Tô

A strange thought crept into my mind the other day: I am kind of excited to eat tô again.

It might be surprising, that I don’t sound more excited about this (although if you find it surprising I’d suggest you haven’t eaten tô before). The fact is I have a love/hate relationship with tô. I enjoy it but I also think it’s gross...it's just how it goes perhaps.

Tô (pronounced ‘toe’) is the main dish of Burkina Faso. It’s made from either corn flour or millet flour which is mixed with water and cooked over a fire until it forms a hard paste.

This process results in a texture that is very different from anything we eat in Canada. And, it’s the texture that is the biggest challenge for me.

Just an aside: one girl I know saw people patching a broken bicycle tire with a glob of tô- it’s got that kind of sticky, hard texture.

The tô itself is just the “paste” but it is generally served with a sauce. [I’ve also seen it eaten without sauce, or mixed with water and consumed as a drink...But with sauce is by far the most common way to eat tô and it’s where variety comes into the diet.]

The two most common types of sauces are gumbo and leaf sauces.

Gumbo sauce (pictured above) is made from dried fish, sliced veggies (tomatoes or onion), okra (which adds a stringy textures) and an assortment of spices.

The leaf sauces are my favourite: Baobab (the national tree of Burkina) or oseille (the sorrel plant) make delicious sauces. Sometimes the leaves are mushed up and cooked together, other times they are left whole and boiled with onions and spices.

As far as I can understand the average family eats tô nearly every meal (for lots of families leftover tô from the previous nights dinner is served as breakfast).

The older children at the orphanage eat tô two meals a day, and bouille (a porridge, most comparable to cream of wheat) for breakfast.

So am I excited to eat this? Maybe less so for the tô than for what tô represents: a gathering. Mealtimes in Burkina are best defined by the fact that they are a social gathering.

If you are walking past someone that is eating, their automatic response is "t'es invité" (you're invited) meaning you're welcome to join in the meal. Most times the courteous response is simply 'bon appetit' but, this demonstrates, the relational aspect of the Burkinabé even down to meals. It is this that draws me to be excited for tô.