July 04, 2005

Peanut Butter and Sadness

This morning, like almost every morning of my work week, I went to get a peanut butter sandwich from the local "Mama" on the street corner. She sells these huge Congolese baguettes (about the size of one's forearm--without the hand) and offers a range of choices for filling:
-an omelet that she cooks with onions over a Kerosene stove
-margarine from a brand that does not need to be refrigerated
-nothing
-home-made peanut butter

Now the best filling is the home-made peanut butter. She actually buys fresh peanuts, roasts them, pounds them until they become mush and adds a little peanut oil and salt. It's absolutely delish and there are no added preservatives. Yumm!

She hasn't has "pate d'arachide" (peanut butter) in the past two or three weeks so I begrudgingly go for the chemically enhanced margarine. Today, I complained that there was no pate d'arachide in French (she doesn't speak French) but she laughed at my dismay.

I looked up at her and noticed that she had a black eye. I quickly looked away, and grabbed my sandwich (unit cost $0.20). Now why should an honest, friendly, hard-working woman end up with a black eye? So sad.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I guess the moral of your story is that "Peanut butter is better than an oeil au beurre noir" -- unless it is an oeil au beurre de cacahuette noire, of course...

Battered women of the world, unite!

Anonomous (aka your Dad)