Eating, and its fallout

Life in the Peace Corps, in Ghana, is about as different as can be from life in the states. I can say that from experience now, but that is also all I have heard as I was applying and in training. However, none of that, not even homestay, prepared me for what is to come. Nothing could have effectively prepared me for this. In this post I will gloss over all aspects of food, eating, and the culinary arts in Ghana. 

Eating (and its fallout): Fallout is the appropriate descriptive word if I’m having a good day. For the not so good days, there are many other more appropriate words, which I’m going to allow the reader to imagine on their own.

            Outside of that I enjoy the food and the meals here. Most days for lunch, and everyday for supper, I eat with my neighbor, whose wife cooks for us. Once we finish eating she will then clean up after us. I’m sure all the females reading this are rolling their eyes and all the males are green with envy. However, despite how much I enjoy a little bit of light sexism, I want to ensure everyone that I have done my utmost to remedy this. But whatever do or say, not that she understand any of it, she is adamant that her husband and I eat, while she sits 10 feet away.

            In order to create some hint of self-reliance, I have been trying to get her to teach me how to cook Ghanaian food. This consists of me watching he cook until she gives me something to do, or I butt in. I’m allowed to do my menial task for maybe about 45 seconds, or until she finishes laughing at me. Then she takes the onion I was attempting to peel (in my opinion, very satisfactorily) and I wander off shamed.* Honestly, watching Ghanaians cook is rather intimidating. I have tried to pound fufu on several occasions and it always ends the same way: With the women laughing at me as I try to pound it, with two hands, as hard as possible, missing my target on most hits, and then one of them taking it from me and with one hand putting me to shame. This is consistent everyone from twelve year old girls to one hundred and twenty year old women (ages are usually ballparked here.)

            The meals consist of little actual conversation. Partly because Ghanaians don’t screw around while they eat. It’s all business. Also partly he speaks almost no English and I speak almost no Krobo. The conversations we do manage to have consist of him taunting me for eating like a little girl. I respond in kind and we laugh, finish our meal, and then play cards or ludu (Ghanaian version of Sorry.) Not a bad life on the whole. I'm trying to eat bones but that usually ends with me spitting them out on the floor when no one is looking.

            For Ghanaians, meals are communal affairs. Anywhere I go I am offered food. I will often have supper three times in one day. It has taken me some time to develop the foresight and confidence to be able to tell Ghanaians that I am full or that I will be eating later. Meals are shared, between men, with everyone eating out of a communal bowl and sharing our fufu or banku or whatever other starch is present.

            Most of these aspects of eating and cooking I have mentioned are daunting at first. But I can say, without reservation, that I enjoy fufu almost as much as Ghanaians (almost to a man they have said they would have it three meals a day if possible) and I am pretty damn fond of banku, boiled plantains, yams, and most of the other soups and stews they eat. I want to warn everyone that when I return to America I will be eating everything with my hands so please don't be more alarmed than normal by my eating habits.

*This is easier to cope with because I presciently left my dignity in my room at homestay, back during my third week in Ghana. No use for it here.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this post do not represent the views of the Peace Corps.  They only represent those of the author.