Brousse

One of the things that I will miss most about living in a Malian village in the brousse or ‘bush.’ I love that there are so many different types of fruit found in the bush. Go on any walk in the bush during anytime of the year and you will find at least one edible fruit, maybe more. That doesn’t exist in America, you can just walk into the forest and find delicious fruit trees, safe to eat everywhere. Zaban, tomono, sira, and npeku are just a few names of the tasty fruits found. Npeku’s are in season right now. They’re kind of like really tiny, tiny grapes with a bitter skin, and they grow on these very large trees. My buddy Djibril, came back from the brousse the other day with tons. I hope you enjoy the pics. It was hot….
The other day my homologue’s little sister, Diarra, and I went out into brousse to pick another type of fruit, lengue. Lengue is a sour fruit, with yellow/orange skin found growing on a thorny shrub, not too delicious, but women use the seeds of the lengue fruit to make soap with. So she and I went into brousse one afternoon, each with our own bucket, to collect the fruit. After filling up our buckets, we headed back to village carrying our reapings on our head. On the way back Diarra, climbed a npeku tree to get us some of the tasty fruits before heading back into village. It was one of those experiences I will always remember.



Here's Djibril and I with some npeku,
then there's Djibril posing with npeku