A Great Article My Friend Wrote

[My friend Laura wrote this article for the Sabaar- which is the Official Peace Corps Senegal Newsletter. I included a few contextual notes for non residents of Senegal.]

"Bring back the Ooji!"
One PCV’s anti-Jumbo Radio Adventure…because development sometimes involves a return to tradition

It’s lunchtime during the rainy season, in one of the many small villages dotting the newly-green region of Kolda. Every family’s peanut crop has long since been eaten away or sold for cash. Lunch and dinner consist of foraged baobab leaves and bissap sauce…garnished, of course, with colonized West Africa’s dietary staple, the Maggie Cube. [The maggie cube is like a boullion cube with loads of MSG.] A health volunteer has to wonder, how did generations of Pulaars survive without protein during their work season? Actually, I discovered after several mat-sitting discussions with the elders, they used to get plenty.

“The older generations were stronger because they hunted meat every three days. Back then, the woods were thicker, the rains longer, and the cows had milk all year long,” explains Mommadou Sabaly, the chief of Foulamory Demba. “If a child was hungry between meals, his mom gave him butter and yogurt to drink, or nettatou powder mixed with honey.” What other dishes were consumed in the past, in the land that literally flowed with milk and honey? Every baobab leaf sauce contained dried meat and nettatou, the black seeds from the chalky yellow pea pod-like locust beans. Pulaars call the seeds ooji and the fruit nette. Does ooji waddat vitamins? “Ooji is very rich,” says Marie Therese Sambour, ICP at Saare Cole Sally. “If one puts just a little bit of dried fish, ooji, and palm oil in the bissap sauce, one gets the nutrients one needs for work during the rainy season.” Unfortunately, however, the modern villager wastes their precious 50 cfa a day on the hypertension-inducing, nutrient-empty Jumbo…instead of these traditional healthier options. Binta Mballo, young wife in Foulamory Demba explains, “We’re used to jumbo now. A sauce just doesn’t taste good without it, so it’s the first thing we buy, and then we buy ooji if we have the money.” They’re used to it, but no one knows its makers or if it’s nutritionally important. When I told an elderly woman in my village that Jumbo has “no vitamins,” she exclaimed “You should go on Radio Kolda to tell us not to throw away our tradition! People think that something from the outside is better, but our food really is!”

Well, speaking on Radio Kolda was a bit ambitious, but after three meetings with the Spanish NGO Medicos del Mundo (toting a little bag of ooji for them to try), they gave me a spot on their weekly radio show: February 28th, 8 pm, Radio Dunia, Velingara. Next came the meetings with my invited guest speakers: our village health relay Abdulai Sabaly, the ICP of Sarre Colle Sally Marie Therese Sambour, and an elderly grandma, Yoba Diao. The morning of February 28th, we bribed the community chauffer to take us to Velingara. Our ICP could not come, so she gave some hasty food group education to her last-minute stand-in. One power-outage later, we were finally on the air. The show bounced between these key speakers. Abdulai explained the three food groups and pointed out that Maggie is not among them….but boabob leaves, bissap, peanuts, and ooji are. The elderly grandmother, Yoba Diao, reminisced about abandoned food habits of old, such as the important mid-afternoon snack meal for young children, and gave recipes. “When we went to the fields in the morning, we would take nettattou powder and honey with us. Right about 10 am, when breakfast was long gone and lunch still far away in the future, we would mix the nettatou and honey and drink until we were full. We would give this to the children, and they might not even need lunch. But now all you mothers gather these fruits and sell them at the markets. All that we used to eat that is good for us, we sell to get money…and those who are smarter than us and know their importance buy them in the cities.” A caller stated that, despite a new prevalence of modern medicines, health has gone downhill since the introduction of Jumbo (which is certainly not the only factor causing the region’s new malnutrition problem, but we didn’t argue with him!) I got to lecture people on their propensity to ask hospitals for magic medicines to cure their medical problems. “Many people have asked me what pill they can take for fatigue. But you are tired during the rainy season because you don’t get enough protein! One must have some form of protein at dinner or lunch every day—eggs, meat, fish, milk, peanuts, ooji, or beans. Take that 25 cfa you spend on Maggie and buy food that will give you strength. The medicine for fatigue is good food.”

And how was the emission received? Who heard besides my loyal villagers (who were also listening for their shout-outs)? A vendor in the Velingara market recognized my name and pointed to the Jumbo for sale on her table. “This is bad,” she said, and then pointed to the vegetables and ooji piled next to it. “This is good. A Toubaco knows Fulado food!” And after a delicious and healthy couscous, baobab leaf, and dried fish dinner at a neighboring compound in my village, the old grandfather of the household apologized to me. “Today you ate with us, but the meal was not tasty—no meat and no Jumbo! The women around here have really cut down…A man no longer gets to eat anything good in his house!”

Evalina Nava, another health volunteer in Kolda, cautioned me before going on the air. “Just remember to remind people to eat Iodized salt. We don’t want villagers to get goiters if they stop eating Jumbo!” Don’t worry, Evalina. No one’s completely giving up Jumbo any time soon. Seeda, seeda.