Francophone Food

Although I’ve been largely food adverse over the last couple of months, my ability to eat more than peanut butter has improved since leaving for Senegal. The nausea unfortunately remains, but at least I can get some food in me.

It’s no secret that Francophone West Africa kicks Anglophile anywhere Africa's butt in the food department. I have been impressed that the tiny little Goree Island I’m staying on, off the coast of Dakar in Senegal, holds its culinary own. A boulangerie exists in what would be a mobile phone airtime kiosk in Uganda. Just like in Paris, the Senegalese Islanders line up in the morning and walk away with fresh baguette tucked under their arms. For each meal I’ve had, a caramelized onion sauce has accompanied the main course of chicken or fish or shrimp. With the assistance of the Mali Chief of Party I reversed engineered it: onions reduced in chicken broth with lime and mustard. Delicious and simple.

Coffee breaks in Uganda consist of lumps of cake, not unlike sweetened concrete. Swallowing the cake is tantamount to scrapping putty from an old pipe, and then it sinks into your stomach like lead. Here in Senegal at the Goree Institute, we were served onion tarts and Petit Fours. They were exquisite.

The African staple, cassava, is served countless ways here and dare I say some of them are tasty. For lunch we were given fermented cassava that had the look and consistency of cous cous with a taste not unlike sourdough bread. Topped with the caramelized onion sauce, it was delish.

Africa, Pregnant

It’s a funny thing to be in the early stages of pregnancy. In addition to the excitement/panic of the good news, behavior change becomes a big part of daily activity. It is too soon, for me anyway, to feel affection, per se, for this life growing inside of me. A more accurate feeling is protective. The obvious example is giving up food that is harmful, like alcohol and sushi. That wasn’t too hard for me though due to my extreme nausea and resultant sheer aversion to just about everything except peanut butter Cliff bars.

But as I prepared for my journey to Senegal, new concerns challenges came into a previous routine experience. I had to take Lariam for the first time, the dreaded anti-malarial that allegedly makes one mentally insane but is apparently the only one safe for pregnancy. Thus, fetus trumps sanity. Yet, I still feared the impact on this living thing’s health. Talk about swallowing a bitter pill. As it lay in my hand, despite reassurances from my Ob and Hayden’s Googling, there was an unexplained hesitation that sprang up like a wall in my mind. Swallowing took a lot of self-coaxing.

Traveling to Senegal was a decision I made before I got pregnant. My job would always push this part of me. I chose a doctor who would get that. Now that I’m here its small stuff I have to be vigilant about, like remembering to put on bug spray, something I was downright lazy about on any other trip. I normally brush my teeth with water from the sink, having become an expert at not swallowing rather than dealing with the annoyance of bottled water brushing that never gets the toothpaste rinsed off the brush properly. Pregnant, I need to worry about imbibing even the smallest amount of water. What if it has Typhoid in it? I’m in the last year of my Typhoid vaccination. Is that cutting it close, especially since the vaccination isn’t a 100% guarantee of a prevention of the disease?

But then I swing the other way. Africa has a lot one can worry about. If I start parsing the risks, I’ll go insane and I’ll realize it’s futile. For example, how can I eat even a single meal here in Senegal? I have no idea about any of the restaurants’ hygiene practices. Even if I did, I can’t control a mistake in someone else’s food preparation. Or even ferrying out to Goree Island. The ferry station was the worst kind of human traffic jam and I literally had to throw elbows to make it into the station. And then I thought, jeez, there are A LOT of people getting on this ferry. Don’t these ferries in third world countries sink all the time, because no one is paying attention to the weight limitations? Ahh!

So far, if I block that stuff out, I mostly notice that much of my symptoms remain the same here as they are at home. I tire very easily and struggled through an all-day session today. I was also very nauseous today; more so than in recent days. Perhaps it’s something I ate here or more likely it is because Peaceflake grew a new body part and just needed an extra pull from my body today.

When the plane touched down in Senegal, I was at once relieved to land in one piece and delighted to be back in Africa. Then I went to slip on my sandals and noticed that I couldn’t get them all the way on my feet. I peered down and, to my horror, I realized that in 7 hours I had produced yet another pregnancy symptom: cankles! My ankles had literally tripled in size and my feet had puffed out to resemble more paddles than feet. Oy!

But otherwise, I have no regrets taking this trip.