Anyone one who has travelled to Southern Africa knows that it’s a place where you can’t find decent coffee. Although places like Zimbabwe used to grow world-class coffee beans in the Vumba Hills it was all exported to gain valuable foreign currency. Today, you can’t find food in that luckless land, let alone coffee. (But that’s another story.)
We’ve got three South African guests in the hostel who are in Canada for a year on working visas. They’ve brought their own “coffee” from back home. Candice, Michael and Wesley, three young, attractive and bright South Africans turn their noses at our free, filtered coffee? in favour of an instant mixture called “Ricoffee”. I was fortunate to live in Southern Africa for almost three decades and I am? very familiar with this African ersatz. In a word, it is foul!
It is a blend of instant coffee liberally laced with chicory and? although it is arguably the best of the? “coffees” sold in SA, it turned this confirmed coffee addict in to a tea drinker during my time there.
It just goes to show you how flexible our tastebuds really are.? Quality, it seems, is? merely a matter of what we get used to. Take the Australians for instance; they literally rhapsodize over an allegedly edible? subtance called “Vegemite”. I’ve yet to meet an Australian that didn’t love it; nor have I met a non-Australian that could stomach it!
The point is, there is no accounting for taste. We eat, drink and enjoy that which we are familiar with no matter how bad it tastes to others. So the next time you see somebody from a strange culture eating something you might regard as ghastly – think of Ricoffee and Vegemite!
Hey!!!!!!! Vegimite is a tasty treat with life giving propertys that is also a byproduct of beer. (also the best cure for a hangover)
Ahhh – but have you tried Marmite?
Its ads on UK television quite happily major on the fact that you either love it or hate it…….. We tried it on some US relatives who sniffed the jar, recoiled backwards and wondered what the awful smell of vitamin B12 was! Marmite, like Vegemite, is made from leftover brewers’ yeast extract, a by-product of beer manufacture. It’s scrummy!
Your Joking about the Ricoffee right. I am a Yank that did the chicken run in the right direction and immigrated TO South Africa but Man Ricoffee is sooooo bad. But now a days we have really lekker coffee in South Africa almost everyone has a press and there are great little cafes just everywhere. (I still do sneak the odd bag of Starbucks in when I go visit La La Land (formerly known as Georgebushmanland) Take those Boer Kinders down to the Local Starbucks and treat them just don’t let them know it is about 70 rands a cup before you get them hooked!
I Love South Africa it is truly my home now but I am glad we have come of age with the coffee thing but in the Freestate they are still making Boer or Modder coffee with an old sock full of gounds in the kettle but it also Lekker on a cold Free State morning Totsiens Michael in Kaapstad.