me how to remove the head and wash the body so it was ready to be filleted. It felt a little strange at first, but it is also empowering to know how to catch and prepare your own food out in the bush. 

Once the sun began to set, we all headed back to camp with the three catfish that we caught. In the dark, we filleted the fish using a leatherman and our headlamps. We cooked the fish over the fire in the cast-iron pan. It tasted good, especially because I got to go through the whole process of catching it and preparing it. It was a very valuable experience to learn exactly how the local people here in the Delta fish. We have also learned in our natural history course that people use the ash of the Large Fever Berry tree, Croton megalobotrys, to stun fish in the river to easily retrieve them. We didn’t have to try this because we were catching fish on our first cast! 

I thought I would be eating rice and beans here everyday, but we have greatly exceeded all expectations. There have been many nights where Jo says, “I would pay money for this”, and we all nod in agreement because our mouths are too busy chewing and salivating to reply. Dinner is one of my favorite parts of the day because it is always delicious, and we all get to sit around the campfire and talk about the amazing things we saw or did that day. It is also nice to enjoy our meal without sweating profusely because the sun is down by the time we settle in for our evening meal. I am going to miss our campfire discussions and gourmet camping meals when I get back home. I have already learned so much more than I could have ever expected, including how to shape the perfect dough ball and how to make pizza without an oven!