Noo, A Banta (Coos, It is finished)

When we came back to village from IST, Sibou informed us that the coos was finished and our family was no longer eating breakfast.  This was bad to hear for obvious reasons, but for one, breakfast was both of our favorite meals.  Breakfast here consists of a coos porridge with sugar; when you add peanut butter, baobob, and honey to it, Oh its delicious! It was the one meal that every day we knew we could eat, and now – A banta. I asked Sibou why and she said ‘nothing’.  I ask her again and she explained how last rainy season, our other host mom Isatou had a baby, Lamin our host dad was sick, she herself had not arrived yet, so the only person who was farming was mama muso (grandma).  With this information, we were impressed that the coos made it this far! Mama muso is a good worker says Sibou, and wow we believe her!  

So I say that is not good and Sibou says emphatically ‘No Kaddy, Not Good!’. So I tell her that we’ll ask Solo what to do.  We can buy breakfast materials for ourselves, but these kids should be getting 3 meals a day! Upon consulting solo, he said it was up to Lamin, our host dad to deal with the matter because if he, or the wives do it –it will seem as if they are going over his head.  So we wait for Lamin to come home from working on the river.  Lamin has beein gone for over 2 weeks now and has not come.

According to Solo, there is still plenty of coos in the village, and Lamin will take care of it.  Inshallah, we will eat breakfast again before the next harvest in October/November.

Although we may not have breakfast, we are averaging 2-3 mangos a day now.  Mangos are delicious and I’ve wanted to dry some, make juice and jam, but we don’t leave any uneaten to do! Mango season lasts well into rainy season in our area so hopefully I will be able to leave some uneaten in order to make some of these things.  So don’t worry, although we may not be getting breakfast, we are getting much more nutrition and calories from the copious amounts of mangos we are consuming each week! Much more so probably than a month ago when we were getting breakfast.

Mango Tree - so delicious