How to eat a sheep stomach

In Mali, you occasionally find yourself in situations where, to be polite, you have to eat something you find really repulsive. This is especially pertinent during the holiday of Tabaski, called Seliba in Bambara (it is the most important Muslim holiday, occurring 70 days after the end of Ramadan). Last year I got pretty lucky and escaped eating anything but liver.

On a day to day basis in my village, the eating of animal parts isn’t really an issue, because we very rarely eat meat at all. But this year we celebrated Seliba on December 8 and 9, and my host family killed 7 sheep (keep in mind that when I say “host family” that refers to a household of about 75 people), so there were a lot of organs to be eaten.

Back in training, my host family (richer and more cosmopolitan than my village host family) usually had a little meat with their meals. And often, this part would turn up that I found absolutely revolting – it looked like a sea sponge. Those of you who know me know that I’m not particularly squeamish about food. But I gave this thing a wide berth. My family never pressured me to eat it, but to be honest I found it so gross that I really would have preferred that it not even be in the bowl.

I later learned that it was the stomach. In retrospect I think it must have been cow stomach, which is even spongier-looking (and therefore ickier) than a sheep stomach.

Anyway, on the second day of Seliba, I was eating with my host father, and there was a stomach in the bowl. After giving me several pieces of liver (the choicest part of the sheep), my host father pushed the stomach to my eating area and commanded me to eat it.

This is the process I’ve developed for eating things I don’t want to:
1) Stay calm! Just remember that it’s not poisonous. It may taste bad or have a nasty texture, but you are unlikely to suffer adverse effects from eating it – it’s edible.
2) Take an experimental bite to see what you’re dealing with.
3) If it’s really bad, down it as quickly as possible. If not, eat normally.
a) If it’s REALLY bad, casually dig a little hole in the dirt with your heel, and when no one’s looking, drop it in. (I’ve used this most with meat that is really a big chunk of cartilage.

In this most recent case, I could have made an excuse, but I decided to bite the bullet and go for it. And amazingly, it wasn’t nearly as bad and scary as it looked! In fact, it was better than many non-organ chunks of meat that are loaded with fat and cartilage.

Seliba has been the big hubbub recently. Just a few weeks before we had a large gathering for Thanksgiving in Sikasso – 45 volunteers came. We managed to make all the traditional Thanksgiving foods. We had arranged in advance to get four large turkeys (pretty available in Sikasso but very expensive – the equivalent of about $35 per turkey), and I went the day before to the guy’s house to finalize the arrangements. He insisted on having the turkeys brought in to show me – they were all very large males and started fighting with each other. It was quite an experience to see the live turkeys the day before! His wife cooked the turkeys for us (we would not have had the oven space).

In fact, the secret to the success of the large Sikasso Thanksgiving gathering, at least for the last two years, has been outsourcing. We got the turkeys cooked for us, and we also had a Malian woman peel and boil 30 kilos of potatoes (then did the mashing ourselves), and cook green beans and squash. We did the pies ourselves, as well as stuffing, vegetable dishes, and fruit salad. Luckily there is a squash readily available in Mali that is almost exactly like pumpkin. Apples are kind of expensive but easy to find. We made seven pumpkin pies and five apple.

Back at site, I’m preparing to do five lessons on HIV with the sixth grade class this week. I’m a little nervous, but I’ve done quite a lot of preparation so I really hope it goes well. My homologue, Assanatou, and I went over all the lesson plans the other day and she was enthusiastic about it. It’s a younger group that I might ideally do the lessons with, but the school in my village only goes to sixth grade. If it goes well, I might do more with them on other health topics.

My cat has been on a bird-hunting spree recently. In the mornings they fly around my yard a lot, and he will grab one and bring it into the house. However, when he tries to then play with it before killing it, half the time the bird ends up escaping and flying out of the house! What a silly cat.