by Aaron Barlow
And then flames shot out. The metal on top blackened and caved. I panicked, flinging a dirty towel at the fire before fumbling the switch off. A lone tear slid over my cheek as I wondered how I would ever eat.
Fortunately, the other burner worked, and later, as I sat on my back stoop, the sun setting beyond the banana tree, my tiny lips struggled around the wide brim of a wooden spoon piled high with brown sugar and cinnamon. I still ached inside from fear of death by starvation; the elephant still sat at the door, and would for a while.
On Thanksgiving Saturday, despite my illness, we started cooking early. We soaked the veggies in filtered, chlorinated water. Cubed potatoes. Sliced carrots. Chopped onions. Pounded garlic.
Amber, Michelle, and I sat over plastic buckets enjoying the vegetables’ thud with our knives’ every slip. Stephanie and Sara perused the market chickens and picked up a bag full of coconut shavings while we awaited the arrival of Becky. The over-feathered chickens were scrappy with little meat, but we settled on four decent ones. Michelle and Becky conquered them while Amber and I sifted flour and sugar into creamed eggs and bananas. We filled the bottom two inches of a ten-gallon pot with sand, placed a tin can in the center and topped it with a smaller buttered pot. We poured in the batter. Outside, Michelle and Becky slit the chickens’ throats. The blood drained. They steeped the headless creatures in boiled water before plucking, and afterwards, Becky grabbed a knife and divided them at their joints. We would even fry the back, neck and tailbone.
Michelle lived in a town near me. During our first few weeks, we had thought only of food, often feeling as if we were starving. A tomato and a cup of pasta washed through our bowels like sand from shore. We needed sustenance—heavy and thick, doughy and greasy, chunky and chewy. We prepared oil-logged spaghetti and fried eggplant by the subtle glow of candlelight. We next endeavored to produce shrimp scampi and French fries. The shrimp were little larger than maggots. By our third meal together, we realized we needed meat—the land-dwelling kind.
When we bought the chicken, we turned from each other to the bird. And then back again. Michelle was willing to kill. I consented to assist. We took it to Michelle’s room. I diced vegetables and boiled rice as Michelle placed one foot on its wings and the other on its feet. Its head in her left hand: knife in the right. Back turned, I knew when she slit its throat; it smelled like I imagined birth, or war, might—a rush of blood, shit and piss piercing the air all at once, orchestrated to the bawling decrescendo of death.
By Thanksgiving our second year there, neither Michelle nor I minded the process. We had managed to create hamburgers, chili, honey roasted nuts, refried beans, nachos and tacos, tuna and salmon—even brownies. On daily jaunts to market, we faced cow and pig, just dead and splayed out. I had learned to recognize stomach by it almost furry appearance and to appreciate that hooves could be boiled into a gelatinous soup.
Michelle and I worked swiftly on Turkey Day, a well-oiled machine. I seasoned flour for frying while she mixed tomatoes, garlic, ginger and onion with coconut milk for sauce. I strained the shavings with hot water twice to keep the milk rich. Becky sat on the back step at the fanta peara—the tiny charcoal cooker lit by that rare wood—and sautéed the green beans and carrots. Sara pulled the finished banana bread out of the ten-gallon pot while wearing leather garden gloves and poured in the second batch. Stephanie ran to the store for more butter and refilled the water buckets. We drank Three Horses Beer and continuously cleaned my two knives, five spoons, and three bowls in a clothes-washing bin. We played Christmas tunes and wiped sweat from our necks, cheeks, and chests with pocket scarves.
My first day at site—after the stove incident—a tiny girl had popped into the frame of my open window. Florence. I noted her rank odor. Still, she became my teacher and best friend. Prideful, she behaved differently from the typically timid Malagasy; whenever I whined loneliness she would try to send me on a blind date with an eligible, clean man. Together, we de-shelled, roasted, and pounded peanuts with sugar, salt, and honey until they were creamy paste. She taught me to round my mofo gasy—a cake-like, sweet bread. I showed her how to stew tomatoes. We ate meals together and talked politics, boys, hopes and dreams. We communicated best in the kitchen—my hands kneading, mixing, chopping.
Sitting there grading papers or entertaining neighbor kids, I realized how misguided I had been, thinking I wouldn’t invest time in food. When I needed a break from speaking Malagasy, being a liaison to the world and teaching English, cooking replaced TV, theater, personal vehicle, and nightlife.
I spent hours hunting down yeast. Melting chocolate for brownies. Marinating beef. Pasteurizing milk and mixing it with butter for Alfredo sauce. Snapping the heads off shrimp. Scaling fish. Mixing ketchup, mayonnaise and sweet-and-sour or Szechuan sauces. Frying crepes. And I did all this, often, wrapped in nothing but the thin lambahoany of the dead, as if I too had been sent to heaven anew.
The colorful wrap kept me about as cool as an ape in a greenhouse when I stood over a flame during the hot season, but I still invited my students to cook with me. They loved that I adopted their dress. That I enjoyed Malagasy “compose” and sugared avocadoes. Ate plates heaped with vary mena. We sang and talked life. Listened to the Black Eyed Peas. They perused my magazines and flipped through pictures of my family.
The green beans sautéed, banana bread baked, potatoes mashed, stuffing soggy but tasty, two chickens fried and two simmered in coconut sauce, my friends and I sat down at 4 o’clock—beers in hand—to a warm Thanksgiving dinner. We ate from the only pots and plates not filled with food. Sara and Becky sat on the tsi—a woven grass mat. Michelle and Stephanie took the wooden chairs. Amber and I sat on raffia stools and placed our food on our laps. We all said our silent thank you and ate.
My kitchen floor, a gray plane of cracked concrete dappled blue, resounded with crunch from the sand beneath our feet and bottoms. The room was hot, but my peach-colored curtains billowed with a breeze. The sun shone in, pawing at our skin like cactus thumbs. We laughed about my bubble-blue walls and defective stove. We grazed well into dark, and, when Florence came by, we gave her family the leftovers.
I noticed, during my first Thanksgiving back in the States, that everything in the green bean casserole came from a can. The turkey arrived at our door as cold and white as a snowflake. The bread just appeared, wrapped in plastic. Cooking started at 9:00, and we feasted at 11:30. Around the oval oak table, we couldn’t agree on music or politics or even funny stories.
And then it was as if I had flipped the channel on a lazy Sunday, suddenly, back to Madagascar. I even felt a fissure of heartache crack inside for my old beau—giardia. I wanted the scent of coconut chicken tickling my tongue and coconut-rum punch slurring my speech.
During Thanksgiving in Madagascar, tired and frazzled, I had not silently thanked the inventor of ovens. I had not wished for the ease of frozen, skinless chicken breast and a refrigerator. I had not praised the ingenuity of sinks. Instead, I had marveled with a new appreciation of all things truly culinary—from raw to ripe and overcooked.
I had been thankful for a warm kitchen where sixteen-year-old girls shed their cultural inhibitions. I had slashed and burned both expectation and ego for survival. I learned that it took stripping ideologies—and food—bare, beyond beauty, to appreciate progress.
But I knew, despite it all, sitting there and singing along to “Silent Night,” that I would still always be innately American.
Even so, now having transitioned back to that overfed and under-appreciative American, with every spoonful of Quaker Oats or a microwave meal—too busy to eat and drink with joy—I yearn for something more. The smell of raw ginger and garlic. Perhaps a bucket of cool water and one knife as I stand at a lone table in an azure-blue kitchen, demanding more butter for bread. My friends laughing beside me, drunk on gratitude for the skills we had acquired that enabled us not to just survive, but
do so with joy. Filled with immense love, not just for each other, but also a big, red island—drifting, almost, unnoticed in the Indian Ocean.
After serving in Madagascar from 2004–2006, Kelly McCorkendale learned the other side of development as an admin assistant in the Europe and Central Asia Region at the World Bank. Life ordering office supplies and booking plane tickets was quite dull compared to teaching in a Malagasy village, so she went back to school—completing her master’s degree in International Training and Education in 2010 from American University in Washington, D.C., where she resides.
Two Years Lasts a Lifetime
Sally Cytron Gati
We teach best when we are also learning. And the teaching we do can return to us.
“Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.” When I was about to graduate from UCLA in 1963, I thought about Peace Corps. My anthro professor, Council Taylor, talked about fascinating experiences in Guinea on the west coast of Africa. It was also the time of the civil rights movement, and I was ready and interested to learn more about Africa firsthand. Going straight to graduate school did not inspire me.
What did was a chance happening on campus. One of the first groups going to Ghana was training there, so I sat in on a lecture; that was the spark I needed, and I knew this was to be my next move. I filled out the extremely long application form and was invited to train for a program in Brazil. That would have been fine but, since I knew that there would be a training session for Nigeria at Columbia University, I asked to be considered for that instead.
Nothing seems to be easy; in those days, this was also true. Peace Corps Washington held me up until I had lost weight. Besides that, they didn’t let me go to Nigeria with my group because the FBI hadn’t finished my background check. I had to wait and go by myself, arriving in Nigeria about a month later.
When I finally got there, I was assigned to a high school in the capital city, Lagos; this caused raised eyebrows in my group from those who believed that the reason I came late, alone, and didn’t get a “bush” assignment was that I was really working for the CIA.
My assignment was to teach English literature, grammar, and writing in a boys’ high school—United Christian Secondary Commercial School. I was given a one-bedroom, air-conditioned apartment that had a kitchen, bathroom, and living room. It was in a six-unit building about twenty minutes walk from the school in a very nice area of Lagos called Apapa. From my front window, I could view an undeveloped field with a small community center recreation building behind which was a big Kingsway supermarket. There were shops that sold fruit and vegetables, a beauty parlor, a bakery, a butcher shop, a clothing store, and a place to buy gas containers for heating water.
Down the block from my place, separated by a parking lot, was the fancy Excelsior Hotel and the famous Moroccan Room with a band and bar and nightly dancing. I, of course, was a good girl, and only visited to see what was going on there. I lived on the corner lot. The “ashewos” (Yoruba word for prostitutes) used to stand in front of my apartment. When the headlights of cars came down the road, they’d shine on these ladies before making the turn, and I’d watch them from my third-floor balcony.
It wasn’t easy being green, never having had a class of my own. The school was organized into Five Forms, the first, corresponding to Freshman; the second, Sophomores; the third, Juniors, the fourth, Seniors, and the fifth, those who were in school for an extra year to prepare and take advanced placement tests. I was lucky in one sense, though, because another Peace Corps teacher was at my school, and he was already there when I arrived.
Duane was a math teacher from Seattle. How nice for both of us to be able to commiserate and to talk about our situation, especially when things weren’t going well. I had a shoulder to lean on when the headmaster caned my P.E. class for not coming in on time because I had not insisted that they stop their soccer game. Duane helped me when I had uncomfortable encounters with an British English teacher, who told me, “Sorry, Sally, we can’t have an American in charge of the English Department.” When my monthly allowance (about $150) was stolen by my “houseboy,” Duane was there to help me through the month. When Duane’s girlfriend came as a PCV, I was pleased to be a witness at their wedding, attended by Peace Corps Director Bill Saltonstall and his wife Kathy.
Both Duane and I were active at our school and in the community. Duane organized projects for the Lagos Work Camp, getting volunteers to build a concrete receptacle for garbage. I had a music club, in which I had students playing traditional Nigerian instruments. We met once a week, and the kids practiced and got so good, we were asked to be on Nigerian TV. I also organized a swimming club.
The one project outside of school that I feel most proud of was a sleepover camp that I organized that gave twenty-four boys from my school a chance to have a terrific “scoutlike” experience, swimming in the lagoon, canoeing, fishing, cooking, building a campfire and cutting logs for seats surrounding it. I worked with a wonderful man from the Ministry of Social Welfare, got the Chief of Police to release one policeman who was a fine swimmer to be one of my counselors, had an Olympic swimmer as swimming coach, had two PCVs help as counselors, and a Mariner Scout to do the canoeing classes. We had some publicity in Nigeria because of an article in the Nigerian Daily Times, but more fun was to hear from my mom in the States that there was a report on one of the major American TV news programs on Christmas Eve telling about my boys’ camp.
What I learned about myself was that whatever my interests, experience, and abilities were before I went to Nigeria, I expanded on. I was interested in music, folk instruments, and folk art and found Nigeria the perfect place for all of these. I collected many traditional instruments and loved to “jam” with the students. I often went highlife dancing with Nigerian friends. Having been a Scout counselor for years in California, I brought an innocence coupled with enthusiasm that helped me move forward to organize the camp in Nigeria. I was good at sports and loved the idea that when our school became co-ed, I could introduce volleyball to the girls in my P.E. class. I love Shakespeare and enjoyed the opportunity to teach some of his plays in my classes. I learned to cook Nigerian stew with cayenne peppers and okra and eat it with cassava with my fingers. I fried plantain and made it regularly. I rode on my motorized Solex bicycle with my crazy monkey Ukhekhe, and we watched the goings on from our balcony.
I saw a country in turmoil: coups, killings, corruption, cultural clashes, and political instability. I marveled at the many living languages spoken by divergent tribes, fell in love with the folk art, came away with new perspectives, and made many meaningful friendships.
When I returned from the Peace Corps, I went back to graduate school, got an M.A. in Comparative Folklore and Mythology at UCLA with an emphasis on African Studies and did a master’s thesis on Yoruba folklore. My first job was in Los Angeles as an A.B.E (adult basic education) teacher and later I began teaching ESL (English as a Second Language). When I moved with my husband and son to San Francisco, I began teaching ESL for the Community College (now City College of San Francisco), and I’m still happy in the classroom.
Besides my full-time ESL job, I also teach a Seniors’ class in World Cultures in Oakland once a week. I can immediately recognize when a Nigerian is speaking English. One day, not so long ago, as I was doing my attendance sheets at the Pleasant Valley Adult School Office in Oakland, I heard someone speaking with a distinct and recognizable Nigerian accent. It was another teacher, a new hire. When he acknowledged that he was from Nigeria, I told him that I had spent two years at UCSCS high school in Apapa, Lagos, Nigeria.
He then told me that school was where he had been a student. Now that was something! Out of 55 million people in l964 and 180 million today, how unlikely would it be to find someone who not only knew of my Nigerian high school but had been a student there?
As we talked, he started telling me about various p
eople in his class, about his math teacher, Duane, and about other teachers and students we both knew. He asked me what my name had been when I was in Nigeria. I told him, “Sally Cytron.” He spelled my last name correctly and said, “Believe it or not, you were my English teacher.”
‘Dapo, Duane, and I got together in Oakland and had a mini-reunion in April of 2008. My Peace Corps experience came full circle.
A Yoruba proverb says, “One does not easily or casually take the child from the palm-nut.” Mr. Oyekan Omomoyela (in The Good Person: Excerpts from the Yoruba Proverb Treasury) explains: “It takes effort to accomplish a good end.” I never knew if the effort I made as a Peace Corps Volunteer really brought about anything good, but the benefits and good memories for me have definitely been long lasting and have spread over my lifetime.
Sally (Cytron) Gati was a Peace Corps high school teacher in Lagos, Nigeria, from 1964-66. She’s been teaching for over forty years and still teaches ESL at City College of San Francisco. She’s also a teacher/trainer, textbook writer, and documentary filmmaker. Her website is http://fog.ccsf.edu~sgati.
Sister Stella Seams Serene
Starley Talbott Anderson
Though things don’t always work out, the experiences—and the places—stay with us.
It was a long way from a Wyoming ranch corral to a Setswana chief’s kraal in a rural village of South Africa. The cultural distance may have been even further for this ranch-raised sixty-year-old woman traveling to Africa with the United States Peace Corps.
The sights and sounds of the July day I began my journey are burned in my mind like a brand on a calf. High trill voices rang out in greeting over the rocky, red hills, echoing back to the chief’s kraal. Black pots bubbled over open cook fires watched by black faces eager to meet the Americans arriving on a big bus from Pretoria. The chief’s kraal harkens back hundreds of years to when it was actually a corral to hold livestock or a cluster of buildings to hold the chief’s family and their possessions. The modern kraal, however, is a cluster of buildings housing offices similar to a city hall in any city in the United States.
