Foraged Snack · Wild Nut
Mangetti Nuts (Manga)
Photo: NoodleToo / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0
For up to eight months of the year, San communities of the northeast traditionally lived mainly off manketti nuts — the tree's hard-shelled fruit was that reliable a food source.
The oily, protein-rich kernel inside the manketti tree's fruit is cracked out by hand, then eaten raw, roasted over coals, or pounded into a nutty paste to enrich porridge.
Why it's made this way: Manketti trees are scattered across the sandy woodlands of Namibia's far northeast, and the nut has sustained San and Kavango communities in the region for generations, ripening each year between March and May.
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