fooooood here, especially now

the past new moon (last thursday) marked the beginning of ramadan, a muslim holiday that consists of one month of fasting. the significance is supposedly to give everyone a sense of how poor people live each day, which is a great concept (though we've been recommended not to try it for more than a day or two). the true definition of "fasting," in this tradition at least, actually consists of not eating or drinking during the daylight... thus plenty of families pig out during the night time, and nearly everyone wakes up around 4am to eat some stuff / drinks some water to get them through the day.

while fasting doesn't at first sound like the best time to explain the food in this culture, the special foods prepared at night comprise some interesting examples of various traditional meals. so far, the two times i've eaten after sunset with my brother, aunt and uncle and my aunt's drugstore ("alimentation"), i was obliged to first eat what they call porridge (though that name applies to several dishes, apparently). this consists of a large grain similar to tapioca, all sweetened with a bunch of sugar and ginger. i like it pretty well, though i have yet to finish drinking a whole cup of it the way everyone else does. after that (both times), we ate what must be the most disgusting thing i've ever had: bull intestines. i am not sure how intestines are eaten safely as they have fecal matter carried inside them, but obviously it can be done. my main concern was that the wrinkled black meat looks a lot like a giant tongue and is very difficult to swallow without first chewing for a long time and getting the full-on textural experience.

in general, people do not use utensils here. most dishes consist of rice topped with some kind of sauce containing meat and vegetables, served in a large communal bowl that is shared by as many as six or seven people. after the water bowl is passed around according to age, everyone scoops the rice into little sauce-laden balls -- for sure using only the right hand (the left hand is used to wipe one's ass and is hence not suitable for eating... luckily i am right handed). the more adroit native eaters have a little flick-of-the-wrist-thing they do to form the handful into a discrete unit that doesn't fall on the ground like mine when we shove our hands in our mouths. perhaps the most popular dish is made from crushed peanuts, though i am allergic to peanuts so i've learned what that dish looks like (since smelling food before you eat it is considered rude here) as well as how to say "i cannot eat peanuts; they kill me" in bamanankan. another thing they eat a lot of here is french fries, which i have helped to make with the women in my family (this is kind of uheard of - men cooking, that is - so i have hidden it from my brother... men and women also generally eat seperately, so sometimes if my brother isn't home my aunt makes me eat alone in my room). the french fries are sometimes made of sweet potatoes (not always orange) or cassava -- those are really good when they're hot, not so much when they're not. fried plantains with onions are relatively common, and meat that was not prepared in a stew/sauce is often cooked on a skewer or in little meatballs. fish is common in the rice dishes, and always includes the whole fish. i ate a couple of small deep-fried whole fish once, and they were surprisingly good despite how unappetizing they looked. sandwiches are popular on the street, though i have grown tired of rice, bread and noodles as they constitute a good 60 percent of my diet. sometimes for dinner we will just eat pasta with oil on it -- the eating of which is aided by using the bread as little grabbing-gloves... so, in so many words, a noodle sandwich.

at school every day we have salad that is safe to eat, but for travelers the fruit and vegetables are generally off limits unless they have a thick skin you peel yourself -- water conditions here are not what they ought to be and cause lots of illness among children between the ages of 0 and 6 years. corn, millet, rice and sorghum are some of the biggest crops here, and a popular dish in the villages (for all meals, apparently) is called "to" -- a thick porridge of grains with an acquired taste and texture. sometimes it is topped with a black juice that comes out of baobab trees, but i just assume the sap stay in the tree where it is more comfortable, and so am i. one of the most popular crops i see every day throughout the city (as well as in the country) is okra, which is a main ingredient in a whole class of really mucus-y sauces you can eat over rice.

i'd love to go into greater detail but i've been at this internet spot for about one million hours and i've got several assignments to work on. i interviewed my uncle last week about his rice farm about 20 km outside of bamako (hope i can visit it!), but i still have another interview to do, plus a photography project and an investigation of where the human waste in bamako goes (short answer: it doesn't go). we recently returned from a weekend voyage to sikasso, a village several hours south of here near the border of burkina faso and cote d'ivoire -- also the home of my family name, Berthé. i hope to tell more about the visit later, or especially post some pictures of the amazing hike we took, but like i said i should go soon. the last thing i'll say now is that next week begins our five-day sojourn to kalabankora, a very small village where we will live with non-french-speaking families and hopefully my bambara will improve...

all of my love / k'an bu fo...

idrissa