Burkinabe Cuisine

Le Tö – The most consumed food  in all of Burkina.  It is usually made by mashing millet or corn for an extended period of time until it is ground into a fine grain.  Then water and heat are slowly added until it resembles a dough type substance.  Tö can be served with a wide variety of oily sauces or soups.  The sauce will definitely determine the quality of the meal because tö is relatively tasteless.  Red sauce is typically made with tomatoes and fish, beef, chicken, sheep, or goat meat.  Green sauce is made with okra or other types of leaves.  Peanut sauce is made with Burkina style peanut butter, which is basically a peanut paste without added sugar or preservatives (tastes similar to organic peanut butter.

Riz Sauce – Another one of the most common dishes in Burkina.  Riz Sauce (rice with sauce) is served as a bowl of white rice and a separate bowl of sauce.   Usually the choice of sauce (if there is one) is between peanut sauce and vegetable sauce

Riz Gras- Rice cooked with tomato paste and oil.  It tastes vaguely similar to Mexican style rice.  Usually served with meat on top.

Benga- Mixture of rice and arrico (black eyed peas….taste similar to kidney beans).  Benga is typically served with one of the sauces described above.

Ragu d’ingyam-  a broth soup made with  ingyam, a legume that is very similar to a potato

Spaghetti/Macaroni- Pasta with a n oily tomato  sauce, usually made from palm oil and tomato paste

Kous Kous – Once in a blue moon, my host family makes kous-kous.  It serves as a base for a  variety of sauces, but most of them are  tomato based with onions and peppers

Never eat with your left hand in Burkina!  In Africa, your left hand is the “dirty hand” because most people use it to splash water on their under region after using the latrine….the hole in the ground that functions as a toilet (they don’t use toilet paper much here…).  It follows that greeting someone with your left hand is offensive.  In traditional Burkina society, left handed kids would be punished by their mothers until they learned to do most things with their right hands.

Price Breakdown:

Weekly Peace Corps Trainee Allowance – 10,000-12,000 CFA ($20-$24)

Our host families serve us breakfast and dinner. Breakfast consists of coffee or tea and “gato”  which  is basically bread dough fried in palm oil.  It’s actually really tasty when it’s served fresh, but unless you can find the lady making it and buy it on the spot, you usually receive it semi stale.  We’re on our own for lunch.

Riz Sauce / Riz Gras / Omelette- 300-400 CFA ($0.60-0.80)

Goat Meat Brochette – 500 CFA ($1)

Coke/Sprite/Fanta – 450 CFA ($0.90)

22oz Brakina (the equivalent of Bud Light) – 650 CFA ($1.30)

22oz Beaufort (the equivalent of Heineken) – 800 CFA ($1.60)

Hotel Sissilis

22oz Brakina – 850 CFA

22oz Beaufort – 1200 CFA

Hamburger – 2000 CFA

Cheeseburger – 2500 CFA

Fries – 1000 CFA

It’s important to understand that I eat separately from the family every night, as do most PCTs, because the food they serve me has been prepared separately from the food for the rest of the family.  Peace Corps supplies my host family with money to pay for my meals, but the family generally cannot afford to serve themselves the same meal.  Most nights the family eats to, riz sauce, benga, or potates/ingyams  if it’s a harvest day.  I never finish my meal, though, and my host brothers and sisters finish off  the rest of my food.

We all can’t wait to be sworn in as volunteers for a variety of reasons, one of them being the fact that our living allowance as volunteers is WAY MORE than our living allowance as trainees.  Of course, in terms of dollars that means about $10-$20 more per week, but to us it’s a lot!