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🌍 Country of the Week · A Spin the Globe Teacher's Guide
Djibouti
DjiboutiAfrica · This week's dish comes from Djibouti City
About Djibouti
Djiboutian cuisine blends Somali, Afar, Yemeni, and French influences, spiced rice (skoudehkaris), grilled meats, and the fermented flatbread lahoh. Cardamom, chili, and Red Sea trade flavor the table.
Lahoh, also written laxoox, is a teff or sorghum sourdough pancake close to Ethiopian injera and shared with Somalia, cooked on one side only so the top stays pocked with holes. Skoudehkaris gets its character from cumin, cardamom, cloves and cinnamon rather than from chilli, and the meat in it is usually lamb.
This is a port before it is a country: a small territory on the strait where the Red Sea meets the Gulf of Aden, with almost no farmland and a great deal of traffic. That is why the pantry is a trader's one, rice, spice and dates arriving by ship, and why Yemeni, Somali, Afar and French habits sit on the same table without merging.
The wider picture: Fifty-four countries of tagines, stews, and fire-kissed grills.
This week's dish: Djiboutian Banana Fritters
Light little fritters of mashed ripe banana and flour scented with nutmeg, fried and dusted with sugar, a Djibouti favourite.
Serves 4 · Prep 10 min · Cook 15 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 Djibouti 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. Djiboutian Banana Fritters comes from Djibouti City, in Djibouti. 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 Djiboutian Banana Fritters. How have the people, trade routes, and history of Djibouti shaped what ends up on the plate there?
4. Compare Djiboutian Banana Fritters to a dish your own family cooks. What is similar, what is different, and what one question would you ask a family in Djibouti about how they make and share it?
5. After you cook Djiboutian Banana Fritters, add Djibouti 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