food

okay, although I have a normal blog to add after this and I periodically mention the food situation here, I feel that I really should sit down and describe some of my more memorable food experiences so far, for better or worse. Lets start off on the more G rated events, already discussing to with everyone, I feel it necessary to talk about the other fine cuisine that Mali has to offer. Perhaps my favorite has become rice and sauce. I know this sounds painfully boring, but in a country where "Mr. D" runs rampant, eating a constipatory ( I have no idea if that is even correct) like rice really helsp you out. Plus, the peanut sauce really is rather good. Another one of my favorite meals has become spaghetti. the spaghetti is more or less noodles with peanut oil and maggi (it is like chicken bullion and they put it on EVERYTHING) and it tastes amazing, although it rarely fills you up. The best part about the spaghetti is eating it with your hands, because well, rice is one thing but spaghetti is definitely tricky and since you can only use your right hand, it makes life that much more fun. One day however, I helped our teachers host family pick some cucumbers and they gave me some as a reward which I took home to my family. Thinks they would be happy and maybe I could get some cucumber with dinner, I was really excited. Then dinner came, and I got cucumber, and that was all. Well that wouldn't have been so bad except two nights later the family had picked a bunch of cucumbers and then asekd me if I liked them, since they were ahdning them out as a snack I said yea of course, and I got them again for dinner that night. Now I like cucumbers and vegetables are always a nice change in the diet, but when you get a bowl of cut up cucumber when you are starving well, it doesnt quite hit the spot. One day a couple of trainees and myself biked into Sanankoroba and after a couple of beers and the bar, decided to go find some meat. Finding a rotisserie we ended up buying about 4 dollars of goat meat which was still twitching and after an hour of barbecuing it, we got to eat it on a nice cement bag on the ground, it was fantastic, and absolutely disgusitng all at the same time. Another interesting event that I witnessed was the other night we threw a going away party and cooked a whole goat in the ground. Well, in a country where they don't really have butchers, you sort of have to kill the goat yourself. While I won't go into a lot of detail I will say I have seen them kill chickens and the main different is that goats have a lot more blood. Then in order to skin the goat, we had to cut a whole in the leg, then stick a bike pump into it to blow it up in order to separate the skin from the meat, it was a great time. I think what really topped it off however, was stuffing the goat. While potatos and onions seemed fine to me, the goats balls were also placed into the fold for stuffing, which I thought was a little excessive. As for now those are the main food stories that I have, and I have to say, i really am beginning to question going vegetarian in the country, not because of my feelings towards animals, but because the meat here really is not good.