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🌍 Country of the Week · A Spin the Globe Teacher's Guide
Chad
ChadAfrica · This week's dish comes from N'Djamena
About Chad
Chadian cuisine is Sahelian, built on millet and sorghum porridges (aiysh) eaten with okra or meat sauces. Grilled meats, dates, and the fiery daraba stew reflect a crossroads of desert and savanna.
Daraba is defined by a pairing: okra and groundnut paste together, with tomato, greens and sweet potato around them, which gives it a texture between a stew and a sauce. The porridge beside it is boule generally, and aiysh among Chadian Arabs, so both names are correct depending on who is speaking.
La bouillie is the sweet counterpart, a thin millet porridge taken at breakfast, sometimes with milk or tamarind. The country runs from Saharan desert in the north through savanna to the wetter south, and the cooking follows that line, dates and dried meat at the top, millet and okra in the middle, fish from Lake Chad and the rivers below.
The wider picture: Fifty-four countries of tagines, stews, and fire-kissed grills.
This week's dish: Bouillie de Mil
Chad's smooth millet breakfast porridge, simmered sweet and finished with a splash of milk, gentle enough for dawn and for small children.
Serves 4 · Prep 5 min · Cook 20 min · Difficulty: easy
See the full recipe: ingredients, steps and dietary swaps →
Grown-up jobs: any step that uses a hot stove, oven, boiling water, or a sharp knife is for a teacher or parent. Children can measure, mix, and assemble.
Discussion prompts
1. Find Chad on a world map or globe. It sits in Africa. Which oceans or neighboring countries does it touch, and roughly how far is it from where you live?
2. Bouillie de Mil comes from N'Djamena, in Chad. Read its ingredient list together. Which of those foods do you think are grown or raised nearby, and how might the country's climate and landscape explain that?
3. Read the short story behind Bouillie de Mil. How have the people, trade routes, and history of Chad shaped what ends up on the plate there?
4. Compare Bouillie de Mil to a dish your own family cooks. What is similar, what is different, and what one question would you ask a family in Chad about how they make and share it?
5. After you cook Bouillie de Mil, add Chad to a classroom map and give it a stamp. Write down one fact about its food or geography that you did not know this morning.
🌍 Spin the Globe · Geography through food · spintheglobeofficial.com/for-teachers