Fou-Fou

Me and the boyz

Foufou:

There I am with bits of beef speckled on my face choking on a doughball like a biscuit from Popeye's, a former Congolese preacher is laughing at me and our host pleads with me, "My friend, please hurry I need to go to the hospital."

You're probably wondering how I got myself into such a pickle.

Thursday morning we went to see B*******, a little background about him: 

he used to party hard drinking and smoking like it was the end of the world. During this time he occassionally saw missionaries but he didn't take the message of The Restoration seriously. Then one day, according to him, some of his co-workers started pointing at him saying, "You die. You die." This terrified him. For weeks he couldnt eat or sleep and everyday his co-workers repeated the ominous message. Then on a sleepless night, his spirit tormented and his body exhausted he turned to God. He found The Book of Mormon he had been given and read a chapter. He was comforted and was finally able to fall asleep. He couldn't go a day without reading The Book of Mormon after that. He started seriously meeting with the missionaries and began the repentance process. Unfortunately his co-workers did not cease tormenting him with their terrifying message and deep down he still had his doubts. 

That leads us up to our meeting with him on Thursday he told us that he had had a dream that week (and my French is awful so the translation may be a little off) In the dream he saw God and then God got a scalpel and cut all the fear out of his brain and told him he needed to get baptized and he would not die if he was. 

So he agreed to a baptismal date in March which was super awesome. We said a closing prayer and were gathering our things when he shot up excitedly, "No! Today I feed you! Today I feed you Fou-fou!" (Not sure if that's how it's spelled) 

Elder Alleman's face went pale, "oh... Fou-fou... Elder Murdoch has never had Fou-fou before he can eat mine." 

Then B*******'s brother, E****,  appeared out of the other room, "Never eaten Fou-fou? Heh-heh-heh." He darkly chuckled. 

"I love Fou-fou, I eat it everyday!" B******* said enthusiastically.

I was unsettled by the different reactions to the word and was unsure if Fou-fou was a delicacy, some sort of fish paste, or posion. B******* set a menagerie of tupperware on the table most of them looked like meat, one however was filled with massive doughballs, that was Fou-fou. I nervously followed everyone else in using only our hands to eat, I felt like I was following custom but everyone started laughing at me, I nervously laughed too, hoping that I wasn't offending anyone. It wasnt until much later that I recalled an important tid-bit of information I learned in Mrs. Perry's 4th grade class: in Africa you use your right hand to eat and your left hand to wipe. I had been using my dominant (left) hand to eat hence the reason everyone was laughing at me. 

I had a little Fou-fou at the beginning of the meal and while it didn't taste bad, it was difficult to swallow. So I avoided it and ate the meat first, it was actually quite good. Then it came down to the Fou-fou and the spicy beef but everyone else was already finished eating. I had observed the proper way to eat Fou-fou was to rip a small ball off and to lubricate it in chicken juice to help it go down. I knew we needed to get going soon because B******* had to take E**** to a doctor's appointment. I quickly started pounding the Fou-fou and spicy beef (which wasn't that spicy) but every time I tried to swallow the Fou-fou it got stuck in my throat and I was already pretty full.  Ordinarily I probably would have just called it quits but I didn't want the Africans to judge me for wasting food. 

I just kept shoveling Fou-fou into my mouth not entirely sure how I was going to get it all down.  The room became uncomfortably warm, I was close to asphyxiating on Fou-fou and everyone was speaking in Lingala or French. I just kept shoveling Fou-fou into my still full mouth.

There I am with bits of beef speckled on my face choking on a doughball like a biscuit from Popeye's, a former Congolese preacher is laughing at me and our host pleads with me, "My friend, please hurry I need to go to the hospital."

Eventually I got to a point where I could sneakily toss the remainder of the Fou-fou away and we rushed out the door. Before I left they told me, "haha, this will be a story you tell your wife and children when you return to them in 2 years." They are awesome.

Love y'all,

--Elder Murdoch 

Blurry picture of us eating