Wedding

So I attended a wedding in my village recently. Weddings here are not a day long event but are 4 day events. Every day brides family will provide dinner for the community. This is a lot of people to cook for and is so much fun to watch.

So Ghanian dishes are the following:
T.Z (pronounced "Tee Zet" thus the reason why every child believes the letter Z is pronounced "zet")- This is a mix of corn flour and cassava flour. They add it to a pot of boiling water and then stir like crazy. It's really like an attacking motion.
Fufu- The ingredients varies from region to region of Ghana. Southern Ghana will use yams and plantains while the North will use just yams because plantains won't grow up north. You boil the yams and then pound them until they magically turn into a lump of dough. Without fail the women will form this ball of yam into a perfectly round ball.
Rice- Either in the form of a ball or cooked with a little bit of tomatoes. If cooked with tomatoes it is served by itself.

Those are the staples and then each is always served with some type of stew. You'll either eat it with some groundnut stew (tomatoes, onions, salt, peanut butter), Okra stew (okra, tomatoes, onions, salt), Dagban stew (local leaves off a tree, tomatoes, onions, salt), or Bra soup (leafy plant, tomatoes, onions, salt).

With these dishes I've mentioned you'll have learned about 90% of the dishes here.

So back to the wedding, this family is cooking for all 300 people in my village. Impressive. Watching the women cook the T.Z was like watching a really happy and joyful Iron Chef. They had this huge cauldron and a stirring spoon that measured up to my neck. I stood next to it but unfortunately didn't get a picture of it. So big cauldron, big spoon, a LOT of cassava and corn flour. There were about 12 ladies lined up behind the cauldron all taking turns spinning and attacking the T.Z. They tried to get me to stir the spoon and I probably only managed to move it a foot. Then I realized why it took 12 strong women to make this huge pot of food. I sadly didn't get a video of this (next time, as there are always more weddings).

On day 2 they made koko (porridge which is just like a really really watered down T.Z). Breakfast for all!

Day 3 they make Fufu. And yes, I got video's of this!

This is a video of women pounding fufu. There is such great coordination between them all it really always blows my mind. My mom is the one spraying water on the fufu.
"Twabu" which means pounding

This video is of them pounding a different ball (same day same time) and they had a super good rhythm going. It's really soothing to hear. The reason the video looks kind of weird/rushed is because at this particular moment I was trying to hide the fact I was recording because they felt self conscience they weren't in their good clothes. I told them you guys wouldn't mind. Fufu 

They had like 3 huge balls of fufu which they used to feed the village.

The family will get obnoxiously loud speakers and blare music the last 2 days of the wedding. There is some tribal scream that every women will randomly do when they feel like it and there is a ton of dancing and singing. The whole community really rallies behind these weddings.

Then the wedding ended (for me before I called it a night) with me being completely embarrassed because I got called out to dance in front of the ENTIRE community. The moment of "oh god... it's actually happening" will forever be engrained in my head

Random post

     I saw something funny the other day. My 3 house sisters all decided to have a group pee. Urinating (nobody here says “peeing”) is totally no big deal here. They all went into the bathing area of the house and urinated all around the hole that leads outside the compound. It was pretty funny when the realization dawned on me what had just happened. In general going to the bathroom here is no big deal. I’ll be going to fetch some water and somebody in the group will just say they have to “go to the toilet” and wander 10 feet into the bush and go about their business. Sometimes one of the girls will try to make a point that we can still see the person’s outline (if they haven’t gone in far enough) and then everybody will laugh.

     Now the music everybody here has been listening to! It is all moving music man. These songs are all the rage here and I have to say, I like them. If you got some time to burn and you want to listen to some Ghanian music then click away!

 

Azonto -Azonto is probably the biggest (or was the biggest) hit in Ghana. It was on the local news for the craze it was starting haha. Since I don't really know how to dance you can imagine how much laughing actually happens when I try to move to Azonto.

I love my Life - I mean this song is what every life lover (and one in particular) will love.

Yesi Yesi- I don't actually know what this song is about but the tune is just catchy man.

There are more songs but I realized searching up songs when the title is in a different language which I can't spell, is hard. So I hope you enjoy these 3 songs.