Groundnut soup

This week’s Sunday lunch was at B’s flat just below ours. B is from Mali originally and he cooked us a traditional dish from across most of West Africa, groundnut soup , which we ate with and ram meat stew with rice and plantains, all yummy. It is strange that here in Nigeria stews are called soups, and soups don’t really exist – but then what is a soup but a watered down stew!

Basically it is onions and tomatoes, tomato paste cooked in water with lots of  different seasonings – black pepper, salt, celery slat, ground bay leaves, dried fermented onion spice, sumbala and of course chilli or pepe as they call it here in Nigeria. No  oil is used . The vegetables or meat if you are using it are then boiled in this and finally the ground groundnuts are added or peanut butter is you shortcut the nut grinding stage and then cooked until it thickens. I first encountered this in Mali but didn’t get a chance to taste it until later. If you love groundnuts you’ll love this. If you’ve tasted SE Asian peanut dishes like Satay, then you should try this.

Shortages in the land of plenty

Abuja has been in the grips of a fuel shortage now for just over one week. Long lines of 50 or so cars queue every morning at the filling station at the end of our road waiting to see if there is any fuel, while black marketeers tout round large yellow plastic containers with tubing to dispense their liquid gold. The crisis started just before the Eid Sallah holiday weekend and has continued all through the week with no sign of let up. Lots of rumour and conspiracy theories abound but meanwhile ordinary folks are hit hard. Last Friday when the crisis broke saw people stranded in town trying to get home at a reasonable fare. With what fuel there is being sold at 3 times its normal rate, taxi drivers have soared their prices, making it prohibitively expensive and blowing volunteers travel allowance. Luckily a colleague has come to the rescue and is driving  me to and from work: it means going in later than normal and leaving later but that’s OK for now.

Lots of rumour and conspiracy theories abound as to reasons, cause , resolution and normal service resumption dates – read  more from the Reuters news report. Unfortunately, such shortages are not uncommon in a country which is  produces 2.7 million barrels of crude oil per day and exports over 2.3 million barrels of that, making it the 14th largest producer worldwide and the largest on the African continent and the 6th largest exporter of oil worldwide.

La musique du desert

 

Just giving a blatant plug to the first album from a young Tuareg group, Dèran, which includes my friend Boubaker from Djanet. I first met him as a young lad who came to cook for us as we travelled in the Tadrart region of south east Algeria. As I discovered he played guitar and kept us entertained in the evening with Tinariwen songs and stories of wanting to make music to “welcome everyone to the desert”. He comes from a long line of Tuareg musicians including his mother who is an imzad player. Now as a young man his band have cut their first album I hope they can get it played and release through one of the internet agencies that specialises in this type of music such as Re-aktion. In the meantime here is a taster for you all to enjoy.