This post will get less creepy as you keep reading.

Last Friday, I stood on the soccer field at the primary school and watched the two teams of boys (I don’t think girls were explicitly excluded from the teams, but instead, had been socialized enough to not ask if they could play.) from my middle school play. In the classic example of masculinity in sports the teams were playing shirts vs. skins. 

I didn’t intentionally start doing this, but I started checking out each of the boys who was shirtless. Specifically, I was looking at their stomachs to see if there was any signs of malnutrition among them.

When the people around you commonly eat five times a day, food security isn’t always an issue that you think about. I have never seen the classic photographs of children and adults emaciated from famine play out in real life in my village. 

What we have in my village is not a problem of famine. There is plenty to eat. (Although I cannot state that this a fact for all of all of Benin. My village’s location on one of the main highways means that we have ready and regular access to a lot of things that we need.) What we have is a problem of malnutrition.

The main food group here is a mixture of flour and water (beaten to the consistency of polenta) that always comes up on the losing side in the caloric intake vs. nutritional intake battle. (As I eat M&Ms from a care package as I write this.) It will sit in a hard lump in your stomach for hours, and since you are still able to go about your work, everything seems fine.

It isn’t until you see your students run by with their shirts off and you can count the ribs next to their bloated stomachs that you realize that everything may not be, in fact, fine.