flour (fulawa)

Luke and I went to market again today for a few essentials (most importantly flour so we can make bread). The last time we went to see the man who sells flour, he wasn't there. We were able to find pre-packaged flour in the store, but it was twice as expensive.

Today, we were excited to find Mati at his flour shop. I was amazed at how much easier and less intimidating it is to buy flour with a couple more weeks of Hausa under our belts. We forgot the word for flour, so we just pointed to a white bag and said, in English, "flour?"  And he said what sounded like "Kuna son flour?"  (Do you want flour?). Turns out, the Hausa word for flour is "fulawa" which, happily, is pronounced almost exactly like "flour" in English (likely because the word is derived from English).  :)  There are many words like that in Hausa...derived from English, French, or Arabic (i.e. eggplant= aubergine; sugar=sukari).

We asked for 3 kilos, and he weighed it out on his balance and poured it in one of the ubiquitous black plastic bags that they everyone uses here. We had (almost) no problem figuring out how much money he was asking for! Each kilo was: dala dari sittin = 60 dala = 300 cfa. We chatted for a bit- seems like everyone we meet is so pleased that we are learning Hausa, and eager to teach us. Its fun! 

At home, I opened our flour tin to pour in our new flour. When T, our house helper, saw what I was about to do she stopped me.  I was confused. Why shouldn't I put our new flour away in the flour container? She then reached under the counter and brought out a large enamelware bowel and a sifter. Aha!! Silly Americans! The flour has to be sifted first to remove any rocks, bugs, etc!  I'm glad we have T to help us!  I didn't even know that we had a sifter.

sifting flour

So then, I thought, what about the whole wheat flour that we had a local woman grind for us? Should I sift that, too?  I decided to try. Turns out, sifting the whole wheat flour "makes" some good-looking wheat germ! I decided not to sift the whole tin of wheat flour (it seemed pretty clean already)...but I did sift enough to have plenty of wheat germ to put in my yogurt in the mornings. Yay!

wheat germ!