My Aunt (Part II)

My aunt goes to church every morning at 6.30 before going to work and on Sundays. Before that, she makes devotions at home in front of shrine to the virgin. She prays with ostentation. It makes me smile because from what I remember from the Gospel is that Jesus clear dislike for that kind of attitude. But hey Jesus is dead so I guess people don't have to stick to what He said… I'm no going to get started on religion and Christians in particular because it is one of my pet hate. I wont say a thing on the reigning hypocrisy, the judgmental attitudes, and in the case of some Born Again, Pentecostals etc…, the hijacking of God who find Himself reduced to signing pre-death salvation insurance contracts the minute someone stands up in church and declare "I'm saved", forfeiting His right to the Last Judgment, renouncing His own words which say that salvation is an ongoing process (if God is really that cheap I'm not interested would be my stance). Nothing on the unbelievable dogmas, the far-fetched interpretations of texts, the gilt-riddling message of the Roman Catholic Church and the self-hatred that comes from never being good enough (we're already born stained and then the Devil/free will -same thing really- are thrown in the mix just to make things that little bit more interesting). I won't say anything on religion except that I kind of like what Jesus actually said. He's on my list of cool and misunderstood people.
So, my aunt at home in the living room has a shrine dedicated to the Virgin Mary. A shrine that makes me think of the voodoo shrines of the Haiti or Brazil dedicated to Yemanja, goddess of beauty and rivers. There's a tall statue of the Virgin, an abundance of white and blue cloths, flowers, rosaries, holy water in a phosphorescent Mary look-alike container, incense, pious images and a candle burning all day long. I wrote once an essay on African religions in the New World and how slaves used the Christian pantheon to camouflage their African deities. I'm not sure of how to interpret my aunt shrine though. She'd rather die than admit any link with voodoo because as she said many and many times, it is the worshipping of the devil. I cooked up little explanation: she is coming from one of those costal dynasties created by free black Brazilians returning to set up their own trade in slaves. These returnees must have come back with their syncretic religion of Christianity and African religions. Back here they got "re-christianised" or “de-Africanised” by French Roman Catholic missionaries and the second layer of meaning of the syncretic New World’s religions disappeared, leaving us with the weird kind of Catholicism my aunt practices. Funny twist of history really.
My aunt says she is a Christian, but it is very ironic that she would lack so completely what I think is the basis of Christianity: charity.
For my birthday she offered me a piece of cloth and ask her seamstress to make me a dress out of it. A couple of weeks later the seamstress came back with the dress and asked for her fee. I had to pay for my present.
My aunt resent me for staying with them for the duration of my stay here. No direct attacks, just a continuous stream of little humiliations. From not allowing me to dish my own food and counting herself the pieces of meat I’m allowed, to forbidding the maid to wash the plate I use to eat but letting her do the washing for every other member of the household, also forbidding the maid to wash my clothes or run my errands even though there are no such restrictions for the rest of the family. Sly remarks on my hair, my clothes, what I do and how I do it. I never say a thing.
I take a deep breath and think to myself: if Heaven is populated with Christians like her, please God let me go to Hell.

My Aunt (Part I)

My aunts never smiles. She’s always mumbling to herself, complaining about one thing or the other. And she is stingy with money, love and food.
I don’t care much for the absence of smile, or the constant bemoaning. One of the things that it is getting to me is the stinginess. Because it means that often I go hungry. And it’s not because the family finances are tight (she‘s a program manager for a foreign NGO, my uncle runs his private hospital), it’s just because my aunt is stingy to the point of meanness.
Right now, after lunch, I am still hungry. They don’t do breakfast in this house, and lunch was a meagre plate of left-over casserole. The solution will be to send someone buy me some food later on. Things aren’t’t so bad today though because we have fruits in the house. A very rare occasion indeed, because they tell you fruits and vegetable make you fat. Not eating white rice 5 days a week though. I’m craving vegetables. Spinach, aubergines, carrots, leeks, green beans, you name it, I miss it. It here that for the 1st time ever I ate a Djollof rice without any sort of vegetables in it. Just rice cooked in tomato purée. What happened to the cabbage, the carrots, the peppers? I'll never know…
We eat our akoumé (sort of polenta made with corn flour and staple food here) nearly dry because the stew must last for a few meals even if it means adding water to it to augment quantities (and killing most of the flavours).
I felt uneasy at the idea of buying my own food and cook it for myself but after today to the hell with inhibitions. My body is already telling me I’m lacking vitamins and minerals: I’m having bad cramps in my legs at night, I'm thinking magnesium deficiency.
Buying my own stuff for my own use will perfectly fit into the system already in place in the house: the husband gets steaks and vegetables, grilled fish and fruits, the only son gets whatever he wants, the teenage girls (who barely eat anything anyways) 2 cousins living here and me get rice, cheap meat cuts, tripe (cant stand the smell, taste or look of it… on those nights it means eating plain white rice), skinny chicken wings and feet. Missing my mother’s cooking, my guardian’s Italian cuisine and the little dishes I’d cook myself miss tasty creative food. missing food prepared with love .