Visit to the Maize Mill

During PST I spent a lot of time de-kerneling corn with my host family. Often I would come home to a porch full of strangers shucking corn (or maize, as they call it here) and a mountain of maize kernels. These kernels went into bags which went into my host family's storeroom. I never saw the next stage of the process, until today.

Today I visited my local maize mill with my friend Flora, and she showed me the next steps in the maize to ufa process.

The maize kernels we're poured into metal buckets and rinsed in water.

Then the kernels were poured into the coarse grinder.

After grinding, the kernels are warm and smell like roasted corn.

The bran has been detached at this point, but is mixed up with the kernels. Using wide flat winnowing baskets, the maize bran is separated out.

The maize bran is collected in a maize sack, and the remainders of the kernels are stored in a bucket. They are still very coarse at this point, so they need more grinding to make ufa (maize flour). That's where we stopped today though. They are going to bring the maize back for the final grind another time.

A-maiz-ing! (I couldn't resist)