Parades and Tofu

Last friday, May 20th, was the Cameroonian national day to celebrate its unification. To celebrate I went to the mairie in Bayangam to watch the parade. People here parade every chance they get; Youth day, Womans day...they just love to parade! So I went down there with Julie and our friends Marjolie and Ma Suzy who brought about 200 skewers of tofu to sell. We found the Bandrefam traditional dancers and danced around the drum circle with them. School children and groups from the various political parties marched in the parade. There were also men from one of the secret societies who had rather creepy masks and long robes, I asked but they didn't even want me to take thier pictures.

The following day we went to another volunteers town, Bandjoun, for a tofu demonstration. This whole tofu thing has been really successful. Julie used another volunteers recipe which we eventually perfected with Suzy. I think the key to it was really having a Cameroonian women do the cooking, she could intuitively know when to take the soy milk off of the fire and several other little tricks. Basically you just soak the soy beans for about 10 hours then grind them at the wet mill. Add a liter of water for every cup of beans used then squeeze out the water. This gives a milk which is what you put on the fire, but make sure to save the remaining soy product to make a sauce for dinner (it really yields a lot of food!). Leave the milk on the fire until it boils, stirring occasionally so that it doesn't boil over, then take it off the fire and add a generous ladle of vinegar (I recommend Soliel rouge brand, it seems to have enough alcohol to work). Leave the lid on for a bit while the milk coagulates. Once its cool enough again squeeze out the water, at this point you can add grated onions, peppers and maggi cube for flavor. Put it all in a sack and stick a rock on it- even sit on it- to make sure that as much water as possible escapes and to solidify the block of tofu. Et voila, tofu! To make it especialy pleasing to the Cameroonian palate deep fry it in peanut or refined palm oil, put on raffia skewers with onions, add pimante sauce and enjoy!

Ma Suzy is really motivated and has been succesful in making tofu to sell in village for 100 cfa per skewer, or brochette. We've been teaching other women to make it too and really pushing the nutritional value of soy. Its great because its cheap to buy the beans or people can start to grow them. Within the culture here children basically never eat meat, fish or eggs. Meat is really just for men, its too expensive for the rest of the family. Many women and children fill up on starches but remain malnourished due to a lack of protien (and other nutrients), so hopefully women will learn and accept the importance of protien and will use soy in thier own cooking. Its also really rewarding to do these demonstrations, women are always amazed that you can make meat that tastes like chicken out of milk!