Garri is one of Sierra Leone’s staple foods, coming second in popularity only to rice. The dish is made using the cassava plant, which is indigenous to West Africa.
“Even in the diaspora - people in Haiti, in Brazil, in Cuba, a lot of other countries also eat garri”, comments BBC journalist Evelyne Musambi.
Mamie Margao is the Chairlady of the garri processing centre in Sierra Leone’s second-largest city, Bo. She uses foods such as coconut, groundnut, plantain and sesame seeds to add a new dimension to the traditional dish.
According to the food seller, the sesame seed variety, colloquially termed “beni garri”, is her bestseller.
Speaking to BBC News Africa, Margao says her motivation is the desire to “make a different taste and add value.”
The Chairlady notes that the colour and texture of her garri can change, depending on the extra ingredients she adds to the mix. For example, the addition of sesame seeds or coconut makes her garri turn brown.
Margao insists garri lovers shouldn’t let these unique flavours deter them from eating the food as diversely as possible.
Some people fear coconut garri may be far too sweet to eat with anything other than water, but Margao says this is not the case: “You eat it with soup if you want to eat it with soup, not only sugar.”
The garri can be eaten in combination with other foods, such as stew, soup, potato leaf, bitter leaf and spinach. Sugar, coconut, garri and milk is a particularly popular blend for schoolchildren.
Margao closes her interview, saying that the inspiration for her dishes came from God: “God give [sic] me the idea.”