The okra blues

Times are tough now at post.  Most local farmers are bringing in their okra crops, and for some reason, they’re getting paid far below the customary price.  A whole bushel basket of okra this year is worth only 100fcfa, or about 25 cents, to the middlemen who come to market from as far as Togo to load up their trucks with my area’s produce.  The farmers aren’t making a profit right now, so they aren’t doing business with anyone else in town.  Everyone’s suddenly found the cash flow into my post has dried up.  This is happening at exactly the same time that my school has started to crack down on students who haven’t paid this year’s tuition of 14,000fcfa ($28).  I have students who slump listlessly onto their desks in our afternoon classes because it’s 4pm and they haven’t eaten all day.  Or if they have eaten, it’s been only a sticky dough of boiled maize without sauce or a protein.  

“Are you hungry?  What do you want to eat?” I usually ask my students in English right before the lunch break, when they’re squirming on their benches and staring out the windows.

“Me, I want to eat the rice, sauce, and the fish,” Valerie says.  “Me, the pâte and the meat!” Fiacre calls out.  Right now, it’s only the children of wealthy families who are eating like that.  

Later: “What will you eat for dinner?” I ask Abel, the 2nde boy who lives in my concession.  He likes to practice his English with me.

“I will eat the gari,” he says.

Gari is nothing but dried and grated manioc.  I switch into French.  “Gari?  That’s it?  That doesn’t haven’t any nutritional value.”

“No, but that’s all I can afford right now,” he replies. 

Abel ends up earning a little money that evening to buy a real dinner, but many of my students are struggling to get by.  We have to hope that the next round of harvests will turn out better for everyone.