Rice and beans

Nigerians would be content, I believe, to eat one type of starch for the rest of their lives. For breakfast, lunch, and dinner, it’s served in a variety of ways: white, fried (oil plus onions, not any egg that I’ve ever found), jolof (like fried, but with chili peppers), and even cooked and then pounded into a mushy paste called ‘tuo’. There are other grains like millet and corn and potatoes, but so help me – all I ever see is rice.

The women in Yargalma, where we’ve started the assessment and advocacy work in earnest the past weeks, know me well; we spent 6 weeks there last year working 7 days a week in their homes, intruding into their lives. They ask “Is that Casey!?” because I, apparently, look different from last year. I’m told that every white female who visits these villages is called “Casey”, but I like to pretend that a few can tell us Caucasians apart. They ask me about my home, my ‘America’, my family, my journey, and, eventually, ask if I’ve finally gotten married yet. I’m past my prime in these villages, where girls are married as young as 15, sometimes 13 years old. I’ve learned not to answer this question, not because I care what they think, but because I want the men to think I am very much spoken for and I hate lying to the women. Many tell me that I’m different from a year ago – “more white” and “fat!” – which are both true compared to the sorry condition I was in when I left Zamfara last July.

So I smile, greet them in return, and only laugh in answer to the question about my marriage. They giggle and we chat more as they prepare food for the day. This is an all day affair – millet and corn and rice have been thrashed after harvest in October, but now it has to be winnowed, washed, and then pounded. It seems to me that everything they serve must first be pulverized. Beans, ground nuts, grains… it all gets processed, cooked, then mashed up. So it’s bean cakes (fried in oil), very dense corn bread, millet that’s cooked, mashed, then mixed with milk to make a porridge (same for guinea corn). Even ground nuts are often roasted, pulverized, mixed with oil and then fried to make something like crispy peanut butter morsels. There’s the local tofu, which is fried in chili pepper-loaded oil. This has to be one of my favorites. And, of course, there’s always rice.

Sometimes I join them in pounding in the mortars for a few minutes. The mortars and pestles are made of extremely dense wood and are really heavy as a result. These women have biceps and abs that put all of us to shame. Even the little girls are ripped from this daily labor. As I laugh and give up on the mushing of whatever food will be served today, they not-so-slyly return to the topic of my maybe-husband. I can’t follow the conversation completely and turn to my translator and friend for help to find her doubled over laughing. She comes up for air knowing I didn’t understand the string of Hausa words.

“They say if you married a black man, it would be like rice and beans because now you’re so white!”