J’ai pil

One of my favorite foods and one that is native to the northern part
of Benin is igname (yam) pilé. Imagine a potato on steroids and then
double the size, make the skin a little tougher and thicker and you
are close to imagining an igname. Now igname pilé takes this food that
looks like it was produced for the Jolly Green Giant, and smashes it
up like mashed potatoes—of course you remove the skin first, and
ignames are so dense you have to boil them for much longer than
potatoes to make them soft.

Mashed potatoes you’re thinking, imagining perhaps beaters plugged
into a socket, and stirring up the ignames in a giant bowl. Nope.
Unplug the beaters and put them away. Turn off all your lights and go
outside, and imagine a giant mortar—half my height—and with that
mortar, pestles the size of oars. They put the skinned and boiled
ignames into the mortar with some water and take the pestles to it.
Normally two people pilé taking turns raising and smashing the pestles
into the mortar to make the ignames soft and ready to eat.

For the past year I have seen woman and girls of all sizes piléing,
and until tonight I never dared to try my hand at it. I have to be
honest, my interest in piléing is because in passing, and jokingly, I
said I was going to try my hand at it, and to this I was challenged
that I couldn’t do it. My friend told me, with my missing knuckle on
my left hand and well let’s be honest my lack of doing any manual
labor I could not do it. “You’re going to break your hands and get
blisters,” I was told.

Tonight, as I saw them shaving the ignames and boiling the water, I
told my sister, Huguette, that I wanted to pilé, and of course they
were all for this—a few months ago I learned how to make pate to the
delight of everyone. I was nervous to pilé, because it always looks
like it would take great strength, and I worried I would tire after
one or two swings, but how I forgot I once played softball.

Now softball of course is nothing like piléing, however all those
years spent outside with my dad doing buckets and buckets full of
balls for batting practice certainly made my hands immune to
blisters—not to mention the added motivation of recalling being called
noodle arm until I was maybe 14 years old.

At first when I started it was amidst laughter, but as I refused to
stop with fatigue and improved in my aim, I proved myself worthy to
pilé another day.