#aharddayswork

Tapioca is not a food I was particularly familiar with in the U.S. I knew it was vaguely related to pudding, but I had never eaten it.

Here at post, however, tapioca is big. The region of Togo around my village produces the majority of the tapioca and gari in Togo (this according to the president of my village groupement, feel free to take it with a grain of salt). Regardless, my village produces a lot of gari (more on gari later) and tapioca. And it is directly connected with my work - as an activity that transforms manioc into a value-added product to sell at market, an activity performed exclusively by women, it is right up my alley in the food security department. I am supporting the manioc groupement in my village as they try to form a cooperative with the groupements in neighboring villages. They hope to cut out the middlemen and sell directly to foreign markets, thereby increasing the earnings they see for their work. Tapioca is central to the livelihood and food security of many families in my village - so I should probably learn how it's made, right?

Last Thursday I arrived to make tapioca with Sabine, the secretary of one of the women's groups I work with (we're starting a garden project).  She has a very measured way of speaking, and exudes calm productivity. The heat was already sweltering at 9 am, and I could not believe that Sabine was spending the entire day next to a hot fire. I was dreading spending just several hours over the big shallow pot, around which the clay stove is built.

You start by washing the manioc tubers, then grinding them into a coarse powder/paste. You place this into huge tubs, cover with water and let it soak. Next, you place the particulate onto a big piece of fine mesh or fabric, which you close and twist to press all of the water out. The result is a very hard, slightly rubbery solid. Sabine showed me how to break this into small pieces with my hands before rubbing it through a large, square woven sieve. The resulting fine powder is adding very gradually to the hot, shallow pot. Just after adding a bit, I used a twig broom to sweep the particles from side to side. I use the verb sweep very intentionally - it took me a while to realize that for tapioca, you do not use the broom to stir. That breaks apart the pieces that clump together. Instead, you push the clumps around the pot, making sure to shift everything to a new place so that it doesn't burn. This whole process is essentially to dry out the tapioca - it's not even toasting, since the tapioca doesn't even turn a light brown. The heat of the fire is also critical - if it's too hot, the tapioca will brown to quickly, instead of staying the pure white it's supposed to be.

Now, lest you receive an inaccurate impression of an idyllic morning making tapioca, I must confess that sitting next to the fire was rough. Not because of the heat, but due to the immense amount of smoke that billowed into my face, stinging my eyes. I produced probably a solid cup of tears, thoroughly speckling the inside of my glasses. Sabine's little daughter, who came by to check up on our progress, found this quite amusing. At the time, I felt like I was proving something to Sabine, or maybe to myself, so I stuck it out.

When I had both sifted and dried several batches on the stove, Sabine congratulated me on (finally) getting the technique down, and for being such a trooper for sitting by the smoky stove. When she gifted me some of the tapioca I had made, I felt like I had at least done something to earn it. Yet, she - and numerous other women in the village - do this once or twice a week when they can harvest the manioc. And they don't sit over the stove for a mere three hours as I did, but for the whole day, from seven in the morning until dark. They pause only to eat the food that they prepared before starting the whole process. Hence my quick and probably-less-than-polite retort when one of the men in my village asked me why women eat less than men. "Is it because men work harder?"