Sheemuh!

Yes, I know it is not spelled sheemuh - but that is how it is pronounced! In an earlier blog I wrote about the staple food in Zambia - the corn meal mush stuff - and I was worried. Well, I'm here to tell you it is actually really good!! It did not taste like corn meal at all - actually more like mashed potatoes, on the dry side. And it is served with a 'relish,' meaning a side dish. It is made out of maize that is ground up very fine - and it is super filling. Most Zambians eat 'sheemuh' everyday - at every meal they eat because it is so filling and so inexpensive. The interesting thing is that they eat it with their hands. More precisely, they eat it with one hand. The first time we ate it we were having dinner with the AWANA Zambia team and so they showed us how to do it - and laughed at us a bit, too! What you do is you take a bit of sheemuh in one hand, roll it into a ball, push your thumb into the ball a bit to make an indention and then use it to scoop up some 'relish.' With our first bit of sheemuh we had cabbage and chicken and another time we had beans and some sort of meat. And it was quite a hoot to watch us eat - Zambians don't get dirty when they eat but our team had food up to our elbows!