We fed on assida, a stiff millet porridge, and millah, a vegetable sauce…he would place a large lump of assida in a dish, scoop a hole in it, and fill that with millah; the seven of us fed together, eating with our right hands…I found this diet wholly satisfying.
-The Life of My Choice, Wilfred Thesiger
Thesiger’s accounts of the Empty Quarter, Shatt al-Arab, and Danakil Depression are better known to readers than his earlier years in Western Sudan, but it was there when he learned to eat rough and not complain about the roughage he had to eat. By eating aseeda. If you can eat your share of that you can eat anything. Seated around the Kordofani dinner bowl, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Or as you say in Dar al-Kababish when you first dig in your right hand, Bismillah, In the Name of God, a phrase with nothing to do with vegetable sauce.