Recently I peed in a near stranger’s yard in the middle of the night and I didn’t have the excuse of being drunk or five years old.
I was staying with a different host family while visiting my village. I already have a house in my village that is mostly furnished but as this was my first time in village I stayed with a host family who could introduce me to a lot of people in the village and give me tips on living there and show me around and such. This family had electricity but no running water and the nearest latrine was next to some jungle-y looking trees and across the yard where there were no lights. I had to go to the bathroom after dark and this was my only option. I took my book light with me and wandered out to the latrine. I opened the door and was greeted by a moving wall of giant cockroaches and other bugs. With thoughts of touching these bugs with my hands or having them jump on me as I tried to balance and pee into a hole while holding my book light in my teeth I quickly decided that the latrine was not a viable option. This left me with either holding it until day light (about 10 hours) or peeing in the yard. Peeing in the yard obviously won. I won’t describe the scene that ensued but I’m sure you can imagine something just as comical and sad as the real thing without my help. Oddly enough, my biggest problem came when I realized that I had nowhere to dispose of my toilet paper if I didn’t want the family to know that I was using their yard as a toilet. Most Beninese people don’t use toilet paper. I haven’t asked exactly what they do as an alternative but I think it has something to do with their aversion to using their left hand for anything related to shaking hands and eating. Luckily we can find toilet paper here but there was no way that I could blame the toilet paper on one of the kids in the family or something because I was probably the only person within a 50 mile radius or more using toilet paper. The option of disposal that I chose was running back to the latrine, opening the door really fast, and throwing the toilet paper in the direction of the hole in the ground, squealing, and running back to the house.
In my last post I mentioned a moment when I saw a current volunteer hiss at a Fan Milk guy to get his attention. (Well actually I didn’t mention the Fan Milk which is strange because Fan Milk is a delicious Beninese treat of joy and joyness. There are different flavors but I have become a loyal fan of Fan Milk Vanille. They are about the size of a hot pocket but utilize the concept of a GoGurt. They are sold by guys who walk around with little freezers on wheels like old school ice cream men, complete with a bell to ring and attract children or Americans from blocks away. The vanilla one tastes like a vanilla pudding pop. SO GOOD.) In the previous post I talked about how I thought I could never hiss at a person and then I went ahead and hissed at students without even thinking about it. I had a similar thought around the time of the “I will never hiss” that was similar but regarding littering. That same day I saw a volunteer buy something at a street vendor, take off the wrapper, and drop the wrapper to the ground without a thought. I saw volunteers and Beninese doing this everywhere for the first couple weeks. I mentioned my surprise at all this littering to a current volunteer and they recalled feeling the same way when they first got to Benin. At first I tried to keep all of my garbage and find a trash can to put it in. The problem is that there are no trash cans anywhere. Seriously, you could walk around a major city all day and not find a trash can and there is likely no way you would find one in a village unless a current volunteer or NGO has placed it there. Everyone just throws their trash in the street or in piles behind their house or someplace else. Most of the time there trash piles are picked through for a time and then burned. I guess it wouldn’t be that bad if plastic bags weren’t such a hit here. Little black plastic bags are used with every purchase here and are all over the place littering streets and such. Its such a weird concept to get used to.
Interesting Story: We went to a local healer last week and I got my fortune read by a medicine man! Another stagier, Wendy, went before me and he used what looked like a Jumanji board to tell her that she was born under the sign of a very grand tree and that people are going to be jealous of her in her life because of it. It was this really long and intricate fortune with lots of cool metaphors having to do with the tree. I was not having a good day and had in fact just organized a strike amongst the stagiers. I had gotten at least two people to agree to strike to the soundtrack of Newsies and then had to spend several minutes explaining Newsies to a few poor souls who had never seen it. So instead of continuing to sulk in the back I decided to play the African Jumanji game and get my fortune read. To my surprise, once I sat down the guy put the Jumanji board away and brought out a few strings with seashells tied to them. He asked me to use my money and the marble he gave me and rub it to my fore head and then put it on the ground. I accidentally dropped the marble while doing this and blurted out in front of everyone, “Oh no, now I’ll have gris gris!” which is a sensitive topic for Beninese since they are the home of the original Vodun or Voodoo and are constantly having to discuss voodoo curses with people (i.e. Americans). I am choosing to believe that the combination of singing Newsies songs under my breath for his first fortune telling, the likening of his fortune telling accoutrements to a Robin Williams movie, and the dropping of the sacred marble explain my subsequent “fortune”. The man rubbed the strings with shells over my marble and money and then basically said that I am in good health but that my biggest troubles in life will come from not being able to keep my mouth shut. He said that I will have trouble with language and how to say things and that this can be helped if I am generous to churches and poor people. No grand tree metaphors for me! Shut your mouth and give us money! I guess I won’t be going there to have them cure my malaria if I ever get it.*
*On a serious note, that health center had a lot of cool plants that are natural remedies to many ailments and they help a lot of people and don’t accept much money (or any, I can’t remember with all that ‘French” they were speaking).
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Good Morning, Madame Dione! OR That Time I Hissed at My Students and Threw a Rock at the Feet of Some Kids Cowering in a Latrine. (8-28-10)
I may have hissed at a student this week and/or whipped around and made a noise that sounds like “Ehh!” in response to students talking behind me as I wrote on the board. Also, a few weeks ago I chased after some kids, followed them into their house and back to their latrines, and threw a rock at their feet while yelling at them in broken French. In both scenarios I instantly realized that while this response would have been out of character for me, socially unacceptable, and generally unheard of in the United States it came almost naturally to me in a classroom here. You see, in Benin, it is common for people to hiss at people to get their attention.
The first time I heard a Beninoise do this I was perplexed. The first time I saw an American do it I was in awe. I remember thinking something like, “Wow , I don’t think I would ever feel comfortable hissing at another human being.” Some other common ways to get someone’s attention here include: Making smooching noises with your lips as if you are calling a dog, snapping your fingers, or yelling out the most obvious physical characteristic or perhaps the profession of the person such as “Fat! Short! White! Foreigner! Blond! Bar Lady! Carpenter! Teacher!”. All of these things appear to be rude to an American, but are completely acceptable here and unquestioned. When the Beninese Peace Corps trainers first started working with Volunteers they could not comprehend why the volunteers would get so upset by all the Beninese people screaming “Yovo” at them all the time. It is just so common here to call someone by what they look like or what they do that they couldn’t understand why having “White/Foreigner” shouted at you would make someone upset. It took them a while to understand that in our culture it is usually seen as an insult to refer to someone in that way. That we don’t like to be loudly pointed out as the foreigner by every person we see on the street every day even if we walk down the same street past the same people every day came as a surprise to them I guess.
A few weeks ago I was hanging out at the TEFL house with some other stagiers (those of us who have not yet sworn in) and some of the local kids began to mildly harass us from outside the walls of our courtyard. I’ve gotten used to the fact that we are a constant source of wonder and amusement for local kids, but that doesn’t make it any less annoying sometimes. The kids kept coming and opening the metal door to our courtyard a little bit and then running away. I got so annoyed because we have very little privacy here and those kids knew that they were not allowed to come into that gate unasked. Children here have very particular cultural restrictions on how they can interact with adults. Teachers are often bowed to by students and in most cases a child is not allowed to say that an adult has made a mistake or lied about something. That being said, children are children, and there are troublemakers and punks everywhere and in Benin it is super fun for the punk kids to harass the foreigners who don’t speak English very well. Eventually the kids got bored with opening the gate and decided to start throwing things over our wall. A rock came flying over the wall and I had had enough. I picked up the rock and along with another girl went out into the street. Some little Beninese girls who were sitting in the street watching this entire exchange told me where the kids went and led me into the courtyard of their concession. I couldn’t find the kids anywhere and the little girl pointed to one of the doors of the houses. I asked if their parents were around and she said no. If I didn’t do anything the kids were just going to keep bothering us so I walked straight into their house with the other stagier and the little tattle-tale Beninese girl and found the kids in the back of the house hiding in the latrines. They looked terrified when they realized that I had followed them back there. I took the rock that they threw over our wall and threw to the ground at their feet and it bounced back up a little bit as I yelled “Ce n’est pas bon!!!!”which basically means, “It is not good!!!!!”. And then attempted to say something along the lines of “Your parents will hear about this and you better not come back to our house again!” in broken French. As I walked away I thought of how much my power had probably diminished the moment I opened my mouth and sounded like a 2nd grader but I was still oddly proud of myself for at least trying to get my point across. I know that American Dione would never chase children into their house or throw rocks at them. I know that American Dione wouldn’t gesticulate wildly and argue prices with a vendor of any sorts. American Dione definitely wouldn’t hiss at students or make unintelligible noises like the one I made at my group of kids the other day. Benin has already changed me. I am giving you fair warning to forgive my breaches of American cultural norms in two years when I return and hiss at a waiter at a bar to get their attention. There is a phrase that volunteers in West Africa when there isn’t much you can say or do about a situation: WAWA- West Africa Wins Again. So WAWA America, I’m becoming bien integre.
The first time I heard a Beninoise do this I was perplexed. The first time I saw an American do it I was in awe. I remember thinking something like, “Wow , I don’t think I would ever feel comfortable hissing at another human being.” Some other common ways to get someone’s attention here include: Making smooching noises with your lips as if you are calling a dog, snapping your fingers, or yelling out the most obvious physical characteristic or perhaps the profession of the person such as “Fat! Short! White! Foreigner! Blond! Bar Lady! Carpenter! Teacher!”. All of these things appear to be rude to an American, but are completely acceptable here and unquestioned. When the Beninese Peace Corps trainers first started working with Volunteers they could not comprehend why the volunteers would get so upset by all the Beninese people screaming “Yovo” at them all the time. It is just so common here to call someone by what they look like or what they do that they couldn’t understand why having “White/Foreigner” shouted at you would make someone upset. It took them a while to understand that in our culture it is usually seen as an insult to refer to someone in that way. That we don’t like to be loudly pointed out as the foreigner by every person we see on the street every day even if we walk down the same street past the same people every day came as a surprise to them I guess.
A few weeks ago I was hanging out at the TEFL house with some other stagiers (those of us who have not yet sworn in) and some of the local kids began to mildly harass us from outside the walls of our courtyard. I’ve gotten used to the fact that we are a constant source of wonder and amusement for local kids, but that doesn’t make it any less annoying sometimes. The kids kept coming and opening the metal door to our courtyard a little bit and then running away. I got so annoyed because we have very little privacy here and those kids knew that they were not allowed to come into that gate unasked. Children here have very particular cultural restrictions on how they can interact with adults. Teachers are often bowed to by students and in most cases a child is not allowed to say that an adult has made a mistake or lied about something. That being said, children are children, and there are troublemakers and punks everywhere and in Benin it is super fun for the punk kids to harass the foreigners who don’t speak English very well. Eventually the kids got bored with opening the gate and decided to start throwing things over our wall. A rock came flying over the wall and I had had enough. I picked up the rock and along with another girl went out into the street. Some little Beninese girls who were sitting in the street watching this entire exchange told me where the kids went and led me into the courtyard of their concession. I couldn’t find the kids anywhere and the little girl pointed to one of the doors of the houses. I asked if their parents were around and she said no. If I didn’t do anything the kids were just going to keep bothering us so I walked straight into their house with the other stagier and the little tattle-tale Beninese girl and found the kids in the back of the house hiding in the latrines. They looked terrified when they realized that I had followed them back there. I took the rock that they threw over our wall and threw to the ground at their feet and it bounced back up a little bit as I yelled “Ce n’est pas bon!!!!”which basically means, “It is not good!!!!!”. And then attempted to say something along the lines of “Your parents will hear about this and you better not come back to our house again!” in broken French. As I walked away I thought of how much my power had probably diminished the moment I opened my mouth and sounded like a 2nd grader but I was still oddly proud of myself for at least trying to get my point across. I know that American Dione would never chase children into their house or throw rocks at them. I know that American Dione wouldn’t gesticulate wildly and argue prices with a vendor of any sorts. American Dione definitely wouldn’t hiss at students or make unintelligible noises like the one I made at my group of kids the other day. Benin has already changed me. I am giving you fair warning to forgive my breaches of American cultural norms in two years when I return and hiss at a waiter at a bar to get their attention. There is a phrase that volunteers in West Africa when there isn’t much you can say or do about a situation: WAWA- West Africa Wins Again. So WAWA America, I’m becoming bien integre.
So, I’ve been in Africa for over a month? (8-22-10)
It’s hard for me to comprehend that I have been here for that long already and at the same time I feel like I have been here forever. Time is flying and going ridiculously slow at the same time and I don’t like it! I have recently had a few rough days/series of days and a lot of moments where I try to figure out how the hell I got myself here. That happens to me a lot. I generally work really diligently to get myself where I want to go but then once I am there I can’t even remember all that and it just seems like I magically got myself to Africa and it is hard to see all the little moments that came together to make this happen. I got to talk to my mom, Bonnie, and Mandi (sisters), last weekend and that made me feel a lot better about being here. It is really easy to lose sight of why I came to Benin in the drama/drudgery of daily life here. It was extremely helpful to take a step back for a second and see what I am doing through the eyes of the people who know me best. Also, Jeremy (love interest/creepy stalker) asked me to describe what I am hoping to gain out of this experience and the process of thinking about that again and writing it out and trying to explain it to someone else really helped me refocus myself. For those of you who are intrigued by what I am hoping to gain out of this, these are some things I came up with:
1) I am a very curious person and it is hard for me to accept other people’s descriptions of things as true. I have a strong desire to figure things out myself. I wanted to join the Peace Corps because I want to experience what life is like for the majority of the world outside of America. I wanted to live in a developing country and figure out what drives the people there. I want to know about their daily lives, their quirks, their hopes, their opinions, their culture, their habits, and basically everything about them there is to know. I realize that as an American who knows they can go home whenever they want and is for sure going home after two years, my experience isn’t going to be the same as the people who actually live their entire lives here, but I want to get as close to what they have as possible.
2) I love languages and learning languages and I know the best way to do that is to get immersed in the culture and language. Hopefully I will become somewhat fluent in (West African) French and also become somewhat proficient in Sahoué, which is the language spoken in my village. By the way, I haven’t yet addressed in my blog which village I will be in. I will be living and teaching at a middle school/high school in the village of Lobogo. It is in the south western region of Mono/ the Mono-Couffo in Benin. If you are intrigued you can look at my facebook album “A Little of This and a Lot of Lobogo” or you can Google “Lobogo, Benin” and see a map and some pictures.
3) Whenever I told people that I was thinking of joining/actually joining the Peace Corps, a good portion of them responded with something along the lines of, “Oh I thought of doing that but I got married/got a teaching job/had kids/did something else instead. But that’s awesome that you are doing it!” Every time I think about wanting to come home I remind myself of my gut reaction to these responses to my decision: thinly veined horror. I don’t want to ever have to say something like that to someone twenty years from now. Even if this experience is one of the most difficult things I will go through in my life, deep down, I still want it. Relatively speaking, two years is not that big of a chunk of my life. Before I found out in late May that I was coming here I was also looking into a teaching job in the school corporation that I student-taught in. I interviewed for the job, it’s a good school corp, and it would have been perfect for me, but every time I thought about actually taking it I had a slight panic attack. I just couldn’t imagine doing that next. It didn’t feel right to me. This experience is what I wanted and begged the universe for over the last year. I re-read some of journal entries from the last six months and came across what I wrote in my excitement during my flight from New York to Paris on my way to Benin:
“ I am currently on my plane to Paris that will connect me to my flight to Benin. I am feeling so many emotions. When the plane began to take off I started to cry a little but and had a moment of panic. I can’t believe I have actually done this. I have made my dream come true and joined the Peace Corps. Its going to be awful and amazing. I’m going to love it and hate it. I’m going to desperately want to come home. I’m never going to want to leave. I’m going to feel isolated. I going to feel like a part of something. I can’t wrap my mind around it yet.”
I don’t even remember writing this but when I found it I was struck by how much it already has come to be true. I’ve already experienced all of these emotions and many more since coming here and I know it is going to get better/worse. I just need to remember that this is what I want and if I can’t remember that then I am eternally grateful for the expensive phone calls, the packages, the letters, the hidden cards in my luggage, and the emails/facebook messages that have come to mean more to me than you can probably realize.
Funny/awkward story: I created havoc at my host family’s house the other day with Silly Bands. I have no idea why, but the Silly Band obsession has been brought to Benin by current volunteers and now I have spread it to my family. A few weeks ago I got a bright pink T-Rex silly band from my roommate from the first week of training. I wore it all the time and the kids in my family were always asking me about it and wanting to see it. I decided it would be a fun game to have my sister send me a bunch of them from the States so that I could give them to the urchin children in/around my house. I knew it was going to be a delicate situation just because there are so many kids around here and I was going to have to give one to any kid who was near, so I was waiting for a time when just my favorite kids who actually live in the house. My opportune moment came one day after school. I walked up to the house and my urchins had trained all the urchins in our neighborhood to sing the Yovo song to me but instead of “Yovo” they said “Dione!” So it went something like this:
“Dione! Dione! Bon soir!”
“ça va, bien? Merci!”
I was so excited that instead of screaming “foreigner” at me that they remembered my name that I decided this was to be Silly Band Distribution Day. Little did I know that it was going to cause so many problems. Once I handed out a silly band to all the little kids, the older teen sisters wanted them. I had planned on that so I gave one of the sisters a pile of like 15-20 Silly Bands to disperse to the other sisters. I went out back to sit with the women while they were cooking and I got mobbed by like 10 people wanting more Silly Bands. The kids wanted new ones. Some of them were chewing on them like pieces of gum while other hitting each other with them. The sisters all claimed that I didn’t give them any Silly Bands when I personally helped the one sister hand them out so I knew that wasn’t true. In this confusion, the little kids starting seriously injuring each other in an attempt to supply their newly acquired Silly Band addiction. The parents who were sitting around either looked at me like it was my fault or started beating their kids to get them to stop complaining/fighting OR chastising me for not giving them a Silly Band. The sisters kept harassing me for more Silly Bands and when I said I had already given them to them they held up their Band-less wrists and said, “Well then where are they?”. Then they started grabbing at the blue duck bracelet what I was wearing on my wrist that has sentimental value and saying I should give them that one. They tried to physically take it off me. This and the mob of kids pawing at me and demanding more broke me. I shouted in broken French something like this, “NO! This is a little gift from someone in the United States. Someone in the United States sent it to me and it is for me and you CANNOT have it. Stop you! Maybe it was not a good idea for me to give the Silly Band!” After this I could hear the sister mocking my over emotional reaction in the alley behind the house from my bedroom window. What could have been a sweet little moment with my host family turned into a shit storm in which I was alternately made to feel guilty, embarrassed, or super bitter and angry for having to deal with this unintended scenario. It was AWFUL.
1) I am a very curious person and it is hard for me to accept other people’s descriptions of things as true. I have a strong desire to figure things out myself. I wanted to join the Peace Corps because I want to experience what life is like for the majority of the world outside of America. I wanted to live in a developing country and figure out what drives the people there. I want to know about their daily lives, their quirks, their hopes, their opinions, their culture, their habits, and basically everything about them there is to know. I realize that as an American who knows they can go home whenever they want and is for sure going home after two years, my experience isn’t going to be the same as the people who actually live their entire lives here, but I want to get as close to what they have as possible.
2) I love languages and learning languages and I know the best way to do that is to get immersed in the culture and language. Hopefully I will become somewhat fluent in (West African) French and also become somewhat proficient in Sahoué, which is the language spoken in my village. By the way, I haven’t yet addressed in my blog which village I will be in. I will be living and teaching at a middle school/high school in the village of Lobogo. It is in the south western region of Mono/ the Mono-Couffo in Benin. If you are intrigued you can look at my facebook album “A Little of This and a Lot of Lobogo” or you can Google “Lobogo, Benin” and see a map and some pictures.
3) Whenever I told people that I was thinking of joining/actually joining the Peace Corps, a good portion of them responded with something along the lines of, “Oh I thought of doing that but I got married/got a teaching job/had kids/did something else instead. But that’s awesome that you are doing it!” Every time I think about wanting to come home I remind myself of my gut reaction to these responses to my decision: thinly veined horror. I don’t want to ever have to say something like that to someone twenty years from now. Even if this experience is one of the most difficult things I will go through in my life, deep down, I still want it. Relatively speaking, two years is not that big of a chunk of my life. Before I found out in late May that I was coming here I was also looking into a teaching job in the school corporation that I student-taught in. I interviewed for the job, it’s a good school corp, and it would have been perfect for me, but every time I thought about actually taking it I had a slight panic attack. I just couldn’t imagine doing that next. It didn’t feel right to me. This experience is what I wanted and begged the universe for over the last year. I re-read some of journal entries from the last six months and came across what I wrote in my excitement during my flight from New York to Paris on my way to Benin:
“ I am currently on my plane to Paris that will connect me to my flight to Benin. I am feeling so many emotions. When the plane began to take off I started to cry a little but and had a moment of panic. I can’t believe I have actually done this. I have made my dream come true and joined the Peace Corps. Its going to be awful and amazing. I’m going to love it and hate it. I’m going to desperately want to come home. I’m never going to want to leave. I’m going to feel isolated. I going to feel like a part of something. I can’t wrap my mind around it yet.”
I don’t even remember writing this but when I found it I was struck by how much it already has come to be true. I’ve already experienced all of these emotions and many more since coming here and I know it is going to get better/worse. I just need to remember that this is what I want and if I can’t remember that then I am eternally grateful for the expensive phone calls, the packages, the letters, the hidden cards in my luggage, and the emails/facebook messages that have come to mean more to me than you can probably realize.
Funny/awkward story: I created havoc at my host family’s house the other day with Silly Bands. I have no idea why, but the Silly Band obsession has been brought to Benin by current volunteers and now I have spread it to my family. A few weeks ago I got a bright pink T-Rex silly band from my roommate from the first week of training. I wore it all the time and the kids in my family were always asking me about it and wanting to see it. I decided it would be a fun game to have my sister send me a bunch of them from the States so that I could give them to the urchin children in/around my house. I knew it was going to be a delicate situation just because there are so many kids around here and I was going to have to give one to any kid who was near, so I was waiting for a time when just my favorite kids who actually live in the house. My opportune moment came one day after school. I walked up to the house and my urchins had trained all the urchins in our neighborhood to sing the Yovo song to me but instead of “Yovo” they said “Dione!” So it went something like this:
“Dione! Dione! Bon soir!”
“ça va, bien? Merci!”
I was so excited that instead of screaming “foreigner” at me that they remembered my name that I decided this was to be Silly Band Distribution Day. Little did I know that it was going to cause so many problems. Once I handed out a silly band to all the little kids, the older teen sisters wanted them. I had planned on that so I gave one of the sisters a pile of like 15-20 Silly Bands to disperse to the other sisters. I went out back to sit with the women while they were cooking and I got mobbed by like 10 people wanting more Silly Bands. The kids wanted new ones. Some of them were chewing on them like pieces of gum while other hitting each other with them. The sisters all claimed that I didn’t give them any Silly Bands when I personally helped the one sister hand them out so I knew that wasn’t true. In this confusion, the little kids starting seriously injuring each other in an attempt to supply their newly acquired Silly Band addiction. The parents who were sitting around either looked at me like it was my fault or started beating their kids to get them to stop complaining/fighting OR chastising me for not giving them a Silly Band. The sisters kept harassing me for more Silly Bands and when I said I had already given them to them they held up their Band-less wrists and said, “Well then where are they?”. Then they started grabbing at the blue duck bracelet what I was wearing on my wrist that has sentimental value and saying I should give them that one. They tried to physically take it off me. This and the mob of kids pawing at me and demanding more broke me. I shouted in broken French something like this, “NO! This is a little gift from someone in the United States. Someone in the United States sent it to me and it is for me and you CANNOT have it. Stop you! Maybe it was not a good idea for me to give the Silly Band!” After this I could hear the sister mocking my over emotional reaction in the alley behind the house from my bedroom window. What could have been a sweet little moment with my host family turned into a shit storm in which I was alternately made to feel guilty, embarrassed, or super bitter and angry for having to deal with this unintended scenario. It was AWFUL.
Africa: Where T-Shirts Go To Die (8-14-10)
Have you ever wondered what happened to that obnoxious Mickey Mouse t-shirt that you bought when you were twelve at Disney Land and then never saw again? How about that festive “Curves” t-shirt you worked out so hard for last fall, ladies? Well don’t fret; it’s probably on the back of some African. More particularly it’s probably being worn by someone in my host family.
I have been noticing for weeks that people often wear the most random clothes here and I was compelled to write this entry because of a very special t-shirt I saw some ten year old kid sporting this evening while on a walk with my host sister. The shirt said something like, “Mabel’s Whore House: Las Vegas”. All I know for sure is that the shirt said “whore” really big on the front and a kid was wearing it. I laughed out loud and then tried for twenty minutes to explain to my sister why and then gave up and decided to share it all with you! Last weekend one of my host brothers came into the room wearing a Halloween “Curves” shirt-yes, like from the women’s workout club! My best guess is that it was used as an incentive for women to not eat so much Halloween candy?! Moving past the irony of a weight loss t-shirt celebrating a candy-coated holiday, we must examine how in the world a Beninese teenage got a hold of this t-shirt. I’m thinking some good intentioned women’s group got together to help the “Africa children” and decided to clothe them with donated t-shirts and such. Or maybe Africa is where the Salvation Army sends its extra drop-offs? Or maybe Curves has gone global and I just didn’t know.
In addition to t-shirts, one can find a smorgasbord of inappropriate/misinterpreted clothing here in Benin. My sister wears a bathing suit tank top that I’m pretty sure I’ve seen in the States for a shirt several times a week. It is common to see women walking around with shower caps during or after a rainstorm to protect their hair. Every once in a while I come home to one of the children around the house wearing a puffy winter coat. I was stuck in the middle of an argument between all the adults in Hausa the other night and when I looked around for help, the only person around was one of the urchin children and he was spinning around in circles in the corner of the courtyard while wearing a bright pink winter coat unzipped over his birthday suit. I couldn’t find a single reason to critique this child’s fashion choices. It had gotten chilly that evening but he was prepared in case his spinning caused his body heat to rise too dramatically for him to maintain homeostasis. Smart kid.
In other news, I visited my future village this past weekend and it was crazy.
Highlights:
-There is a little midget woman who works in the market and who is going to be my best friend.
-There is another marché maman who sent me Sangria as a welcome gift and told me that she knew I would do well in the village because of my smile.
-There is a monkey that hangs out in the marché (market).
-I ran into a ragtag group of kids who were blocking the dirt path out of my village with a rope made out of leaves and demanding a toll. I’m sure if they are there playing an African version of Lemonade Stand or if they are an actual orphan gang who set up the toll for a living. Either way I am also going to make them be my friends.
-My village is beautiful and everyone seems really nice.
Some not so awesome things:
-It’s a tiny village in Africa and it really just hit me that this is what I am doing with my life now. I haven’t really gotten a chance to sit down and think about how much my life has changed in the last 6 months until now and it hit me really hard this weekend. I left all the people and things that have come to define me and it is going to be harder than I thought.
-I have a nice private latrine, but it is still a latrine. Latrine= hole in the ground that I have to squat over whenever I want to go to the bathroom. Some other volunteers with latrines have to walk out of their house and across the yard to get to the latrine every time they want to go to the bathroom so everyone in their concession knows what they are up to and will often stop them to chat on their way even though it is obvious that they have toilet paper in their hands. My latrine is a room attached to the back of my house and has a pipe that directs unseemly smells out of it.
-I have a nice outdoor shower but that just means that I will be standing outside (in a roofless room of sorts) and pouring water over my head from a bucket.
-A lot of people in my village don’t even speak French so I have to learn Sahoué, the most common local language. This is both exciting and a little discouraging because I am struggling right now to learn French and I probably won’t be able to use it with a lot of the women who will become my friends L. On the upside, if I work really hard I could be fluent in two more languages instead of one by the time I’m done here. Since most of the local women only speak Sahoué (and other African local languages)and they will most likely be the people, aside from my students, who I will be spending most of my time with, it is possible that I can become fluent. We’ll see!
Funny/awkward story: When I got home from visiting my village I walked straight through my gate into a Muslim prayer session of about 30 people. Literally the entire family was in the courtyard alternately standing and kneeling on rugs in a ceremony being led by a Muslim priest of sorts. I was carrying a bunch of bags and a cement sack of oranges that I brought back as a gift and I had to inch around all the people as they were praying to get to the door of the house. I had no idea what I was supposed to do. I wanted to make sure I greeted my maman and didn’t seem anti-social and I also wanted to present her with the bag of oranges I brought back from my village since I had lugged them all over Southern Benin for the previous two days on various modes of transport including a crowded car full of strangers that included a woman breastfeeding her baby amidst the 6 of us who were shoved in the back seat as well as a Zem. I say all this like you should be impressed but you would be amazed at the things one can find delicately balancing on the back of a Zem here. My personal favorite so far includes two people and two live goats. Back to my story, I basically just sat on a chair in the courtyard and waited for the ceremony to be over completely unsure if I was offending anyone n any way. It was super awkward.
I had forgotten that Ramadan had started while I was away and the family it pretty serious with the whole Muslim thing, which is to be expected. They are currently fasting from five in the morning to seven at night. Last weekend I realized too late that I accidentally fed some of the urchin children and probably made Allah very unhappy with them. I was eating a delicious lunch that I had guiltily watched Aisha (one of the sisters who I spend a lot of time with but who does not speak French so there are a lot of awkward silent pauses) make me in the middle of her long day of fasting. It was an omelet with onions, tomatoes, and peppers on top of some fried ignames, which are basically yams but taste sort of like potatoes. This has become my favorite meal that the host family makes me though it is quickly becoming edged out by these fried vegetable dough things that the second or third wife has started making since Ramadan started. The family starts eating them as soon as the fasting stops for the evening and usually they give me an entire bowl of them and they are so good. Anyways, I didn’t realize until days later that the reason the urchin children were begging me for food more than usual was because it was Ramadan and that I had provided several of them with pieces of the pineapple I had eaten for lunch. Oops.
I have been noticing for weeks that people often wear the most random clothes here and I was compelled to write this entry because of a very special t-shirt I saw some ten year old kid sporting this evening while on a walk with my host sister. The shirt said something like, “Mabel’s Whore House: Las Vegas”. All I know for sure is that the shirt said “whore” really big on the front and a kid was wearing it. I laughed out loud and then tried for twenty minutes to explain to my sister why and then gave up and decided to share it all with you! Last weekend one of my host brothers came into the room wearing a Halloween “Curves” shirt-yes, like from the women’s workout club! My best guess is that it was used as an incentive for women to not eat so much Halloween candy?! Moving past the irony of a weight loss t-shirt celebrating a candy-coated holiday, we must examine how in the world a Beninese teenage got a hold of this t-shirt. I’m thinking some good intentioned women’s group got together to help the “Africa children” and decided to clothe them with donated t-shirts and such. Or maybe Africa is where the Salvation Army sends its extra drop-offs? Or maybe Curves has gone global and I just didn’t know.
In addition to t-shirts, one can find a smorgasbord of inappropriate/misinterpreted clothing here in Benin. My sister wears a bathing suit tank top that I’m pretty sure I’ve seen in the States for a shirt several times a week. It is common to see women walking around with shower caps during or after a rainstorm to protect their hair. Every once in a while I come home to one of the children around the house wearing a puffy winter coat. I was stuck in the middle of an argument between all the adults in Hausa the other night and when I looked around for help, the only person around was one of the urchin children and he was spinning around in circles in the corner of the courtyard while wearing a bright pink winter coat unzipped over his birthday suit. I couldn’t find a single reason to critique this child’s fashion choices. It had gotten chilly that evening but he was prepared in case his spinning caused his body heat to rise too dramatically for him to maintain homeostasis. Smart kid.
In other news, I visited my future village this past weekend and it was crazy.
Highlights:
-There is a little midget woman who works in the market and who is going to be my best friend.
-There is another marché maman who sent me Sangria as a welcome gift and told me that she knew I would do well in the village because of my smile.
-There is a monkey that hangs out in the marché (market).
-I ran into a ragtag group of kids who were blocking the dirt path out of my village with a rope made out of leaves and demanding a toll. I’m sure if they are there playing an African version of Lemonade Stand or if they are an actual orphan gang who set up the toll for a living. Either way I am also going to make them be my friends.
-My village is beautiful and everyone seems really nice.
Some not so awesome things:
-It’s a tiny village in Africa and it really just hit me that this is what I am doing with my life now. I haven’t really gotten a chance to sit down and think about how much my life has changed in the last 6 months until now and it hit me really hard this weekend. I left all the people and things that have come to define me and it is going to be harder than I thought.
-I have a nice private latrine, but it is still a latrine. Latrine= hole in the ground that I have to squat over whenever I want to go to the bathroom. Some other volunteers with latrines have to walk out of their house and across the yard to get to the latrine every time they want to go to the bathroom so everyone in their concession knows what they are up to and will often stop them to chat on their way even though it is obvious that they have toilet paper in their hands. My latrine is a room attached to the back of my house and has a pipe that directs unseemly smells out of it.
-I have a nice outdoor shower but that just means that I will be standing outside (in a roofless room of sorts) and pouring water over my head from a bucket.
-A lot of people in my village don’t even speak French so I have to learn Sahoué, the most common local language. This is both exciting and a little discouraging because I am struggling right now to learn French and I probably won’t be able to use it with a lot of the women who will become my friends L. On the upside, if I work really hard I could be fluent in two more languages instead of one by the time I’m done here. Since most of the local women only speak Sahoué (and other African local languages)and they will most likely be the people, aside from my students, who I will be spending most of my time with, it is possible that I can become fluent. We’ll see!
Funny/awkward story: When I got home from visiting my village I walked straight through my gate into a Muslim prayer session of about 30 people. Literally the entire family was in the courtyard alternately standing and kneeling on rugs in a ceremony being led by a Muslim priest of sorts. I was carrying a bunch of bags and a cement sack of oranges that I brought back as a gift and I had to inch around all the people as they were praying to get to the door of the house. I had no idea what I was supposed to do. I wanted to make sure I greeted my maman and didn’t seem anti-social and I also wanted to present her with the bag of oranges I brought back from my village since I had lugged them all over Southern Benin for the previous two days on various modes of transport including a crowded car full of strangers that included a woman breastfeeding her baby amidst the 6 of us who were shoved in the back seat as well as a Zem. I say all this like you should be impressed but you would be amazed at the things one can find delicately balancing on the back of a Zem here. My personal favorite so far includes two people and two live goats. Back to my story, I basically just sat on a chair in the courtyard and waited for the ceremony to be over completely unsure if I was offending anyone n any way. It was super awkward.
I had forgotten that Ramadan had started while I was away and the family it pretty serious with the whole Muslim thing, which is to be expected. They are currently fasting from five in the morning to seven at night. Last weekend I realized too late that I accidentally fed some of the urchin children and probably made Allah very unhappy with them. I was eating a delicious lunch that I had guiltily watched Aisha (one of the sisters who I spend a lot of time with but who does not speak French so there are a lot of awkward silent pauses) make me in the middle of her long day of fasting. It was an omelet with onions, tomatoes, and peppers on top of some fried ignames, which are basically yams but taste sort of like potatoes. This has become my favorite meal that the host family makes me though it is quickly becoming edged out by these fried vegetable dough things that the second or third wife has started making since Ramadan started. The family starts eating them as soon as the fasting stops for the evening and usually they give me an entire bowl of them and they are so good. Anyways, I didn’t realize until days later that the reason the urchin children were begging me for food more than usual was because it was Ramadan and that I had provided several of them with pieces of the pineapple I had eaten for lunch. Oops.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)