This is necessary to make the rice cakes. There is also another fire in the kitchen. This fire is constructed inside a tripod arrangement of inverted large ceramic and metal pots. These support a large pot over the fire to cook the food. In order to cook, the women sit on tiny stools near the fire.
Food is stirred and ladled out with scoops made out of gourds called calabashes.
These look kind of like our butternut squashes as they are growing, but they are narrower at the top, and smaller. And when they are split and dried, they have a tough, wood-like texture that makes them useful as spoons. Yama stores her ladles in the wooden framework of the door, because there are no drawers or any kitchen counter. One day we asked Yama to make spaghetti for us. The Malians make spaghetti a different way then we do.