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.

Traditions found

I would be lying if I said I didn’t have preconceived notions and with
that expectations of the traditions I would find in Africa. I imagined
all night ceremonies, ceremonies for beliefs that others might have
thought should have been long tossed aside. I can not detail exactly
what I though I would see and hear, but I was excited at the prospects
of such occurrences.

One of my complaints about changes in Africa, not that I am an expert
by any means, but I sense a loss of traditions that as a Peace Corps
volunteer, whether we outwardly admit it or it is deep down inside of
us, want to see.

For the past few months I have taken to running in the morning, and on
my way back home I always stop by and talk to a Togolese woman and her
little boy Assiz, and sometimes her husband if he is there. Yesterday,
just as I was about to take leave, we could hear screams and yelling
from far behind her house. It isn’t the first time I have heard
peculiar noises coming from a group of people.

One of the first months I was here I heard chanting coming down the
road after darkness had already descended, and my sister, Petra, told
me it was a group of people singing to stop the rain, which in June is
welcomed, but by October becomes a disturbance, causing roofs to cave
in and crops to go bad. In addition to chants is of course drums,
which are almost always beating in the distance, in most instances
celebrating a persons death—the louder and more constant the drums the
older and more important the person.

So my Togolese friend turns to me and tells me to wait to watch the
people go by, and as they past by chanting not in sorrow they carried
over their heads a body, strapped to a gurney made of sticks, and
covered with white cloth, with just its feet left to touch the open
air.

Death in Benin seems to always be glaring you right in the face,
whether it is the killing of a chicken with your own hands so you can
eat, a baby guinea hen falling ill and dying, someone stealing your
goat and killing it, only to find it was pregnant, a dog becoming the
casualty of someone’s motorcycle, an infant dying of malaria, a
husband dying of AIDS, or if you are lucky making it to old age and
dying in a peaceful sleep. These situations are real and there is
something to be said for a culture that takes death as such a natural
process, like breathing, which it is, and celebrating it, and it is my
believe it has always been this way.

So I suppose while traditions now are accompanied with cold Coca-colas
and beers, and people with cameras, and their cell phones, or t-shirts
that say, “I Kissed Your Boyfriend,” I feel grateful that the
principles that have always guided old traditions still live on.

Back to School Shopping

Balancing the overall shock that comes when you take a person, who has been living in an underdeveloped country, like Benin, for a year, and then putting them not only in the developed world, like the United States, but a Target no less, is a task that most Peace Corps volunteers face. But on my second trip to Target I think I handled myself well; making it out of the store in less than an hour, compared to the first four hour trip. Of course this was not without a slight pause in front of the back to school supplies section, which is a marvel paired with the dollar section at the front of the store.

Students in the United States are currently gearing up for back to school, obvious by the parents being followed by their whining children trying to distract them with things not necessarily on their list of supplies for the new school year. It isn't hard to spot when I used to be one of those kids, stocking up on spiral notebooks, three-ring binders, dividers, packs of blue, black, and red pens, a calculator, which if used to its full capacity I am certain could help you do quantum physics or nuclear fission, 6 packs of 100 sheets of lined notebook paper, highlighters, protractor, compass, colored pencils, markers, and of course a backpack to put all this stuff in for transport back and forth on the bus and from classroom to classroom.  This doesn't even take into account back to school clothes shopping, which I would squirrel away money for from my summer job, and squander three times as fast when I was a teenager.

It is a stark contrast to what many of my students will be facing in Benin in another two months, when school starts in October, after students have helped finished working in the fields, providing them with the time to go back to school. At this point the students will go to the market and buy their cahiers (notebooks, which are half the size of American-type notebooks, and without the hard, plastic and cardboard fronts and backs). Then there is the standard metal box, which all students buy that has a compass and ruler, a pencil, and I believe one red and one blue pen, although those may have to be purchased separately. Most students don't have backpacks, and it is not rare to see paper bags that we, in the United States, give gifts in used to carry notebooks back and forth to school, and not on a bus, but by foot, and if you are lucky by bike. As for clothes, well all the students have to wear khaki uniforms, which may be bought new, but mostly are taken out, washed and mended for the new school year.

Now I have only considered the lists, not the costs of these lists. Huntington National Bank's Annual Backpack Index in Columbus, Ohio, provides and compares the amount spent to fill up a child's backpack here in the United States. For 2010 the statistics read as follows:

Elementary School: $472
Middle School: $535
High School: $998

As for clothes, one article from Louisiana reports that according to LSU AgCenter, the average family will spent a little over $600 for clothes, shoes, and electronics.

Those cahiers and the box of supplies in Benin equates to less than $10, which many students struggle to buy, and know they have to make last all school year. They can't lose a notebook, or fill one up too quickly. The one pencil they get is sharpened down to a nub, and since it doesn't have an eraser they use both sides of the pencil. Then there is the case of the missing chalk. If I leave little bits of chalk my students quickly take them, to use as white out at home, or in the case of younger students to eat for the calcium.

Finally there is one cost at least the students here in the United States don't have, which is paying to go to school. Education is free, provided by the government, but in Benin, the government doesn't even have the money to pay its teachers for months at a time. The students pay for their education. At Materi this price is equal to $25 (half the price of a pair of tennis shoes, maybe less), which is paid throughout the school year. This means not everyone is even going to school, especially girls, who may come from families whose parents don't believe in educating a girl, or choose to only use their money to pay for their brothers to go to school. For more statistics on the state of Benin's education visit here.