Pestling and loading

Hey there all, as a follow up on the Ethnic issues entry, a Togolese friend would have me add that, in addition to the reasons mentioned, peoples outside their ethnic homeland maintain contact with that homeland in order to insure that in case of their death they have a proper ceremony/ burial. Their death might not be recognized in an ethnically foreign community.

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I have found a couple new things good for the heart :

The first is helping a woman to load a basin onto her head. Everything from water to bread to chickens seems to be transported in the typical round 2.5-3 ft wide 8 inches deep metallic basin.

Situations where I have found myself helping a woman to load a basin include:

- at a water source, in order to take water back to the household

- after buying bread from a woman who runs a bread business out of the basin on her head.

- after buying cloth from a woman selling cloths out of a basin.

- after buying a coconut from a woman selling coconuts out of a basin.

The second activity is pestling yams into Foufou, a prized food staple similar to pasty, thick, and sticky mashed potatoes. Necessary materials including a pestle 4 or so feet long and a mortar 1.5 feet or so wide, the pestling of the foufou is another job accomplished by women. Often pestling is a group event bringing 2 or 3 folks to the same mortar creating a rhythm created by each pestle hitting the yam filled mortar in turn .