Last week I made plans with Ma Nakama (the Paramount Chiefs' wife and the lady who cooks for me) to come over during the weekend to learn how to cook. I'm at school during the time she's normally cooking so weekends are the only time I can partake in the cooking extravaganza. I have been repeatedly asked by the teachers at my school if I know how to cook yet so I figured it was time to do some Sierra Leonean cooking. I had previously helped my host sisters (albeit minimally) cook during training but hadn't yet done much since arriving in Yele. Time to don an apron and do some cooking!
Saturday morning, after a leisurely few hours of drinking tea and reading on my porch, I traipsed over to Nakama's to begin cooking. My first task was to separate the cassava leaves from their stems--it could be compared to preparing lettuce or any other leafy green. Once de-stemmed the leaves were put into a large wooden bowl thing (I don't know how to describe it, hence the use of the word 'thing') where two girls promptly began pounding them with 10 foot long wooden poles. Cassava leaves contain cyanide so they literally beat the poison out of them. Seems odd to me that you would even consider eating something with cyanide, but they've figured out how to do it. Props to the Sierra Leoneans. Some time in their past they must have been very desperate for food sources. I did not take part in any of the cassava pounding but it looks like very labor intensive work. Almost everything added to the sauce is pounded to a pulp, if possible, even if there is no cyanide to banish, such as onion and pepe. A fellow PCV remarked the other day that cooking in Sierra Leone would take about two seconds if they had food processors. Instead they do it all by hand so it takes a few hours.
After the cassava leaves have been sufficiently beat they are added to the already boiling pot of water and palm oil. My next task was to help de-bone the fish. I learned how to prepare both dried fish and raw fish (luckily I was not asked to gut the fish, I need to build up the nerves before setting on that unpleasant task-I am, however, quite proficient at breaking heads off dried fish). While I was doing that two other girls were sifting through rice picking out pebbles, pounding the onion and pepe, grinding granat, and adding Maggie (MSG) and salt to the sauce. Once I had finished the fish was added to the pot and all the other prep was done so the sauce was left to boil for a while.
Looking back I was a relatively small part of the cooking process with my measly two jobs, but it's a start. I certainly understand the basic concept of cooking here but I don't yet have a good grasp on what proportions (water to palm oil to cassava leaves) makes for a good sauce.
My school has decided to hold end of term exams already, which feels very early to me since I only finished passing back mid-terms 3 weeks ago. But we're in full swing finals mode, which will be over November 30. At that point the teachers have a weekto grade their tests and hand over their scores to the C.A.R. committee. The C.A.R. committee (which, coincidentally I am the chairman of even though I have no idea what that entails) is then responsible for transcribing the scores for each student for each subject into their report card. With over 800 students, each taking about a dozen classes, should be a quick process (note the sarcasm). My favorite part of the exams though is that proctoring the tests is called invigilating. Makes me sound super cool and important when I say, "I've got some invigilating to do today." It sounds like I'm off to go fight criminals. Proctoring exams is not quite as cool as catching criminal master-minds but at least the terminology lends to some imagination.
In other word news, my new favorite word in Temne is kabep. It means spoon, but I like it because it's nice and jaunty. If it was a person I'd picture it wearing a bright yellow rain hat and boots and hopping through rain puddles with exclamations of "kabep!" every time it lands in a new puddle.
Saturday morning, after a leisurely few hours of drinking tea and reading on my porch, I traipsed over to Nakama's to begin cooking. My first task was to separate the cassava leaves from their stems--it could be compared to preparing lettuce or any other leafy green. Once de-stemmed the leaves were put into a large wooden bowl thing (I don't know how to describe it, hence the use of the word 'thing') where two girls promptly began pounding them with 10 foot long wooden poles. Cassava leaves contain cyanide so they literally beat the poison out of them. Seems odd to me that you would even consider eating something with cyanide, but they've figured out how to do it. Props to the Sierra Leoneans. Some time in their past they must have been very desperate for food sources. I did not take part in any of the cassava pounding but it looks like very labor intensive work. Almost everything added to the sauce is pounded to a pulp, if possible, even if there is no cyanide to banish, such as onion and pepe. A fellow PCV remarked the other day that cooking in Sierra Leone would take about two seconds if they had food processors. Instead they do it all by hand so it takes a few hours.
After the cassava leaves have been sufficiently beat they are added to the already boiling pot of water and palm oil. My next task was to help de-bone the fish. I learned how to prepare both dried fish and raw fish (luckily I was not asked to gut the fish, I need to build up the nerves before setting on that unpleasant task-I am, however, quite proficient at breaking heads off dried fish). While I was doing that two other girls were sifting through rice picking out pebbles, pounding the onion and pepe, grinding granat, and adding Maggie (MSG) and salt to the sauce. Once I had finished the fish was added to the pot and all the other prep was done so the sauce was left to boil for a while.
Looking back I was a relatively small part of the cooking process with my measly two jobs, but it's a start. I certainly understand the basic concept of cooking here but I don't yet have a good grasp on what proportions (water to palm oil to cassava leaves) makes for a good sauce.
My school has decided to hold end of term exams already, which feels very early to me since I only finished passing back mid-terms 3 weeks ago. But we're in full swing finals mode, which will be over November 30. At that point the teachers have a weekto grade their tests and hand over their scores to the C.A.R. committee. The C.A.R. committee (which, coincidentally I am the chairman of even though I have no idea what that entails) is then responsible for transcribing the scores for each student for each subject into their report card. With over 800 students, each taking about a dozen classes, should be a quick process (note the sarcasm). My favorite part of the exams though is that proctoring the tests is called invigilating. Makes me sound super cool and important when I say, "I've got some invigilating to do today." It sounds like I'm off to go fight criminals. Proctoring exams is not quite as cool as catching criminal master-minds but at least the terminology lends to some imagination.
In other word news, my new favorite word in Temne is kabep. It means spoon, but I like it because it's nice and jaunty. If it was a person I'd picture it wearing a bright yellow rain hat and boots and hopping through rain puddles with exclamations of "kabep!" every time it lands in a new puddle.
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