Sierra Leone

In the fall of 1991 and again in 1993, I visited Sierra Leone in an effort to learn about aspects of West African culture that would shed light of the development of African-American cultural development in the South Carolina Lowcountry. Here I’m visiting a hillside rice field, with the farmer’s field kitchen behind me, and some harvested vegetables in the pan to my right. She was kind enough to tell me about using earthenware pots to cook medicine for her children when they were young. She further lamented the decline in the use of handmade earthenware for cooking, saying the good flavor of food was lost in metal cook pots.