Throwback to my Family Tradition and Lifestyle

I hope you enjoy this series.

Here is the first photo of this series:

This is a picture of me on a Saturday in December 2006. I was pounding Achu. Achu is a meal from my village (Bafut - in the North West Region of Cameroon). We cooked this meal every Saturday.

This is my grandmother's kitchen. It looks like a typical African firewood kitchen. The furniture and walls are black because of the smoke produced by the fire. We have a foreign kitchen in the main house but this one helped us with food that took a long time to cook. That way our cooking gas lasted longer.

The leaves behind me are banana leaves which my grandmother harvested from behind the kitchen. We used it to wrap the meal. Achu is a meal made of pounded cocoyams and some unripe bananas. The soup is yellow and is made from palm oil and limestone with some sweet-smelling local spices added to it. This yummy dish is highly respected and eaten with a lot of pride and delight by those who eat it.

Pounding the cocoyams and bananas to a smooth paste isn't easy. The smoother the paste the more you enjoy the meal. I remember that at about five years old I had a little mortar where I pounded. I couldn't make the paste smooth so my grandmother or aunt will pound it again in the mortar you see in the picture.

This picture was taken during the Christmas holiday. I was in Upper Sixth - about to obtain my GCE Advanced Level Certificate. My school didn't allow braids so it was only during breaks like this that I could plait my hair.

A lot of memories. 

I hope you enjoyed this post.