Millet and groundnuts

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Millet
Millet is a native plant to Senegal. It’s a staple crop across a huge chunk of Africa. In Senegal, a lot of farmers that used to grow millet now grow peanuts, but there are still a lot of millet fields. Millet is good for dry, hot places like Senegal.

Mbamb has both millet and peanut fields. Before you can eat millet, you have to process it. First the women put a pile of it into a wooden mortar. Then they pound it forever. This removes the usable grain from the hard husk. Then they pound it some more. Then they separate the edible part from the inedible part using the wind. The woman dumps the pounded millet from one bowl at waist height to another on the ground. The wind blows away the inedible part, while the heavier part goes into the other bowl. Then they grind it up some more. The whole process is really hard work. If the family had the money, they could send their millet to be mechanically processes in a nearby village. Few families in Mbamb can afford to do this.

Millet can be lots of different textures depended on how it’s cooked. Mbamb use it to make everything from couscous to porridge. We ate quite a lot of it during our stay. They mix the porridge version of it with sweetened soured cow milk. I couldn’t stomach that one. However the couscous was yummy!


Groundnuts
Groundnuts (aka peanuts) are a big deal in Senegal. In Dakar, every few blocks you see a woman selling roasted groundnuts from a pile on a small table. One of Senegal’s most popular dishes is Mafe. To make it, the cook mixes peanut butter with oil and meat and vegetables. It’s eaten with rice or couscous.

Groundnuts came to Senegal with colonization. It really wasn’t a great idea; Senegal is too dry for the plant. Nonetheless, a lot of the country is covered in groundnut fields. The crop made a lot of money for the French colonizers, but it’s not doing very well any more. The world price for peanuts is low, and Senegal has had a lot of problems with draught. The two factors combined have meant a lot of bad years for the farmers.

In Mbamb, the men were bringing in the last of this years crop while we were there. They make piles of still-attached peanuts all around the fields and village. Then everyone works together to pick the nuts off the plant. They store the groundnuts in bags in the storeroom and use them throughout the year to trade with salesmen who come to the village. Some of them are also sold to the peanut-oil factory outside Kaolack.

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Photos

Women at work
This is what women do for most of the day during the time after the peanut harvest.

Roasting the peanuts
To make roasted peanuts, they light branches on fire and then mix the peanuts into the hot sand.

Chargrilled peanuts
Here we are eating the blackened peanuts. They were pretty good! Residents of Mbamb eat a lot of them.