High on the Hog_ A Culinary Journey From Africa to America - Jessica B. Harris [9]
As came okra, watermelons, and black-eyed peas, so came sesame and sorghum. The African continent is also responsible for our eternal confusion about yams and sweet potatoes. Some variants of true yams are African in origin. Across the Atlantic, they became confused with the sweet potatoes that were the predominant tubers to which the enslaved in the United States had access. In African American parlance and from there into Southern usage, they retained the name of the African tuber that they replaced—yam.
Peanuts are New World in origin, yet they remain connected in many minds with the African continent, because it is likely that they moved into general usage in the United States via the Transatlantic Slave Trade. They returned to the northern part of their native hemisphere complete with an African name that derived from the Bantu word nguba, meaning “groundnut”—goober. So we’re all celebrating Africa when we’re eating goober peas.
CHAPTER 2
SEA CHANGES
Enslavement, the Middle Passage, and the Migrating Tastes of Africa
Gorée Island, Senegal—
Sunday was the day that the small ferries that took travelers back and forth to Gorée from Dakar were most crowded. Then daytrippers headed over to frolic on the tiny island’s beaches and stopped for lunch in the local restaurants that caught the sea breezes. Those with more cash splurged on a gourmet luncheon at the Relais d’Espadon, or overnighted at the Chevalier de Boufflers, the small hotel named for one of the island’s early-century governors. To those with little knowledge of its past, Gorée was a pleasant place in the 1970s: a picture-book spot where time seemed to have stopped. There were no cars, only sandy streets and alleyways bounded by rosy brick walls festooned with brilliantly colored bougainvillea blossoms. The breezes kept the island relatively cool, and the sight of a woman rounding a corner with her brightly colored robes billowing in the wind was one of the island’s joys.
In the early 1970s, I journeyed to Senegal frequently and visited the island occasionally during my stays in Dakar. There, I learned of the calabash of milk that islanders offered annually to the sea to placate its tutelary spirit, Mame Coumba Castel. In those days, the aroma of frying fish turnovers called pastels and of meat grilling on the stoves of the small eateries near the ferry dock perfumed the air, and I loved the slip of sand under my feet. I enjoyed the warm greetings of the folks who lived on the outpost and the friends I made there. The most unforgettable thing about Gorée, though, was La Maison des Esclaves.
An unprepossessing building from the street, it looked like any other one, its rosy stucco facade broken by a wooden door that had seen much wear. A hand-lettered sign was the only indication that this house was different from the others surrounding it. It said, simply, LA MAISON DES ESCLAVES: the House of the Slaves. Through the door, one entered a courtyard where the most arresting feature was a curving horseshoe staircase under which a small corridor led to an open doorway to the sea. The brilliance of the sparkling sea on the other side beckoned through the darkness of the hall.
A small office was on one side of the entrance. In it sat the curator cum guide, whose ramrod posture and carefully enunciated French made me think of him as one of the ancien combattants, war veterans, who manned such venues throughout Western Africa. Joseph Ndiaye was his name, and on my first visit, he took me, my mother, and our small group of tourists through the former dwelling, detailing how the slave traders lived lavishly upstairs while terrified