In which I become a Ghanaian gourmet...

With thanks to Judith for helping me get the illustrations sorted. :)

Were I to ask you about your last evening meal I’m pretty sure you would begin by naming the meat/fish/protein content.  In Ghana the list would begin with the carbohydrate: rice balls, TZ, banku, fufu and so on.  The reasons for this I hope will unfold…

In the main, a Ghanaian evening meal consists of a stew or thick soup served with “stodge” – a large portion of starchy carbohydrate - which is much cheaper and more filling than the meaty protein content.  Here in the north, the favourites of these staple carbs are the locally grown millet, maize, rice, closely followed by beans (black-eye and barambarra) and yam.  The stew/soup could be made with groundnuts (peanuts), chicken, goat, guinea fowl, dried fish or, more occasionally, dog or donkey.  You must be able to get pig as well, given the number of them that roam the land, but it's not mentioned much; perhaps because many of the locals can't eat it for religious reasons.  Okra is also a favourite; it cooks into a very slimy, green stew.  The stews are heavily spiced and, since ALL the meat is used one way or another, you are never quite sure what you might be eating. 

 A large portion of "stodge"

Instead of cutlery the stew is eaten with a carbohydrate spoon.  You tear off a piece of your rice ball, banku, fufu etc and use it to scoop up the stew.  However, in order to change your rice into a stodgy spoon-ball or your yam into a thick ball of fufu there is a huge amount of preparation:

 Banku with Okra soup.  You eat the soup by tearing off pieces of banku to use as a spoon.

      To make Fufu:

·        Peel and boil the yam

·        Mash

·        Pound and stir, pound and stir, pound and stir, for many hours (!) until you have a starchy, congealed mass.

·        Form into large balls

Pounding fufu - watch your fingers!

 

Similar processes are involved in forming rice balls and TZ.  A further process is required for banku in that you must allow the maize to ferment first.  I’m told that a previous volunteer got drunk through eating too much banku.  I don’t think we will fall into that trap!

 Cooking can be a labour intensive, communal affair.

 

Ghanaian food preparation is therefore extremely labour intensive!  Women work together on the streets, pounding enormous pots of fufu etc.  There is a system: three or four hands stir while one pounds…lose the rhythm and you could end up with some very sore fingers! My personal thoughts are: one-the introduction of a spoon might revolutionise this style of cooking and, two-what a huge amount of effort for a very bland, tasteless ball of stodge.

Tuo Zaafi (TZ) is a favourite accompaniment to stews here in Zebilla, made with the local maize flour and jute (?) leaves.  Millet porridges are also popular.  These are the sorts of porridges that are eaten throughout the day and can be purchased and sucked out of a plastic bag.  In fact, all meals are interchangeable.  Rice balls for breakfast is very common although this might be taken in the office at 9 or 10 o’clock (or at play time in school (for both teachers and pupils)).

In our office there is a surfeit of overweight men.  I think that their fathers were farmers who worked hard on the land and needed lots of carbohydrate to sustain them.  Their diet reflects this.  However, when you are sitting around in the office you are not burning off all those carbs.  Possibly a re-think of dietary requirements is in order here!

Street food, Ghanaian style, is readily available if you shop at the right times.  Market days happens every third day and many women will be up at three in the morning to prepare foods for sale.  As well as the labour intensive dishes there are stalls selling fried yam (big chips), plantain, roasted guinea fowl, barbecued maize and meats.  Paul’s favourite street food is the donut which comes in huge varieties both savoury and sweet!  You can watch the ladies frying up the donuts in enormous aluminium bowls on the streets (very safe!).  Oils are readily available in the forms of groundnut oil and palm oil, both locally produced.

 Cooking and selling donuts.                         

 

                                                                              

On the whole, we have managed a healthy diet though we have had to be creative!  Catching your meat before you buy hasn’t really been an option (!) and although there are a few butchers, the flies surrounding the stalls are not encouraging.  So, our protein comes out of a tin: corned beef, tuna, mackerel, along with eggs and beans.  Basic fruit and vegetables are seasonably available but there isn’t huge variety.  Right now I am pining for a nice cauliflower!  We don’t have to agonise about the choice of apple we fancy this week; it’s the boring green one or nothing…and only if you get to the market before they’ve all been sold!  At the moment it is difficult to find oranges and bananas so we are limited to mangoes and apples although avocados seem to be in season as a kind of substitute.

 

 

 Palm nut soup with fufu.

 

You buy your veg etc by the bowlful – no need for scales!  And how much a bowlful costs depends on the seasonal glut and/or whether the delivery lorry has passed through town.  Goods don’t come from very far afield; none of your fancy southern goods here (pineapples, papaya, green beans…), possibly because of preservation problems but, more likely, because of their expense.

 Buying tomatoes by the bowlful.

We cook on an oversized camping gas stove.  There is a kind of oven but we have never used it because we were told that the gas leaks and it is extremely old and dirty! Within their compounds, women seem to use a little aluminium stand filled with charcoal but on the streets they use logs; a neat system of large logs fed under the pot as they burn through…saves an awful lot of chopping (oh and Ghanaians use the word chop as meaning “eat”).

 A typical charcoal burner

 

 

 or using logs.

 

Enjoying a restaurant meal in Zebilla is quite difficult to imagine.  We have eaten out; there is a “chop bar” near the office, a place romantically called “The Container” (because that’s what it is), “Friend’s Gardens” (which may/may not have food…they sometimes don’t even have drinks!) and a nameless one further afield.  Two of these four serve your food in a polystyrene container: a huge dollop of luke warm rice with a spiced up fish or meatless leg of guinea fowl plonked on top.  Fruit juice comes in the form of the large cartons you buy in the supermarket and a glass if you insist.  In the other two the experience is slightly better in that you have a real plate. 

 Banku with tilapia fish...on a real plate!

Eating out is a better experience in Bolgatanga and improves considerably as you travel further south.  Of course, we don’t do this very often...remember the tro-tro journey?!