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Cake
The Girls' Club makes gateau simple to demonstrate at the end-of-school-year party at the secondary school. Cake cake cake.I have been reading “The Grapes of Wrath” by John Steinbeck. I really like it. I like it so much that I have to write about it, but that means no longer reading it. I waited and satisfied two needs at once: eating and writing. Sweet and sour cabbage- not too bad. The first paragraph is what got me-
“Chop a head of cabbage and an apple. Add one chopped onion and some garlic. Cook in water until the cabbage is tender…”
Ooops, I mean,
“To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth. The plows crossed and re-crossed the rivulet marks. The last rains lifted the corn quickly and scattered weed colonies and grass along the sides of the roads so that the gray country and the dark red country began to disappear under a green cover. In the last part of May the sky grew pale and the clouds that had hung in high puffs for so long in the spring were dissipated. The sun flared down on the growing corn day after day until a line of brown spread along the edge of each green bayonet. The clouds appeared, and went away, and in a while they did not try any more. The weeds grew darker green to protect themselves, and they did not spread any more. The surface of the earth crusted, a thin hard crust, and as the sky became pale, so the earth became pale, pink in the red country and white in the gray country.”
Not exactly a picker-upper, which is dangerous because, as I told my Dad in a quarterly report letter, I am like tofu or onions when it comes to good books- I absorb whatever I am immersed in. (Including a somewhat bizarre experience with a book about nuns, but that is in the past.)
“The Grapes of Wrath” is a story about a poor “Okie” family looking for work in California during the Dust Bowl. The family begins the trip with about $140.00. Total. Nothing in the bank.
During one of my few breaks today, a break from reading that is, I took a few snicks of Nutella, a recent Christmas gift. I thought about how I don’t have much money, which is true, but I have enough to get chocolate if I need it. “Need.” I think that makes me rich. This has been bothering me. I am a volunteer in a very poor nation, yet I can drink a beer when I want one, I can get a little chocolate; frankly, I could return to the States at any point I thought that would do me better than Benin. I am a volunteer, I work without pay for anyone who wants me too, yet the U.S. government would still provide the stipend if all I did was read every day of the week.
As in, “The Grapes of Wrath,” rain is a problem in the commune of Athieme, but it is not dust that shows itself, it is mud. In some places the ground no longer absorbs the water, including the cornfields. Many crops are flooded beyond salvation, which makes corn prices high and kitchens sans la pate. In a land where 150 FCFA can buy a bag of noodles and feed a guy for maybe two meals, or 150 FCFA can buy half a kilo or so of corn that can feed a guy for a couple days, it’s easy to figure what most people usually eat. There are some homes I have visited and never eaten rice or noodles, only la pate.
I am nervous about this. I have always known there are hungry people in the world, but now I can put names and faces and families with those generic “hungry people.”
One farmer, after the first flooding rain, asked me what the days’ Scripture had said. Since it was Sunday and immediately after mass, I knew: love others as God loves each of us. (Rough translation.) He then told me that he wondered if God really did love him. He wondered why God had created evil, and also doubted that mankind had been well enough equipped to make decisions in this world of good and evil.
We had a discussion. I was fervent in describing my love of free will (and that God did not create evil), while he, in his frustration, insisted that his ideal world would be one of complete equality. No one richer or poorer than the other, no one dependent on anyone else. Life was planned out, beginning to end, and he wouldn’t need to make decisions that risked putting his family in a difficult, possibly hungry, position.
I kind of saw his point of view. Maybe his frustration and my easy security created too much of a difference for us to agree at that moment. Yeah, I am a volunteer and can’t do or buy every thing I want, but I have enough to eat, and I don’t plan on making this volunteer experience my living. I have options. I don’t have my head down, preoccupied by necessity regarding the fields and my savings account. I have the luxury of being able to keep my head at least looking straight ahead, and often near the sky. I think the big picture is much easier to see from above.
Another instance: I had been a lazy mother and had not fed Derique all day. He was hungry-doggy. I had a visitor, and I told her I had to go buy some food, though I did not say it was for Derique. Was she going to wait for me to return? Or head on home? She said she’d wait. I realized that she wasn’t going anywhere knowing that I was coming back with food. Derique was hungry, the girl was hungry. I had three balls of akassa with sauce. I asked the girl what she had eaten that day, and she paused, mentioning something about 50 francs worth of rice and I could see in her eyeballs that she was hungry. Derique, the girl, the girl, Derique. Though I had to feed Derique, I could not give him three balls of akassa knowing the girl was hungry, and I could not injure her pride by telling her she was eating dog food, so everyone got a ball of akassa. Well, Derique got one and she got one and a half.
As guilty as I start to feel sometimes, I know that I would not do anyone any good at all if I just gave everything up and lived with the poorest of the poor. I cannot save the world and feed everyone and their dogs. All I can do is try to help a bit.
I sit in this big old house and read one of many books, and type these thoughts on a computer. I believe everyone has a certain role to play on this earth, and sometimes there are big differences. I compare us, humankind, to words in a dictionary: I may not know them all, but each one has its own definition, and at some point is or was critical in someone’s self-expression. Feeling guilty but also getting to know my position on earth, my biggest question is, can I keep making cake while knowing people don’t even get la pate?
*Having finished “The Grapes of Wrath,” the verdict is yes, I can keep making cake. Phew.
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mom
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I am an ostrich
It is easy to keep my head in the sand and pretend that no one is hurting. If we see a sad story on the news, we can turn the channel. Sometimes I even look down on some people because I think they could just try harder. How can I be so insensitive? Because the guilt is strong if my head comes above ground. I'm really not a mean person, I just want an explanation of why I am so fortunate and others are not. When I don't know why, I make up excuses or ignore. Is this at all clear? Love you! You do make a difference no matter the size and I'm glad you can still make/eat cake. I like the dictionary analogy.