Meal Time

One of the more radical differences between my experience in France and my life here in Senegal is meal time. The French have a well-deserved reputation for being food conisseurs. They take food very seriously, and the day takes its shape around the mealtimes. Eating is never rushed in France. We always had an hour and a half break at school for lunch and my roomates who worked in various sectors each took at least an hour break at midday. Furthermore, the French are very particular about mealtimes. Eat a sandwhich while walking down a street in a French city at 4pm and you are sure to get a few strange, and likely dissaproving looks. Snacking, a favorite pastime in America, simply isn't done in France. I got the impression that snacking is disrespectful; food is so revered that it deserves its proper place - a table. We would often spend hours around the table at my appartment, starting with an "apero" of chips and a drink at 6:30 before eating our main dishes, then desserts, and then lingering around the table afterwards with a cup of tea. Likewise, at a restaurant or café, once you take the table, it's yours for the evening. No pressure from the waiters to move on so they can get the next party in and squeeze the maximum profit out of a Friday night.

Sooo, take that image of everyone seated around their table, calmly and patiently enjoying their meal....and contrast that with 8 hungry, growing, adolescent boys in Senegal. Mealtime here lasts approximately 6 minutes. We sit at a round table and eat out of a huge round bowl, each one with a spoon. Everybody claims a wedge-sized piece of the "pie." When we eat from a common bowl, the dishes are rice based, with vegetables and the meat - usually fish but occasionaly chicken - in the center. You start with the rice close to you and quickly little walls form between your space and that of your neighbors. Shortly after someone will start divvying up the veggies and meat, slicing them into bite size pieces with the side of their spoon and distributing a piece to each person. The boys make sure that everyone gets their fair share.

The food is very good here. What is lacking in variety of main ingredients (we eat variations of fish and rice about a third of the time) is made up for in flavor. The dishes are always tasty the flavor is never the same, though often slightly spicy, which I like. And there is always plenty to eat, though the boys make sure that nothing goes to waste. In this house, known as Maison I, the boys do much of the food preparation. Just this morning I lent a hand preparing the veggies and saw just how organized they are in the kitchen. Every morning they prepare not only lunch but also the evening meal. As someone who has trouble preparing one meal at a time for only one mouth, I am impressed at how well these teenage boys prepare multiple meals at one time for 15 people. And it always comes out good!

But I am impressed with the speed at which these boys eat. This weekend, when one of the boys finished his dinner in about 4 minutes flat and scampered off to turn on the TV, my acquired French mealtime habits sounded alarms in my head. "What are you doing?" I asked him. "You're already finished? I just started!" Seemingly reading my mind, he replied "This isn't France Brad!"