Travel Guide Natio

Natio is best known as a manufacturing center for shea butter, extracted from dried shea kernels. An ancestral beauty secret of African women, shea butter is renowned for its cosmetic properties and is also a very healthy cooking fat used as a substitute for oil and other fats in the savannah regions. The "butter tree", as it is also called, is extremely widespread in the savannah regions. As you drive through the villages of the region, you may come across large patches of brown nuggets drying in front of the huts. Along the roadside, women sellers crowd around with bags filled with green shea nuts, whose pulp is absolutely delicious Making shea butter. Throughout Natio, women are busy in small groups preparing the butter. First, they crush and roast the nuts until they obtain a brown paste that they dilute by whipping it with full arms in large stainless steel basins. The work is extremely physical. When the paste is sufficiently aerated, they pour it into a large vat filled with water and collect the fatty agglomerates that rise to the surface to compact them into balls or clumps, forms in which they will sell the butter at the market. The butter waste is recycled and transformed into fuel for the next preparation.