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.