Our first look and taste of Aseeda, Camel Drivers’ Porridge, today at Hajj Bashir’s, surprised by how bad a staple food can be, from the very first bite it is disgusting, a dirty lower intestine brown colored jello mold of boiled millet flour surrounded by a poured over slimy gravy reconstituted from a dead dry camel.
-Diary, El Obeid, January 17, 1984
No, it wasn’t as bad as that. We got used to it fast enough after accepting there would be only that and nothing else to eat for the next forty days. And no, the Milāh, Gravy, wasn’t made from dry camel meat, but rather with fried onion, chili pepper, and powdered okra (that’s how it got its slime) and tomato. In fact, not bad, not bad at all.