Warming temperatures and declining rainfall are also obstacles for farmers.
When the vegetables are cooked by my host-sisters, they are doused in oils and seasonings that contain high amounts of lead. While the meals are often delicious to the taste, it feels like eating out at an American-Chinese restaurant three meals a day given the amount of salt and oil I'm consuming. This does not leave me feeling like I'm in the best of shape most of the time. Combined with the heat, the heavy and unhealthy food leaves the local Senegalese people and myself feeling sluggish. Miraculously, and maybe due to the incessant sweating, both my husband and I have lost weight since moving here.
In the local boutiks (stores), one can buy old potatoes, moldy bananas and ancient onions that have been living in bags for a long time before they see the shelf. Oils, packets of seasonings and pastes that would never be approved in America, are readily available and consumed by my village's population.
Rice that was cooked yesterday can sometimes be saved without any proper storage or refrigeration for a meal over 24 hours later.
Inequity
Around the bowl, the children are the least provided for and are used to eating just the rice of the meal unless an adult throws them a small piece of a vegetable or a piece of meat. Children are more than used to this and are often confused when I give them a piece of my potato or chicken. Just as with American children, their palates are used to what they know best, so often kids don't even like to try vegetables in the bowl and opt for handful after handful of greasy rice.
