Weka

While I love the communal, eating with my hands thing during meals with Sudanese, there are still a few foods that I'm still getting the hang of eating. Weka is one of them. They eat a lot of okra here. Weka is okra that has been dried in the sun and pounded into a powder. They add it to certain stews to thicken them up. It tastes really good. But the consistency of whatever they put it in becomes, for lack of a better comparison, snot-like. Stews with weka are usually layered with kisra (a spongy flat pancaky thing), and you scoop it up and eat it with your hands like everything else. It's usually more of a special occasion dish so it's not something that I eat at the center all that frequently. AKA, I haven't had enough practice to master eating it yet. It requires a swift turning hand motion to get it to your mouth without making a mess. I inevitably end up with some weka on my clothes and usually dripping down my wrists. Recently I was eating with a group and it always happens that one or two (or three...) gave me a weka eating tutorial. I still made a mess. Whatever, one day insha'llah (if God wills it), I'll get it all in my mouth like a Sudanese. Though I'm pretty sure that day is still a long way off. Being able to poke fun at myself is an indispensable skill here.