Tapa-lappa

There are two kinds of bread in Senegal (not counting Dakar, where they have French bakeries and pastry shops) - French baguettes, and village bread.  Village bread is a lot better, in my opinion, because it is chewy instead of having the hard crumbly crust of French bread, and also it is more dense and filling.  And just generally tastes better.

 

Anyway, I just recently learned from other volunteers that the village bread is also called "tapa-lappa", to distinguish it from baguettes.  (In my village, the village bread is just called "bread", because there is no French bread to compare it to, but in Tamba, you have to choose between "baguettes" and "pain du village", or "tapa-lappa").  I had never heard a Senegalese person refer to the bread as tapa-lappa, so I asked about it, and learned that tapa-lappa is a Pulaar word that means "hit it and beat it".  So for breakfast this morning, I bought two small "hit-it-and-beat-its" from the bread man who stops by the Peace Corps house on his bike every morning.