Beans, beans, the magical fruit…

One of my goals for my first 3 months at post is to learn how to make some traditional Nigerien dishes.  In an attempt to do just that I spent an hour one afternoon with my host mom learning how to make rice and beans with at onion/peanut oil sauce.  The lesson went well so I decided that I would try to make it on my own. 

 

I ventured out to the daily market to pick up some beans.  I was surprised to find out that you can’t buy a single serving of beans, you have to buy by the measure (one measure equals about two pounds, and no, it didn’t occur to me that everyone else who buys beans has at least 5 mouths to feed).  I convinced the man to sell me a half measure of beans which cost me a whopping $0.30.  Proud of making my purchase using the local language, I was strolled home greeting all the little kids and old men along the way.  Upon arrival I opened up my bag of beans and got out my pot to boil them in.  I realized that I was going to have to sort through the beans when I saw the plethora or non-bean like items in my bag (rocks, corn kernels, worms, bean shells, etc).  I dumped the bag out and began to sort through the hundreds of beans one-by-one. 

 

About 10 minutes into what felt like a small project (realizing I wasn’t even half-way done and still had to do the same thing with my rice), I thought about how nice it would be if I just had a bag of beans from the grocery store that I could just put straight into the pot.  It seemed quite ridiculous to spend so much time and effort on preparing lunch; maybe I could just pay one of the neighbor kids to do it for me.  It was at that moment that I felt a little ashamed.  It occurred to me that sorting beans was the whole reason I wanted to come to the world’s poorest country in the first place.  Ok, maybe not to sort beans, but certainly to partake in the tedious, time consuming work of the under-resourced.  I’m the one who wanted to understand and experience first hand the reality of daily life in the third world.  I finished sorting/ cleaning/boiling the rice and beans, and as I sat down to enjoy my lunch I reflected upon all the work it took to make one meal. 

 

It might not sound as profound an event as it felt, but I assure you that this was a grand revelation in relation to my two years of service.  So, while my flesh desires the ease and convenience of shiny packages of ready-to-cook rice, my soul is learning to rejoice in the tedium of market beans.  I wrote an additional verse to “Magical Fruit” to commemorate the occasion (kind of like the way the Israelites built altars or set up pillars of stones).  Please enjoy:

 

Market beans, market beans, the magical fruit;

The more you eat, the more you stand in solidarity with the poor;

The more you stand in solidarity with the poor, the better you feel,

So eat market beans for every meal…

 

I think it will catch on, don’t you?

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