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Village life　−Daily diet

In Mbomo, nobody dies from hunger. What are necessary to eat is labor and a few utensils to open the forest and cultivate crops. Their staple food cassava can be harvested after six months. There are oil palms and plantain banana trees which bear fruits without being cared. They spend a lot of time for processing cassava tubers and cooking. I enjoyed tasty local dishes.

Most families don't have a custom to sit together and eat at the same time. Some eat only once a day, others eat three times a day, which depends on food availability.

 
They dug out cassava tubers. After that they peel and soak them in water for more than 4 days to ferment and remove toxity.

Mongwele: After removing fiber, they knead cassava and steam it. (Left)
Pondu (Saka saka): The most popular side dish made with cassava leaves. (Right)

Foufou: Dried and powdered cassava is processed with boiled water. (Left)
The right dish is made of meat of duiker, macaroni and tomato.

Sweet type cassava can be eaten just by heating. Fruits above are called Safou which are eaten by boiling. It tastes creamy, not sweet... difficult to explain, but good.

Boiled and beaten plantain banana (Left). This is also their staple food. The dish on the right is sardines, cooked with cucurbitaceous seeds.
This is also a popular dish of smoked fish, cooked with soup of oil palm (Mousaka) and coco, leaves taken from the forest. Seasoning of most dishes is just salt, chili pepper and soup stock cubes.

They love mushrooms taken from the forest. They cook soup, or dishes with meat or fish.

A popular snack is doughnut called Mikate, fried with palm oil.
Brewing place of local alcohol called Monganda, made of corns. It is very strong.
 
The main market of the village. Those who want to sell food or goods come and go any time. You cannot always find what you want. In the photo, they sell bushmeat. They also sell dishes by the spoon.
In the village, raw fish are difficult to get and smoked fish from other places are sold. These ladies are removing ants from fish.