Wijila and a lesson

What more could I want? A patient Sonrai woman (Zubba) helping with my culinary skills and teaching me health-related vocabulary the whole day! Sweet!

The meeting I had this morning with the Health & Hygiene Committee was surprisingly non-Malian. They were there on-time, we got to business without the requisite gossipping, and out in 15 minutes! They will all start the extensive survey to find 150 families to manage our garbage cans. Met up with my teammate and we went to market to get wijila fixins. The spice guy and ladies waiting to buy were impressed with my "deydey" skills. But I had a cheat sheet Zubba gave me.

I enjoy the snacks I get alongside the women too. They prepared this dried-then-re-hydrated tuber (not manioc, not yam) with spices. Yum. We talked a lot about puberty and girls dealing with periods here. A subject I had never learned the vocab for with male tutors, and was very thankful for Zubba's help. I need all this information for my health curriculum I am teaching beginning in the Fall. But wow, the horror stories she was telling. Girls who double and triple shorts under their wrap skirt for 3 or 4 days never changing them...only to smell and walk funny; girls getting cut up from dried matter on poorly tied cloth; and mothers or older sisters who seem to have forgotten how it was for them and don't help out! We also had the birds-and-the-bees chat in Sonrai. Lots of good vocab and even ways to explain things while being culturally sensitive. You don't have intercourse you have a "meeting with a man." They aren't days of high-fertility but the "mean days" (mean as in not nice). To help me out Zubba even produced her copy books from 1986-87 when she was in the 9th grade. Amazing. I really hope she gets better once she has her baby and can go back to Health School. She would make such a great health worker!

Once we started making the wijila, my basin got a bit dirty. In fact, evidently it is a faux pas to wear such nice clothing while cooking. Sheesh, I thought the Sonrai valued looking nice at all occasions! I was touched that though I am constantly called too skinny and weak, when we were kneading the dough the women saw I actually have a bit of umph. Yay. This round of wijila-making I learned some details on spice preparation I hadn't learned in Sala or with my host-family here. Like the redder the tomato powder the better (black means they roasted the dried tomato too long); you pound the kabe (I am sad I don't know the translation for this, I think I won't be able to find it stateside!) to remove the black powder that comes off and only use the white powder and mossy leaves remaining. Soaking the date-paste makes it easier to incorporate. Pounding the garlic makes the flavor come out. And one can leave out the peppers if desired.

Rain forced the wijila making operation inside--at least now Oumar and Bebe couldn't trampled our formed dough. The sauce turned out a bit salty--but other than that it was delicious!