Food, culture, and rural women

Much of my time in Cameroon was spent exploring the market. I would find some new fried insect to try, some weird bush fruit, or an indistinguishable blackened bushmeat, dried over fire, held open by sticks at the ribs and buzzing with flies. I kept a blog about the kinds of strange food I ate, and included both my favorite (definitely white palm grubs, fat and juicy, spiced with hot pepper and maggi cube and eaten off of a stick) as well as the ones I’d rather not eat again (definitely monkey, every time). There’s no market in Botswana, no street vendors rushing to sell you food at the pit stop (well, there is no “pit” stop… ah, Makanene), and I’ve been missing my experience of Botswana by taste. I am working my way through my grocery store supplies- familiar foods imported from South Africa- and I can’t help but feel that I’m missing a huge part of the culture by not eating local food.

Freshly pounded millet flour being sifted.

I spend these days assisting Ecoexist with a survey of farmers, farming techniques, market access, and food security. This gives me insights into what people eat, which is further developed simply by seeing their homes and what they keep around their concessions. So much of food here is millet. In fact, families measure food security not by nutrition but by starch. As long as there is “pap” you’re stomach is full. Pap is local grain flour (millet, sorghum, or maize) made by women, who’ve for the most part also planted and harvested the grain. The grain is cleaned away from the stalk with the use of a large, flat-headed wooden pestle and pounding the stalks in a multi-day process involving many women. Then the grain itself is pounded using a large mortar and pestle, and the large particles are sifted out and pounded again into the fine pap flour. Making a batch of flour takes several hours of work, and is repeated every few days in order to keep the house fed. Like in other parts of the world, women are largely responsible for growing food (although here it’s in infertile sand), maintaining home structures with reeds harvested at the Delta’s edge, and keeping their families fed. They are truly resilient.