cuisine

Quick update: I’m in the middle of Benin, doing language, cultural, and technical training, while living with a host family. I love the host family, the town I’m in is nice. And I just got my post assignment – a small village – which Ill be visiting next week.

Meaty-blog part:
One of the things that people asked me about most often before I came to Benin was, “What will you eat there?” Truthfully, I had no idea, but I’d read something about plenty of yams, peanuts, rice, and beans. All things I can handle. As I came closer to leaving for Benin, I read about pate and bushrat and goat. But still, my main attitude toward new food has pretty much always been: if its not going to make me sick, I don’t have a problem eating it.

Being in Benin for three weeks has shown me my limit.

It is not so much the substance of the food I can’t handle. Rice, peppers, corn flour, chicken, tomatoes, okra… all those things are wonderful. It is the way in which they are cooked here that has brought me to the place I am today. And that is the place where I buy a loaf of bread and the entire thing in one day.

To make things more clear, I am not starving. I am given way too much food. Way too much of food I can’t exactly handle. But I have found my limits, and they include something called pate blanche with gumbo – an innocent sounding mix of okra, fish, onions, and corn meal. And I cannot eat it. I have tried, but I can’t.

I also can’t eat most of the cheese and most of the pieces of meat that still have arteries on them. And once again it is not the idea of these foods that I simply can’t bring myself to enjoy eating, it is the way they smell, the way they look, and of course, the way they taste.

And I promise this blog is not going to turn into one of those places where all I can talk about are superficial things like the food and weather. I bring up the food issue only to bring up a corresponding point: things are harder than I expected, and I am not as good at being in Africa as I would hope.

I had hoped that I would arrive in Africa and, knowing that this is a place where people can starve, be able to eat what is graciously given to me. I even practiced eating the cartilage off chicken legs before I came. But surprise. Not only is the chicken somewhat sketchier here, but they eat things I didn’t expect, like okra. I did not expect to be such a spoiled American, whose discarded chicken leg gets handed to the baby so she can suck it dry. I mean, how dare I complain about food when for goodness sakes, I’m in Benin, Africa. But here I am, complaining. And to give myself a little credit, I’m not complaining as much as some of my fellow trainees, but I am still complaining.

But I’m also going to suggest that my complaining may just do some sort of justice to the reality of living in Africa. If I, a middle-class, white, educated, American girl could just slip right into the daily life of a Beninese woman, then it would mean that I am just as capable as a Beninese woman, and that her life does not bear any challenges that I could not overcome. The truth is, it should be hard for me here. Things don’t get to be easy for me, because I have not faced the challenges that women (and people in general) here must face. Washing clothes by hand, cooking over a two-foot coal stove, making ends meet with only a few dollars a day, trying to keep children healthy when there is no health care, teaching a class of eighty students with little or no supplies – these are all things that are new to me and I should not get to handle it with ease and confidence. And to take it even further, I don’t want to think that just because people here know how to deal with some these things, that its okay that they deal with them.