Africans

If anyone recommends a restaurant, and recommends you try a particular dish, then I suggest you do, because my American mentor at work suggested we try the eggplant (aubergine) at African Feeling in Newtown, and she was right. The eggplant's to die for.

We've only just discovered Newtown really. It takes nine months or so to stop hankering after tourist restaurants and start hunting out where the natives find their tucker, not that there was anything native to Australia in African Feeling, just a beautiful big black lady with a glorious set of dreadlocks, unashamedly microwaving the stuff she'd prepared earlier. Ping.

Anyway, Newtown could give the curry mile more than a run for it's money - two miles of restaurants; lebanese, turkish, Thai, African, you name it. And men smoking bongs on the pavements. Noice.

The African food reminded Darren of Nigeria, where he spent six weeks as part of his medical school training back in 1994. He chose Nigeria because he had a Nigerian friend who's father was the chief of the local village (and owner of a hotel and a hospital, where he practised as jack-of-all-trades), though I was dubious about him visiting West Africa in the summer because (1) I'd checked the climate graph and found it was the rainy season and (2) I was conviced he'd get eaten by cannibals, who'd surely find the sight of his chunky little legs to good too keep from the pot.

But no, he was going to Nigeria and that was that, so I settled into a summer working for North West Water and waited for the call.

A week after he left the call came, though it was difficult to make out the voice on the other end of the line because of the noise of the torrential rain hammering on the corrugated iron roof. It was raining - lots.

It continued to rain for six weeks and the Africans fed him plantain and yams on an almost daily basis, his only solace the friendship of a small goat living in the garden outside his bedroom window.

Then on his last night in Nigeria, finally, a breakthrough. Not Plantain again. Not even yam. On his last night in Africa they sacrificed the goat in his honour. An honour killing you might say. And after that he wished he'd gone to Bolivia instead.