As we came home from church today, we noticed some interesting activity across the street. I took these photos from our balcony, then decided to go down to meet these amazing women who were cooking enough food to feed the entire neighborhood.
You can see that there are 8 HUGE pots cooking rice and beef stew. You have probably never seen pots this big. I think all 3 of our grandkids could fit inside one of these pots.
I noticed about 5 or 6 empty 50 lb. rice sacks. That’s a lot of rice. They cook the rice, then pile it in the flat pans on top of the pots to keep it hot. Some of the pots were filled with chunks of beef.
Those are hard boiled eggs that will be added to the food platters.
These ladies found a slice of shade. They were making meatballs with chopped onion and green pepper mixed in. The lady fanning was keeping the flies away.
Wow, that’s a lot of rice!!
This is the beef stew:
In this narrow space between the unfinished home and the compound wall, there were 8 fires and 8 huge cooking pots. Imagine the heat! These women were so hot and working so hard. Wow. They were incredible!
The stirring spoons and scrapers, as you can see, are 5-6 feet long because the fires are so hot. You have to keep some distance.
To move or lift the pots, they use fabric threaded through the handle slots.
You can see the beef cooking under the rice.
Fried hard boiled eggs?
These two were in charge of washing and cleaning the rice before it was cooked. They kept preparing batch after batch.
This is the catering crew who prepared dozens of platters of the food. Then they carried them to the wedding tent and eating area down the road a bit.
The cooking and feeding went on all afternoon, along with loud music and lots of people coming and going on our street, dressed in their very finest and fanciest clothing. It was a really fun party to watch today!
Our Cote d’Ivoire Abidjan East and Bamako, Mali Mission 