Making Shae

Shae trees are really prevalent where I live (more commonly known as a high quality skin moisturizer when processed, e.g. shae butter). Fortunately, villagers are good at processing the seeds to extract oil (for cooking or skin application once it cools). It is done mostly on a larger scale by women's group for sale, although sometimes people will do it individually. My host aunt, Halimatou Binta Ba, decided to do the latter. It was a really cool process to watch! She sent her seeds she collected to Salemata (5km away) where they have a grinder, and then did the following steps when she got them back:

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