Today I am going to tell you about meals in Mali and the types of foods we have been eating. We don't find much diversity in the food we eat here. In the morning I have a cup of hot Nesquik (I bet you didn't think we had that here) and a bowl of cold cereal. Luckily, we brought a 32-pack of assorted cold cereals from Houston. That is only what I have. The research team who works at the site all day usually has bouillie, a sweet creamy mixture made from the rice left over from the previous day, and a baguette (French bread) with jam. We boil hot water on a medium-sized propane burner to make hot chocolate, tea, and coffee.

Lunch time is at 1:00. Most of the time we have "tigadege" (Tee-gah-deh-gay) which is a peanut sauce that has meat, potatoes, tomato paste, onions, and garlic in it. It is served with rice. After lunch we may have packaged vanilla creme cookies, mandarin oranges, watermelon or Nesquik. Tigadege is good but I am getting tired of it. Because of the lack of refrigerators and imported goods, many different foods are not available.

We have been able to have a bit more variety for dinner. We have had tigadege, fish sauce and rice, french fries and brochettes (little pieces of meat grilled on skewers), spaghetti, and roasted chicken and french fries. Most nights we get fresh lettuce to make a salad. The fish sauce was prepared with the fish heads, eyeballs and all. I am glad to say I did not have much of that.

Yama and her daughters are our cooks. They prepare lunches and dinners. Yama's kitchen is in a small room downstairs from where we live. In the kitchen there are shelves along the wall and a "ji daga" (gee dah-gah) in the corner of the room. A "ji daga" is a large pot with a cover that is used to store water. The pot is made out of porous clay so that the water can slowly seep through the clay and keep the container cool. People need to store water in a cool place since there are no refrigerators. Also in the kitchen is a blackened ceramic cooker that sits over a live fire. The top is like a muffin pan and is used to cook little rice cakes. In the courtyard there is a wooden mortar and large pestle. This is used to pound rice and other grains into a flour-like consistency. This is necessary to make the rice cakes. There is also another fire in the kitchen. This fire is constructed inside a tripod arrangement of inverted large ceramic and metal pots. These support a large pot over the fire to cook the food. In order to cook, the women sit on tiny stools near the fire. Food is stirred and ladled out with scoops made out of gourds called calabashes. These look kind of like our butternut squashes as they are growing, but they are narrower at the top, and smaller. And when they are split and dried, they have a tough, wood-like texture that makes them useful as spoons. This is calabash season, and thousands of these calabash ladles are for sale in the market for 50 francs (10 cents) each. Yama stores her ladles in the wooden framework of the door, because there are no drawers or any kitchen counter.

One day we asked Yama to make spaghetti for us. The Malians make spaghetti a different way then we do. They make a sauce and cook the spaghetti in the sauce instead of in a different pot of water. My mom went down to the kitchen to help Yama make it the way we like it. It was surprisingly good, even though we couldn't add any Italian seasonings because you can't buy them here.

The roasted chicken and french fries dinner was the best and most different meal so far. The chickens were a gift given to us by a carpenter friend named Jajé (Jah-jay). The chickens were small and did not have much meat on them. The french fries, though smaller than McDonalds fries are excellent. They are greasy but taste really good. Having the chicken made my sister really homesick for American food. As for myself, though the food hasn't been too bad, I am craving pizza!!