The Asante Fufu Curse...Gregory Ofei Obuobi
Gregory Obuobi
Chief Executive Officer - Director of management and affairs. at Self-employed; He is a published author.
The Asante Fufu Curse - The Late Fufu Dinner By The Hearth - Gregory Ofei Obuobi.
I had madly crushed open her right thumb on the bed of a mahogany mortar as she sat turning over and about the pounding fufu dough. I cursed my father. I have since turned my back on the ghastly Asante fufu dish.
It was late gloaming in tropical Bibiani. Afua Nyarko had close done her trading stint at the Bibiani Old Town market. In the shelter of the murk of her stall pitched close to the north entrance of the Bibiani Old Town Market, she sat her haunch on a stool frying and selling the late aweasu corn cakes. Her customers from the Bibiani District farming community had not all left the Bibiani metropolis market. It was just past 17:30 hours. A Wednesday. The sun had almost set by the west beyond the Bibiani 1927 2 Howling Dogs Ltd. No shadow would cast visibly enough.
By my mother’s directive, I had got fixed a light tomato peppered soup for dinner. We would eat fufu with the soup. When she returned home from her marketing merchandise, all was set. It was 17:35 hours of the clock. The cauldron soup bowl sat on the hearth in the kitchen, bubbling over, its sparse contents of kippered fish, koobi, salted-beef and pork feet turning over in violent swirls.
‘Yaw, set the mortar!’ Afua Nyarko rushed to her room in her father’s clan house.
She sat at the foot of the mahogany mortar as I stood sentinel and pounded one cooked plantain piece after another as she brought them to the bed of the hold of the mahogany mortar. I smashed the plantain pieces to dough. Soon the pounding dough was one, melded into a carbohydrate rough pasty adipose mound. Then she packed the plantain paste out the mortar hold. We worked on the all cassava pieces in turn. In no time the cassava mound had turned a white malleable paste. Then Afua Nyarko slashed and packed away a half of the cassava dough. To the bed of the mortar she brought a mound piece of the plantain from a sheltering earthen bowl by her side. We worked on the mix. I pounded. She turned the mix over and about. The mix of plantain and cassava transformed to a light yellow fufu compound dough. It bore a refined texture in a meld of cassava-plantain fufu. She packed it in small dashes into dishes. The first half pounding was done. Then we set to working on the remaining crude past dough. Bam! Pound! Bam! Pound! Half-way through the work, an accident struck. My mother’s attention had strayed from the mortar. She had elected to look over her right shoulder at a distracting passing shadow. Before she knew, Afua Nyarko had had her right thumb crushed open by a mad pestle pound. I had dealt a mad crushing pound on my mother’s right thumb! By accident!
‘Wui!’ she had screamed in response. Afua Nyarko looked. The inner palm dermis of her right thumb showed crashed open. The muscle beneath the dermis showed red fresh meat. She wailed muffled wails: ‘Mnh! Mnh!’ ‘Wui!’ ‘Mnh!’ I was that disoriented that pain came throbbing in my being. I could hardly believe what I’d done. The pains! I had killed my mother! How careless! I surely could have saved my mother the agony even if she had gone that careless at work. The burst thumb was treated. It was bound in fresh cassava poultice and bandaged.
Afua Nyarko suffered the pain. But most stubbornly she suffered to get the fufu done. Her family must eat dinner! Food! She would not starve anybody. Her newly married husband drew near and studied what had happened. He was served her fufu dinner for the day. They relished the fufu dinner. I refused to have anything to do with that fufu dinner. I have since stayed away from anything called fufu dish.
Does fufu merit all the trouble the tribe goes to get it fixed? What are the essential nutrients of any fufu dish? How is any nourishing fufu dish? I wondered. A preponderant store of carbohydrates! The soup is not any highly proteins in contents for over-cooking. Can’t some ingenious native Ghanaian scientist invent an electric motor cast-iron fufu pounding gadget for the kitchen? The appliance could as well do banku cooking. It can as well mash eto for the Asante! Akua Yaa would love that even in her grave! The Ghana kitchen should come mechanized with electric motored cooking equipment. Handy. Patented: SIBSTER! We are in the beyond of independence.
TRADEMARK:SIBSTER
FOR THE SIBSTER FILE JOURNAL - news and culture magazine. Edition 9
Tags:modernizing the asante traditional fufu/electric fufu cooking gadget.
AUTHOR COPYRIGHT ? GREGORY OFEI OBUOBI Tema, Dec 18, 2018
The Asante traditional fufu is an ancient dish; not nourishing enough and tiresome to fix.
Chief Executive Officer - Director of management and affairs. at Self-employed; He is a published author.
5 年What purpose does any dish fixed by the hearth in the kitchen serve, you would say? The most urgently essential life support is the food man eats, I should argue. The nutrients are as important as the means of getting the dish fixed, itmust be argued. Tell us, anybody, what you intimately know about fufu and the light soup that goes with it in any Kumasi home.