Food for Thought

Today I will attempt to elaborate on an issue very near to my heart: food. And when I say “near to my heart,” what I mean is “in the vicinity of my stomach.” But I must warn you – I am notoriously awful when it comes to remembering the names of foods. It never seemed like much of a problem until I went to France, where I was constantly being served new delicious dishes (mostly cheeses). I’m a visual learner. So the fact that all of these foreign cheese names were being thrown in my ears without my eyes seeing how to spell them – on top of the fact that who can pay attention to anything when their mouth is experiencing a multi-ring circus of amazingness and non-pasteurized dairy products – meant that I left France with a great appreciation for the cuisine, but little idea of how to replicate it at my local Trader Joe’s or for the rest of my life.

This same problem has struck me in Senegal. Other volunteers seem to have no problem rattling off obscure Wolof and Pulaar words for what we eat. But if I didn’t learn it in my first two weeks in Senegal, when I had my workbook of Wolof phrases matched with pictures, chances are, I have no idea what they are talking about. Hence, my life is full of me saying things like, “Oh I love that thing with the red sauce and the potatoes!” and “How do you say couscous in Wolof? I thought that was millet? How do I say couscous? It’s the same word? It’s not the same word? How do I say I love this thing with couscous? You don’t understand me? Damnit.”

Anyway, here is how the day often breaks down:

BREAKFAST

Most volunteers find comfort y in a hearty bean sandwich on tapalapa bread in the mornings. They’ll tell you cute stories about their relationships with local bean sellers and how no one can satisfy their protein deficiency quite like good old Khady on the laterite road. But I was raised on boxes of sugary, sugary cereal, so while I can appreciate a solid bean sandwich, in the morning, I need to feed my pancreas. For this reason, I start my days off with various cereals and powdered milk/baby formula. I try to eat a piece of fruit and usually fail. It’s been cold lately, so I’ve been indulging in a morning tea. If I’m feeling crazy and want to contribute to the local economy, I buy four beignets for 10 cents and let the sugar burn into my blood.

SNACK TIME

Snack time is critical in Senegal. I always find myself getting hungry around 11am and think, “I can’t eat now! I’ll spoil my lunch!” This thought is ridiculous and should always be ignored, because lunch will fall anywhere from 1:30pm to as late as 3:45pm. And on days when you’re really hungry, it’s always 3:45pm. For this reason, I usually buy a bag of sugared peanuts, a bag of roasted peanuts, and a piece of fruit to eat and feel healthy and good about myself. But if I’m working in my room that day, I usually just stuff my face with the generous supply of Cheetos donated by so many of you.

LUNCH

Many volunteers opt to eat lunch and dinner with their families, but from the very beginning, I’ve told my family that I’ll eat one meal a day with them and fend for myself at the others. This creates a complex situation that inevitably defines my life. If I lunch with my family, then I better have a plan for dinner – crashing a friend’s house, rounding up vegetables at the market, or breaking into my backup stock of food. It also creates an aura of gambling. It’s rude to ask what’s on the menu, so taking lunch means sacrificing dinner, which sometimes means giving up the chance to eat something marvelous like chicken and couscous. Lunches are usually pretty dependable though – ceeb u jen (rice, fish, and a whole bunch of vegetables.) Sometimes my host mom makes fish balls with red sauce, which is exciting. The same surprises happen in my office – I’ll think I have their weekly menu decoded (fish on Mondays, supakanja on Wednesdays, always chicken on Fridays), but then on a random Tuesday, they’ll serve me chicken, fries, salad, and a Coke. Needless to say, I’ve become very attached to my Senegalese lunches, and look forward to almost all of them, except supakaanja, which was once accurately described to me as eating phlegm (it’s a beloved dish involving palm oil.) I've also picked up the Senegalese habit of chugging an entire glass of cold water in one gulp after my meal. Almost all Senegalese do this, except for my host mother, who is currently on a strict Asiatic diet that only allows her to drink water two hours after her meal. Yes. Fad diets have made it all corners of the world.

AFTERNOON SNACK

For most Senegalese, after lunch is tea time. Tea is not tea in the sense that Americans often consider it, with a fancy tea bag, herbs, and grandmothers. Senegalese tea involves bags and bags of sugar in tiny, tiny glasses. As a self-identified pre-diabetic, I think it’s delicious, but I try to limit myself. I have to admit that tea is the closest thing Senegal has to dessert, and I really miss dessert. Just that taste... of sugar... to finish off a meal... is so... GOOD. So I usually end up eating sugar in some form after lunch. And yes, I admit that sometimes “some form” means eating straight sugar cubes. I’m not ashamed.

DINNER

As I mentioned earlier, my lunch-dinner game is always a gamble. If I eat lunch with my family and find myself needing to whip up a dinner, I usually just do something simple like fresh spring rolls, bruschetta, a peanut butter and banana sandwich, or macaroni and cheese. Sometimes I meet up with other volunteers and cook dinner, or I hit up one of Thies’ fine restaurant establishments (they really are quite lovely). Sometimes I eat cookies and take a vitamin. But on those days when I eat with my family and hit the jackpot – such as the previously mentioned (and today’s reality) couscous and chicken – I just feel on top of the world. I get similar feelings from omelette night, chicken and noodles night, egg salad night, and soup night. For many months, our most common meal was salad with fried fish, which for some reason just doesn’t do it for me. But lately... I’ll have bad days at work, bad encounters on the street, nothing will seem to be going right... and then all of my meals will just fall perfectly into place. We haven’t had salad with fried fish in weeks, and for that, I am grateful.

So there you have it. My culinary experiences in Senegal are far from typical – I live with a decently wealthy family in a decently wealthy area with plenty of farm and garden output. But still, my reality is my reality, and this is what Senegalese is to me. And it is... delicious.