One of my favorite things to do in Abengourou is shopping at the food market (no, this town doesn't have a very broad range of entertainment options, so what). And I like to try stuff that I've never eaten before, or ask the women what dishes they make with a certain vegetable. So, naturally, when I spotted some gigantic green beans the other day I was inmediately drawn to them (see picture of one of them next to my hand to see what I mean). The fact they were selling them individually (at 50 FCFA each) should have given me a hint of their evil potency, but I was so excited about my discovery that I bought the whole selection this amused lady had on display. Which meant becoming the proud owner of the 6 or 7 biggest green beans I had seen in my life.

Although the market lady had suggested me to crush the beans into a liquid sauce with onions and mini-eggplants, in my mind they were like any other beans. So one evening I peeled them out of the pods, boilt them and then mixed them with some tomato sauce and rice. At first their taste threw me off, or the lack thereof. They were surprisingly really bland, kind of like eating spoonfuls of dirt, but they had a potent, thick aftertaste that wasn't so bland after all. After drinking a few liters of water to get rid of that unpleasant texture, I went to bed. And an hour or two later my stomach started feeling like a huge rock had been dropped into it, while some green bean nightmares possessed my sweaty body. They were almost like hallucinations in which I desperately ran in fields of oversized, angry potatoes to escape the evil beans under the disapproving gaze of ginormous angry pumpkins. I also had to make frequent visits accross the hall to my beloved toilet, who witnessed the greenest poo ever.

After a horrible sleepless night for work I had to go on a field visit to a village located an hour away from Abengourou, and only Coke saved me from puking beans all over my couterparts' sandals. The thick, sickly taste stayed in my mouth the whole day, in spite of the endless Cokes I ingested like an addict. It was only at 10pm that, not having eaten anything since the night before, I accepted a friend's invitation to have some chicken. And, thank God, the mighty chicken beat the evil beans and I started coming back to life.

Moral of the story: don't trust oversized, evil-looking vegetables (mini-tomatoes and mini-eggplans are delicious, by the way). And don't cook anything you're not familiar with. Unless you want to have nightmares or become acquainted with all the toilets in town.