Niger

Niger
Millet Fields in Rainy Season

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Southwest Potatoes

So I peel the potatoes and cut them meticulously into uniformly random pieces, about the size of a quarter and as thick as three nickels, never four. All the while I can already taste the finished product. Usually, as is the case with human neurology as well as many other animals, more pleasure is had preparing and anticipating the reward than when actually or receiving it. But in retrospect, tasting the southwest seasoning doused liberally on these potato bits, fried golden brown, with precious olive oil, may have been the moment of purest pleasure all day long. There’s something about southwest seasoning that sets me right. I couldn’t help singing to myself as I flipped up the frying pan, sending the potatoes into the air and letting them fall back into the pan. The sound of the sizzling, the silence of the potatoes in the air, and then the sizzling again. The kitchen is a place of mediation, of the yoga of cooking. Rarely, while preparing food, am I somewhere else mentally. Each cut, each potato peeled keeps me right here in the kitchen, right now, totally in the moment. Later, when eating the food my mind begins to ramble. In Hausa there’s a word for things that come into your mind, or in a Hausa’s terminology are brought into your mind, while you are eating. Santi is that word. If you bring up something random, or even not so random, while eating a Hausa will tell you that you did santi. I’m starting to demystify this concept for myself (as Westerners often do) while writing this entry. Now, I think about those ideas coming to me as me leaving the now moment in which, while cooking the food I was so absorbed – skittering off into the infinite array of memories and connections after having been so present in the kitchen. But now I will re-mystify because this idea of santi, if said by a Nigerien man, who never cook the food themselves, can’t be explained by my justification above. I suppose I’ll have to accept the mystery and destiny of santi. And back to Southwest Potatoes. I hope potatoes come into my life now as GI disorders did during my first three months. For the last 18 months before coming to Niger I avoided starchy vegetables like potatoes like the plague. I indeed thought it a crime to call them vegetables at all! Now here I am, asking Allah to bring me more.

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