Senegalese diets are very monotonous. In village, everyday for lunch we usually have rice or crushed up corn with loose peanut sauce (watered down peanut butter with veggies or left over meat boiled in) and for dinner it’s more or less the same thing but with millet porridge instead. This could be because my host family doesn’t have much else other than rice, millet, corn and peanuts, but it can also be because they simply prefer to have meals they’re used to.
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| Chicken coop is right there.. |
So in a desperate attempt to diversify our food, I tried to make a chicken dish for everyone in my family...a risky move especially since they can be critical about any dish other than their own. However, since a cold was spreading, I thought chicken soup would be appropriate. So I bought the loudest rooster from the chicken coop literally outside my front door (note the picture below), because that thing cock-a-doodle-doos all night long and doesn’t stop. Next I asked for some onions from my host moms garden and then bought macaroni and oil from the nearest road town, about 5 miles away.
My host brother killed the chicken right there in front of my hut and then handed it to his kids so they can remove the feathers and chop it up. The children are always tasked with these things, and they just love to scare their token Peace Corps volunteer with the chickens intestines!
The women in my village cook just using a fire on the ground with three big rocks surrounding it where the pot sits. Since I’m not familiar with cooking like that, I had my host sister help me. I chopped the onions up and she washed and seasoned the chicken before throwing it in a pot with water and oil. She told me to add the pasta and onions when the chicken is “ready” before she left to go hang out with her sisters. I don’t usually cook meat at home, so I added the onions and pasta the minute the water started to boil thinking that the chicken was cooked enough. She came back 15 minute later and saw that they were added way too early and exclaimed that the meat has to cook for at least an hour. She shrugged and said that we’ll just have to see what happens after an hour goes by. I’ve never had pasta boiled for an HOUR, so this was a new experience for everyone involved.
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| The end product! |
An hour later, we came back and the pasta was SO boiled it turned into mush. It looked like straight up vomit with huge chunks of chicken in it. My host sister looked at it and shook her head. But then we tasted it, and it actually tasted awesome. The pasta mush had a hardy texture and the chicken and onions were cooked just enough to make it all taste like a chicken Alfredo sauce. We passed the dish around with bread to everyone, and it was a hit! “A diyatta” and “I nin che” was called out to me, which translates to “Its delicious! Thank you.”
Even though I messed up, this is probably one of my proudest moments in village. And that night, I got to sleep in silence since that rooster became everyone’s dinner.
