Name: Hamdia
Age: 25
Occupation: student, our cook!
Hobbies: watching movies
Favorite food: fufu
Favorite beverage: Lipton tea with lemon
Favorite thing to make: breads and cakes
Goals: open a bakery after graduating with a degree in hospitality
Currently: She is on break at school for the month so we are privileged to have her as our meal provider! She prepares food literally all day for us and we get the best authentic African food made with love 🙂 Her day could start at 5:30am if she has to start cooking the wheat meal that has been soaking all night for our breakfast. Then it consists of running to the market after we scarf down our meal just to get ingredients for the next one. She makes sure to have well-balanced options and is attentive to all our likes and dislikes. She even let us test out her baking as she made Rachel a beautiful birthday cake.
My favorite memory:
Cooking with Hamdia! She is a great teacher and so caring to all our wants and needs. I love going over to her house and helping with our meals. I have mastered the dropping in of plantains slices into boiling hot oil without splattering and knowing the exact color to look for to know when they are done. She feeds my desire for knowledge on the local produce, what’s in season, prices and recipes/customs. She even let me in on her secret recipe for the rub she uses to grill chicken!
I love my new friend and will be sad to say “goodbye” when departing Africa!
Fun Fact:
Fufu is a common favorite here in Ghana. It’s a doughy-type starch made from plantains and cassava after being boiled and pounded with a huge rod (you should see the muscles these women have). It is served as a big ball in a bowl of soup- either granite (peanut) soup or plamnut soup. Supposed to scoop out the soup with bites of it.
Fufu-top, palmnut soup/palmnuts- bottom
