Cultural Cooking Day - Saturday, September 5th

Saturday was cultural cooking day for our training. All of the trainees, trainers and host families came together and cooked traditional Namibian dishes from different areas of the country. Our Otjiherero group made homemade bread cooked in a pot in a hole in the ground and cooked all the parts of a sheep, including the head! I took part and scraped the charred hair of the sheep off of the head and a hoof – I think. Other groups cooked traditional fish and beef dishes, porridge, breads, stews and fresh chicken. We watched (and some trainees helped) as they took the live chickens out of the box, held them still over a large brick and cut their heads right off. Their feathers were then plucked and then they were cooked up for us to eat. Freshest chicken I’ve ever had – but definitely not for the faint of heart. My favorite dish was the “fatcakes” – think funnel cakes without the powdered sugar. Yum!! Enjoy the pics!

*Note – the traditional dress of the women that you see in most of the pictures of the ladies with the hats that look to be like cattle horns are that of the Otjiherero women. The Otjiherero culture is largely based around cattle farming, which explains the traditional hats for the women.