Dating Advice in Cameroon

Eating in this country is just about one of the most unattractive things on this planet. You cannot look cute while eating Cameroonian food. Accept it. You’d better hope no one you’re trying to impress is in the room while you eat. Ideally, no other person at all would be in the room while you eat. Although, even if they are, at least it’s a pretty even playing field and everyone is at their most unattractive as well. Still, do not accept a dinner invitation if you hope to make a good impression on that particular person. Everything conspires against you. Literally nothing is going your way.

First of all, you eat with your hands, so food is all over your fingers. If you ever make the mistake of touching your face or wiping your mouth with your hand while eating, you just end up with food all over your face. Rookie move! Never touch your face! Unfortunately, you’ll most likely have food all over your face anyway. No matter how careful you try to be. This is because of the nature of the food. Fufu, the building-block of all meals, is a playdough-like ball of starch that is consumed with different types of traditional soups. No tidy bites of pizza or delicate bunches of salad (which, if we’re being honest, aren’t even that easy to begin with). Soup and fufu is all you get. Fufu itself is a bit sticky and ends up on your palms and fingertips. You eat it by molding it in your hand until a small ball forms and you then dip the ball (along with your fingers) into a bowl of soup. It’s the slimy, goopy soup that really gets you. The main ingredient is palm oil, and no matter how fast you try to scoop everything into your mouth, oil inevitably drips down your chin or oozes in the corner of your lips. Most soups are also the consistency of snot (especially that damned okra soup), and even trying to separate a glob of soup onto your fufu and into your mouth proves a challenge. There are little snotty trails connecting your hand back to the bowl back to the fufu back to your mouth (it gets crazy) and they absolutely refuse to break, despite your best efforts. Then there are little chunks of leaves and vegetables in the soup, that, when combined with the consistency of the goo, love to stick to the outskirts of your mouth and cheeks. (This is when trying to wipe them away only ends up backfiring). These little pieces of vegetable also love to get stuck in the cracks of your teeth. To top it off, the soups are loaded with hot pepper. This makes you sweat uncontrollably and you normally develop a mustache of perspiration beads along your upper lip. It also makes your nose run, so in addition to the snotty soup you also have real snot on your face. Again, if you try to wipe at it, you will only succeed in replacing it with bits of vegetable. So there you are, enjoying your meal, looking like you’re dying with snot dripping down your lip and sweat building up on your forehead and food all over your face. If you try to give a seductive smile, you will only reveal all the leaves stuck in between your teeth. There is zero sex-appeal. Zero. And there’s nothing to diminish your humiliation because Cameroonians eat all together in big circular groups. That’s right, every person in the room can see you and what a mess you are. There’s nothing you can do about it. Your only option is to accept that you cannot look good. You’ve been warned, avoid all dates that involve eating.