Emily Becker: Nightly routine →
Nightly routineI close and lock my door and walk the 17 steps out to the street. I turn left and walk the 43 steps to a small structure off the right side of the road.
Beneath the rickety roof of loosely woven palm fronds sits a woman, probably in her late twenties, in frying fish in a large cast iron skillet over a charcoal fire. I do not know her name. In my head, I call her “Fish Lady” although I would never say this to her face.
“Good evening,” she says.
“Good evening.”
“How are you?”
“I’m fine. And you?”
“Fine. And the cat?”
“He’s fine.”
“How much?”
“Two hundred,” I respond, handing her the Tupperware container that now permanently smells of fried fish.
She places four pieces in the container and exchanges it for the two hundred piece in my hand.
We have this same interaction every night I am in my village. She is always in the exact same spot. I usually respond the exact same thing to her questions. (Though I sometimes trying the entire interaction in local language instead of French.) The entire journey will always take me 14 minutes to complete.
But at least someone in my village notices when I’m not there.
“See you tomorrow,” I say, turning to walk the 43 steps back up the street.
I follow this girl in the Peace Corps living in Benin (a small country in West Africa, between Togo and Nigeria) and she posted this cute story about one of her nightly rituals.
I’m not sure why she does this though (care to explain, Emily?) do you buy fish every night for dinner or do you also have a cat?
PS: I also like it that she’s gotten to the point where she knows the number of steps (17, 43) and the exact number of minutes (14) to complete this little task.
Reminds me of that scene from The Count of Monte Cristo where, in prison after several years, Edmond says to the old man that he’s counted all of the stones in his cell.
The old man replies, “Yes, but have you named them…?”
The answer is I have a cat. After I ran out of bagged cat food from the almost-Walmart store in the capital, I started buying him fish to eat on the street. When I did the math, it was actually more expensive, but I like that it gets me out in the community every night.