La Nourriture

Alright, it’s time to talk about food. I really enjoy the food here! There is a wide variety of good natural stuff grown right here in Béré. The staple is white rice, and it usually accompanies every meal in some form. There is also millet, although it is less common because in this culture it is associated with poverty. They say that only the poor people eat millet; rich people eat rice. The second staple that accompanies every meal in some form is the peanut. Roasted peanuts, peanut butter, peanut oil, and peanut paste. The third staple is starchy root vegetables. Potatoes, sweet potatoes, and taro are the most common. You can buy all these things in the market along with the more seasonal stuff. White beans, onions, garlic, tomatoes, eggs, moringa, cassava, okra, cucumber, avocado, lettuce, green onions, cabbage, peppers, beets, pasta, whole wheat kernals, white flour, salt, sugar, sugarcane, green tea, red tea, papaya, bananas…that’s all I can think of right now. Sometimes a woman will come to the hospital compound and sell fruits and vegetables, which is quite handy! It saves walking a mile or so to the market. I’ve heard that there is way more variety available at the Saturday market, but I haven’t gone to see yet.

My family feeds me two meals a day, breakfast and dinner. Desiré and I always eat together. Here are some examples of what we eat:

• Boule and sauce
 - boule (“bool”) is white rice pounded into a flour and then cooked together with whole rice. The result is a sticky ball that you pick from and dip in the sauce. There are many kinds of sauces. Red, green, brown, thick, think, creamy, runny, spicy, not-spicy, you name it. Some of my favorites are moringa sauce and long sauce. Long sauce is a slimy brown sauce made by soaking the bark of a certain tree and then scraping off the slimy-ness. It’s called “long” sauce because it is kind of stretchy when you dip into it.
• Beans and rice
 - usually accompanied by some type of potato, lots of onions and garlic, maybe some tomato paste, and definitely peanut oil.
• Bouillie (“bwee”) - 
this is a porridge made from rice or millet flour, peanut paste, milk, and sugar. You usually drink it out of a big cup, but it can also be eaten by scooping it up with your hand and slurping it down.
• Pasta
 - sometimes it's pretty bare with just peanut oil, onions, garlic, and salt. Other times it’s more elaborate with peppers, potatoes, tomato paste, onions, garlic, salt, spices, etc.







• Beignet (“bayn-ye") or gateau (“gah-toe”)
 - these are very similar but have slight differences. They’re essentially donuts. Beignets are golfball-sized balls of rice dough dipped in hot peanut oil. Gateau are basically the same thing except they are about baseball-sized and made with wheat flour instead of rice flour. I think some powdered milk may also be included, but I’m not sure. You usually only eat these in the morning when they're fresh.





• Tea or hot milk with sugar
 - one of these is served with every meal, no questions asked. The tea is either a green tea or a red tea made from a local plant called “sorel”.

As you can see, there aren’t a lot of green vegetables or fruits in that list. That’s because they are more expensive and a little hard to come by. Lots of fruits/vegetables have to be brought over from Moundou. I try to buy some of these things on my own and eat them for lunch to boost my nutrient intake. I usually always have a papaya and some bananas on hand, and I have lots of freeze-dried fruits/vegetables that I brought with me from the States (broccoli, green beans, corn, blackberries, cherries, etc.).

FYI, I added some pictures to the old “Family” post.