Meet Yipin

Yipin was born in the small town of Silly in Burkina Faso in West Africa, though she grew up living throughout the country. Her father, a teacher, would move to a new town every few years to work at a different school, bringing Yipin and her seven brothers and sisters with him. They were her closest friends, so she never felt alone, even at a new school—they would walk to and from classes every day as a crew, always there for each other.

Yipin always helped with the cooking when she was growing up. As a very young girl, she learned the art of making a cooking fire—carefully building a stand out of rocks to hold the pot and gathering sticks, dried leaves, and other kindling to ensure the larger cooking logs would catch fire. When she was seven, she was assigned her own dish: Tô. These cornmeal-based dough balls are a staple of Burkinabé cuisine, and with the guidance of her mother and older sisters, Yipin soon became a master at making the perfect tô.

In 2010, Yipin moved to New York City, where she went on to get a master’s degree and become an accountant. She also became well-known in her community for the delicious West African food that she would make and sell on 125th Street in 2011-2012; she now loves to teach her West African friends in New York how to recreate the food from their home countries with ingredients in the United States. Today, she lives with her husband and three young children in the Bronx.