Karite

Karite is the little round fruit, green outside and sweet yellow inside, that hides a shiny brown nut used to make shea butter.  The riper the fruit, the sweeter and yellower the flesh inside.  I'm told that monkeys love karite and are very disliked by people who want a crop of the yummy fruit because monkeys can only tell which one is ripe by biting each and every one.

I thought the very ripe ones smelled a bit like saur kraut, but, of course, didn't taste like it.  It is possible to eat more than ten of these in one sitting!  Then what's left is a lot of brown seeds.  I think they make shea butter by drying, frying, and grinding the seeds.  Adama remembers a childhood game he played, in which each contestant chose his best seed (from all he had eaten!) and threw it at his opponent's seed in an attempt to crack the slippery round thing without getting his own seed cracked.   


When Adama went to buy some clothes recently, the shop keeper brought out a long traditional robe, called a boubou, that Muslim men wear when they go to pray.  He was like, "but that's Muslim." and the shopkeeper was like "You're not Muslim?"  He says, "No, I'm Christian."  The shopkeeper was so surprised.  Hardly a day goes by without someone being surprised that Adama isn't Muslim.  They say it's his beard that makes them think that way.  This is the month of Ramadan, when those who don't usually grow a beard, grow a beard; and those who don't usually wear a boubou, wear a boubou.