Amongst the treasures that I’m bringing home from Goma are some cool woodcrafts, a shoka (axe) made of bone, and a ton of clothing (almost $300 worth) made by the HEALing Arts women. The most precious item, however, is two large nutella jars packed with Piri Piri made by Mama Germaine, back at Maji Matulivu. The main ingredient is the wickedly spicy African Birdseye chili pepper (a.k.a. “African Devil”), with a Scoville rating of 50,000-175,000 units.

This stuff is absolutely delicious. It’s not the heat that makes it so good. In fact, I wish it were less spicy so that I could put more than the usual half-teaspoon of it on my food. I’m told that every Mama has her own recipe, and this stuff definitely packs more flavor and heat than what I got at the restaurants in Goma. I don’t know what alchemy Mama Germaine performs to make the peppers taste so good. What I do know is that I and many of the guests at Maji would routinely abuse our gastrointestinal tracts with the stuff at every dinner, consequences be damned. Sam Dargan (a regular at Maji and Piri Piri connoisseur) has dubbed Mama Germaine’s variety of piri piri “Goma Lava,” in tribute to the active volcano that periodically wipes out parts of the town with molten rock.

So, before I left, I asked Mama Germaine to cook me up a huge batch to take home, gave her ten bucks, and left while the pepper-preparation (frying, I think) made that whole wing of the house uninhabitable.

I’m going to dole this stuff out to friends and family in little jars. If you get to try it, remember that I brought it to you out of love, and that it definitely hurts me as much as it hurts you

Oh, and the “explosion” part (in the title of this post): As it turns out, nutella jars do not have lids that screw down particularly tightly, and both jars leaked Piri Piri oil during the bus ride from Goma to Kigali. Upon opening my suitcase, I was greeted with that familiar, eye-watering fragrance, and I knew I was in for an afternoon of careful wiping and washing. Of course, I got some in my eyes and had to warn the staff to be extra careful with my laundry. But in the end, the spill was contained in a new jar and sealed tight with electrical tape and a surgical glove.

Though I half expect the stuff to melt through glass and take down my flight somewhere over the Atlantic…

Related Posts:

• Goma Security Alerts (December, 2007)
• New Flickr Photos Posted (September, 2007)
• Congolese Plane Crashes (April, 2008)
• Live from Goma (August, 2007)
• Potential Instructable? (September, 2007)

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 27th, 2007 at 3:56 am and is filed under goma, personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.