Thursday, July 15, 2010

Fou-Fou, French nails, and "Dear John"

Yesterday evening was quite a bit of fun! Melissa, Abi, and I were going to go to an artisan market right after I got off work at 5pm, but we decided not to go and to instead go out to dinner with a group of people.


10 of us piled into one of the land rovers and drove to a foufou bar; a restaurant that sells the traditional West African meal of yams and a spicy goat meat soup. It was pretty good food, but pretty spicy; I had to be careful not to touch the food to my lips or they'd be on fire within a few seconds!


Wikipedia has a great article on foufou (for school-related papers there's scholarly journals--for everything else there's Wikipedia!), but basically foufou consists of a sticky lump of yams that you pinch off and then dip into the soup. The yams are not like the ones we get in the States and typically call sweet potatoes. These yams are really long, hairy like a coconut, are white inside, and can be rather bitter. The yams skins are cut off and then it's cut into huge chunks about the size of your two hands. They're then put into a big tub and people stand around with long paddles and pound the yams. Kind of like churning butter: up-down-up-down-up-down. Eventually it becomes a kind of fine powder and then hot water is mixed in to make it a sticky dough. It's pretty bland and I guess could have the consistency of white bread that you've played with and squished. :)


The soup had huge chunks of goat meat. Like bones, fat, skin (which is almost 1/4" thick!!!!), and some meat. And lots of chilies!


We were all there for about 2 hours and had a great time chillin'. Our driver, Dennis who works in the engine room on "his babies", was the only guy in our group--a fact the restaurant workers thought was hilarious!


We came back to the ship, changed into PJs, rounded up the nail polish and whatever snacks we had (pineapple from that night's dinner on board, ritz crackers that came in on the container yesterday, peanut butter, and some muffins one of the girls swiped from the leftover fridge). Headed up to queen's lounge to watch one of the movies that Melissa's mom had sent her. "Dear John" was the pick... ah, I LOVE that movie... and the book is better because it ends the way it should, not the way you necessarily want it to.


Melissa's mom had also included nail polish for French nails, and Melissa was happy to oblige us with her expertise. I spend most of my days in my chacos, and I usually clean cabin floors barefoot... my feet don't like how much bleach I work with... at least I like my nails now. :) Ah, I'm such a girl!!!


The last three or four days the ship has been rocking so much! If you're just standing still for a while your ankles can get really sore with all the compensating!We're not sure what it's due to, but we all notice it! Today I was walking down the hall with a bucket of cleaning supplies in one hand and sets of sheets and towels in the other and I was running into the walls as I walked. Caitlin and I were joking that we would probably fail a walk-the-line sobriety test! Maybe I'm glad I'm not sailing.


*dinner and movie night with "the girls" is always a ton of fun!*

1 comment:

  1. It takes a real lady to handle 1/4" thick goat skin, French nails, and wall slams all in one day. "Good stuff!' to quote my daughter.

    ReplyDelete