Finding the right food

For some foreign students finding palatable food can become a challenge.

Students leaving their home country find it difficult to adjust to a new environment. Besides course-related issues they experience a few non-academic problems such as food, transportation, accommodation, finance, weather and language problems.

For international students arriving in Pakistan, the major problem besides accommodation is to get themselves accustomed to the proportion of spices and oil in Pakistani cuisine. Although there are foreign restaurants in cities like Islamabad, Karachi and Lahore, not every foreign student can afford eating out at these often pricey spots.

“I live in the university hostel and only once did I make the mistake of having a bite of the awfully spicy food catered by the hostel’s mess. I prefer fast food outlets and at times restaurant at the Sindhi-Muslim society (in Karachi) for lunch and dinner because they keep things in proportion,” says Jordanian medical student, Suhail Rasmi Al-Zghoul.

However, there are exceptions like Omar Hussein, who is a Somali student at PIMSAT and a Microbiology graduate from the University of Sindh. “When I came here, I had the same problems which most foreign students have. But now I don’t know how to eat food without spices,” Hussein said with a boastful grin.

“The choice for food in Pakistan is overwhelming but I don’t like most of it,” says a Yemeni student, Nasr Ahmed. “Pakistanis seem to be in love with vegetables in particular, I never saw such a wide variety of veggies in my country.”

On the other hand there are students who have found a solution to their food problems. Abdullah Mohamed Ali, a student at the International Islamic University, Islamabad says, “When we get exhausted from eating Pakistani food daily in the hostel mess, we try to cook all our beloved traditional dishes on our own. But we can’t enjoy this very often owing to the tough study schedule.”

Almost all international students miss their traditional food but among them only Somalis are famous for bringing home-made preserved food items with them. Abdinair Mohammed, a Somali Public Administration student at University of Karachi says, “Whenever I’ll go to Somalia, I will definitely bring ‘oodkac’ (a type of fried meat), which can be preserved for a long time without freezing, and the famous Somali ‘halwa’ which is in great demand among my friends.”

Published in The Express Tribune, May 7^th, 2011.