In Ouidah, an old center of the slave trade in Benin, there is a large walled compound holding the city hospital which from its previous use is called the Fort Frances. Just outside the wall there is a large square park with lots of dust, the mandatory piles of ciment blocks and unlaid tile (almost every public space in Benin looks like some kind of project which was abruptly stopped halfway through and all the materials left everywhere) many small humps and foot high walls and ciment squares that look like they were once the base of something. Several very nice trees with nobby, veiny trunks whose whole surface is different shades of red and brown, a vast profusion of scarrs topped by thick green foliage giving islands of shade during the day and at night an even darker darkness.

Under one such tree near the middle of the park sits a lady on a small ciment block with a machete by her feet and a pile of young, green coconuts. I found her there just after it had become completely dark. If I had come a little later she would have already carefully placed each remaining whole coconut into her bag and balanced the sack of twenty-something coconuts, a large steel washbasin and the machete on her head with the help of a passerby, and stepped carefully home along the paved sidewalk which at the next corner becomes an unpaved sand road leading to her home behind the hospital.

But I got there in time and indicating I wanted a coconut, stood patiently by as she chose one, took up the machete and chopped all the way around in even strokes, taking away most of the green and then white fiber, looking for where the nut starts, bit by bit, not cutting too deep all at once. When she gets to the nut's edge she looks up at me to see if I want her to tap all around the top to open it (to drink right there). I do want it to drink right there and she expertly finishes this last part quickly handing me the nut as I pay her the 75 francs CEFA (early 2003 equivalent of 15 US cents) and greedly gulp down the fresh partially fermented milk giving the nut back to her to break apart in a moment.

Two ladies sitting just under the tree motion to me to come sit down with them, they dont speak French and I cannot say more in their language (Fonbe) than ‘welcome, thank you very much, and hows it going? fine’ but I understand that they feel I should sit, it is good to rest. They look expectantly now at my nut which was serendipitously cut into three pieces by the seller's machete. I hand them each one piece and they nod in appoval, we all slurp and chew the tender meat together : welcome to African hospitality.