Cookin'

When I came downstairs for my evening "sitting with the host family" time Miss was making dinner so I walked towards the kitchen. As I got near she said, "if you come in here I'm going to put you to work!" and I gladly accepted her offer. I grew up cooking and food always strong social glue so I am always happy to help cook here.

Miss was making salad and sauce for dinner so, while she was preparing the sauce I cleaned the lettuce. Preparing lettuce Senegalese style involves removing the leafy part from the more stem part of a piece of lettuce (for some reason they don't like the good crunchy part), soaking the leafy part in bleach and water, then drying it off. After finishing with the lettuce I "marinated" the tomatoes and cucumbers aka covered them in vinaigrette. Miss had boiled potatoes (to be part of the sauce) and took those off to cool. She put the sauce in the pot (Senegalese people refer to all sauce as "sauce" no matter what's in it... usually, like tonight, it's beef bullion/MSG cube, salt, oil, onions, garlic) to cook while I cut the boiled potatoes into bite sized cubes. The potatoes were added to the sauce and that was left to sit.

We eat dinner at 8:30pm pretty much on the dot and, because the meal was ready before, we sat around waiting. The kids did their homework and the rest of us sat around listening to Khady jabber. Close to 8:30pm Miss plated (tossed the lettuce in the vinaigrette, placed it around the edge of the plate, put cucumber and tomatoes on top of it, then placed the sauce in the middle of the plate). At 8:30pm we all sat down on the mat, got our pieces of bread, and dug in.

From now on just know that I'm going to use Miss' rule when it comes to cooking: if you come in this kitchen - you're going to help!


Cheers,
KO

Dinner's On Me

My house is about half full right now so we've been having a lot of food left over after lunch each day. Because I know there's food that could be simply reheated, I decided to cook dinner for everyone! I wasn't sure if anyone was going to like it (though I knew they would pretend) but the leftovers were a fall back in case they hated my food.

I had been thinking about cooking dinner for a while and I was going to attempt a macaroni noodle with Laughing Cow (or Vache Qui Rit if you're in a Francophone country) cheese sauce that other volunteers had made...then we had spaghetti for dinner last night. Not wanting to bore my host family I decided on a peanut sauce stir fry mix vegetable pile with lettuce around the edges (usually my host family eats cooked mixed vegetables with onions sauce and lettuce around the edges so this was my Asian/American take on that). This morning I went to the market and bought: lettuce, green beans, green peppers, onions, garlic, carrots, peanut butter (which is really just mashed up peanuts with no salt or sugar), and limes.

After lunch I cut the green beans, cleaned the lettuce, then bleached all of the vegetables. (Side note: that might sound like a bad idea but it's to kill any parasites or amoebas living on the vegetables so eating minimal quantities of bleach is better than eating those.) Around 7pm I realized that I hadn't bought bread yet so I ran out to get that, most Senegalese cooking involves the rule of: if there's not rice there's bread. After the soap opera I boiled the green beans and carrots while cutting the peppers, onions, and garlic. The garlic, onions, and peppers were then sauteed, the green beans and carrots were added, and then they were taken off. I only have one pot so they were moved to a plate while I put the peanut butter with some water, to thin the sauce, soy sauce (bought in a bottle in Thies but you can buy it in packets in most boutiques), lime juice, some sugar, some salt, and some Chinese hot pepper sauce that my parents sent me. After lots of whipping it was ready so I threw the vegetables in and tossed the mixture.

That was put in the center of a plate, lettuce was put around the edges, and the bread was cut for everyone. Miss helped me get the mat down, water bottles out, and forks ready then we ate! I thought the meal was pretty good, not the best thing I've cooked but not bad by any means. One of my host sisters didn't really like it but pretended she did. Another seemed to really like it - or is just really good at pretending. I couldn't tell if Miss liked it or not but then later she asked if she could save some for tomorrow so I guess she did... and that's everyone in my house right now (except for my host mom but she's been eating yogurt and millet every night).

So overall I think it was a success and I'm glad I finally cooked for them. It doesn't look too appetizing but here's a photo:

and she's back!

I realize it hasn't been a huge absence but I've been sick the past few days so it feels a world different/better to be back to normal (no worries, the sickness wasn't serious). First, to catch up to speed: On Monday I went to Ndem and it was pretty much everything I was promised, it was really interesting and really weird. It's not Senegal - it can't be. The best way to describe it without dedicating a whole post to it (which I'm not feeling right now) is it's kind of an artist commune in Senegal. Yeah, the artists are all Senegalese but they're working on a purse deal with Banana Republic, everything's painted blue and white and, somehow, they don't drink salty water like I do. Anyway, in Ndem I met 5 French women, 2 a few years older than me who worked with NGOs and Ndem and the others were midwifes who occasionally took weeks in Ndem. I was planning to leave after the hot part of the day (so around 5pmish) but around 3pm I felt a fever coming along and decided it would be better to be sick in Bambey then Ndem even if it meant a bike ride back through the hottest part of the day. So off I went, and, honestly, it didn't seem much hotter than usual. I got home and showered as my fever really kicked in and, long story short, the last few days have been filled with drinking Oral Rehydration Salt mix and lots and lots of water. Don't worry, it wasn't anything serious and I woke up today ready to conquer the world again!

I set off around 9:30am this morning (much to the surprise of my host family who hadn't seen me in the past few days except when someone would come up and tell me it was a meal time only to be turned away by me mumbling "I don't eat" and pointing to my stomach) for the high school. I was meeting with a French teacher to correspond with my world wide schools class in California (hi class if you're reading this!!). After a pretty productive meeting I left still feeling on top of the world! I didn't have too much going on but it was going to be an awesome day if for no other reason than I was feeling great.

On my walk back from the high school (which is a hike) some horrible high school girl followed me yelling the Senegalese equivalent of the "n-word" for white people. At first I was taken back, then chose to process my emotions while I ignored her. She and her friends proceeded to continue yelling it then saying "maybe she didn't hear/understand (it's the same word in Wolof)" and then, the cherry on top, "hey red-ears (the translation) give us some money." I ended up doing nothing, something I both do and do not regret. I wanted to turn around and give them a verbal lashing in Wolof but my Wolof isn't anywhere good enough. I was debating just telling them, in English so it mostly would have been for my own good, "you're disgusting and offensive," but I realized that wouldn't have done me much good either. I briefly entertained picking up a rock and throwing it but obviously didn't. It didn't really anger me as much as just offended and saddened me. I can deal with people calling me Toubab, that's kind of a cultural thing and most people don't realize it could be offensive (this is a culture where there are stereotypes about the different ethnic groups and it's completely fine). Everyone knows this is an awful word to use and that it is disgusting and offensive and these girls were just doing it to be horrible people which is offensive and saddening in my mind.

Not willing to let it ruin my good mood and settled stomach I made my way to the post where I received a whole bunch of letters (thanks AGC, Grandma, and Schlankers) and onward home. I had tutoring today and while it wasn't a great lesson in terms of my Wolof progress I had fun with my tutor. I casually explained that I wanted to learn the words for bargaining because I know I'm being charged a high price which she found hysterical, but knew was true. Hopefully next time I'm overcharged in the market I'll be able to fight back with my new Wolof vocab (I'm probably going to think of myself as a superhero in that sense).

After tutoring just more hanging out with the HF and dinner. I've long had this theory and I hope sharing it doesn't jinx it: any dinner served with bread is going to be awesome. Examples: beans come with bread, spaghetti comes with bread (who knows), sometimes we just have meat with onions and bread, and, from tonight's dinner add to the list, chick peas, potatoes, and bread - it was amazing! Way to go Miss!

Tomorrow's not filled with any specific plans but I want to get some laundry done and go visit the women's training center again.

One week until Thanksgiving, I cannot wait!!!

KO