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I never expected to eat a chicken head, but as I studied the bone structure of my meal in the twilight of the 2nd of January, 2008, I discovered that chicken-head meat is pleasant. I refrained from gnawing on the eye sockets, but everything else went down well.
Since December 25th, 2007, I have more often than not only needed to eat every other day, finished with a cup of coffee for digestion while sitting in a pagne for a bathrobe as waistline relief. On Christmas Day I visited my host family. I was greeted as warmly as ever, given the customary water to drink, and then began eating. Oh, and such good foods- Santa Claus-belly-sized pots of rice with well-spiced sauces and goat meat, beans and fresh bread, and salad with a homemade mayonnaise dressing, all accompanied by aperitifs and digestifs. I napped before going out with ‘Papa’ to greet friends and wish Merry Christmas to the world. We returned to another plate of rice, beans, and goat meat. I slept like a fat snake in the sun.
The following Saturday I cooked with Miminon. We made a peanut sauce and chatted in the kitchen. She tried to stifle her chuckle at me liquefying onions, tomatoes, and hot pepper in her kitchen, but I heard her swallow her giggle. She said that if she had a camera she would take a picture of me because I looked so Beninese. I had to laugh too. She washed the kids while I stirred the sauce and we continued making each other laugh.
On New Year’s Day eve I invited friends and made food for a party. I cleared my front room to make a dance floor and borrowed speakers to make the roof shake. My mistake was to invite people who had to drive to another town to return home after midnite- those people chose not to come. Others did arrive, and we ate and drank and danced a bit anyway.
New Year’s Day began with thunder and heat. I went to church to wish Happy New Year to friends there. It rained on my walk home. Later I went to eat with Mathurin and his family: more salad, more rice, more meat. Mathurin and I had been invited to a nearby village, so I ate again: akassa* with fresh fish and ablo* with a piece of rabbit. I listened to the group of men debate in Mina. Politics. Once returned home, I made a cup of coffee. The rain had brought the cool Harmattan winds full force.
On the second day of 2008, I hosted six wonderfully polite children for five hours. I know Aïchath through Camp GLOW, the girls’ summer camp; she brought her brother and sister and three cousins to play. We had card games: Old Maid, Phase 10, and UNO, we looked at pictures of the United States of America, specifically Kansas, played Frisbee, danced, and ate salad before they left. I left too, for the New Year’s party with As.P.E.L. and surrounding community. Ghislain and friends, and I participated some, built a double-decker paillote called ‘The New Palace.’ We had a generator to produce cold drinks and loud music for the party. We inaugurated the paillote, then climbed up to eat beans with bread and ablo with fish. I said ‘Happy New Year’ as is said in Mina to all my friends, and took pictures of new holiday outfits. I, too, was wearing a new holiday outfit that matched the material of the others. Florent, my co-As.P.E.L.-er, invited me to his home where I ate akassa and the chicken head, then the second round of pate rouge* and a piece of rabbit. Ghislain and I shared some palm wine, a barely-alcoholic extract from a newly-felled palm nut tree. Once returned home from this party, I didn’t even have room for coffee. I could only make myself more comfortable in a bathrobe-pagne, finishing my book and listening to the neighbor’s music.
I am told the party lasts until 2009. That’s fine with me, since it’s that much less cooking to do, and pagnes always have room for expansion. Happy New Year!

*Corn-flour based; generally corn flour boiled in water with variations to give slightly different tastes and textures.

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