An interesting breakfast in the village - by Joel Kruse

Our Gumuz guard, Bachunk called us to a keya party in the morning at 8am before school had started. He said, "Come to my father's house right now to drink keya." (Keya is a grain drink that Gumuz drink everyday along with their neighbours or after working together. They don't drink water. Instead, they drink keya.) So, mom, dad, Karissa, Sonia and I decided to go. Mom let me skip school but my sisters wanted to stay home.

When we arrived, we went into Bachunk's dad's house. We sat down on rocks. They washed our hands and then gave us keya in cups. They washed our hands again and served us porculaca weed that we dipped into hot spices. They said, "After you drink another cup of keya, we will give you milk." Before they served it to us, they looked into a gourd and started talking about it. They said, "What are we going to do? We said we would serve it to the guests but it is really sour. Maybe it is two or three days old." They poured it into cups but it looked like cottage cheese. It smelled like rotten eggs.

They put some in a cup and gave it to dad. He took a sip and gave it to Sonia but she didn't want any. Then she gave it to me but I didn't want it and then Mom and Karissa each took a sip. They said it tasted really bad. Then Bachunk washed his hands and he scooped chunks of the sour "cottage cheese" into his mouth. He said, "This is disgusting" but he kept on eating it. His kids said, "we could eat this everyday." Some other kids went outside and spit it out. Gumuz have just started drinking cows' milk in their homes.

Then they served us peanuts and after that nga (thick sorghum porridge) with opa stew (large ground beans with mashed porculaca). We dipped the nga into the stew but I didn't like the stew so I just ate the nga. At the end, I pretended to eat the big chunk of porridge because it is so hard and heavy that I could pick up the whole piece. We were really full but Wohiis started giving us gurshas. He fed us more nga and stew by his own hand. Karissa was giggling. 

After we were completely full, Wohiis said, "Come to my house." He got up and we followed him to his house. We were served nga and opa stew again. We couldn't finish it because we were so full. He was really happy that we ate at his house. Then we went home and we did not eat lunch until 2 o'clock. I was happy I got to eat breakfast in the village. I also only had to do an hour of school when I got home.