Of popcorn and peanuts

So for those of you thinking that Freetown seems to offer little more than frustration and privation, I’ve got two words for you: peanuts and popcorn.

Both of these everyday delicacies abound around town. Peanuts, known locally as groundnuts, are a staple in Sierra Leone, grown widely and used extensively in local dishes. But this does not detract from their deliciousness when purchased, warm and roasted, from a roving streetside vendor. They are carried in a large flat tin platter, balanced (like most loads) upon the head of a (usually young and female) salesperson. Measured out by the cupful and wrapped in newspaper, they cost just a few pennies for a healthy handful.

And such taste! Forget your can of roasted Planters, munched from the living room couch in front of the Patriots game. Forget, even, those steaming carts of roast nuts that pepper the streets of Manhattan. These Salonean peanuts are simply a delight: carefully roasted and then exposed all day to the beating rays of the African sun, they are an explosion of hot salty flavor.

If peanuts are a predictable Sierra Leonean treat, popcorn is an unexpected delight. I can't remember the first time I noticed, while winding in a jam-packed taxi through Freetown’s maze of narrow streets and alleys, an old-fashioned, movie-house popcorn maker perched incongruously in front of a tiny tuck shop. Dazzling beside the dusty street, these red and chrome poppers – seemingly more at home in a circus tent than an African capital city – are a common sight around Freetown. Much of the time they sit silently, bellies full of fresh, uniformly delicious (seriously, PopSecret can’t hold a candle to it) popcorn.

But sometimes, when you’re lucky, you find one in action: popping cheerfully above the whirr of the generator, tempting nearby noses with the heavenly scent of newly-popped corn. I think the proprietors of one particular popper, along the main road through Tengbeh Town, time their popping to coincide with my commute. They sit grinning beside their trusty machine, knowing that its smell is torturing those of us stuck in taxis in the crawling, often standstill evening traffic. When I (inevitably) cave and buy a plastic baggie-full of that delicious, freshly popped corn – available sweet or salty – they calmly take my few hundred leones, utterly unconcerned that they’ve ruined my dinner.