The important stuff: FOOD!

Well, I just got back from my first visit to the market (marche). It was crazy busy there and they had just about everything under the sun available. I went with my two host sisters and while I didn’t get anything myself, it was nice to see what they buy and how they buy it. For example, they bought little baggies of both oil and tomato paste. These are very popular ingredients in food here, but most people don’t buy them by the can or bottle because they don’t have anywhere to store what they don’t use. So, they only buy what they need, but have to go to the marche more often. I asked my sisters and they said they go to the marche everyday.

There was also a wider variety of fresh produce than I was expecting. They bought tomatoes, onions, garlic, cabbage, and peppers. I also saw a variety of fruit, including mangoes and liane, and guavas. I had never had liane before, but it is a sort of sour fruit that you crack open, then you suck the juice off of the seeds. There isn’t actually a lot that gets eaten, but it was good in an acidic tangy sort of way. (liane is the French word for it, it’s called weda in Moore, and I have no idea what it is in English. I looked it up and it translated from French as “creeper,” but I feel like that isn’t right.)

As for the types of dishes we have here, most of what I’ve eaten is rice based, but the more common local dish is To (pronounced toe). It is essentially just flour and water boiled together until it becomes a sort of flavorless gelatin. My family uses corn flour, but I think millet is more common. It reminds me of gravy that just came out of the refrigerator, but thicker and more Jell-O like. And like I said, flavorless. My family eats it with baobab sauce, which is made out of baobab leaves and okra. (fun fact for you all: baobab, the iconic African tree, isn’t a tree at all. It’s closer to celery than it is to a tree.) Though, I have to admit that it is the only sauce that I don’t like so far, mostly because it has a really slimy texture that I can’t handle.

Other dishes I’ve had: riz sauce d’arachide (rice with peanut sauce)
Couscous avec sauce tomate (delicious)
Spaghetti (instead of cooking the sauce seperately, they make it a little thinner and cook the noodles in the sauce)
Des Haricots (Beans. This was also delicious and pretty close to chili)
Benga (actually a Moore word, but it is beans and rice, I can buy a baggie of it for 100CFA or 20 cents)
Omelette (More of a fried-egg sandwich than an omelette we would think of, but they mix in onions or on special days green pepper and it is awesome !)
Riz sauce vert (Rice and green sauce. I actually haven’t had this yet, but if it’s like baobab sauce, i probs won’t like it)
Riz gras (Fat Rice. I think this is my favorite dish! Like the spaghetti, they make the sauce first, then cook the rice in the oily, tomatoey, flavorful liquid, and make another thicker sauce on the side. It’s things like this that are the reason they warn us we probably won’t lose weight while we’re here.)

A note on meat: There is no specific meat that typically goes with any of these dishes. I’ve had fish in just about everything. And it is just a chunk of the fish that hasn’t been cleaned. So when I see fish in food, I typically pick the skin off, pull the bones out and break it up into smaller chunks in my sauce. When I first found fish in a dish, I was a little nervous, because Burkina is a landlocked country and I was curious where the heck the fish came from and how it was stored, but dried, salted fish is very very common. I even saw it in the market today! They were just entire fish, salted up and very brown. I’ve also had unidentified dark meat a lot of my food at the host family that I think is pigeon. They raise pigeons and I was around one night when they were catching one for dinner. I don’t ask a lot of questions though…

They also have chicken here, but they are definitely not as big as chickens in the US, they have a lot less meat on them. I’ve also seen goats, sheep and even a few cows around town, but as far as I know, I haven’t eaten any of them. Well, actually that’s probably not true, haha. I ordered a hamburger the other day, and while it definitely wasn’t a hamburger like I’m used to, I think it was beef. But as I said, I don’t ask a lot of questions.

While discussing food, I think it is appropriate to discuss water. My host family’s house has running water, at both the faucet in the yard and in their indoor shower. (like I said, I’m getting spoiled here). Even though they have easily accessed running water, I can’t drink it. It is full of amoebas and parasites that my body won’t like. So the Peace Corps provides us with these nifty water filters. There are made out of two buckets, two filters, and a spigot. The water goes in top, through one filter (which I think mostly cleans the water) directly into the second filter (which I think purifies the water. It has those black specks like my filter at home) and then sits in the bottom bucket until I’m ready to use it. But even after the double filter, we still need to add two drops of bleach to every liter of water to ensure that everything is good and dead.

There aren’t too many drinks that are unique to Burkina or even West Africa. Mostly we drink Coke and beer. I think I’ve had Brakina the most. It’s the Burkina national beer. They also have SOB-Bra, Flag, Beaufort, Castel and even the occasional Heineken. The first three listed, along with Brakina are the main choices, and really they all fall about somewhere between a PBR and Old Style. But they’re cold and therefore delicious.

Other than cheap beer, there is one new drink I’ve discovered: bissap. It is brewed from habiscis flowers, but then chilled and mixed with ginger and sometimes other juices. It’s served cold and it’s pretty delicious. My host sisters make and sell bissap frozen in baggies (saches). (Yes, my family owns a freezer. Yes, i am losing friends because of how spoiled i am at my host house. But whenever i bring icewater to class i always share, so i'm not losing too many friends :P) I usually can’t drink the bissap as strong as they make it, but watered down a little, it is awesome!

Well, there is a look at food and drink in Burkina. I’m sure I’ll have a lot more to add when I actually have to cook for myself. Or maybe I’ll just continue to buy baggies of benga and never actually cook :)