Harvest Season

The end of September and the first part of October was the start of the corn harvest in Kedougou. The corn harvest brings with it kabaa nyimi wahati (corn-snacking time)! For a few glorious weeks, I was offered a piece of roasted corn or a piece of fresh corn to roast almost every time I sat down in someone's compound. The corn grown here is field corn--not as delicious as sweet corn in the US, but great for roasting and snacking on in between meals. I had heard a rumor a long time ago from a former volunteer that boiled field corn does not taste good, but I disagree. It is a nice change every once in a while from the ubiquitous charcoal-roasted corn. I only ate boiled corn a couple times this season, but I plan to eat more of it next year. If I am not feeling like eating rice, it is much easier to face a meal when I have a few cobs of corn in my stomach. The start of the corn harvest also, not coincidentally, coincided with my host family once again mixing corn lunches and dinners into our standard diet of only rice. This was a very welcome change.

Near the middle of October, peanuts began to ripen in my village. Peanuts, the most common snack in Senegal, come in a variety of forms: dried, salted, roasted, candied. Most of the year in my village, people snack on peanuts that have been dried in the sun after harvest and later stored in rice sacks. I was recently reintroduced to the wonder of raw peanuts. I say "reintroduced" because I tried only a few last year--not enough to really get a taste for them. Peanuts, when eaten straight from the ground, have a completely different taste than the normal "peanut" taste I am accustomed to. They are crisper and taste fresher. They have an earthy taste as well, possibly due to the dirt that inevitably gets on your hands while cracking the shells. Raw peanut shells, by the way, are much harder to crack than the shells of dried or roasted peanuts. The best part of raw peanuts, though, is their creaminess. It always sneaks up on me, this unexpected taste

Speaking of creaminess, I had dairy in my site a total of five times during a three week period recently. In village dairy comes very rarely, and it is always in the form of milk or yogurt. A lot of cows have given birth recently, which means that the mothers are producing milk. When a calf is born, the owner of the mother cow generally makes a yogurt dish (sweet yogurt poured over rice or corn) as a sacrifice to feed the village. I had a couple of these during the last few weeks, including a delicious yogurt sauce over corn couscous. I knew that eating a lot might upset my stomach, but I ate a decent amount anyway because it was so good and very different from what I usually eat. Another fun dairy adventure was trying raw milk for the first time. I had been offered some raw milk to drink last month and regretted turning it down. This time, I told my toxoma's wife (who had just milked her cow) that I could only drink a little so that my stomach would not hurt. It is possibly that I have simply forgotten how creamy whole milk is, but the creaminess of the raw milk I tried took me by surprise. Growing up in a city, raw milk was always far from my radar. Ever since I was little I have been intrigued by raw milk and have had a slow-burning desire to try it. I never sought it out but am grateful that the opportunity presented itself to me.

In another surprising turn of events, I now enjoy eating jaxatu (bitter tomato). This close relative of the eggplant was formerly one of the most disgusting vegetables that I had ever eaten (I think I mentioned this in a blog post near the start of my service). Especially when eaten raw, the bitter tomato tastes objectively bad. What has inspired my taste buds to recently--since September--start enjoying its flavor? I have only a few candidate ideas: (1) jaxatu is a an acquired taste that I have recently started enjoying, (2) the limited availability of vegetables in my village has prompted my taste buds to like one of the only available vegetables, or (3) any variety in village food is exciting and thus tastes good. Now I enjoy all forms of jaxatu. I never turn down a jaxatu when offered one to snack on and I have even bought them from vegetable stands a couple times.

I have my fingers crossed that the gardens in my village will produce well during the upcoming cold season and that we will continue to have jaxatu for the coming months.