So when you eat fufu or akple, you are usually sitting with several people, all carefully eating together with their hands.
When I first tried fufu, I was super excited because people had been talking about it for months, but I never had the chance to try it since I arrived before the harvest and yams weren’t available yet. When I finally tried it, I loved the taste and the texture, but I was really nervous to eat with my hands in front of new people. The taste isn’t very strong, it’s kind of like eating mashed potatoes, but the texture is firmer and silkier than mashed potatoes. The sauce that goes with the fufu is what really makes or breaks it. We don’t have refrigeration here, so a lot of the time the sauce is made with a ton of spice to help keep parasites and flies away. Most of the sauces are so spicy that you can feel the heat on your hand before it even reaches your tongue. One time, the sauce was so spicy that I got a rash on my arm from it dripping down while I was eating with my hands. Don’t rub your eyes after eating!
Fufu is made from yams that are first peeled and boiled, then pounded vigorously with a wooden stick. We often cook fufu over a fire made with charcoal or wood, not on an electric or gas stove. The women and children peel the yams and boil them until they are soft. Then the men pound the fufu while the women prepare the sauce. You can imagine that if it’s a big group of people, you have to pound a lot of fufu, and it can be a lot of work!
