Real Gs move in silence

It wasn’t that we were making deep-fried lasagna, but that we were making deep-fried lasagna in Benin.

It was my friend’s birthday, and I was at our ex-pat friend’s (the kind that get paid a salary that allows them to live in house with air conditioning and satellite television) house in Bohicon. Her requests for the day mainly included a list of things that she wanted to eat.

Culinary-wise, most things are possible here. That is, if you’re willing to think ahead, lay down enough money, have access to a fridge and live close enough to make a trip to Cotonou. (which means, yes, we had previously thought out this plan to eat deep-fried lasagna, and it wasn’t something that just happened after too many Beninoise)

She had made the trip to the biggest city last weekend, then transported the lasagna, hot dogs, cheese and pizza (which we had previously used for other things), dropped them off in the freezer in the city before biking back to her village 15 km away. The other three of us that were there had traveled in by bike, taxi and bus in journeys that ranged from 3-6 hours.

Then, we had defrosted the lasagna, cooked it for 40 minutes, covered it with pancake batter and pan-fried it while sweat dripped down our faces.

Never had I worked so hard for the ability to eat something so ridiculous.

A second-year Peace Corps Thanksgiving dinner, in list form

-Three fried chickens

-Three pans of stuffing

-One virtually untouched bowl of salad

-One bowl of gravy

-Three eggplants, fried and sliced

-One dozen deviled eggs

-One pan of macaroni and cheese

-One bowl of mashed potatoes

-One pan of sweet potato casserole

-Two green bean casseroles with homemade cream of mushroom soup and fried onions

-Two dozen rolls

-Two dozen chocolate chip cookies

-One pumpkin cake with cream cheese frosting

-One apple pie

Serve me up another plate of German fries, but please no liver

When I was in elementary school, my Girl Scout troop went on a camping trip. I don’t remember if we were trying to complete a badge or something (I assume we were) but for one meal, we were all supposed to try something new or eat as many vegetables as possible or some other goal that isn’t really the point of this story.

The point is that about halfway through the meal, my mom (our troop leader) brought out a plate of what she called “German fries.” We thought they were just some ethnic version of French fries, so we greedily accepted them.

After the first plate was finished was when we learned the secret of the “German fries.” All eating ceased when we learned what we thought was potato was actually fried eggplant.

To really understand this story, you have to understand how much of a picky eater I was when I was little. I had just finished my phase of refusing to eat pie, but instead just eating whipped cream on a plate at Thanksgiving. I had never tried eggplant, but that gave me all the more reason to hate it.

Two weeks ago, I was at a party. On the plate in front of me was a mixture of green beans, potatoes and meat. More protein and vegetables than I had seen in the past week. I had no idea what this “meat” actually was. As usual, no one told me the specific cut or even animal of which I was about to eat.

A couple bites in, one of the other volunteers I was with looked up from her plate. “I think it’s liver,” she said before going back to eating.

I lost all my desire to continue eating the “meat.” (Some things haven’t changed 15 years later)

The point of both these stories is that until I knew what both of the foods in front of me actually were, I had had no reason to not like what I was eating. (In fact, over 15 years later, I distinctly remember liking the “German fries.”) It was the words that changed everything.

When I’m called the word for “foreigner” it means so much more than just an identification of my skin color. All the cultural implications of the term would fill my empty plate of German fries. When men force me to make the distinction between “Madame” and “Mademoiselle” they are looking to find out so much more than whether they are addressing me by the appropriate title. (As I’m not married, I’m actually a “Mademoiselle,” but I have a hard enough time getting respect from men here to start with, I try to fake my marital status by age association.)

It is the words that have the power. But in so many cases here, I’m not the one who gets to run the conversation. 

The night I ate three dinners

The first was at my tailor’s. I was there to try on the skirt she made for me, and while we were waiting for her daughter to come back with buttons, a plate of fried yams appeared in front of me. At 5:45 and with the Benin culture of eating dinner when the work gets down and dinner gets made, usually between 8-9 p.m., this was intended as a snack. I ate a few, hoping to pass this off as part of my dinner.

However, the first taste of fried food in a week only served to make me want more fried food. I biked home with the intention of making a pit stop at the Mama who sometimes sell fried yam puffs by the taxi stand. Five minutes later, I was in possession of 200 CFAs less but significantly more fried food than I was before. At my house, I dumped the contents of the black plastic sachet onto a plate and prepared to eat the second half of my dinner in the company of the next episode of the West Wing.

You may have noticed that I’ve been watching a lot of West Wing recently. I would say that is a correct assessment. The past three days, I’ve allowed myself to slide into a little hermit-like existence. I still leave my house once a day, but I have lost a little the effort to become part of this community. For the past three days, I’ve allowed myself to fall a little into the belief that I can spend the majority of the next two years watching the West Wing in my house, as long as I make an appearance outside it once during the day.

The past three days wouldn’t have been wasted if nothing had happened during those three days. But things did happen when I wanted them not to, as kicks in the ass usually do.

The father of my village host family came back about five days ago. He had been traveling in order to bring home his brother who had fallen gravely ill in Contonou.

This I knew. I spent the first two days that he was home at his house.

But in the three days that I had decided I wanted to pretend like I wasn’t part of a collective society, the brother died. Because I didn’t really talk to anyone for three days, I didn’t know until three days after the fact when my colleague knocked on my door in the middle of my episode of the West Wing to see if I had stopped by to give my condolences yet.

I hadn’t.

“I’ve been trying to call you the past three days,” my host father told me as we were sitting outside his house with his family. I honestly hadn’t received the call, which is not unusual, but I also cursed myself for not having stopped by the past three days.

After 10 minutes, my colleague said to my host father in Ife that we were leaving. When my host father responded in Ife, my colleague turned to me and said to me in English that my host father was asking me to stay to eat dinner with them.

I nodded.

I wanted to stay, but also a little as my penance for the past three days, a half hour later, I sat with my host father and ate my third dinner, and third helping of yams, of the evening.

Please someone ship me a pepperoni pizza

Or some crab rangoon. Or some ice cold milk. Or some Cheez-its. Or some chocolate chip cookies. Or a cinnamon roll. Or Diet Coke. Or a non-fat white chocolate mocha. Or some maple syrup. Or iceberg lettuce. Or dill pickles.

I dream a lot about food. This morning I woke up with a serious craving for biscuits with hot melted butter. Once, myself and another volunteer spent a half hour trying to list all the varieties of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream.

I have been a (most of the time) vegetarian for over 4 years. I’ve learned to deal with food cravings and the self-control needed to resist them.

There are plenty of foods here that I do like. I will never forget the first time I had a craving for pate, a staple here that really is just boiled flour and water. And many foods that are better here than in the United States. (See: pineapple).

But here, the ability to recreate American food is the ability to find something familiar after spending the day waiting to see if your neighbor will help you fetch water from the well or trying to find someone who will replace your lock.

I will never again underestimate the comforting power of Dijon mustard or Velveeta macaroni and cheese. 

Eating hamburgers in Benin

We found the sliced, processed cheese first. From there we searched for ketchup. When we heard one of our moms knew where to find ground beef, we knew we had struck a gold mine.

We gathered at Dave’s house, the stagier whose mom had found the coveted boeuf ecrase. In a fashion similar to the US, the men grilled the hamburgers over the charcoal. And then the rest of the women in Dave’s family got a kick out of making the guys prepare the rest of the dinner. We fried some igamnes slices, our Beninoise twist on the French fry. Another stagier brought four Coca Colas, the one thing we have found so far here that is almost identical to the product you can find in America. (Although high fructose corn syrup does not exist here, so the soda is still manufactured with real sugar.)

We popped open the sodas and the seven of us gathered around the table while Dave’s host family looked questioningly at the patties of meat covered with melted cheese on the tray in front of us.

For a vegetarian, I get quite a number of cravings for hamburgers. Or that could be precisely the reason why. But in Benin, eating a hamburger is more of a statement of what it possible than a defiance of the nutritional values to which I’ve attained for the past four years. If you can make a hamburger in Benin, almost anything is possible.

We spent the rest of the night wondering how long it would be until we all ended up at the medical office in Cotonou with food poisoning.

Dessert

“Bonjour Maman. Un ananas s’il vous plait.” 

The woman removes the yellow metal tray about 2 feet in diameter from on top of her head, and places it on the ground. She removes the machete from around her waist and, holding the pineapple by the green leaves, proceeds to peel the rind from the fruit. After, with a few quick cuts, she slices the pineapple onto a metal plate and then slides the chunks into a black plastic bag. She stabs on the pieces with a toothpick and hands me the bag. I will eat the entire pineapple by myself. 

Lunch break

I take my usual spot on the wooden bench that doesn’t quite sit even on the sandy ground. I am joined by the three other Yovos in my French class. Each of us balance a plastic plate of rice, beans and sauce – our normal lunch here.

“Hole in the wall” would be an apt term for what has become our usual lunch spot if it had walls. The wooden structure has a back wall and a slat roof that leaks when it rains. We came here the first class and have continued to come mostly because it is close and we aren’t ripped off.

The lady nods in recognition of us now from behind the table where she serves. A metal bowl of rice is to her left covered with a cloth to keep out the flies. Next to it is a bowl of spaghetti noodles and a plastic container of powdered manioc, a root vegetable similar to a potato that adds calories more than taste. A large pot of black-eyed peas is in front of the rice. These are served with either rice or manioc and then topped with a spicy red sauce. A plastic container of fried fish is on the right. This and a hardboiled egg can be added to our rice and beans for an extra 100 CFAs. On an extra good day, there is also a cheese similar to paneer on the menu.

The lady doesn’t ever say much, but I wonder what she thought the first time a group of Yovos walked up to her and gestured wildly at the pots in front of her.

I scoop the last spoonful into my mouth and hand my plate and spoon to one of the girls who is washing dishes in a plastic tub. I pay and walk back down the stone road to class. “Until tomorrow,” I say.