Easter, Benin Style

I hope you all had a good easter sunday over there in the land of hot showers and private cars. I honestly cant complain. My easter was pretty good. On Friday I had some friends over to my house for tea and to show off Ooses kittens. She was very patient. Since I had a few people send me entire boxes of earl grey tea, thanks guys really Im not complaining at all, I had enough to share with my friends. Real earl grey tea is hard to come by here so it was a special treat. Then I was invited to my postmates village to celebrate easter and a baptism of a friend of hers. On Saturday I went over to help the women cook for the celebration. At first I thought that the celebration of the baptism was on saturday and that it was at night as we were helping cook around noon. By help cook I mean the white girls got to sit and watch, and entertain children. We brought over lots of eggs for decorating and had an easter egg hunt with the kids. Of course the Beninese dont understand why easter rabbits and eggs are all related, but its ok even after we explained they still didnt understand. We had to explain to the kids what the idea of the game was, we had hidden their eggs and they were to look for them. It was cool to watch the kids get into it and then we hid the eggs again for the adults who werent necessarily doing much. After a little while we left and took a nap.
We came back for dinner I realized now that the celebration of the baptism was on sunday along with easter and the women were going to be cooking all night to get ready. Its not like in the states where you can make rolls in advance and freeze them or something, no refrigeration means everything is done just before. The women had made the biggest basin of pate I have ever seen and they had slaughtered a goat to feed everyone. Then I found out that they had made a sauce and akassa for us to eat, akassa is like this jello like consistancy almost like pate but the grains they use to make it are much finer, and the sauce, this is where it gets interesting, was made by taking the head of the goat, hunking it up into pieces and stewing it for god only knows how long, there was probably tomatoes and onions in there too. My first reaction was that of discust but then I figured what the heck when is the next time Im going to be able to be given the oppotuntiy to eat goat head sauce with akassa? It also would have made a pretty lame story if I hadnt eaten it. I was thinking of you guys. So I dug in, and surprisingly it wasnt bad at all. Then the true test of my stomach I was given a hunk of the goat head. I cant tell you what part it was from looked a bit spinal but I wasnt in the mood to really think about where the piece I held came from. Yes I took a bite. It was some of the least tough meat Ive had here in Africa, kind of tasted like bacon I thought. So there you have it, my latest culinary adventure.
Easter sunday went well I attended a church service which was pretty cool no organ music but there were african drums along with dancing clapping, general gettin down for the lord. The baptism was also interesting to witness. Then we ate. This was the first time I had ever seen a meal with courses prepared by Beninese person. We started off with beans and bread, we all also got a beer which would come in handy later for washing down hot pepper sauce, then rice and pasta mixed together with hot pepper sauce, then we had pate rouge with a tomato and onion sauce and for dessert we had some chilled hibiscus tea, called bisap here. We all ate outside in a circle under a cashew tree. Really relaxing and good easter.