Tofu has come to Pô. And I thought soy beans were just for Aveno® skin-care products. Heretofore my sole use for tofu was in a bowl of delicious Hot & Sour soup. Who knew? But hang on, it’s not merely tofu. Golly, what can’t be done with soy beans? Candles? Detergent? Add it to hard soap? Why, even the by-products can be used to feed someone . . . or some thing. Nothing goes to waste here in The B.F.

OK, so hang on, kids . . . get out your Kitchen-Aid® with the meat grinder attachment, and let’s begin . . .    Tofu 101.

Start with about two kilos of dried soy beans. Sort well (this takes forever) to eliminate any bad or dark beans or tiny stones. Stones aren't good. Soak the beans overnight in a 10-liter bucket and watch them swell. I was in Leo last week for a formation on the transformation of soy (that’s soja, here). The girls told me that we were working with two kilos of soy. Really? Then why can’t I lift the bucket? Ah, because those two kilos swell to about 15 kilos, plus the weight of the water, and that’s before they’ve gone through the mill.

Next, tote your bucket of wet, well-picked-through beans to the mill (the moulin). But not just any moulin. You need the wet moulin. Move over, you silly nassara. You can’t use the same mill that’s used to grind dry corn for meal, for goodness sake! So at the wet mill, you’ll pour-in your beans and add a lot more water.  Out comes this wet, extraordinarily heavy paste. I can tote a 20 kilo suitcase on one arm; but I couldn’t budge the bucket full of milled soy paste. It took two of us to tote it from the mill to my bicycle, whereupon it was mounted on the back of the Barbie back to be walked back to the laboratoire.


For every kilo of dried beans (and we began with two), you’re going to add 10-15 liters of water. Do the math. That’s 20 liters of water (imagine what that weighs) . . . and that's just for round-one. Someone's going to need a very large pot. Use your hands, it’s fun. Not you, nassara. Your hands aren't big enough. Move over. Mix the water with the soy mush and you’ll get the consistency of thin oatmeal. Here's Satia, Yaya's wife. How she does this in her best complet without getting splashed is absolutely beyond me. 

Now take some fine linen or muslin (cheese cloth is too hole-y), tie it to a rope strung between two tall wooden stakes in the ground, and make a hammock-type cradle. What, you don't have two stakes in your yard? Well you're going to want at least four strong gals to hold the cloth. Have I mentioned that this stuff is heavy? Using a bowl, start pouring the mush into the linen filter. About three liters at a time is the max. Fills up quickly, doesn’t it? And it’s so thick that it won’t filter any longer, right? Wrong. Move-over, nassara! The Burkinabe can squeeze out another two liters of liquid from what I believed to be a fully dry paste. OK, so now what?


Let the professionals continue wringing the linen filter until no more liquid will come out. Remove and save the paste residue in a clean basin. Continue until all 20-plus liters of mush have been strained. Then add more water to the saved paste (at least another 10 liters) and repeat the entire process. Yes, we do it all again to glean more soy-rich liquid. As you can see, one batch is going to fill-up both of these large basins with liquid. These basins are also used to bathe children. Well, not these specific basins, but basins of this grand size.

Just imagine . . . earlier in the day it was merely a bunch of raw beans, and now it's soy paste inside that cloth. What happens to the dry paste at the end of phase two? Just stay with me.

OK, so now you’ve got a frothy, milky liquid, ready to make soy milk. Gallons and gallons of it! No, nasarra, move over -- you can't make froth since you can't lift a full bucket of liquid this high. This is a Burkinabe art form, and I should have known from the same art used to prepare a frothy, sweet tea. Aeration and height are the keys to the froth. At this point, simply boil the liquid for about 45 minutes, and voila! Move over Silk®! This is really good soy milk. But we’re not aiming for milk. The people want tofu . . . though they don't know it. Important note: Never say tofu in The B.F. It's called viande du soja, or soy meat. And oddly enough, no one asks what animal produces soja meat. Is it just me, or is this odd? Me, I like to know where my meat comes from.

OK, so while your soy milk is boiling in a giant pot (called a marmite), grab about two kilos of crushed tamarind. OK you folks in Texas, don't tell me you don't have tamarind. Add water to cover, and let it sit. After about 30 minutes, strain the tamarind (new linen cloth, please) and toss it from a bowl by handfuls into the boiling soy milk pot. Move over, nasarra. You can't even scoop-up a handful of liquid. So true, and the girls laughed and laughed at me. Soon, before your eyes curds will form. It’s astounding! Don’t have any tamarind handy? Use vinegar or lemon/lime juice.

When all the curds have formed, use a slotted spoon (a really, really big spoon) and scoop out the curds into another linen cloth. Start wringing, again. Wring it dry . . . and then, move over, nasarra and let the pros do their work. Twist, turn, push, mash. You’re aiming for something the size of a very large round of Gouda. Now, while all those curds are still smashed together inside the linen cloth, place a heavy slab of wood on top to flatten the product. In fact, the product under that press is almost the size of that slab of wood, and about half as thick.   Don’t have a six-inch thick slab cut from a baobab tree? Use a cutting board and sit on it. Yes, it will take that much weight. Now you have tofu, . . . excuse me, viande du soja. Set the slab aside, still in linen, in a bucket, or even in the frigo. We’ll deal with it tomorrow.

As for what’s left in the pot . . .the whey, if you will? Well strain it (yes, in a new linen cloth), add a bit of sugar and/or some flavoring (like vanilla or rum) and you’ve got a delicious, nutritious drink ready to be placed in plastic sachets and sold . . . though it's best after refrigeration.

Day two. Remove your tofu from its cloth and place it in a bucket of water to wash off the outside. Then start cutting it into large slabs, about an inch thick . . . maybe a little thicker. From there, you want to continue cutting until you have hundreds of cubes, about one-inch in size. Here, uniformity is the name of the game. OK, nassara, you can cut a cube.

Now make a delicious tomato/onion/garlic marinade and toss those cubes in it. No, you can’t stir-in the marinade or you’ll destroy the cubes, which are a bit delicate until they're fried in oil. Rather, the basin must be tossed to coat the cubes. Picture Bobby Flay in the Iron Chef kitchen. Move over, nassara, because we've got to toss ‘em high to coat well. This image of Satia drizzling marinade shows only about 1/8 of the total product. Then, in several batches, into hot oil for about five minutes. Now stab the fried, extremely hot cubes on skewers with onions, tomatoes, peppers, or whatever you like . . . just like making kebabs. This stuff is amazing! It’s tastier than a chicken-breast kebab; and no, it’s not merely that I’ve not had any decent food in months. This stuff is amazing.

What else can you do with these wonder beans? Well, if you keep cooking the milk for another hour or so, you can put it in the frigo for a day or two and you’ll have yoghurt. Again, before selling, add some sugar and flavor. You can also ferment the beans into a yummy drink. Mmmm. No kidding. The fermented beans can also be used whole, like soumbala here in Burkina, which, I realize, means nothing to you in the States.


So let’s talk numbers. Five kilos of dried soy beans costs about 1800 cfa, or about $4.00 U.S. So for less than $2 U.S., you’ll make over 100 kebabs, which are sold for 50 cfa each. That’s 5000 cfa, just from the kebabs . . . and that doesn’t include the sales of soy juice, yoghurt, and soy milk. And this is an every-day business. That’s a profit of no less than $7.00 U.S. per day . . . and that’s after you’ve paid for the mill and purchased the veggies and wooden kebab sticks. One month of sales will pay for eight (8) young women to attend school for a year. Another month of sales will pay for their healthcare. Imagine the possibilities. Move over, Starbucks.

How can something that is so easy (once learned) be so cost effective and such an excellent income generating activity for the Burkinabe? And that dry, pasty by-product? Chicken feed for the maisonette? Wanna guess what size that giant marmite pot is? Here’s a hint – move over, Burkinabe, because I think I could take a bath that . . . but we can only speculate.

This is Leo, a town about six times the size of little Pô, about 9 hours away by bus(es) but only about 124 km, as the crow flies. OK, this isn't really Leo. This is the Hotel Sissilis, about two kilometers from the center of Leo. It's always been my home when I visit Leo. Now Leo's fabulous . . . home of my great pal, Hugo; but I like to think of Leo like this . . . a Cozumel-style hotel and great pool. Frankly, this is all I ever needed to know about Leo. Whoops.

Hilary and I had a cocktail party yesterday . . . separate, but together, via mobile. I can’t speak for Hil, but at midnight last night, I was still hosting the party chez moi. This crisis-induced fête came about when Yaya called about 08h30. I saw the name and immediately hit Silence on the mobile . . . oh-so quickly, as if I had to touch a hot flame. I sprang from the chair where I was happily savoring the end of the John & Susan Sutter saga. Felt like I’d been hit with a bullet. Total panic. Why? Long boring tale, so just close this browser window now.

I believe that this week will completely define my PC service. This morning began the test, when I escorted (read: chaperoned) Yaya’s wife, their 8-month-old daughter, and a couple of girls from Pô's Petites to Leo, via Ouaga. Transport in the country is never easy. Prior to arriving in The B.F. I read some good advice from a Returned PCV (RPCV), who said, kids, take those ear-buds out, turn off that iPod, and embrace the culture around you. That sounded so wise . . . such a practical bit of advice. But after almost 15 months in country, I’ve got some advice for the gentleman who wrote that. Anyone want to venture what I’d like to tell him? We may all be on a bus together, but I'm going to separate with my iPod. And in a land where the Burkinabe can and do sit for hours saying nothing to each other, who's really going to care if this nassara is off in iPod-land? Such was my plan.

I never leave for transport without a fully-charged iPod. But today? And for the next who-knows-how-many days? I’m stuck . . . 24/7 of having to speak with a woman who speaks Kassim and two young girls whose French is probably about like mine. This doesn’t bode well. In Kassim, I can hold a very decent conversation if I limit the discussion to where are you going, how much does/did that cost, can I eat that, and listing names of animals. Chee-bee-airy: chicks. After that, it’s time to say koko-may . . . see you later. But not this week. Togetherness. I've found a translator here in Leo who understands my French very well. He translates it to the local language here, Nooni. Then a Nooni speaker translates my thoughts into Kassim for my . . . . what are these gals? My wards, my charges, my . . . what?

How did this happen, you ask? Well, only in Pô, where things happen at the speed of light. Yaya and I had discussed taking a groupment of women to Leo to learn the closely-guarded secret of making tofu; but never in a million years did I think that Yaya could pull this together in three days,. Especiallly when the Leo contact (Jean Louis) was mine; when we had only a two-week window to accomplish the tofu formation prior to the Bike Tour arrival in Pô, followed immediately by the 50th Anniversary PC Fair in Ouaga, followed immediately by my continued work to prepare for the new PC arrivals in October . . . blah, blah, blah. YetYaya did it. That was the phone call. But wait! Yaya, weren't we going to go together? You mean I'm going . . . alone? But let's get real . . . come on now . . . who's going to say no to this man? This is us after completing a counter-part workshop. Look at Dan, laughing his ass off at my sad French. OK, maybe that's not what Dan's doing.

Only Yaya. Only Yaya could pull this off. The second time the phone rang yesterday, again I hit Silence and walked outside to talk to Sada. Now we know that anytime I willingly leave the hut to speak Kassim before 09h00, I’m somehow desperate to escape something. Finally it occurred to me that Yaya could be calling to say that going to Leo was not possible . . . so sorry. So I downed my rum-punch breakfast and returned the call. I nearly fainted at the news. This morning I departed for Leo at 07h00. This has disaster written all over it . . . or maybe not. How bad could it be?

Well, I could be emotionally damaged for life. To me, Leo means an over-priced hotel with a lovely pool. Air conditioned rooms with color TV and music videos. Cocktails by the pool and a fine steak. And Hugo! Not this time! Not with the charming Satia (and she is fabulous) and her absolutely adorable baby . . . and not with two brilliant and highly motivated teenage girls (all of whom have disappeared as I type this). Together, but separate. Do you suppose that's what they were thinking, too? I know where Satia's gone . . . to find baby food. But where are those girls? If I return with two knocked-up girls, someone's going to answer for this together, but separate theory; and I fear it will be moi-meme!

This is what life is generally like in Leo. Hotel Sissilis, four or five PCVs on a bed with cocktails, cigarettes, and wet swimsuits. But tonight . . . . well I'm in an auberge that's really quite fine by Burkinabe standards. Certianly not by your standards; and it's certianly not Hotel Sissilis. Tomorrow may bring about a change. The classes begin at 10h00, which means I can sleep late, until the resto on the other side of my paper-thin wall begins banging pots at 06h00. Tomorrow night I imagine myself sleeping in the height of malaria season on a plastic mat, outdoors in a gravel courtyard . . . stumbling in the dark at night to a loo that will probably be . . . well, I can’t even imagine what the latrine facilities will be like. On the other hand, I can look at this as a great spa week, sans the lovely spa. I brought a carton of cigarettes, two dozen apples, a pound of peanuts, and 10 bananas . . . because I don't expect to eat anything in this village. This should tell you that I brought virtually no clothing. I also brought enough facial and mani/pedi products for all the women, so perhaps we'll do a spa evening. Maybe I'll drop 10 pounds and return to site with glowing skin. Miracles do happen . . . look what Yaya did.

How do I get myself into jams like this? I’ve got important things to do in Pô. I need to have Seydou repair or replace my frigo. I need to pick-up my laundry. I’ve got a pair of pants at the tailor’s. I was going to organize my sock drawer. OK, I don't have any drawers.

There was a time in my life when I was genuinely incapable of spontaneous travel. Ah, what the PC will do to a . . . well, I was going to say to a normal woman . . . but we all know that’s a big fat lie. If I was normal, would I be here in The B.F? Do they have crows in Burkina? Am I ready to stop bitching now and to suck it up and deal? We can only speculate.