In Benin, Kids Bring Machetes to the First Day of School!

I LOVE the first day of school. I love everything about the “back to school” season. Back to school shopping was one of my favorite experiences growing up. It was more than just the excitement of getting to pick out a new backpack, lunchbox, and crayon box. For me, back to school was a time of giddy anticipation. I didn’t love getting up early or having to do homework, but for some reason I loved going back to school in the fall. I loved seeing everybody after what seemed like ages. I loved waiting to see if there were any new kids in our class of kids who had all basically gone to school together our whole lives. I love the feeling in the air the first day of school as well as the smell of the school on the first day. Maybe it was all the new plastic and polyester accoutrements that made the first day of school smell that way or maybe it was just me. I never really told too many people about my love of “back to school” because I’m sure they would hate me or laugh.
Obviously, back to school season is a little different in Benin. The kids wear uniforms but they are all these khaki outfits that are made for them by the tailors in the village. There is a tailor across the street from my house who has been “working on” three dresses for me for three weeks but has really just been making little khaki outfits for all the kids who are going back to school. The tailor across the street works in a building made out of mud brick and has a sewing machine but it is powered by a foot pedal. I just got one of my dresses back from her and it was done really well. Anyways, back to the “back to school”. In Benin, the first day of school is official, but most of the students don’t show up and neither do the teachers. Students generally trickle in for the first few weeks of class. Teachers show up only to write their schedules on the board. I think I was the only person teaching the first week of school and I had about twenty of my supposed sixtyish students there. My classrooms are open air cement rooms with a chalk board, desks, and a dirt floor. The “cafeteria” is a thatched roof pavilion where moms come to sell food around lunch time. The kids who do show up for the first week of school come with brooms and machetes. The brooms are to sweep the garbage out of the classrooms and the dirt off the desks. The machetes are to hack away at grass that has grown in the school yard over the summer. I was so confused when I saw the kids walking up with machetes on the first day. At lunch time I stood in the “cafeteria”, ate some rice, and watched a bunch of kids hack through chest high grass. Suddenly there was a lot of yelling and running and pointing. It turns out that the kids found a python! They got a big stick (more like a branch) and lifted the python out of the grass with it. The python was at least 4 feet long and HUGE! One of the older kids carried the stick and the snake over to the jungle and through them both into it. They also found a hedgehog in the fifteen minutes that I was standing there. I almost didn’t want to leave for fear that I would miss an African bigfoot emerging out of the grass.