A field of gourds near Ségou, Mali

The gourd is a very versatile vegetable, not so much for eating, but for making a vast range of bowls, utensils and musical instruments. The body of the kora, for example, is made from half a large gourd. It is also used in the Ségou region when making pottery – you can see a potter in action with clay and a gourd here.

Other links: here’s the French wikipedia entry for ‘calebasse’ (more detailed than the anglophone one), and here’s a nice site showing how they grow and are used in cooking. Finally, this francophone Canadian site shows more examples of how the gourd is used in Africa.

Gourd, bless you!