What we ate

Before we left for Africa, a lot of people asked us what in the world are you going to eat over there.  They thought the food would be awful.  Well, I remember thinking the same thing the first time we went 7 years ago.  So we took a ton of snacks with us just in case.

We were pleasantly surprised that the food was actually very good.

This trip we hired someone to cook lunch for us Mon - Thurs and it was so good.  People from Senegal eat a lot of rice and mostly fish but sometimes beef or chicken.  The meals are served in a huge dish and is shared between 5 or 6 people.  They don't usually use spoons, but we did.  You eat a triangle shape of food in front of you leaving barriers between the people beside you.  If you don't like something in your section then you toss it to the middle which is free game.

 This meal was rice with chicken n onions.  Now they like spicy food because inside the chicken was something that looked just like a lot of spices.  I thought that looks good, well I took a big bite of it and OH MY, I think I guzzled half my water down at that point.  It was good but maybe in small doses.

This is Pastor David from the church who helped us out.  Audrey is sitting next to him, she was one of our translators.

I guess people didn't like the tomatoes.   Once you get finished then people may break down the barriers of food to finish it up.

 All done.

We were so proud to have cleaned our plate that day.  Actually every plate was cleaned.  It started as one group and then we all felt it was a competition to finish them all even though we all said we were done.  Our cook knew we liked the food that day.  I guess we aren't that picky of eaters.

Trying to finish their plate.

Each day we shared lunch with our translators and it was a great time to get to know them better.  One day while we were waiting on lunch we all gathered around and started singing different worship songs - they sang in French and we sang in English.  It was so amazing to hear us all worshiping one Savior with different languages.  Just a little touch of what Heaven will be like.

In the evening we cooked our own food - grilled cheese, ham/turkey sandwiches, and tacos.  Most of the food over there is about the same price as here - except bread and cheese.  We went through some bread with all of our sandwiches.

Our kitchen area

Trying to get the gas working in our oven so we grill a lot of grill cheeses at once.

The final product

Taco night

For breakfast, everyone brought stuff from home to eat - poptarts, crackers, oatmeal, etc.  I on the other hand couldn't wait to eat their mangos.  It is mango season when we go and these are the BEST mangos I have ever eaten.  I so wish I could bring some of them back home.

We ate out a couple of times, but it is them trying to make American food - pizza, hamburgers, and chicken.  It is ok, but still not as good as the actual Senegalese food that we had prepared for us.  They do have really good ice cream, so of course we took advantage of that.

As for drinks, we had filtered water where we stayed which us girls used to brush our teeth.  But as for drinking water, we preferred to purchase bottled water in which we carried huge 1.5 liter bottles around with us all day.

We did drink coke every now and then and we brought pink lemonade packets to add to our water.  Now, Jason had bought 2 Dr Pepper's in JFK before we left and 1 was saved for an emergency so here is that emergency kind of night.

So thankful that our group was so flexible with what we ate.  There was no complaining which made it so nice.  It was like these were the best sandwiches we had ever eaten.