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January 16, 2007

Foonga and other dinnertime crimes

An edited version of this article appeared in the Guardian Weekly (1-8 February 2007): Real Men Don't Eat.

Night falls. Hamma’s wife approaches the men’s mat, bends down and then beats a hasty retreat. She has left behind a large bowl of millet and a smaller one of sauce. There is a hurricane lamp on the ground nearby but it will remain unlit. After all, eating is a shameful activity best done in obscurity.

‘Nyiiri wari’ (the millet paste has come), murmurs our host Hamma, but no one answers. Bukari is plaiting strands of plastic to make rope. Amadou is hollowing out a small log to make a feeding trough. Hamma’s son Burayma is lying on his back gazing up at the stars. There is no rubbing of hands, no cry of ‘Good, I’m famished’, no acknowledgement at all of the nyiiri’s arrival.

Hamma pours water into a bowl. ‘Lootee juude mon’ (wash your hands). Bukari sighs and dabbles his right hand in the water, but Amadou hangs back. ‘I ate yesterday,’ he says.

The Fulani of West Africa are governed by a code of behaviour called pulaaku, similar to stoicism in that it demands the mastery of human needs. Hunger, thirst, pain, grief and affection are all passions which must be ruthlessly controlled. The phrase ‘I ate yesterday’ is a particularly macho expression of pulaaku, implying that eating on alternate days should be quite enough for anyone.

‘Bismillahi,’ says Hamma and puts his hand in the communal bowl. He takes a handful of the millet paste and dips it in the sauce. Bukari follows suit. My turn. I reach out my right hand and take a glob of the boiling hot millet paste. My fingertips are on fire, but to flinch or say ouch in this setting would be social suicide. A man does not feel pain, and if he does he certainly does not show it. I grit my teeth, dip the nyiiri in the baobab leaf sauce, and raise it to my mouth, where it burns my lips and tongue. I swallow, smile weakly and brace myself for the next handful.

Hamma’s cows stand all around us, chewing the cud and stamping their hooves on the ground to ward off mosquitoes. A Fulani’s cows are very much part of the family, and they roam right up to the straw huts. Short of actually eating the huts, the cows can do no wrong.

‘They were vaccinating cows in the marketplace today,’ I say, and the group explodes into laughter. Making conversation near the beginning of a meal is called foonga, and it is another violation of pulaaku. It demonstrates that you were so hungry that your brain stopped working, and only now that you have swallowed something have you thought of something to say.

A Fulani meal is a tightrope stretched over an abyss of foonga. Speaking too soon is bad form, but staying silent too long is equally disgraceful; it suggests that you are so focused on eating, you can’t think about anything else.

Another heinous crime is to break off too big a piece of nyiiri in one go. Fulani folklore tells of a greedy man called Bellaajo who went to eat at his neighbour’s hut. As Bellaajo reached out to dip his millet in the sauce, there was a sudden flash of lightening and everyone around the bowl saw that Bellaajo’s nyiiri was as big as his fist. Luckily, Bellaajo was a quick thinker. He put the hunk of millet to one side and said to his host, ‘You should save that for the children’s breakfast.’

Eating in front of one’s mother-in-law is a serious taboo. Some Fulani men take this to extremes and feel ashamed to eat in front of women at all. Amadou boasts that even his own wife has never seen him eat, but I have never had the opportunity to ask her whether this is true. I suspect that Amadou might be exaggerating his pulaaku credentials.

Since I have already committed foonga, I might as well reinforce my shame. I raise my head and peer into the shadows where I imagine Hamma’s wife and daughters are sitting. ‘Nyiiri mon na weli de!’ I call (This nyiiri is delicious!). That should give them something to talk about tomorrow afternoon while they are pounding the millet for dinner.

Posted by sahelsteve at January 16, 2007 11:06 AM