BANKU

Part of living in Ghana is eating Ghanaian food. There is fufu which is a pounded starch (the looks sort of like a huge boiled dumpling) that can consist of a combination of yam, cassava or plantain. There is light soup and groundnut soup, kelewele, red red, waakye, kenke and teazet among other dishes.

One popular dish consists of banku, fried fish and pepe (a pepper sauce). To explain banku, you could say that it looks sort of like fufu, but is usually grey in colour, it is not as soft, and it is made from fermented corn.

The first time I tried banku was at a restaurant in Tamale. It was in a bowl filled with soup, and I thought that it was fufu. After about three bites, I began to feel sick. Every time that I caught the scent of the fermented corn in the air I would feel a little queezy.

I spent the next five months explaining to people that I enjoy Ghanaian food, but I can’t take banku. That was until last week.

While eating some rice and stew at the Ackerson house, Anita and Mr. Ackerson were eating a meal with banku. In recent weeks, I had been getting the feeling that I would like to enjoy eating banku. I decided that I would try it again. I tried it, and it was delicious. I traded my plate of rice for Anita’s plate of telapee (a well-liked kind of fish), pepe, and banku. I had it again for dinner last night.

I can now drop my story about why I don’t eat banku. Rather, I can tell the abridged version of how I came to like it.