Ginger Beer 'Salone' Style

I have not yet been able to independently make any of the international dishes here like Saki (Cassava Leaves) or Jola (Potato Leaves) (both sauces or plasas served mostly with rice.)  They are both delicious but difficult to make, I don't beat myself up about not being able to cook them yet, most girls here start cooking these dishes at around 10 years old so they have quite a head start on me.

The first thing I have been able to prepare is the local equivalent of Ginger Beer or Ginger as it is known here. When it is 35 degrees Celsius and the sun is blazing hot a really refreshing way to cool down is to drink some spicy sweet Ginger.  I am going to show how we make it here:

First, the ingredients:

Root Ginger

Limes

White Sugar

One of the essential kitchen implements here is what is called a Matowodo  and Matapencil (I state here again that these are Krio words and I am spelling them how they are said because I do not know written Krio and have no dictionary to refer to) or a mortar and pestle in English but I am sure that before I came to Sierra Leone I had never seen them this big:

Mortar or Matowodo

My friend got this for me from a village and had engraved I Love Africa and the date on it for me, this made me laugh because I know very little of Africa and have not travel anywhere else on the Continent but it was very nice of her and I haven't seen anyone else with a Matowodo quite like mine.

Moving on, you need to wash the root ginger very well in water:

Once done, put the ginger in the mortar and begin to beat it:

No tap water here so we have to buy our drinking water in packets:

Put the ginger in a sieve and dip it into the water.

Squeeze out the ginger then place it back in the mortar.  Wash and cut the limes in half adding them to the mortar and beat the ginger and limes together.

Once you have crushed the limes into the ginger sieve the mixture into the water again.  Remove the limes and beat the ginger again, repeating the process until the water has enough 'heat' (from the ginger - Sierra Leoneans love spice and many add chillies to their mixture, for me the ginger is enough.)

Add sugar to taste, for me this is a lot as I like it very sweet!  Here I put the ginger in quite small quantities into these plastic bags, because we don't have electricity much for it to get cold, it has to be in small volumes. 

I put it in the freezer as a gain lack of electricity means that for anything to get remotely cold it has to be in the freezer not the fridge.  The closer to freezing though, the better!

This is a very refreshing drink and though I have not tried it would be very nice with some Vodka and lots of ice!!

Chicken Drama

Over the last four months we have been processing Cassava (a starchy root vegetable and staple food in West Africa) into something called Gari in Winston's village, Luawa.  This involves uprooting the Cassava, grating it, pressing it and roasting it.  The end product is a dry course powder which is mixed with powedered milk, sugar and water and eaten as a snack.  We intend to sell the Gari when the price peaks.

Now, we are having to store the 45 bags of Gari that we have finished in our house.  Poor SK (Winston's youngest brother) has a bedroom full of bags of Gari...

We're pretty sure it won't fall on him as he sleeps.

So, we have a bit of a mouse problem (or 'aratta' in Krio - but they are mice not rats) in the house and we often hear them scurrying around at night.  As we don't want them munching through the gari bags, we had to take the decision to lay rat poison (sorry mum - I should state here that when my parents had mice they used 'humane' traps which just caught the mouse, my mum would then take each mouse and liberate it in the park.)

This was to be quite an operation because we have our 21 month old daughter roaming around the house putting EVERYTHING in her mouth which meant that any remnants needed to be cleared whilst Thea was still in bed.  So one evening the poison was mixed with left over rice and strategically placed around the house at night once the monster was in bed - Thea that is.

Good Quality Chinese Rat Poison.

 The following morning I had to restrain Thea in the bedroom whilst the poisoned rice (and expired mice of which there were 3) was disposed of.  This was for SK to do.

The next day Hadja (for those who have not read previous entries this is Winston's sister who lives with us) called me into the garden to show me a dead hen by the dustbin (this is a big hole in the garden in which we burn our rubbish.)  At night we shut our chickens up in their house so it was strange not only that the chicken was dead but that it was outside.  With no marks on it to suggest an attack the mystery deepened.  I went and opened the chicken house and found inside another dead hen and 4 dead chicks (I have spared you a photo of this.)

Some thinking later it clicked in my nappy brain (yes Thea is nearly two and my brain still works at about half speed!) and I asked SK how he disposed of the poisoned rice, he looked at me like I was stupid and said "I put it in the bin." Oh!  The chickens had obviously thought it was an extra meal!

After apologies, my own 5 minutes of quiet mourning and explaining to Thea who was repeating "hush chick, hush chick" (hush is what you tell someone who is ill or has hurt themselves here) but didn't seem too affected, discussions came about the camp about the consumption of the two hens.

Immediately I stated that neither Winston, Thea or I would be eating poisoned chicken but additionally before they attempted to cook any chickens they would need to find out from someone if the poison would affect the meat.  I should explain that the confusion came about because in the villages they use certain poisons in hunting and these do not affect the animals meat.

Winston returned home and said "no one in this house is eating that chicken!"  Hadja and SK were quite dejected but Abdul Rahman (next door neighbour and general odd jobs man) was delighted!

I told Abdul Rahman at this point that should he decide to eat this chicken and he got sick that he was not to come here as we have clearly warned him, with witnesses (witnesses for everything are important here!)

That evening Abdul Rahman told me that he had cooked the chickens and as he had boiled them they were "foaming like soap" and that they tasted terrible, I told him that as the chicken was laced with poison that I was not surprised.  I asked him, "did you eat it all?" a little embarrassed he said "yes", I asked, "does your stomach hurt?" to this he replied "it takes a lot to give me a stomach ache,"  "clearly" I said.