During mango season, (beginning in about a month) the gigantic fruits will be widely available both for sale on the street and in our family's and neighbors yards. Occasionally someone who has traveled to a larger city and is returning will bring a pack of cookies for folks to eat.
Terenga
Something you'll hear when people talk about Senegal is this cultural idea of terenga, which roughly translates to welcoming or hospitality. If I'm walking down my village's road during a meal time, I'll undoubtedly hear people shout to me to come and eat with them in their compounds. "Come eat lunch! Come eat dinner! Come eat!" The culturally appropriate response is to shout back, "It's good!" or "I've eaten, thank you," even if I have not.
The spirit of welcoming and sharing what everyone has is a significant reason that Senegal remains a peaceful pocket of culture in a region of the world often fraught with wars and ethnic tensions. The terenga that I experience here as an outsider is not related only to meals, but this is the most common experience I have of it.
While well-intended, this terenga can be intimidating as it often comes in the form of shouting and in what appears to be an angry, controlling posture from my independent, western perspective.
Nutrition
While the few vegetables I am able to source from my village's weekly market are grown locally and without pesticides, the local soil lacks the ability to nutritiously fortify these crops as the fields have been overworked for many decades and can barely produce enough to sustain the lives of the people who live here.
