Bringing Thanksgiving to Senegal

This next post will unequivocally make my blog a food blog. However, I need to get better at taking pictures of food, if I really want to invest in this, because the photos to follow do not do the food justice (if I do say so myself). I was a bit hesitant trying to host a Thanksgiving meal in Senegal for a couple reasons. One, I really wasn't sure if what we'd try to make would work given the ingredients we have in Senegal. Second reason I hesitated - I wasn't sure that, even with the proper ingredients, I could cook a Thanksgiving meal! Sure, maybe with my mom and grandmother around I could feel a bit more self-assured, but that is a lot of food to coordinate. In any case, despite my worries, I think my roomate, a few other girls, and I did manage to pull off something quite nice. So here's a recount of Thanksgiving à la mode Senegalaise. 

My roommate Giulia and I decided we were going to try a modest Senegalese Thanksgiving meal because we both love to cook and eat and we knew of a couple other American women who wanted to cook a Thanksgiving meal but were living in host families and didn’t have access to a kitchen. This was the Monday before Thanksgiving. By Wednesday evening, 16 people had RSVP’d – how this happened, we’re still not quite sure.

So, Thanksgiving morning began like I’m sure it begins in many American homes. Giulia and I went to the market to get our “turkey.” And by this I mean, Giulia and I went to the sprawling, open-air market called Tilène and negotiated for 3 live chicken. Actually, Giulia offered me up to the vendor as a second wife for $2 off the price of the chicken – what a good friend.  We then watched our chicken be carted away and quickly become no longer alive. For 200CFA/chicken (about 50 cents) a couple men plucked, cleaned, and bagged our Thanksgiving feast and we were on our way. Oh I forgot to mention that our chickens came included with a series of eggs inside of them – including one that was about ready to come out, shell and all! The next stop: finding a substitute for pumpkin for the pumpkin pie. Fortunately, there is a type of orange squash in Senegal called “naadjo” that everyone puts in the national dish ceebu jen, so we thought, why not “naadjo pie?” After finding half a large “naadjo” for about $3, we moved onto our Senegalese contribution to the meal: “sauce feuilles” (sauce and greens). Giulia had an idea how to make this dish; I was totally clueless. So we asked the woman we were buying the greens from, who elaborated out the recipe to us in very precise Wolof, that was not very precisely understood by us (thank God she caught on to how clueless we were despite our nodding and used lots of large gestures). Feeling quite excited and having basically chatted up the whole market in our quest for strange food substitutes for Thanksgiving, we headed home.

What proceeded was what I like to think of as Tabaski, Take 2, except swap out the large sheep for 3 stuffed chickens. I spent a couple hours wrestling with the now thoroughly dead chickens, creating a stuffing out of dried and hand-smashed baguette, and filling the birds. Giulia basically tackled the rest of the dishes. Then we had a few American women come over and take a gander at green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, and apple crisp. Things were going quite well until our oven decided that it was too hot and no longer wanted to work. For a brief moment there, Giulia and I envisioned serving our guests half cooked chicken and slowly watching them all get the nasty little Salmonella stomach bug I had a few weeks ago. But in true Thanksgiving and Senegalese fashion, the boutiquiers, the men that run the corner shops that are found everywhere in Dakar, nearby us stepped in and saved Thanksgiving! One of them lugged heavy tanks of natural gas up and down our steps to try and restart our stove. When this failed, the other lent us his personal hand-held gas/mini-burner so we could cook with that and focus all the heat and power of the dying oven on the stupid chicken. It was unbelievably sweet of them – we ended up borrowing that gas for most of the day. However, the end result was wonderful, mostly because we had had so much fun cooking together and we had a large group of friends to share the meal. I believe we had 5 nationalities represented at our eclectic Thanksgiving dinner – American, Italian, Senegalese, German, and Swedish.

It was also really fun going to the boutiquiers and their families and sharing our meal with them. Food culture in Senegal is a very interesting thing, and sometimes people are very hesitant to try something that is too far removed from what they know – like many other cultures, I’d suppose. But, in any case, they seemed to really appreciate the food, and it felt like a very in the spirit of Thanksgiving sort of gesture, but also felt like a great way to connect with our neighbors and thank them for saving our butts!

In this entry, I’ve posted some photos from my camera, but I’ll post more once I get more photos from other people. And before leaving you with the photos, I thought I’d leave you with a complete menu:

1. Salad with homemade vinaigrette and feta

2. chicken stuffed with homemade “baguette” stuffing

3. mashed potatoes and gravy from the chicken

4. cornbread (Italian style from Giulia)

5. sauce feuille (with palm oil, cassava leaves, and beef)

6. bissap sauce with mint and lime (also known as hibiscus flower sauce, our version of “cranberry sauce”)

7. green bean casserole

8. couscous with raisins and mint

9. pumpkin pie

10. apple cake from a nearby patisserie

11. apple crisp

12. chocolate chip cookies 

Me and my new hubby, thanks to Giulia.

Us by the chicken graveyard.

Giulia learning how to make "sauce feuille"

Us after we pulled ourselves together post oven scare.

Cornbread!

Stuffing after being removed from the birds.

Giulia, the art historian, assembling the dinner platter in an aesthetically pleasing way.

me looking crazed trying to lug 3 chickens into the dining room.

Almost there!

Thanksgiving dinner table.

The main course.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! 

Tabaski!!

What follows is the promised blog on Tabaski in Senegal, 2011. I had an absolute blast; I got to get dressed up in my best Senegalese clothes (which didn't look to ridiculous in this year, I think) and eat lots and lots of sheep.

Tabaski is truly the holiday of the sheep. Each family that is able kills at least one pretty big male sheep to commemorate Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son Ishmael when God demands it of him.  God intervenes, however, and offers him a sheep to sacrifice instead (for more information, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eid_al-Adha). So, Muslims around the world sacrifice male sheep on this day, share some meat with neighbors, and then, at least in Senegal, feast for days, weeks, months (!) on delicious sheep. On the day of the actual holiday, I had the honor of eating my host family's sheep 4 different ways throughout the day. I lost some weight just before the holiday because of my stomach bug, so this holiday really came at a perfect time. Nothing like 4 servings of sheep and french fries to help you regain those pounds! Here are some pictures from the day.

Tabaski, while a very fun holiday, is also a lot of work. My host family killed two sheep, and there is a lot of preparation and clean-up that follows this event, so people start their day very early. Not exactly like the leisurely Christmas mornings we have in the States. Anyway, as a result, this is a not-so-attractive picture of me sleepily washing out pop bottles to fill with filtered water to drink for the day. Killing, cooking and eating sheep makes you thirsty!

This is my host family sheep, clearly pre-sacrifice. He seemed pretty calm all morning; I guess its a good thing he didn't know what was coming.

This is my host aunt making a sauce for the traditional breakfast of Tabaski. I always forget the name, but its a sweet sauce made by mixing peanut butter with bouye, the juice made from the fruit of the baobab tree. It is absolutely amazing, and you pour it over the millet porridge eaten on special occasions called "laax." Only problem is, its absolutely delicious and super filling. I was stuffed by 9am and had four more courses of sheep to come.

Here's a picture of the "laax" cooking. Its a bit like oatmeal, but even more filling.

These are my two host cousins, just come back from the morning prayers at the mosque with their Pappy (grandpa). The matching mbou-mbous were adorable, and they were clearly so proud to be old enough to go the mosque with the adults.

Out of respect for the holiday, I'm skipping the gory details, but this is clearly sheep post-sacrifice. There were about 3 basins like this filled with meat from just one of the sheep, and my family killed two. People use and eat every part of the sheep except the horns and the hooves, which is nice to see. Very different from our sterile, Saran-wrapped cuts in the States.

This is the meat in action. It smelled so good!

And the famous Senegalese onion sauce that goes with the meat. This is probably an entire giant bag of onions chopped and cooked down for about 4 hours. The end result is the sweet and spicy sauce that you pour over the meat. Amazing.

So, the traditional first meal from the sheep is the liver, which we ate 2 hours after the "laax" around 11am. By 1pm we were on to the second meal, french fries (which when cooked in peanut oil are to die for), with the onion sauce, olives and the meat, of course. You eat this all with bread. These two platters were just for the kids and young adults.

By the middle of the afternoon, someone had essentially force fed me more sheep (I was so full), and then everyone crashed for a couple hours. So much cooking and cleaning! Around 6pm people started to wake up and get ready for the getting dressed up and visiting relatives part of the holiday. Here's me in my mbou-mbou with the boys.

Everyone is so beautiful on Tabaski. People have clothes made months in advance with really expensive fabric and tons of embroidery done by tailors who work sometimes all through the night in the couple days leading up to the holiday. The end result, however, is gorgeous. This is a picture with a couple of my host cousins. The tops of both women's mbou-mbous are all covered in embroidery. I went for a more simple route. My fabric already had the orange embroidery built-in, the tailor just had to make the shape for me.

Me and another cousin. She was absolutely adorable, and she knew it.

I visited with my host family and their extended family for awhile before going around the city to visit some friends. This is me with another intern from ASBEF, after we had just been fed more pop and fruit at his house.  The look on my face is one of extreme happiness and pain from the fullness of my stomach.

Me and two of my friends from MAJ. We had just come from Pape's house (on the right), where (shocker!) we were fed grilled sheep and onion sauce. It was so, so good but I was in a lot of pain by this point.

And finally, my friend Amadou and I at his house. At this point its almost midnight, and he was kind enough just to offer me some juice and then find me a taxi for the ride home. I was so full, happy, and pooped. I got back to my host family's house to pick up some stuff and see if my host sister wanted to go see Youssou N'dour playing at his club. But the concert started at 2am (a typical time for concerts to start in Dakar) and while we were waiting to go, I fell asleep on their couch. So, they just tucked me into an extra bed, and that is how my Tabaski ended. Quite a day! The rest of the week I had to go through sheep detox, eating only fruits and vegetables. But it was completely worth it. Deweneti!

Also, for a quick MAJ update. The International Conference on Family Planning is coming to Dakar in two weeks and MAJ is helping to prepare a lot of the pre-conference activities. I am helping them order and buy camera and video equipment so they can document the conference and MAJ activities from here on out. Also, we're working on creating an electronic database of all MAJ evaluations and reports on activities, so that MAJ can have a more unified and organized monitoring and evaluation program. With this, I am working with a couple ASBEF interns to create a bi-annual report of MAJ activities, with statistics of how many activities and people they've reached in the past 6 months. We're hoping to have this ready before the conference to show to potential partners in the field of reproductive health. And finally, the MAJ Twitter account is going strong! If you haven't already, please follow MAJ at:

@MAJ_Senegal

We'll be tweeting a lot particularly related to conference as we get closer. The more buzz that can be generated, the better! 

What a weekend! Part 2... Training Session with MAJ

The other reason I was so busy this past week is that I double-booked myself, and scheduled a training session for MAJ members the Sunday of the Project Fair. But it still worked out and I think the training session went really well. The International Conference on Family Planning is happening in Dakar this year (what luck I have!), and this will be an excellent means of showcasing both ASBEF and MAJ's involvement with family planning and reproductive health in Dakar. The conference is taking place at the end of November, and so much of my time and energy related to the service project has been helping MAJ get ready for the conference. This includes helping them generate as much buzz as possible about the conference and the organization's role in it. So, the training session held this past Sunday was aimed at helping MAJ members become more familiar with social media tools so they could spread the word about the conference and MAJ's role more effectively online. We specifically focused on Twitter and blogging, as MAJ already has a great Facebook page.  I had so much help with MAJ members and other ASBEF staff-members (especially with the French), and because youth typically know a lot about technology anyway, the training session was more about sharing ideas and skills than a formal presentation. Here are some pictures from the event. 

Opening slide, translates to: "Training session on communication and social media tools." Basic, and straight to the point.

Getting set up for the session. Everybody who had a computer brought it, so that MAJ members could start Twitter accounts during the session and get to try out all the Twitter features.

This is me with Mandiaye Pety Badji, who helps MAJ and ASBEF with their communication and media needs. The two of us led the training session, which usually meant me bumbling along in French and then him reiterating what I had tried to say in comprehensible French and Wolof. As I said before, I was very grateful for all the help from ASBEF and MAJ.

Tweeting in action!

One MAJ member deep in thought apparently....

Pety Badji explaining the nuances of Twitter. Nuances were very difficult for me to explain in French, let alone Wolof.

A shot of the group.

This is not the best picture of him, but a picture nonetheless of the National MAJ president, Pape Momar.

We are hoping to get MAJ up online soon with a website, hopefully before the conference. Stay tuned for more updates! 

What a weekend! Part 1...West Africa Project Fair

First of all, I apologize for not producing a whole lot of updates in the past couple weeks. Things have been very busy (in a good way!), however, I also have come down with a pesky little stomach bug that makes me just want to lie around and sleep. But enough of my excuses. 

The first reason I have been so busy is that Rotary Clubs of Dakar were the host clubs for this year's West African Project Fair, a week-long affair that invites Rotarians from all over West Africa and the world to visit Dakar and learn about the projects being conducted by Rotary clubs in the region. I was really fortunate to be a part of it, and it was a very interesting opportunity to get to meet Rotarians from all over the globe. This includes the former Rotary International President, Ray Klingensmith, who I got a couple of pictures with at one of the dinners scheduled during the week. It was also a nice opportunity to work on my translation skills, as the vast majority of Rotarians who came to Dakar were English-speaking (mostly from Nigeria or the U.S.). So, I felt very helpful and also profited from the very interesting cross-cultural conversations and delicious food. Here are some pictures from the week. 

This is me with some of the local Rotaracts who helped people sign-up for the Project Fair and showed people around. There are 3 big Rotaract clubs in Dakar and they worked their butts off this past week to make sure the Fair was as successful as possible.

A picture of me and Nigerian Rotarians at the "Home Hospitality" dinner. Local Dakar Rotarians divided up the incoming Rotarians and hosted them at their houses for a delicious meal.

I went to the home that Ray Klingensmith also went to, and got a picture of him with the Dakar organizers of the Project Fair.

Same picture, just with me in it!

Opening ceremony for the Fair.

Former President Klingensmith addressing the group.

Some pictures with me and Rotarians from Nigeria (above) and the U.S. (below).

And this final picture is from the closing dinner with all the Rotarians. Everyone was beautifully dressed, the food was wonderful, and there was dancing. I was very fortunate to have this Project Fair happen in Dakar while I was here.