THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, December 31, 1994 TAG: 9412310303
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ESTHER DISKIN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Long : 135 lines
When Francis Bruce would sit down to dinner in his West African homeland of The Gambia, the family - and often friends and neighbors - would dine as one.
A large aluminum bowl of sticky rice, soaked with spicy meat or chicken and vegetables, would sit in the middle of the table. Everyone reached into the bowl, squeezing the rice into clumps and putting it in their mouths.
His family, like nearly everyone he knew, ate their meals together, at home. If kids in the neighborhood were outside playing, they would be invited to join the meal.
``People just put the bowl down and say, `Come and eat.' They don't say, `Go to your home for dinner,' '' Bruce said.
When the food was nearly gone, the adults would step away from the table and let the kids finish the meal.
Bruce, 35, has brought his memories and his recipes to a strip shopping mall in Virginia Beach to inspire ``Mama Africa,'' which he says is the only restaurant in the area cooking up real African cuisine. He opened three weeks ago, in a small, dim storefront in the Aragona Shopping Center.
He's brightened up the place with African motifs - a silhouette of the continent dominates one wall - and hung cloth curtains in African patterns. Bruce waits tables and sometimes works at the battered gas stove alongside the Yandeh Ngie, the chef, a friend from his native land.
He spends lots of time explaining. Every customer stares quizzically at the menu, then at him. ``I want to try this,'' says one. ``How do you pronounce it?''
This year, for the first time, Bruce celebrated Kwanzaa, a weeklong African-American festival which honors African ancestors and traditions. Bruce served a feast of African specialties at a kick-off event in his restaurant. Afterward, the crowd sang songs and passed a hat for donations.
Kwanzaa, which ends Sunday, emphasizes values like community spirit, self-determination, collective work and faith. For Bruce, there's no need for a holiday. These principles are the fabric of life, and the guiding force on his journey to become a small businessman in America.
Bruce grew up in Banjul, the capital of The Gambia, with a population of about 50,000.
The small city feels like a town, Bruce said, where neighbors and families know each other. People walk to the open air market to haggle over the price of vegetables, and mothers cook dinner for their families. Even on special occasions, Bruce said, people rarely eat at restaurants.
Bruce and a friend came to the United States to attend Lubbock Christian University in Lubbock, Texas - a city where most blacks live on the East Side, apart from whites.
He came with an African cookbook, but little practical experience at the stove. At home, his mother - like most women in The Gambia - had prepared all the meals. But he was living the bachelor life, so he started to cook.
During college, Bruce's visa barred him from taking a job that might employ Americans. So he and two friends from The Gambia banded together to start a restaurant.
``Teranga'' opened in 1982, with four tables out front and three African guys in the kitchen.
``It just hit,'' he said. ``There was nothing like it out there. So people wanted to try it.''
Most of his customers, Bruce said, were whites. It frustrated him that African Americans were hesitant to explore foods that came from their heritage.
When Bruce married an African-American woman from Lubbock, the couple experienced prejudice within the black community.
Bobbie Bruce, his wife, says some acquaintances derisively called her ``African woman.'' Her father ignored her husband's name, referring to him as ``that African.''
``African Americans think they are better'' than native Africans, she said. ``There is still a lot of ignorance.''
West African food is typically laced with garlic, curry, lemon and peanuts - the latter is The Gambia's main export crop - and a mix of other spices, which Bruce won't reveal.
``It's spicy,'' says his wife. ``If you've got a beer in hand, you're in heaven.''
Bruce and his family moved on, though he remains a partner in the Lubbock restaurant. After graduating with a degree in agricultural economics, he went to Kansas as a hog-farm training manager. He left there to take a similar job with Carroll Foods of Virginia Inc. in Isle of Wight County.
Pig farming couldn't match the appeal of turning Americans on to the flavors of Africa.
So he turned to his partners, who gave him the financial backing to open ``Mama Africa.'' He even got Ngie, the cook from the Texas restaurant, who is the sister of one of the partners, and who learned to cook at the age of 10.
If Bruce's venture catches on, the partners hope to combine some of the profits of their two restaurants to start another in Atlanta.
In Lubbock, he and his partners were sometimes invited to schools, where they cooked food and educated students about Africa. When he would go to the schools, he would always take a map.
``Who can tell me where The Gambia is?'' he would ask the students.
Most did not know. So he would show them and slip in a history lesson. He'd tell them about how British traders sailed up the Gambia River into West Africa centuries ago, capturing the native people to serve as slaves in Europe and America.
Most of the slave trade took place in West Africa, because the Gambia River provided easy access from the Atlantic Ocean.
He would tell them about the culture of his homeland, about the kind of cooperative spirit that pervades everyday life.
And he continues to be mystified, and deeply troubled, by the violence he sees within the black community in the United States.
``They don't trust each other. They will take from each other. Even kill you,'' Bruce said. ``They don't want to see the guy next door do better.''
For Bruce, who understands life in terms of connections, it's difficult to explain such disunity.
After all, he says, his ancestors may have been taken to America by slave traders.
The people he meets could be part of his family, he said. ``I just look around at any one of them and say, maybe one is my cousin.'' MEMO: AFRICAN CUISINE
Signature flavors of The Gambia's West African cuisine include
onions, peanuts, curry, tomato paste and garlic. A sampling of the
menu's traditional foods:
Yassa (Yah-sah) - marinated chicken simmered in onion gravy over
rice, with vegetables.
Choo Yappa (Choo Yah-pah) - seasoned beef tips in a tomato sauce with
carrots and potatoes.
Caldu (Cahldoo) - red snapper marinated with onions, a touch of lemon
and mixed vegetables, served with rice and a tangy spinach sauce.
Acara (A-cah-rah) - black-eyed pea fritters. The peas are seasoned,
ground into a paste, fried in oil and served with a spicy tomato sauce.
Bissap - herbal beverage made from the tropical sorrel plant. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by D. KEVIN ELLIOTT, Staff
Yandeh Ngie, the chef at Mama Africa, and Francis Bruce, the owner,
dish up some native African foods at the restaurant.
Map
Color drawing
by CNB