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smoking burundian bottles

last night was halloween and there was a big (relatively speaking) party at my place. we wore costumes, carved pumpkins, drank, danced, etc. you know, the same things that all of you in the americas did i’m sure. haloween isn’t so celebrated in europe or africa, so it was my responsibility to represent, if you will, along with my two american comrades gena and rob. more on all of that later when i get my paws on some photos...

for the party i made bloody marys, which wasn’t too difficult to accomplish here. i also had a secret weapon: “extra de table” sauce from burundi. i’ve tasted some hot sauce in my day, from many different parts of the world. i must say, this burundian stuff is quite an anomaly.

i had my first jaunt to the market with gena a couple of days after i moved into my house. at the muzungu (white person) market i spotted the ketchup and next to it a few bottles of hot sauce. all of them had very generic hot sauce looking packaging except for one, which had a simple black and white label as you can see. i consulted with gena who explained that the hot sauce is from burundi and is quite good, but VERY hot. intrigued by her description, i grabbed a bottle.

later that night i made myself a simple supper of potatoes, eggs, tomatoes, and avocados. i decided to throw some ketchup on it and thought that I may as well test out the burundian hot sauce. i fetched the bottle from the pantry and brought it into to the dining room. this is where things get weird...

i opened the bottle and it started smoking. i am in no way exaggerating. there was smoke wafting from the surface of the hot sauce up through the neck of the bottle and out. just as i was thinking to myself, “this can’t be right,” bubbles began to emerge from depths of the bottle! within about thirty seconds, i had flashbacks of high school chemistry as the bottle’s contents started bubbling so violently that hot sauce began frothing over the top like molten lava spewing from a volcano. after running the bottle to the sink and a quick clean up, i chose to enjoy my eggs and potatoes sans the smoking sauce, thinking that I could have received a bad bottle or something. at the end of my meal i recapped the bottle and stuck it back in the fridge for the time being.

the next day at work, my co-worker sara asked me how my night was and i told her the smoking hot sauce story. sara replied, “oh yes, that’s normal. the bottle always bubbles up and over when you first open it.” wow. ok. ?!?! africa is so weird.

“why does this happen,” i inquired.

“well, i guess because it is so hot,” which seemed like a logical explanation, i suppose. sara also warned me, as had gena, that the sauce is extremely hot.

now that i knew that my special sauce wouldn’t kill me, i had to give it a shot. i ate out for dinner that night, but cooked eggs for breakfast with some onions and avocados. i tossed a little ketchup in the mix and then went for my burundian lava. the sauce’s consistency was a thinner than i expected, so i poured a little more than originally anticipated. the amount i used, however, was still a fraction of the amount of cholula or tapatio i would have used. i mixed it around and took a bite...

initially, the spice of extra de table sauce doesn’t hit you too hard. a few minutes into it, however, and you know you’re in for the long haul. this shit is spicy son! it starts with the tingling of your lips, and soon thereafter your tongue is on fire. the flavor of the pepper itself is quite sweet, so there is a nice balance with the war that has been waged on your taste buds. about twenty minutes after my first bite, the tingling on my lips turned into numbness that radiated down toward my chin and back toward my cheeks. i ate breakfast at about 7:15 in the morning, at 10:30 i could finally feel my lips again, which wasn’t so conducive to cupping.

from now on, no lip numbing hot sauce in the morning for me.