Easter weekend activities part three – domoda and drumming

After Abuko Nature Reserve, Nicola, Abdou and I went to Serrakunda market and shopped for ingredients to make domoda. It was hot and dusty, but I enjoyed walking around the market especially as I was able to ask Abdou all my food related questions! He must have felt like he was shopping with a small child with all my 'what's this, what's that, how do you cook this...?' but he was very patient with me. 

Market activity

Check out the chickens! 

Once the shopping was done, Nicola and Abdou headed home to cook and I walked down Kairaba avenue to get a few supplies. By the time I got home I was hot, sweaty, dusty and exhausted! I checked the temperature and discovered it was 39 degrees which explains why I was wilting! 

Pretty grubby after walking around the nature reserve and the market! 

After a shower and a snooze I met Helen and we headed round to Nicola's place. 

Nicola has recently moved, and now that she has more room to entertain she had arranged to cook for quite a few of us. As a sign of respect to our esteemed host I took her a Kola nut! 

Given at weddings and naming ceremonies these are a respectful gift to present to your host, and are also eaten on long journeys as I think they are an appetite suppressant. I imagined it would taste a bit like a brazil nut but it mostly tasted like evil. Worth a try though! 

After some interesting Bombay mix from Joe (it came with sachets of sauce to mix into it, which resulted in more of a soggy rice crispy experience than crunchy Bombay mix) Helen, Helen L, Aloysious, Joe, Lamin, John, Ba Sarjo, Abdou, Nic and I all tucked in to the huge bowls of domoda that Abdou and Nicola had prepared. It was delicious.

Once dinner was over and we had eaten until we were stuffed, Lamin bought out his drums and he, Abdou and Ba Sarjo got to work creating music for us. Pretty soon we were all joining in, either on the drums or alternative instruments including buckets, bidongs, empty glass bottles and teapots! 

Ba Sarjo and Lamin

We also discovered that we all had our own 'concentration face' when playing the drums (ranging from toothy rat faces to Whoopi Goldberg hyena smiles!) and that it was kinda hard to keep with the beat and talk at the same time! I think it was the longest most of us had stopped talking for days!