French Studies in Mali

As you may have guessed, food in Mali is consistently a source of both frustration and satisfaction, often contributing to humor and group cohesion.

To start, the lack of certain foods frequently generates conversations about what’s missing here including dairy, complex carbohydrates, and vegetables. The cheese we eat almost daily, « la vache qui rit » is little more than calcium fortified butter, and milk comes from Nido powder instead of cows. Bread, although quite inexpensive and of decent quality, means a simple, white, baguette. And vegetables are few and far between.

However, like everything else, one begins to learn to enjoy the simple things in life such as the sardine sandwich midnight snack or the occasional fried plantain. Similarly, one learns to fill voids with more readily available substitutes. It would be fair to say that our consumption of mangos, papaya, bananas, oranges, and other local produce has increased dramatically despite our lack of traditional salads. And the cucumber /tomato/ avocado sandwich has become the norm for lunch.

Still, certain foods such as fish, le poisson, are a constant source of laughter. For several consecutive meals on our grand voyage, which took us all the way from Timbuktu to Burkina Faso, we ate la capitaine, a fish from the Niger River. And with our stomachs already on edge it’s only natural that every day we joke that we’ll probably end up eating fish for dinner. With the cars locked up driving through sand in the mountainous Dogon Country, Shane mentioned to Cherif that should the end of a frustrating day of travel bring us poisson, he might not be able to carry on. Cherif, already incredibly stressed, could only laugh, and he continued laughing for nearly five minutes.

Few would argue that the variety and quality of food in the US are significantly better than those here, but it’s not that simple. Produce is more natural, uncorrupted by hormones to increase size or aesthetic appearance. And, perhaps disturbing in its own way, meat is freshly killed on site. I think it’s fair to say that like anything else this experience will increase our expectations in unexpected ways. But I think generally we’ll all embrace the transition back to America, at least gastronomically.