Snail Soup

This is an excerpt from Bryan's letter this week:

"The owner of the compound insisted that we stay and eat something today, his wife was preparing fufu. We hung around a couple minutes after all we were kinda of hungry and a free meal is a free meal. The man was sitting in front of us watching the news and chatting to us. We were sitting behind at a little coffee table.
When we got the soup all of the meat was at the bottom, but it had a funny smell. So we blessed it and started to eat it. As soon as I tasted the soup I knew what the meat was….lots of snail…but this snail wasn’t nice. It wasn’t washed well or something. It was very, very……..snail-y. The funny thing is that my companion has vowed never to eat snail. Ever. Not even to eat anything that has snail in it. He says they don’t eat them in Uganda. So I’m there struggling with this very snail-y soup and trying not to laugh while my companion was eating. His facial expressions told me that there was something wrong, but he didn’t say anything. When we got to the meat I went for the fish first….trying to get him to eat the snail….as soon as he saw it his face became complexed…I could tell that his processor was working very hard…I took one and ate it….aighee…not prepared well at all, but I didn’t show it or act like it was bad at all…still Elder Balyejusa was poking at it with a very puzzled face…I can’t even write this story without giggling..lol.
Well after all this time, he finally whispered to me “What is this meat?”
I said “It’s cow.”
“No, no…it can’t be. What kind of cow is this?”
“I don’t know. But it tastes like cow.” I replied.
“No, no. it can’t be.. I think it’s snail”
“No it’s definitely not snail. I’ve tried snail, it’s not snail.”
“Oh. Ok. But what part of the cow is it…no, no it’s snail”
(at this point I was biting my tongue not to laugh)
“Oh, ok. Whatever. I like it its good.”
“Hmmm. Ok” …..so he picks one, chops down, and almost spits it across the room… “This is snail!” he said with conviction.
At this point I couldn’t help it. I just started laughing. So our host turns around and asks if everything is ok. I pretended to be coughing while my companion uttered a hurried “No, we are fine” while he picked the half of the snail that his tongue rejected off the floor.
Sooo. We just looked at each other. I’m smiling, he looks like someone dropped a jack hammer on his toe. He won’t touch them. I can’t eat them. So I told him to drink the soup and I would take care of the snails. So he finished the soup. I scooped the snails into my hand, made sure our host wasn’t watching and slipped them into my pocket. We finished, thanked him profusely, and left...problem solved.
He invited us back tomorrow…..I sure hope it’s not snail."