(Mis) Adventures in Eating

By popular request, I'm blogging about fish heads this week instead of my mandate. Ask and ye shall receive:

As I've alluded to before, one of the most important aspects of my work in international cooperation in Mali is "intercultural learning" which is centered around living with an adoptive Malian family. For me, it has proved to be at times the most and least enjoyable aspect of my life as an international stagiaire.

Although the families we are placed are slightly better off than the average Malian family, the conditions there are a far cry from the air-conditioned houses with pools that ex-pats can afford. In short, living with a family provides a first hand glimpse into the every day realities of many Malians. Still, the situation is somewhat artificial, since interns get their own room and bed which is already different than the situation for most Malians who share rooms and beds, if they have a bed at all.

Not all interns have had the same experience as me, but I did have a hard time transitioning from living independently in Canada where my only obligations to others were to feed my cat and to be considerate to my roommates, to being part of a family in a société collective (as opposed to individuelle like home, thanks pre-departure intercultural sensitivity training!) where decisions are meant to be made and actions undertaken with everyone else in mind.

The living conditions in my first family were intolerable to me, and I know that I wouldn't have been able to do 5 months living in a dark, dirty store room with a door that didn't shut all the way. Still, the family spoke French really well, there were cute kids and babies to play with and they cooked me a big plate of eggs for breakfast every morning, so there was good and bad in that situation. Having to change families meant that I had been in Mali for almost a month and still didn't feel "settled", which definitely affected my productivity. 

My next and current family were much better equipped to host an international worker, but I still had issues having my daily needs met, specifically a good breakfast. They seem to be an afterthought here, and most time and effort is dedicated to supper where the portions are enormous. Usually, the family eats so late that by the time they bring me my pot, I've "pushed through" my earlier hunger and don't have much of an appetite anymore. I tried unsuccessfully to explain that a big breakfast before work was more important to me than a huge supper right before bed. Eventually, they started saving a portion of the day's lunch and served it to me warmed up the next morning. This was not my favourite thing, but it more or less worked until the maid brought me cold faroké. I took one bite and vommed before breakfast and then snapped and told my family and my boss no more, I'm buying my own breakfasts *Shut it down!*So it only took 3.5 months, but finally I've been given an extra 50 cents a day to buy my own breakfasts. 50 cents gets me one croissant or pain au chocolate, 2 slices of laughing cow cheese, or 3 hard boiled eggs and a stick of bread. It more or less works.

As for my room, it's a good size and a nice place to retreat to. If I didn't have my room, I would probably go crazy. That being said, the room is still a big change in its own right. There is no screen on the window so mosquitoes have been a problem the whole time and it faces the court yard, so it's noisy and pretty much everyone can see what I'm doing in there at any given time. The lack of privacy bothered me at first, but now I don't care except for when I'm changing. Also, it's stifling hot in my room since its position in the house means it's hard to get any kind of a cross-wind going. The plus side of this is that now the glacier showers don't bother me...I even look forward to them. Finally, there was no problem adapting to the people in my family, because they're just lovely. As with any relationship, it took me a while to trust them, but when I did I realised that they were good friends and great fun.

Evidently, I've adopted the "meh, Africa" shrug coping mechanism where you shrug off things that might otherwise bother you because the other option is not being in Africa, which would be worse. 

Before anyone accuses me of going native though, I must admit that for me, the food has been one of the hardest things to get used to. Mali is known for having some of the worst food in the region. For example, I once heard a Sénégalais proudly announce that they don't have the somehow sloppy yet gelatinous, blackish/green blob food called thon there. As with everything, I did a lot of shoulder shrugging to accept having someone else cook for me and never the things I wanted, and I've spent much time here fantasizing about what the first thing is I'll cook for myself when I get home. I keep craving borscht with a healthy dollop of sour cream which probably means I'm deficient in something found in those two things...or that there has been some latent, as of yet undiscovered Russian incursion into my lineage.

All meals are prepared outside and usually eaten by hand communally,(although separated by gender) out of a big bowl, but my family gives me my own pot with a lid and a spoon, which is good, because I'm not hardcore and I don't really like eating with my hand, especially if I've had to wash with just the kettle. 

Breakfasts are sparse, if they happen at all. Lunches for my family are always rice and sauce, but way too much of it and I get a food baby every time I eat anything with rice in this country. I buy my own lunch most days since I'm at work which means a huge portion of my budget has gone to Le Relax and Burger-Time. Snacks are purchased from nice ladies on the side of the road and suppers are by far the best and worst, depending on the night, allow me to explain:

Suppers in my family are usually some kind of starch (eg: potatoes, beans, sweet potatoes, and cassava root or pasta) with one or two chunks of sheep meat or a piece of fish and a sauce, typically a little too heavy on the palm oil and salt, but tasty enough. Other times, it's a grain (eg: couscous, fonio, thon, attieké) with the same accompaniment as the starch. Rarely, I get salad, nems, meat and peas. For the most part, I eat fairly well compared to other stagiaires, so I don't go out for supper too often. There is however, one problem and that is what has come to be my least favourite thing in the world: fish heads
 

The first fish head I got was some slimy bottom feeder served with rice for lunch after I'd been with the family for only about a month. I lifted the lid, looked inside, closed the lid and momentarily pondered packing my bags and getting on the next flight out. My maman was sitting right beside me, so I did my best work on the thing and tried to sneakily put the lid back on and steal away. She opened the pot and remarked that I had barely eaten the thing, then picked it up and sucked all the skin off of it and dug out all the organs including the eyes. Her tenacity impressed me, but imagining myself doing it made my guts turn.

Prior to that, I had done my best to eat all that she put in front of me, but I just couldn't do it this time, and was hoping that she would interpret my not eating the fish head as a sign that I didn't like it. 

It didn't work, and much to my chagrin, I was given many more fish heads. I did my best to eat them, despite being put off, especially once I had a Malian tell me that giving some one a fish head was a sign of respect usually reserved for the male head of the family. This made me feel uncomfortable, since I already get to skip the eating order hierarchy by being pasty and I didn't want to seem like I was eschewing some sign of cultural respect.

Nevertheless, I suspect he might have been pulling my leg, because the other day one of the kids brought me a pot with a fish tail on potatoes but my mom called her back. She swapped my pot for hers saying that she didn't like the head....

Food in Pictures:

The kitchen

The stove

Breakfast: 

Céréal, usually made with corn, rice or millet and eaten with these big, plastic spoons.
This also doubles as dinner on Sunday.

Lunch/Somtimes my Breakfast: 

Faroké (sp?) dark green sauce made with shea butter and ground seeds, usually palatable but has the texture of sand and will break you if ingested cold.

Every Sunday lunch feast: riz au gras, or Sénégalais rice cooked in oil with fish and veg.

Lunch en brousse=fish and spaghetti.

Ubiquitous sauce arachide, or peanut sauce

Poulet yassa from a street stall, that's a chicken's spinal column in the foreground

Poulet yassa from a nice sit-down place in Djenné. Notice the lack of spinal column.

Fish and Chips, Dogon style.

What's for Dinner?

Beef+deep fried plantains+onions=not bad.

Thon, or tion? Pronounced like "toe" is the bane of most stagiaire's existence.
More common en brousse, and my family hates it anyway, so I wasn't subjected to it that often.
This kind with vegetables wasn't so bad, but I couldn't eat the kind with fish.

One time after couscous, I got a second supper of beets and beans.
Any kind of insoluble fibre makes T very happy.

Tasty sweet potatoes and cassava, one of my favs.

First supper back from Dogon was my fav: nems on salad :)

Fish Heads for Supper: A Cautionary Tale
(go on, click the link. You'll enjoy it)

Fish head on deep fried plantains and onions. This is a "capitaine"
or "nile perch". Tasty enough when not in head form, but I
did the best I could.

Dear real family, next time you try to say I'm a princess, remember this image.

Fish head on salad with a side of bread....wtf?! *shrug*.

This kind of creepy bottom feeder  which was served on rice was the first kind of fish head I received, but I didn't take a pic then. This one was served with red sauce and bread.  I didn't even try to eat this one, this picture broke my camera and I dreamt about fish heads that night...only 2 more weeks.

Finally, after yet another unfortunate and still ongoing digestive episode last week, I refused the last fish head I was offered. I guess there is an upside to being sick.