Speculoos & yam

Now I am already starting to feel the strains of blogging, so there will only be one entry in English… sorry for the French readers out there, maybe I will write from Benin in French for good measure… I guess just be glad all of you that I am nowhere near mastering Twi well enough to write in the local language!

To beat the post holiday blues, I did not stay too long in Ouagadougou but took the road again to Accra to meet Romain my Ghanaian colleague and his team, and then go together for a field study trip to Benin. Going the entire distance from Ouagadougou to Accra at once was quite painful and I remembered a bit late why in the past, I’d broken down the journey about half way in Tamale. After the 20 hour ride in an icy cold AC bus blasting very loud karaoke music on flooded roads, I ended up in Accra at 4am, tired, freezing cold and half deaf… Luckily, I still had the WE to recover and thanks to Romain’s gastronomic Speculoos spread and Promina's delicious Indian cooking, I soon regained my strength.

Another highlight of Ghanaian cuisine, maybe more typical than onion bhajees and chicken korma is ‘fufu’, a staple dish made of yam and I was glad to go and visit the yam market with the credit officers from ID Ghana’s Agbogbloshie branch on Monday to get a real sense of the roaring trade it is here. The yam market is just next to Sodom & Gomorrah slum, the biblical name says it all, one of the most run down areas of the city, a world with its own rules and laws.

A tuber of yam is selling between GH¢1.50 (80 cents) to GH¢3 (Eur1.60) depending on the size and the type, ‘puna’ yam being the most sought after. Yams of African species must be cooked to be safely eaten, Preparing yam is a time-consuming process, involving several minutes of pounding, leaching, and boiling to remove the toxins. Yams may be served fried, boiled or pounded into a fufu dough form. I guess this is all better explained in pictures than in words, until you can taste the real thing and maybe by reading the great book that is ‘Wake Up and smell the fufu’ by Christian Njoya Diawara Small.

And while we are on the topic of books, my publisher friends will be glad to see that Manat, Romain and Promina’s daughter, despite being only 1 year old has already a very good taste in books!