Dutch Ovens, Peanut Sauce and Ouidah

Last night Aaron and Emma came over and Aaron and I tried to make Saus d'Arachide (peanut sauce). I was totally expecting it to taste like peanuts.. I was hoping it would taste like peanuts – I love peanut sauce! Instead, Patricia made the entire meal, including roasting and grinding the peanuts herself into a paste which she called "du buerre d'arachide" (peanut butter) which tasted nothing like Jiffy, for the record. When Aaron and I showed up to make our meal Patricia had already started going on what was supposed to be peanut sauce. Aaron had to keep from gagging when she threw in the obligatory fish bits (he hates the fish here) while I laughed my butt off. It wasn't until she also threw in the fried squishy "cheese" that I had a problem. With our newly ruined sauce we had, of course, some clump of starch made with the flour of mantioc and water. Basically it's constructed like many other things here: boil water and add flour and stir until your arm is going to break from the thick, porridgey consistency. Then you stir a little bit more and VOILA! You can add any form of "red sauce" you want to it. In this case, the only reason why it's called peanut sauce is because you use peanut oil instead of regular, old, red palm oil. It's still that same artery-clogging goodness you've come to expect at every Beninese table. Dessert, luckily, was a much different story. While all the host family raved over the disgusting peanut sauce disaster the three whiteys went to town on a recipe for Pineapple Upside Down Cake. Yes, we formed a Dutch oven the way I never imagined possible; by taking a Peace Corps issued standard water boiling pot and placing several well-burned tuna cans inside. After adding some run-of-the-mill dirt to the bottom of the pot we placed a non-stick (GOD I love chemicals like Teflon) baking pan on top that we filled with the goodness of batter and pineapples we were able to construct using good eyesight, a broken mug for a measuring cup and five or six street-vendor sachets of sugar, a tub of nasty yellowed margarine spread, the best pineapples I have had in my entire life and what I think might have been baking soda or powder – I don't know, it came in an unmarked baggy. After some uncertain temperating over the open coals (that's right, real coal) a decent 45 minutes later we three yovos were enjoying the best pineapple upside down cake I would venture any of us had ever eaten. Hilariously enough, none of the Beninise really enjoyed it at all. For how open they expect us to be with all their 'burn-your-mouth-off" piment meals and oily palm red sauce and fried dough balls they sure aren't receptive to the finer, sweeter delicacies we strive to concoct. Maman Gaius could barely force a nimble into her mouth with me standing over her, plate neatly shoved under chin to catch any crumbs she may have begrudgingly let slip through her lips. I personally was ecstatic that not only was I able to bake something delicious, but did so without temperature gauges, measuring cups or even proper ingredients over hot coals outside in Africa.

Yesterday we went to Ouidah. I had a rough morning start (but I'll write about the bread next week). So the bumpy, two-and-one-half ride through some of the most developed towns in Africa commenced with me in a sour mood. After fighting off some fierce road illness we made our way into Ouidah, home of the slave trade history and Voodoo capital of Benin. We visited the Portuguese fort, which was actually a fort built by the French then burnt by the Portuguese in 1961 then rebuilt and made to house weird, burned artifacts found in the rubbles and local Africrap vendors. That said, I saw some very cool pictures and lots of burned former slave chains and really, really neat gift ideas. The jewelry and art over here is so incredible it's almost worth the insane prices; especially the Kama sutra metal figurines (what home would be complete without that collection?). After that visit we made our way over to the Sacred Forest where one of the former kings of Benin turned himself into a tree, paving the way for future generations of his family to turn into trees. Many of the Voodoo deities are represented in sculptures around the "forest" (which was about the size of Brad's backyard) and some really spoke to me, so I named them after certain family members; can you guess which ones? The history behind this forest is that "Once Upon a Time," in Africa, there was a king who liked to frequent the woods. One day he goes missing for over a week. During that time he talked to a panther but then eventually he either turned into the panther which then turned into the tree or the panther itself turned into the tree or he just went directly from human to tree and skipped the entire panther thing. Either way the rest of his family followed suite and there is rumored to be an entire royal lineage of trees now located in the forest. The proof that is indeed a sacred forest, our tour guide Martine de Souza tells us, is that in 1982 a man tried to cut down one of the trees, but then fainted. When he came to, the tree was back up and had righted itself. Each year since then, on the same day this occurred, the Beninese who believe celebrate this miracle in the forest.
After that treat we all went down to the real tourist goldmine: La Route de l'Esclave. This was incredible and an attraction not to be missed. Unless, of course, the Beninese were in charge of marketing. Yes, that's right, I didn't even know we passed by the "Tree of Forgetfulness" until it was gone because there wasn't even a tree there any more and we couldn't get out of the car to take a picture of the mermaid statue that now stands in its place. The mermaid, the Beninese assume you could surmise (I couldn't), represents the slaves going across the ocean to America... not turning into mermaids, just floating over them to get to the Americas. So you know to take a picture of the mermaid because it used to a be a tree that made people forget their homeland. I didn't get it either. Anyway, the mermaid, err the tree, was placed there by the King of Ouidah at the time, Guezo, to make the spirits of the slaves walking past that way to the ocean from as far away as Nigeria forget their homeland, their culture, their identity "just in case" they died and were pissed and wanted to come back and exact revenge on him. To invoke the forgetting power of the tree men were required to circle the tree nine times and women seven. I guess men remember more than women, I don't know the reason behind the numbering. After circling, slaves were held in the Zomai (or room "where the light is not allowed to go"). Sometimes people would wait at the Zomai for several months in complete darkness. The statues to the side of the Zomai building represent the slaves in bondage. The sculpture in front of it is representative of all the different cultures of the slaves. For those who were too weak to survive this far a mass grave further down the route is placed to mark their passing. A sculpture to the right of the massive grave marking is a symbol of the freedom from slavery that death granted. One last stop before the end was the "Tree of Hope"/ "Tree of Return" (also poorly marked). The tree itself is quite remarkable, but people are just hanging out around it with no hullabloo or significant, visible markings. There is no way this type of lazy marketing would take place at a U.S. Tourist attraction (just picture the World's Largest Ball of Twine in comparison to this). The snack bar was a friggin' cooler with an arrow sign on it and a bag of water tied to a stick as advertisement for beverages!!! The slaves would circle around this tree three times in hopes of counteracting the previous tree's powers of forgetfulness and coming back to their homeland in spirit. This was the ultimate ritual before the their departure at the "Door of No Return". This was one of the most impressive monuments I have seen in the world. Again, not much fanfare, but I think in this case it was much more appreciated. It wouldn't be the same had tons of tourists been taking photographs of the powerful columns that supported an carved image of slaves walking towards the ocean on the northern facade, their backs to Africa, their sides on the eastern and western sides and their faces towards the horizon, their uncertain future and inevitable death, on the southern. This was the last sight of millions of Africans forced to leave their home. It was humbling to imagine even more that several centuries had passed until at least their descendants were able to return home. It was another experience to hear the facilitators that accompanied us murmur in ignominious agreement that it was the Africans who sold the Africans into slavery. We, as "whiteys", had imagined there would be some sort of anger or hatred displayed against us on our visit through slave history (not unlike what we sometimes witness being experienced in the Southern U.S. Territories), but instead received the exact opposite sentiments. It was the kings of Africa, the leadership of the land and its people (Benin and Nigeria specifically), that captured, forced into bondage, and sold their then enemies, and now brothers, to the Dutch, Portuguese, French, English and Danish. And now it is their shared pain of a history of self-inflicted torture and suffering that unites them. It is an admirable sentiment I wish could be echoed in similar situations currently existing in the world. It was an incredible visit and I'm thankful we were able to see this part of the history of Benin and its culture. I got the vague notion that these sites are not more impressive because of the personal humiliation of the country for its ancestral behavior; in a grand gesture these markers are the acknowledgment of faults, but there is also a strong preference to not blast it out too loudly that their past is largely marred by self-destruction and deceit through human bondage. But that's just my opinion, who knows exactly – that's what I'm here to figure out through experiencing the culture for the next two years.

I already have more stuff to write for the next e-mail, but I'll give you all a break with this. I understand how fatiguing it could be to read all this (imagine living it) so I'll let you go with a quick preview of what's to come:

Monday I have lunch again with Danielle's family then dinner at Emma's to speak Adja (her maman never learned French). Tuesday night I might have a break, although I promised Emma I'd help with dinner again and I said I would try and bake something for my post visit volunteer – we'll see if my Dutch oven experience was a fluke or if I'm really getting good at this. Wednesday I leave for the "post visit" in the north. My actual post is Azovè, where I live right now, so my director gave me to option of going to visit someone else because I am already living where I'll be for the next two years. That means I'm going to Natitingou (if you have a map) with free time (no vacation days necessary) and will be enjoying a nice 10-15 hour drive Wednesday morning with a car full of Beens (I'm trying to catch this on, but I don't think it's going to fly). Needless to say, I'll have plenty to share by the time I get to the internet again.

Enjoy the plethora of photos!!!