Chow time

Tried to post last night, but the internet was down following a lengthy power outage yesterday. That will bring me to a post later to describe our business, as many of you have asked just exactly what the heck I'm doing over here. In the meantime, I must answer those who asked, even before I left, what will you eat?

Starches and some vegetables and fruit seem to be the main staples here. There is meat for sale, but most rural (70%) Ghanaians eat only the meat they hunt themselves. The cows I have seen are pretty skinny, but beef and chicken are readily available at restaurants, along with goat and grass cutter, which apparently is like a very large woodchuck-ish animal. Meat is harder to come by for home use unless you are willing to pluck your own chicken or have a freezer and can buy frozen meat. The main two starch dishes are FuFu and Banku. Both are doughs that are served in a ball about 5" in diameter along with a stew of palm oil sauce, spices, vegatables and sometimes meat. A hunk of dough is pulled off and rolled into a smaller ball, then dipped into the stew and swallowed whole. So what is the difference between fufu and banku - and why do you swallow it whole?

Conventional west African fufu is made by boiling such starchy foods as cassava, yam, plantain or rice, then pounding them into a glutenous mass, usually with a giant wooden mortar and pestle. The first early-morning sounds of rural west Africa are often the rhythmic thud-thud's of fufu being made. Often one person reaches in and folds the dough over between each thud of the pestle by a second person. I thought our neighbor was going to lose a hand as she folded the dough AND chatted with someone else while her daughter pounded with the pestle, but I guess they were in a rhythm. As an industrial engineer, though, my mind was thinking OSHA!

Banku is made in a similar way but with boiled cassava and fermented corn mash. This is why you swallow it whole. Apparently, it tastes (and sometimes smells) quite unpleasant. I say apparently because, as instructed, I did not chew mine - a mistake made only once by the unsuspecting obroni (Twi for foreigner - although mostly used for Caucasian foreigners).

My hypothesis is that at one time, there was no way to store the corn harvest in a way that prevented fermentation, therefore recipes had to be developed to use the fermented corn when no other food was available. Then those recipes became traditional (note: this is just a logical guess yet to be validated). Now, they do purposely ferment the corn in order to make Banku. .

So, what are we eating? Well, now that we are living in the residence, we are eating out of our cute little kitchen(ette?) most of the time.


None of these counters or appliances existed when Whit found the space to rent. There was only the crummy sink suspended in air on a couple 2x4's. He hired a contractor to build the cupboards and countertops. Like the other furniture shown earlier, they are all made by hand.


The kitchen is stocked with eggs, oatmeal, peanut butter from the market (freshly pounded peanuts), olive oil (hard to come by), every variety of citrus, canned tuna, corn flakes, butter, bread, and ants. No cockroachs yet (knock wood). We did our shopping on Sunday so not many stalls in the market were open. We need to go again on a weekday or Saturday to stock up on vegetables.