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).
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