Fruit Taxonomy

Growing up in the Cunningham house, at the bottom of your Christmas stocking you would always find an apple, an orange, and an assortment of nuts.  Anna and I got our stockings in the mail from my mother, and sure enough the nuts were at the bottom.  The orange and apple probably wouldn't have made the trip, but not to worry they are sold on the street.  The local variety of oranges are actually green on the outside; orange colored oranges are for sale but expensive because they are shipped here internationally as well as all apples.  There are also a whole swath of new fruits that we have found, some great and others not so much.  I thought maybe you might like to see a few pictures and names of those others that are unfamiliar to you.

Sourpatch Kids TM fruit or zaban



Sourpatch Kids TM fruit opened

The first is my personal favorite naturally because it tastes surprisingly like candy.  This one grows on a vine out in the bush, nobody I know really cultivates it, they just go out and collect when they are in season.  The outside is pretty ugly and inedible, and with a little pressure it pops right open revealing the fleshy seeds that are so good.  I recommend sprinkling a little sugar on this one, as the sourness can be overwhelming.

Cucumber/cantaloupe melon or moussa melon

Cucumber/cantaloupe melon opened

Next we have the refreshing and bizarre moussa melon.  This tastes exactly like a cross between a cuke and a cantalope.  They are easy to grow here I realized when many of them appeared growing big healthy vines from the seeds I threw in the compost pile.  According to people in village a former Malian president Moussa Traore found these on a trip to Morocco many years ago and brought them back to this country because he liked them so much.

Shea fruit

Shea fruit opened

Shea fruit nut

When I used to see American hand soap or lotion that was "made with shea butter" I always wondered, "what IS that anyway?"  This mystery was solved when some vendors boarded a bus I was taking here in Mali selling bags of little green fruit.  Shea fruit are edible, and taste a little like a sweet avocado with a similar texture.  There is not much fruit on the outsite, and inside is a big nut.  Apparently if you crack that nut the kernel inside can be processed to extract oil which is where the butter comes in.  This stuff is internationally known to work wonders for skin and hair.  There are not many of these trees in our village, so we don't really see these much outside of traveling.  This oil can also be used to make food which gives whatever you are eating an indescribable and I think foul taste, I found this out the hard way while visiting our buddy Rob's village where they use it to make everything.




Custard apple or tubab soonsoon

Custard apple opened

The English word for this one actually is custard apple, look it up.  In Bambara, soonsoon trees come in two varieties tubab and regular.  The regular variety are found everywhere, I have never seen these trees produce any fruit although they have nice shade.  The tubab (word for white person, sometimes used to refer to French people only) variety are more rare and smaller, but have these really great tasting fruit.  Malians were really surprised that I had never seen these fruit because they said that we tubabs brought these trees to Mali.  You cannot eat the outside, but like the Sourpatch Kids TM fruit a little pressure and these pop open.  The flesh is soft, sweet, and tropical tasting.  Below you can see a sapling of this tree that was planted in our yard (not the worlds' most fertile soil...).  Unfortunately it will not produce fruit until year 3 which will find us back in the ol' US of A.  On a side note, to the volunteer who lives in our house starting in 2013, please mail me a check for all of the delicious fruit that you will eat as a result of my planting and my daily water hauling.

Custard apple sapling in our yard



Smelly feet cherries or ziziphus fruit

Smelly feet cherry inside view

These little guys look like cherries or crab apples, but have a taste that I think is entirely different.  This is wildly popular fruit here, and relatively expensive here as they usually come from a grafted tree.  Some of our friends, American and Malian, really like them and say they taste similar to an apple.  I would agree with them on the apple part, but I am not the I LIKE THESE club, as I think they have a weird dirty sock/smelly cheese aftertaste.

Donkey chewing gum fruit or sebey

Cooked bowl of donkey chewing gum fruit

This next one grows on a palm tree and has big fruits that look like squash.  In order to eat it, you need to boil it for the better part of a day.  I really like this one.  It is stringy, and you chew it until the flavor is gone then spit out the stringy stuff.  This one is also hard to explain and really sweet with a bitter aftertaste.  Anna and many others really don't like it.  The Malian nickname for this one in donkey chewing gum, because they also like it.

Cat food fruit or zimini

Last and least of all we have the rock hard, dry cat food fruit.  These also grow on palm trees and ripen in bunches.  Kids slingshot rocks at them to get them out of the tree if they don't drop.  Kids gnaw on the fruit which are only edible in a little layer on the outside.  I tried these twice and thought it tasted like cat food, I say this with confidence because of some childhood taste-testing with cat food done by my sister Liz and I.

Green pepper from our yard

This guy doesn't belong, but I am happy to report that my green pepper, jalapeno, cherry tomato, and basil plants are all producing.  Our friend Miriam says they look like doll house vegetables, but hey at least they're there.

Merry Christmas from Mali.  We are enjoying a week in Segou, including two nights at a hotel.  A fellow volunteer down the road had her whole family visiting and we tagged along with them on Christmas day.

Holiday Season

November got away from us. The month opened with a Malian holiday and closed with an American one. We spent the first three weeks of the month in our village. The first weekend of November we celebrated Seli-Ba, aka Tabaski, the "Festival of the Sacrifice," the biggest Muslim holiday of the year in Mali.


While we have not researched the holiday in much depth, according to Wikipedia, Tabaski is a "religious holiday celebrated by Muslims worldwide to commemorate the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son as an act of obedience to God before God intervened to provide him with a sheep to sacrifice instead." In honor of the sacrifice, all Malian families who are able kill a sheep at home and share the meat with family and less fortunate neighbors. The day was filled with family time, religious blessings and lots of meat--liver and bread for a mid morning snack, grilled rib meat for lunch, stewed meat for dinner. Yum.

Seli-Ba Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner hanging from a tree in our host family's compound

The last week of November, we headed south to the region of Sikasso to celebrate Thanksgiving with our fellow PC Volunteers. Volunteers in the Sikasso region prepare a Thanksgiving feast every year - turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, green beans and pumpkin pie made from local squashes. Eight turkeys and three ducks were butchered the morning of Thanksgiving. Certainly the freshest turkey we have ever had.  

George with the turkeys on Thanksgiving Eve. They had no idea what was coming... 

No white linens or banquet tables for Thanksgiving this year. Just lawn chairs and boxed wine in plastic mugs. Turkey decorations courtesy of Tim and Lindsey's care package.

We are thinking of all of you this holiday season. Enjoy Advent. Stay Warm.



Ghana

Accra with high school pal, Victoria

We returned last week from a quick trip to Ghana for a little R&R and had a blast.  All African countries are not the same.  Ghana = futuristic.  I suppose it is relative to living in Mali, but it sure seemed as if we went fast-forward into the future as we drove toward Accra.  We went the budget route, and took a non-airconditioned 45-hour bus through Burkina Faso to Accra, Ghana complete with pitching a tent and camping on the Burkina/Ghana border waiting for the border to open for the day.  We stayed in Accra for a few days, ate ice cream and sea food, went to a great concert, and visited a friend of mine from high school in Lincoln, NE who is now working in Accra.  Following Accra we went down the coast to Cape Coast to spend 5 days at the beach.  Cape Coast has a rich and tragic history of colonization and being a slave trade hub, so we managed to squeeze in a slave castle tour.  I do not think we will take a 45 hour bus again, but would definitely recommend Ghana as a destination. 

Bands from the concert:

Blitz the Ambassador http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=828XpNDScw4&feature=related

Les Nubians http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ldnvTqzjB8 

Alliance Français in Accra (outdoor concert venue)

Rainforest in Kakum Natl. Park

Canopy walk above the rainforest

Dutch slave castle in Elmina



Castle courtyard

West Indies Trading Co. logo

Tiny room for starving misbehaving slaves to death

Anna (way too happy about all this)

3,000,000 slaves passed through this small doorway, now covered with iron bars, over the span of 300 years onto boats headed to America, the Caribbean, and Indonesia



Boat building seen from the ramparts of the castle



Bridge over the castle moat

vignt-deux





September 22nd, Malian Independance Day, known simply as "vignt-deux," is THE biggest party of the year in our village. We invited two neighboring volunteers to join the festivities with us last month. The celebration begins with a soccer game in the afternoon of the 21st as people from neighboring villages flood into town. We brought in a ringer to join in the soccer game, a friend and neighboring volunteer who used to play in college. The village was extremely impressed to see a toubabu in action on the field. The eve of the 22nd, street food and dance parties in every neighborhood until dawn.

The morning of the 22nd, thanks to a well connected friend, we scored VIP seats to hear local government officials speak and watched a parade featuring tradional hunters and marchers from surrounding villages. Mid day - street food and treats not usually available at our weekly market. In the afternoon - canoe races on the Niger River, again viewed from VIP seats.

View of the town square from our VIP seats



The parade begins



Parade marchers ready for the canoe race

Watermelon season begins

The race