Welcome to 25 for 25 my project to watch and eat my way around the world in 2025 with 25 movies from 25 countries matched with 25 country themed dinners. Today’s entry is Senegal but you can see the full Masterlist to watch and cook along with me.
Country: Senegal
Movie: Hyènes [Hyenas]
Director: Djibril Diop Mambéty
Year: 1992
The Elevator Pitch: 30 years after leaving her small village of Colobane, Linguere Ramatou returns “richer than the World Bank” and asks the town to do a devil’s bargain: her money for the death of Dramaan Drameh, her ex-lover who wronged her as a teenager.
How Was the Movie?: Do not enter this movie lightly. What seems like a farce and a comedy quickly subsumes into a tale about capitalism, colonialism, the enduring pain that wealth cannot quell. This film has such a surrealist quality to it without employing too much over the top visual it always stays grounded enough that you don’t lose sight of who the monsters (or proverbial hyenas) are.
We absolutely adored this movie and the costuming and timing were especially good. You always felt like something was just about to happen, this kind of anticipatory dread and relief cycle that repeats over the movie. Obviously the always relevant themes of how capitalism turns people into monsters but it’s not treated as a single note but existing in different forms and strains throughout the town as people struggle with needs and wants knowing what is hanging in the balance.
It’s part fable and part laid all of its cards out on the table about how the IMF and other Western forces (and now China as well) have hollowed out the African continent. How their promises of riches and wealth are not as they seem and how they can destroy a town by allowing people to destroy each other and their moral cores for little gain.
What was for Dinner?:
Out of all the countries and dishes I was most intimidated by making Senegal’s Thieboudienne. In Wolof it’s called ceebu jën and in most places it’s usually referred to as the Senegalese jollof. I ended up on a giant rabbit hole where I compared and contrasted about 12 different recipes to make mine and I’m positive there is no comparison to the real thing but it came out pretty good. I used local fish caught from Peipsi järv (it’s called Lake Peipus in English which made me laugh I’ve lived here a decade and never looked up the English name) in Southern Estonia for that local flare. I could have sourced some other types of fish but that’s the freshest thing I could get which felt important since I was able to get some scotch bonnet peppers as well. I’ve had a few jollofs in my life and some of them were better than this, I imagine that’s my own fault BUT I did my very best and it was pretty good. I added some bissap (hibisus tea) but I didn’t really taste it.
I also made Cinq Centimes which are sugar cookies with peanut butter and peanuts on top. I haven’t eaten a salted roasted peanut in about 10 years (no reason why, just not a food I have any particular affinity for) so I forgot how delicious they are! A very simple and satisfying cookie to go with the complex spicy thieboudienne.
I will continue to leave the jollof making to other more experienced people but I do feel immense relief that I didn’t completely screw it up and I am hoping the rest of the countries will be smooth sailing from here 🙂
That’s it for Senegal, see you next in Brazil!