Baeta, Day Three

Today's lunch was reheated light soup with more smoked fish added, along with some gari. Gari is awesome, it's this slightly fermented cassava meal that has a taste reminiscent of sourdough bread. It swells up to about double its size when water and soup are added, is mostly starch and fiber, but has some protein in it according to the composition index I got form the Food Research Institute. Surprise surprise, it's also a good source of calcium.

Barbara came to see us today at the house to properly finish our series of interviews with her. She has some really interesting stories of the meals she's had to serve, of how she got her school started, of how she tried to make it a practice not to borrow money from anybody (she only borrowed twice in her life, and paid the debt off promptly). She told one story of how she served Jimmy Carter breakfast when he was visiting, and he took a liking to the Tom Brown porridge because it was served with groundnuts, groundnut being the local term for peanuts.

I'm having Maosi make me a dress from the fabric at the top of the stack in the picture to the left. She says it'll be ready tomorrow, I'm very excited. I'll be sure to put up a picture or two!

Things to look out for later in the week: Ghana plays USA on Saturday, any and all of you reading should watch for sure.

Football, Frisbee, and Fufu

Today I stuck around the house, slept in a bit, got some writing taken care of for the night before and watched the first two football matches of the day. I'll quote a friend when I say it was shocking that out of two matches and three teams, there was no single victory to cheer for! Later in the afternoon, I went outside to throw the frisbee around some more with Eric and Frances. Eric and his friends had the disc overnight and probably at school, and so when I got it back, it was not only washed, my name had been re-traced in sharpie, and two more names were added to the list.

Eric's mother and aunt came outside closer to dinner to pound fufu. Fran had shown me pictures of the process before, but I was really curious, so I came over to watch. They knew I'd never tried fufu before, and offered me a piece of the un-pounded cassava (another first). It also tastes starchy and potato-like, and you can see in the pounding process, it's a lot like kneading dough for bread. One person works to release the gluten in the cassava by pounding with this big heavy piece of bamboo while another turns the fufu between pounds and adds water as necessary. I asked if they would let me pound, but I didn't realize how much force and movement was needed, and so I was laughed at for my few wimpy attempts. I have to work on my technique for sure.