The Mysterious Vegetable

Arriving at Tomba again, I was pleased to see that many of the babies there have been gaining weight. Yaya Coulibaly informed me proudly that he had been encouraging them all the cook ameliorated porridge. A few were still on the dangerous end, so I invited them to the CSCOM where we are launching off a new program for malnourished children starting November 30. At the end of my presentation on treating wounds, one of the women in the crowd came up with a brilliant idea. “Oh! We should show Aminata my garden!” Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s a great idea. So after the baby weighing session, a crowd of Malians led me excitedly to a garden. It looked like just any other old garden. Cabbage. But in the middle was this large weird beet thing. It was tan and bigger than my head, happily growing in the soil. “What is this?” The owner of the garden asked me. This tends to happen a lot. Malians quiz me on the names of things, especially food. “I don’t know. What’s it called?” Over and over they asked me. You don’t know? She doesn’t know! And everyone burst out into laughter. Ok, my horrible Bambara isn’t that funny.
“This doesn’t come from your country?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
More laughter. “Well we don’t know what it is either!” Turns out some white people (an agricultural NGO from Germany, I later found out) came and planted it as part of a project to introduce new foods into the community. One result: a large weird beet head thing sitting in the middle of this women’s garden, which people young and old would come and look at. And they were so excited when another white person came who could tell them what it was. What in God’s name is this thing? They said again to themselves. And I just had to laugh with them.