The city Dassa-Zoumé is about half way between Cotonou and Natitingou in Benin and pops up just about when your stomach starts to grumble during the day-long trip. Our colleagues, Malika and Sam, knew just the place for lunch and we stopped in at a roadside kitchen for a feed.
Malika said something about yams and groundnuts and Scott and I said OK, but not really knowing what we were going to eat. A short time later we saw three women trying to massacre a ball of dough.
Lunch was presented to us but we really didn’t know what to do with it so Malika gave us a tutorial. She explained we were eating ‘agoun’ which is a typical dish of Benin. It’s made with white yams which are made into a paste which is pounded into a smooth dough in a mortar. The agoun is served with a peanut sauce with a wild partridge as a meat and some cow cheese (waragashi) and jute mallow to add to the stickiness.
The three women really worked up a sweat while pounding the yams but we truly did enjoy their efforts which fueled us for the remainder of the day’s journey.
