Submitted by Grace McKenna on the 2019 winter session study abroad program in Martinique sponsored by the Department of Languages, Literatures & Cultures…
As week two in Martinique comes to a close, we also reach the halfway point of the winter session. This week, my biggest hurdle to jump over has been the food. Most of it is so delicious, fresh fruit and vegetables everywhere I look. Anywhere I go, I can grab a coconut and can count on being able to order a crepe with a salty or sweet combination. However, the quality standards are much, much lower than those in the United States.
Very frequently, I go to grab a drink of milk and I get the slight aftertaste of dirt. Chips still taste like the ground where the potatoes came from, and fish is basically just a steak. Bones, skin, and eyes all included. The flavors here are also pretty extreme. If you order something with mustard, you should expect the entire thing to taste like mustard, instead of a mix of flavors that include the actual item of whatever you ordered (chicken, for example). Mayonnaise has mustard in it, too. Fish tastes exactly like every bad smell you’ve ever smelt in your life, and frequently I come back into my room after dinner and snack on some of the foods I’ve bought from the grocery store because I didn’t like dinner.
My biggest problem is with the chicken. Any and everything that says it has chicken in it, you should expect chicken wings. Meat still on the bone, and sometimes the skin sagging off like wrinkles. These past two weeks, I have been offered chicken wings in some shape or form at least once a day. In soup, with rice, with potatoes, and very frequently for dinner. It’s not tasteless – I am just tired of having to cut the meat off the bone all the time (not a finger food here!), and I am tired of eating chicken wings in everything the Martiniquians could think of.
But that’s not to say all of the food is like this! There are some really interesting and delicious things here. McDonald’s had a blue cheese burger with actual slices of blue cheese. I had tacos the other day that were some of the greatest tacos I’ve ever eaten in my life. The consistent fried plantains and rice makes me very happy. I like the lamb, the cheese, and the “igname”— translated, this means “yam”, but the vegetable is very different from what we would call a yam in the United States. This is not a sweet potato. Overall, I enjoy about 3/4 of the meals I’ve had here. It’s just that the other 1/4 have been so prominent, that I find it hard to remember all of the delicious parts.