The rest of Saturday- cooking for Mama’s invité party which was supposed to earn a lot of money for her, but ended up being canceled due to the rain. (As was today’s Bambara lesson…Rain is the perfect excuse for everyone to stay in and watch Friends dubbed in French, even DouDou, our Bambara teacher apparently). Then got a ride to Fanta’s. Wedding with Fanta and Mama in the morning, but we spent all morning waiting for the bride and groom to get to the house. A griot was at the wedding party, singing praises to everyone. She was dressed like all the other wedding guests and at first I didn’t know that she was actually a griot and just thought she had an exceptionally musical voice. She was standing in a group with other wedding guests, and then would suddenly break out in to song. I was half expecting a full musical to break out in the massive, underfurnished white marble living room. But then she moved from her circle, and revealed that the other guests were just as musically ungifted as I was. One woman took my elbow and told me that the griot adored me (because I was a tubabu).
After waiting and being served amoeba juice- the plastic bags filled with different colored juices that were probably the cause of Carrie’s amoeba infection- Fanta finally got bored and left. Mama and I waited around for a while more, but then left too, bringing with us a massive bowl of same- riz au gras- which Fanta and the kids devoured. After we left, the wedding party was going to drive together to the uncle’s house to continue the celebration. This is why every Sunday it’s impossible to drive through Bamako- apparently every bride wants to get married in July, so there are impossible traffic jams every Sunday afternoon as the entire wedding party follows the groom’s car from house to house.
Spent the afternoon hanging out with the kids- Fanta had another wedding and a baptism to go to. We had much anticipated plans to bake a cake. I had forgotten that Malian kitchens (a series of different sized metal pots in the courtyard) never included ovens. So our coconut “cake” was actually fried coconut dough balls in palm oil. Mmmmm because I wasn’t ingesting enough palm oil already.
Today after dinner, we were craving dessert. We asked Papé, Niang’s sixteen year old brother what he ate when he wanted something sweet. He rattled off his list: honey, and oh, sweetened condensed milk. Apparently, there really aren’t any dessert vendors in the markets of Sikoroni.. We scoped out the nearest grocery for anything sweet. The stickers on the freezers of ice cream bars are just for show, and the best thing we found were Marocain cookies (read: stale vanilla wafers, the kind they buy for preschoolers because no one can possibly be allergic to them since they are so bland) and a chocolate-peanut spread. Not exactly satisfying, but slightly more so than sweetened condensed milk I imagine.
2 comments:
Sweetened condensed milk is a BIG treat in central america too, where it is called dulce de leche. My Chilean friend tells me the way to do it right is to put the unopened can in a pan of water and boil it till right before it explodes. It will be thick and caramelized.
--Julie's Aunt Liz
During my 2 years in Sevare it was my mission to make a chocolate cake. Lacking ingredients, oven and recipe I persevered. Found substitutes for every ingredient, build my own oven and baked it in an old coffee can. Results - excellent!
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