Breakfast

Jed Brody

What is it they say about a good breakfast being the most important meal of the day?

My alarm goes off at six, but roosters are already crowing. They’ve been crowing for three hours; I’ve learned to sleep through it. I open the metal-slat windows. Twenty minutes ago, someone at the mosque ascended to call the faithful to prayer; this, I haven’t learned to sleep through.

Blinking sweat from my eyes, I glance at the thermometer: 33 degrees Celsius. I try not to think about what this means in Fahrenheit. I delay getting dressed, packing my bag with lesson plans and a bright yellow meter stick. I place my stubs of colored chalk in my shirt pocket before putting it on just for that extra second of relative coolness.

Outside, motorcycle exhaust and crinkled brown stalks contribute to the fragrance of the morning.

I ride my bicycle two blocks, to have breakfast outside the school. I pass the old man I pass every morning. He’s riding a bike that might be older than he is; he’s wearing the kind of cap Oliver Twist wore. He shifts his weight from side to side as he pedals, the folds of his robe flowing like tall grasses. I wonder where he’s going. Again I don’t ask.

I smell mango peels drying when I reach the women selling food. I’m early; one woman hasn’t finished setting up. Her small son, no more than eight, is carrying a long wooden bench on his head. He’s having a little trouble with balance. He looks like a seesaw that got up and walked away.

I hear forks scraping metal plates. I lean my bike against the fence and walk around the chickens pecking at fallen rice; some are sprayed hot pink so their owners can identify them. Several students are standing together and eating. “Do like me!” they say, extending their plates in a symbolic offer to share what they have. “Merci! Bon appetit!” I reply.

I approach the beans and rice table. Eight or nine students jostle, waving their empty plates in the face of the woman who serves them. Her head is ornamented with a gauze-like black-and-orange scarf and glittering balls of sweat. Her outfit, yellow and brick-red, depicts baby chicks and eggs. “Bonjour, Yovo,” she says affectionately.” “Yovo” means “foreigner.” “Bonjour, Mama,” I answer.

Shoving aside protesting students, she selects a plate for me. She reaches for the mountain of cooked rice rising out of a metal basin. As her metal scoop scrapes away a plateful, steam gushes. She ladles on some chickpea-like beans, the beans that I’m going to eat forever in the afterlife, if I’m good and kind. Finally, she dips her spoon into the sauce, past the red oily superficial layer on which green hot peppers float, through murky regions dense with mashed tomatoes, until at last she reaches the source of flavor.

When I finish, I lower my plate into a sudsy bucket; a young girl scrubs it immediately. As I hurry toward the classroom, I prepare for the lesson I’m about to give.

Jed Brody was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Benin from 1996-98. He teaches physics at Emory University. He has not had a driver’s license since 1995.