Food

While i've eaten some few crazy things here ranging from cow intestine stuffed with stomach to sheep hooves - i'm glad to say these aren't regular appearances in the family dinner bowl. Ironically these are the special treats that we will get for holidays and birthdays and not a part of the regular meal regiment. Since i'm too lazy to cook my own breakfast every morning (unfortunately cheerios don't exist here) i usually go to one of the many informal breakfast stands in town. Every morning, women set up rickety tables with one or two benches surrounding it and sell different breakfast options. These options range from harboiled eggs with mayo, omelettes cooked with a selection of spaghetti, potatoes, onions, and yapp (the wolof word for meat, which could mean anything from beef to monitor lizard), tuna fish sandwiches and, my favorite, bean sandwiches. A bean sandwich - a sliced piece of french bread topped with beans cooked in a tomato sauce heavily loaded with garlic, onions and maggi (an msg additive that Senegalese add to every meal - ranging from salad to tuna fish.) The sandwich is usually topped with homemade mayo (so much better than hellmann's) or a peppery onion sauce. These women also sell a piping-hot, spicy coffee laced with three or four heaping spoons of sugar. Most Senegalese work for an hour or two before eating breakfast, so the big breakfast rush isn't until 9:30 or 10:00.

I have several constants in my life: being called toubab (wolof for foreigner or white person), having a woman offer me her baby to adopt and eating rice for lunch. Meals are eaten from a communal bowl so the whole family crowds around one large bowl. Since we eat from one bowl there are several important etiquette rules. The first is that you never, absolutely never, put your left hand in the bowl or use your left hand to hold your spoon (the primary role of the left hand is in the bathroom). Also, you only eat what is directly in front of you - its very impolite to reach in front of someone else and take from their "bowl area." If you want something that is in their area, you need to ask and they will pass it to you. Everyday the bowl is filled with rice, topped with some sort of sauce, several pieces of vegetables and one or two pieces of fish. The most popular lunch dish is ceebu jenn (rice and fish) which is rice cooked in a heavy oil and tomato sauce. Other sauces include onion, onion and tomato, palm oil all of which have the same mix of veggies and fish. I like the food a lot although at times i get a little tired of the monotony of rice with sauces that are all very similar.

For dinner, the most common carb/base is millet which is ground and steamed. It has a striking resemblance to wet sand and at first i thought it tasted like that too, but in the past six months it has really grown on me and i now look forward to it. It is typically topped with a tomato-meat sauce or a leaf sauce (flavored with a bit of dried fish and peanut butter). Chicken for dinner is a huge treat and something that we only have for holidays or other big occasions. Senegalese people can't get over the fact that Americans eat chicken everyday and fish is a more expensive meal and something that many people can't afford to eat everyday.

Hopefully this gives you all an idea of what i've been eating for the past seven months. I hope you are all doing well and i'll write again soon.

Chris