(not so) good eats

I love food. We all know that. But here, food has become the bane of my existence. The reasons are manifold and as follows:

Reason #1: I never learned how to cook for myself. I lived at home (thanks mommy), then I went to college (thanks meal plan/Rita/theta), and every summer I was at camp (thanks Mic/CCC kitchen staff). All this means that I've never HAD to cook for myself because my whole life so far, I've had some way or another of nourishing myself without a bother as to how the food got to my plate. Now, I've been desperately trying to figure it out with severely limited options as to the ingredients I have available. Let's take an example. The other week I decided I wanted to try to cook some rice. I looked in the peace corps Burkina Faso cook book for tips as to what I could make and found a recipe for some curry type thing that kind of matched what I had to work with, but not exactly. I started off great by sifting through the rice for rocks like you are supposed to, then washing it until all the bugs stopped floating to the top. I felt, at this point, that I was on top of it. I owned this rice. Then I sautéed my onions, green peppers, and garlic in blue band (butter/Crisco) and set them aside, just like the recipe said. Then things got crazy. I didn't have any of the right spices, or any flour, so I figured I could substitute a chicken consommé cube that my grandmother had sent me for the flavor. I boiled some water and put the cube in. Now here's the part I don't think I can justify, because I have no idea what was going through my head, and in fact, remember thinking at the time, "this is a bad idea", but i did it anyway. I put the vegetables I had sautéed into the chicken consommé water, along with spoonfuls of powdered milk. Chicken soup milk...Whyyyy??? I hate milk; always have; why would I ever think that was a good idea. The vegetables just kind of got soggy in the chicken soup milk. I thought maybe the "sauce" would thicken or something if I kept it on the heat. I thought water would boil out of it. Ugh who knows. My mother tells me that apparently it's the flour that makes stuff like this into an actual sauce and not disgusting chicken soup milk with soggy vegetables. I had no choice but to eat it, because I was in desperate need of nutrients and I couldn't waste all that good food. Turns out the rice owned me.

Reason #2: Seasonality. Sure, in the U.S. you hear that maybe watermelons aren't "in season" right now, but all this really means is that the price goes up a little bit. You can still find them in any grocery store you go into. I have no idea when strawberry season or artichoke season is, because I never had to know. But here, seasons for foods are painfully obvious. I would love to have a nice juicy mango right now, but I'm told I have to wait until April, which I really don't want to will to come because it's also the hot season. Just the other day I started noticing that there was an abundance of potatoes all over the marche though. Guess it's potato season.

Reason #3: There's barely any food in my village. We don't have a market like most villages, I think because I'm so close to ouahigouya. I mean, biking the 7 or so Kilometers to the marche is not what's annoying; it's transporting the vegetables back to village which poses the problem. I strap them onto my bike and it's fine, but there are certain things I cannot physically transport without ruining them, like eggs. Eggs are just sold straight up, without any sort of protection, so unless someone sends me an egg carrier from the U.S., I can't have any eggs at site.

Of course, you can never have a list of cons without an adjoining list of pros:

Tea time: Taking tea here is not to be confused with "having a cup of tea" or "quickly getting a cup of something hot from starbucks or some other chain like it to-go and then rushing off to continue the day of running around like a crazy person". NO NO. Here, it is a process; one that takes no less than 2 hours; sometimes 4 or 5. You may be asking yourself, how can one possibly or even phycsically drink tea for so long. Let me assure you that it is possible. It's made outside (as everything is) over a little fire in a tiny teapot about the size of a large fist. It's made straight from the leaves (ok well its not really leaves but i dont know what it is, so for lack of a better word), so you fill the tiny teapot with water, put in the leaves, and wait til it starts to boil over. Then you pour it all into a cup, then back into the pot. Repeat many many times. Then, when all the leaves are on the bottom and don't escape into the cup when you pour it out, you pour the tea back and forth between the teapot and the cup very quickly, several times, adding a ton of sugar while you do it. This makes the tea frothy and cools it down a bit. It's then poured into shot glasses and distributed to anyone and everyone who happens to be around. If there are peanuts, you place them in the shot glass with the tea, and drink the whole thing together like a shot. Or you sip it. The whole process is ongoing and continues on for hours. In-between waiting for your shots of tea, you chat, play cards, sit and think about life--whatever.

Free food: People are insanely generous with their food, and, as I've mentioned previously, if you happen to be at or around someone's house during a meal time, they'll make you eat their food. Subsequently, I avoid going over to my neighbor's houses during meal times because I don't really like to (pronounced "toe"), the only thing people really eat, which is like a millet/water combination that's roughly a play dough consistency. I do, however, sometimes stay at my major's house or my accoucheuse's house for lunch because they make delicious rice, green beans, etc. Even people you don't know will offer you their food if you pass by them while they're eating. "Vous etes invitees" is a very common phrase, though I don't think they really expect you to take it. The proper response to that is "Merci, bon appetite". I've noticed though, that on public transportation, people are really forceful with trying to get you to eat. I've mentioned before how any time the vehicle stops, people crowd the windows selling bread, peanuts, little fried dough-like things called gateau (not really cake though), and so on. Any time people sitting next to me (strangers) buy these things; which is pretty much always, they offer me some, to which I always politely decline. But it doesn't stop there. They don't accept my declination and continue to shove the food in my face, to which I reply, "no really, I'm not hungry, but thank you". They inevitably say "I'm not hungry either, but I'm eating. Il faut enlever, il faut manger." YOU MUST TAKE IT, YOU MUST EAT. I hear it so often. Never before have I been bullied into taking someone's food. And so often. People also just sometimes bring me food for no reason. Last Thursday night one woman just strolled on by with some potatoes for me, and another gave me benga (beans and rice). I don't know the science of when and why this happens, but it's nice when it does! And then of course there's the fact that for every occasion; weddings, funerals, baptisms, etc., everyone who goes gets served food. These are not occasions that you have to be invited to either. It's assumed that if you are in the vicinity as it is happening, that you will go, and you will eat.

Gifts of food: I suppose this really could fit into the "free food" category, but it's a little different. Food is probably the most common thing given as a gift to people. Just recently, I enjoyed a delicious meal of the two chickens that had been given to me by the elders of my courtyard. I kept them alive in my courtyard for a few days before eating them, but I didn't really have any idea of how to take care of them, and they were extremely loud in the mornings, waking me up at 4:00 with their cock-a-doodle doos. Seriously, they were so loud I thought they were in my room with me, in my TENT with me, screaming their little wake up songs directly into my ear. They had to go. SO, I took them down to the CSPS, found an old man there to kill them, watched him chop their heads off, and then gave them to my major and my accoucheuse to prepare. One was grilled, the other boiled and served over spaghetti. My favorite part is that when you throw the parts that you don't want to eat on the ground, like the bones and the fat, the other chickens wandering around the courtyard who are lucky to still be alive come and gobble up whatever you drop. Stupid cannibal chickens. Little do they know they're eating their best friend and they're probably next.