The women played a crucial role in the transmission of culture since they worked in kitchens, served as midwives and nursed the sick using medicinal plants. They breastfed the babies and raised all the children on the plantations, including those of the masters. They taught them the Creole language and introduced them to the wonders and evils of the world through storytelling. Africa was recreated through the cultivation of food crops such as okra and black-eyed peas and the preparation of dishes such as gumbo, couscous, jambalaya and smothered okra. Food is an important part of a community's identity. For people living in exile, what can evoke memories of home better than the smell and taste of familiar food? For Carney and Rosomoff, 'food is vested with symbolic ties to homelands left or lost and gives material expression to the way exiles commemorate the past and shape new identities amid alien cultures, diets, and languages' (Carney and Rosomoff, 2009, p. 185). The connection with Africa was also kept alive through storytelling and characters such as Compère Bouki (a Wolof story about a hyena), Compère Lapin (Brer Rabbit), Compère Dabomey and Ti Négresse Congo (the Tar Baby) have been passed down through the ages and are still remembered along the bayous of south-west Louisiana, where Senegal, Poullard and Ebow (Igbo) have been retained as family names. Among the Wolof of Senegal, a tale always ends with fa la lèèb jogee tabbi gèèj (from that time the story went on and travelled overseas). The memory of the deportation of their people and the tyranny of their kings is still conveyed today through song:  
Nga bay sab gerté / Dugub ji ne gaňň / Buur teg ci loxo / Ne la jël naa ko ! / Ngèèn tëdd ba guddi / Buur tëgg ndëndam / Ni jog lèèn ! / Fii ku fi fanaan di jaam [You grow your peanuts / And plenty millet / The king sets a hand on everything / And says it is not yours anymore! / In the deepest of your sleep / The king beats his drum / And says wake up! / You are not free anymore].