Benin: When The Corn Is This High (cont.)

As a woman sits down with her large kettle of milk to begin preparing the cheese, her hair makes a metallic sound; she has used coins to adorn her hair. Watching her as she works, I cannot help but notice the layers of necklaces covering her neck or her arms lined with silver bracelets. Her face seems tired underneath the tattoos. She is weathered by years of hard work and child rearing; the dust of her home seems to have entered the cracks of her skin, refusing to exit.

In West Africa, sitting in silence is a normal way of passing time with your friends, so my new friend seemingly forgets me as she stirs the milk over the fire. Suddenly, she looks up and begins speaking rapidly. Noticing my befuddlement, she begins looking around for someone to translate. She calls over a child who, thanks to government literacy programs, speaks French.

The young boy, in his tattered clothes, comes running to answer his grandmother’s call. He is carrying a hoe and is covered in dust having been working in his father’s fields. At his grandmother’s prompting, he informs me in a tiny voice that his grandmother is boiling and stirring the milk.

Truthfully, I am not too interested in making cheese although it could come in useful one day. I am visiting so that I can talk to the women and see where they live, but I continue the façade and ask, “How long do you boil the milk?”

I see that the boy is hesitating to ask his grandmother. I am unable to decipher if he cannot find the words or if he is being shy. The grandmother pressures him, and he says something to her. Her face immediately shows confusion at the question. I hold up my wrist where my watch sits perched. I point and ask, “How long do you boil the milk?” The woman throws her hands in the air in a universal gesture of frustration. I realize that time in a western sense has no meaning to her.

After a few moments of back and forth banter, we are able to construct a rough time frame. I point to the sun and ask, “There is the sun. Where will it be when the milk is done boiling?” The woman smiles and points to a location southwest of the sun. There is silence again as the sun begins to drop. The sub-Saharan heat dwindles in deep hues of red and purple. I begin imagining the bush growing over the path, the connection to the outside world disappearing into night. I tell my new friend that I must return to the village, and she nods in agreement.

As I prepare to leave, all the women in the village rush over to say goodbye. They shake my hands and walk me to the edge of their homestead. They ask when I will visit again.

“Sometime in December,” I find myself saying, knowing immediately that I have created an impossible reference. Confusion springs up between us again as my mind races to find an appropriate analogy. Language is always the problem in West Africa. I look around, and my childhood in the Midwest suddenly comes to me in rows of corn and passing seasons. Leaning over, I allow my hand to hover about two feet from the ground.

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