No more rice!

In true American fashion I am going to dedicate a post to food. Food is the main topic of conversation we have while abroad because the differences in food are so pronounced. I just had the best meal since I’ve been in Senegal and it was a salad. As the resident lettuce hater I gobbled down the lettuce faster than ever before. The salad was Senegalese style- lettuce, tomato, cucumber, and cooked potato with a oil, vinegar and a pepper dressing. It was amazingly good. So good that I will probably get sick and spend the rest of the week in the bathroom.

This meal represents the overwhelming problem in Senegal of malnutrition. I was so ecstatic to eat lettuce, even though I am a lettuce hater, because I have yet to eat raw vegetables since my arrival. Normal Senegalese meals lack nutrients and vitamins, which is probably a large factor in the high-infant mortality rate as well as susceptibility toward illness. For breakfast people eat baguettes with chocolate or butter, if you live in my house you eat it with chocolate-butter. Coffee or Senegalese tea is a common breakfast beverage and so is powdered milk. You are hard-pressed to find liquid milk. For lunch people eat either meat swimming in oil with rice or French fries. For the past few weeks I have been eating rice and fish every night for dinner. In that dish, cebbujen, there are a few standard vegetables that have been cooked to death. My host family in Dakar calls me “Madame Chou” because I always go for the vegetables especially the cabbage, which is chou in French. While families eat a lot of fish because Dakar is on the water, they do not eat enough poultry or beef because it’s too expensive. Vegetables are available when in season but Senegalese dishes do not use many of them and they are always cooked so that they are mushy enough to ball up in your hand. Many traditional families eat around a bowl using their hands to eat, the oldest women breaks up the vegetables and meat to distribute them to the rest of the people eating. It’s an unsanitary but egalitarian gesture. Fruits are everywhere but are not seen as a standard foodstuff kept around the house because it is seen as a snack you buy in between meals. All that to say I have been making a concerted effort to eat well despite the overwhelming barriers, namely ten tons of rice.