Searching for Saalong

At the risk of sounding like a line Meryl Streep probably delivered in Out of Africa, “Thank God the rains are coming.” I am thankful for the rains because the temperature drops and the dust is contained.  The world looks and smells refreshed and I can sleep without sweating and thereby come a little bit closer to looking and smelling refreshed.  The rains are also bringing out critters.  The other night I woke up to the sound of 2 furry spiders galloping across my room.  In the ongoing tournament for MVFP (most valuable fieldwork possessions), in the current bracket, furry spiders initiate the triumph of mosquito net over Kindle.

There’s obviously a lot of relevance to the start of the rains to my research on food and farming as well. Though farming is still about a month or two away, the rains are bringing new green growth in the wild.  Tiny shoots are springing up out of the still very dry earth.  Some of these tiny new green things are edible.   Last Saturday I was invited to accompany some teenage girl on one of their recent foraging expeditions for such a green edible called saalong.  

I’m hyper self conscious when it comes to foraging for things because as a child I failed in every single morel mushroom outing I ever had.  During the springtime morel season, I’d board the school bus and my bus driver would boastfully hold up the giant bread bag of morels he had gathered in the morning.  Those dumb mushrooms evaded me in every angry march through the woods. 

I got a little flustered, therefore, to see that saalong is not even close to looking substantial in girth.  It’s teeny and grows as close to the ground as it possibly can.  If I couldn’t find a mushroom how was I going to find this tiny plant, a tiny plant that I suspect might actually be classified as an herb? Well it took about 5 tries, but I did eventually and correctly identify saalong.  Much to the amusement of my young female friends, I threw my arms up in the air in celebration, feeling vindicated for every little elfin mushroom that has ever escaped me.  I never determined any kind of pattern for where saalong might be found and noticed that the girls were very careful to pluck only the leafy growth so as to leave the roots intact. We paraded around the bush for about 3 hours.  By the end of the expedition I’d say that each girl had about 1 cup of saalong to take back home, an amount substantial enough to do what it is valued for—making soup slippery.

Saalong that I found

How close to the ground you have to be to pick saalong

About 90 minutes in to collecting saalong, this was the amount procured.  I got great delight that one of my companions was collecting her saalong in an old bread bag-it was this that made me remember all of my bitter and happy morel mushroom memories.

Saalong is helping to drive home the point that food security is not just about having food, but having food that is prepared in a way that is most appreciated and enjoyed.  Commonly used products from the savanna forest (including leaves, seeds, and fruits) contribute to how food tastes and, perhaps even more importantly, how it feels.  Yes, how it feels.  There is a very strong preference for foods that are “slippery.”  Slippery is the less caustic way to describe the sliminess I often ascribe to okra. Though I’ve yet to dig deeper into the matter, I’m guessing that a slippery texture is important for soups because slippery soup covers the staple porridge quite well.  Slippery soup really isn’t my cup of tea, but it is the cup of tea for people here.  If they didn’t value this aspect of their food culture, no one would spend 3 hours searching for it under the glare of the savanna sun.

Even though I’ve never been able to supply my own morel needs, I’ve eaten my fair share of them and appreciate their fleeting buttery presence. Perhaps one of my earliest food memories is sitting in a tavern eating deep fried morels and knowing that because they came from the woods and not from the grocery store, they were afforded a degree of admiration for the time (and obviously talent) they took to find. So even though saalong and it's slipperiness isn’t my cup of tea, I understand why it’s important and not to be neglected in talking about food security in the Upper West and why it and other foraged for foods need to get on the radar of the designers and planners of food and nutrition interventions. 

Attempting to capture the slipperiness of the saalong as it is used in soup.