Only Goats Eat Mushrooms: West African Migrants Learn to Cook in Aurora

"We noticed that whenever they get food from these distribution places, they're throwing it in the trash," Kouyate said. "I decided to organize the cooking as part of the life skills classes." While Denver has seen about 41,000 migrants mostly from Venezuela arrive since December 2022, Aurora has been dealing with an influx of mostly French-speaking migrants from West Africa; they are largely from Mauritania along with a smaller number of migrants from Senegal and Mali. Alvares estimates as many as 8,000 West African migrants have arrived in Aurora since...