visit to homestay family

Last weekend I went to my homestay familie's house to spend the night. My homestay mother was busy and had been busy since six am, working on peanuts. She had taken peanuts to the mill and ground them into peanut butter. Then she takes the peanut butter and puts it over the fire, stirring, stirring, stirring until it changes consistency and separates a bit. Then the solid part is kneaded repeatedly to squeeze all the oil out of it. The oil is kept and sold (delicious!). The remains are then rolled into long sticks (bakaru) pictured at bottom, though dark, or into wafers and fried. Or they are rolled into small balls and then made into a soup called haam haam, which uses follere as well.

kneeding the peanut solid

bakaru ready to be deep fried fried

Apparently my homestay father has come into some money because I turned the corner into his courtyard where normally there is a mat under a citrus tree, and there were 12 sheep and two goats, just sitting right there! What a surprise. I just started laughing. Apparently he started buying sheep at the market, he'll feed them for a few months and then sell them again at markets when they're price is up. Investing, brousse style. (He also somehow aquired a motorcycle!) Anyway he was really proud of his sheep so here's a picture of him posing with them...really with riches, like a king sitting on top of a heap of gold, or American's posing beside an expensive car or house.

sheep here make me laugh anyway, often being quite short haired (these two have hair) and with long swinging tails

pretty little yellow birds sitting in front of a Thevetia bush