At the hospital, the meal is not divided into starter-main course-dessert but organized around a single base—a large dish of rice or banana that everyone shares—accompanied by a sauce, a fish from the Ogooué, or vegetables from the garden. People eat together, doctors, nurses and patients at the same table, in simplicity. Over this tropical structure, softly layered, is the doctor's Alsatian memory: bread, Sunday brioche, the taste of childhood in Gunsbach.

Extracted from the nuts of the oil palm, deep orange in color, it colors and perfumes the sauces of the equatorial forest. More than any spice, it speaks the cuisine of Schweitzer's Gabon—in contrast to the butter and lard of his native Alsace.