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.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
The Mamans and the Papas
This evening I had a chat with my maman in which I discovered the source of at least some of the millions of urchin/slumdog children that run around my house. Apparently, my papa here in Benin has 3 wives and they all live on different floors of this house! It is actually quite common in Benin for men to have up to four wives but I just thought that most of the women around this house were sisters, daughters, and aunts. I could care less either way but it would have been nice to know that I was living on the set of “Big Love: Africa” before now. But you should all be aware (because my maman made sure that I was very clear about this) that my maman is the first wife and the most powerful. She told me about how she is in charge of all the cooking and cleaning and the running of the house. That is a source of pride with many women in Benin and that means that the 2nd and 3rd wives don’t really get to feed their husband like my maman does so they have a different status. The husbands here with more wives typically spend two days in a row with each wife and then move to the next. Many of them have families in different houses in different parts of the city and move around to each house every few days or every week. Apparently in my house, the papa can conveniently just walk up or down a flight of stairs to see his wives.*
*I want to be clear that I deeply respect the women of my house and the family that I am staying with as well as the Beninoise people as a whole even if for some reason my comedic writing makes it seem like I am mocking. That is not my intention. I’m trying to relate their culture to you so that you can understand it a little but more and maybe also respect it.
My maman is middle aged and wears beautiful tissue (the patterned fabric that everyone wears here). She is pretty funny and really nice. She has a few gold teeth which sort of makes her look pirate-ish but that is common here (the gold crowns, not pirates). She is going to help me hand wash my laundry this weekend which should be an adventure. The thing that I am most stressed about is having to hang up my underwear, bras, and the rest of my clothing outside for every person in this house to look at. There are at least 10 women/teenage girls who do the work of women who live/work around here and I’m sure that they would love to chat about my underclothes with or without me. Although I guess that wouldn’t be as bad as the children who run around here. I can barely get them to stop pawing at my hair, skin, and general self. I cannot imagine the amount of times they would rub their grimy hands all over my stuff if they had the chance and I wasn’t there yelling at them to stop.
Back to my maman, the first day we met she told me that since I was American then that must mean I was Christian and that she was a Muslim but she told me not to worry because, “We have the same heart, you and I” and gestured from her chest to mine. Now that I have seen her bare chest at least a dozen times, I’m beginning to wonder if I misunderstood what she said. Maybe she was pointing to her chest and saying something like, “You poor thing, I hope you are comfortable living in a house full of Muslim women who feel it necessary to cover their head at inane moments throughout the day but do not find it at all odd to sit around topless in front of strangers.” It is common (at least in my house) for the older women to sit topless in my maman’s room at night and watch Spanish soap operas that have been dubbed into French. Some other shows that might interest you: Campus (pronounced Cam-poose)-An overacted drama about a group of West African students living on some college campus somewhere in West Africa and doing scandalous things. And this other show that I have dubbed “The Fallen”-a series of old photographs of people who have just died followed by their obituary all presented in silence on the tv screen with a fancy blue background. The women actually watch this procession of the dead for at least a half hour every night. So odd. One time I watched the French Spanish soap operas with my sister in the corner while maman did her prayers right in front of us so we had to crane our necks to see if the dying grandpa was going to remember his daughter or keep calling her “Maria” and believing that she was a former lover while she sat there crying, “Papa, c’est moi, tu fille!” (Papa, its me, your daughter!). Riveting.
Yesterday I exchanged $100 USD (which is a good portion of the money that I have to my name) with a man sitting on a bench on the side of the road. Shady? No, it was ridiculously sunny and hot. I have been trying to exchange money since I have gotten here and it has proven quite difficult. The banks all close around the time that I can get to them after school and sometime the people at the bank just don’t want to exchange your money. I don’t really need to exchange money for anything because I am getting paid enough money by the Peace Corps to eat and stuff but I really want to buy a phone so I can talk to people back home. Apparently all the volunteers here have one and many of the people in my staging group already have them. I decided the other day after school that I was going to exchange my money and that my family was going to help me whether they liked it or not. I harassed my siblings until they convinced one of my brothers to go with me. We walked several miles and got the banks only to find out that they were all closed! I should probably tell you that the only other significant experience I have had so far with this brother was when I got a little but snippy with him one day after school when he kept mumbling at me and would not enunciate and then attempted to grab my arm every 5 five minutes which the pretense of crossing the street but I really think he was just trying to touch me. It’s mostly inappropriate for a man here to touch you if you are not family. And while I am a host sister, I think maman and Allah would think there is still a big enough difference between me and my brother to warrant him keeping his hands off of me. Plus, I am pawed pretty regularly by the ragamuffins around my house and I was not having a good day and he was a convenient target for my anger.
Back to the money story, I’m almost certain that if my brother (his name is Halelo) didn’t hate me before we walked several miles in the heat that he was going to hate me now. Then a Nigerian saved the day! Well, I am assuming he was Nigerian because every time I tell someone that I changed money with a shady looking person on the street they say something along the lines of, “Oh you found a Nigerian?”. We were about to give up our search when my brother said something that translated to, “I know a guy…”. At this point I was more than willing to give my money to “a guy” because it was just worthless paper in my wallet at the moment and I just wanted to stop walking and to have him quit asking me what I was going to do about “the money problem” We walked up to the guy and he was sitting on a wooden bench and leaning against a building. He had a table in front of him that held an enormous stack of West African money and a calculator. Legit. Too legit to quit! I actually got a really good exchange rate from him and lucked out. Plus, on the walk home, we ran into my brothers funny old English teacher and that was an awesome conversation starter. The teacher sort of reminded me of what Jafar looks like in Aladdin at the beginning when he is pretending to be a toothless old man and he convinces Aladdin to go to the Cave of Wonders or whatever it is called. Except this old man was wearing an impressive hat and was sporting an even more impressive beard. After that, my brother and I bonded and little and I am really glad I forced him to take me to get money.
Some things I am excited about for the near future:
1) I just bought some awesome tissue to make into dresses and I can’t wait to take them to the seamstress person.
2) I should be receiving tons of mail and packages soon (wink)
3) I find out which village I will be teaching in NEXT FRIDAY (August 6)
4) I get to visit my village and meet my school director the week after that!
5) I should be buying a phone soon and will actually be able to talk to people I love for more than 5-10 minute sessions.
*I want to be clear that I deeply respect the women of my house and the family that I am staying with as well as the Beninoise people as a whole even if for some reason my comedic writing makes it seem like I am mocking. That is not my intention. I’m trying to relate their culture to you so that you can understand it a little but more and maybe also respect it.
My maman is middle aged and wears beautiful tissue (the patterned fabric that everyone wears here). She is pretty funny and really nice. She has a few gold teeth which sort of makes her look pirate-ish but that is common here (the gold crowns, not pirates). She is going to help me hand wash my laundry this weekend which should be an adventure. The thing that I am most stressed about is having to hang up my underwear, bras, and the rest of my clothing outside for every person in this house to look at. There are at least 10 women/teenage girls who do the work of women who live/work around here and I’m sure that they would love to chat about my underclothes with or without me. Although I guess that wouldn’t be as bad as the children who run around here. I can barely get them to stop pawing at my hair, skin, and general self. I cannot imagine the amount of times they would rub their grimy hands all over my stuff if they had the chance and I wasn’t there yelling at them to stop.
Back to my maman, the first day we met she told me that since I was American then that must mean I was Christian and that she was a Muslim but she told me not to worry because, “We have the same heart, you and I” and gestured from her chest to mine. Now that I have seen her bare chest at least a dozen times, I’m beginning to wonder if I misunderstood what she said. Maybe she was pointing to her chest and saying something like, “You poor thing, I hope you are comfortable living in a house full of Muslim women who feel it necessary to cover their head at inane moments throughout the day but do not find it at all odd to sit around topless in front of strangers.” It is common (at least in my house) for the older women to sit topless in my maman’s room at night and watch Spanish soap operas that have been dubbed into French. Some other shows that might interest you: Campus (pronounced Cam-poose)-An overacted drama about a group of West African students living on some college campus somewhere in West Africa and doing scandalous things. And this other show that I have dubbed “The Fallen”-a series of old photographs of people who have just died followed by their obituary all presented in silence on the tv screen with a fancy blue background. The women actually watch this procession of the dead for at least a half hour every night. So odd. One time I watched the French Spanish soap operas with my sister in the corner while maman did her prayers right in front of us so we had to crane our necks to see if the dying grandpa was going to remember his daughter or keep calling her “Maria” and believing that she was a former lover while she sat there crying, “Papa, c’est moi, tu fille!” (Papa, its me, your daughter!). Riveting.
Yesterday I exchanged $100 USD (which is a good portion of the money that I have to my name) with a man sitting on a bench on the side of the road. Shady? No, it was ridiculously sunny and hot. I have been trying to exchange money since I have gotten here and it has proven quite difficult. The banks all close around the time that I can get to them after school and sometime the people at the bank just don’t want to exchange your money. I don’t really need to exchange money for anything because I am getting paid enough money by the Peace Corps to eat and stuff but I really want to buy a phone so I can talk to people back home. Apparently all the volunteers here have one and many of the people in my staging group already have them. I decided the other day after school that I was going to exchange my money and that my family was going to help me whether they liked it or not. I harassed my siblings until they convinced one of my brothers to go with me. We walked several miles and got the banks only to find out that they were all closed! I should probably tell you that the only other significant experience I have had so far with this brother was when I got a little but snippy with him one day after school when he kept mumbling at me and would not enunciate and then attempted to grab my arm every 5 five minutes which the pretense of crossing the street but I really think he was just trying to touch me. It’s mostly inappropriate for a man here to touch you if you are not family. And while I am a host sister, I think maman and Allah would think there is still a big enough difference between me and my brother to warrant him keeping his hands off of me. Plus, I am pawed pretty regularly by the ragamuffins around my house and I was not having a good day and he was a convenient target for my anger.
Back to the money story, I’m almost certain that if my brother (his name is Halelo) didn’t hate me before we walked several miles in the heat that he was going to hate me now. Then a Nigerian saved the day! Well, I am assuming he was Nigerian because every time I tell someone that I changed money with a shady looking person on the street they say something along the lines of, “Oh you found a Nigerian?”. We were about to give up our search when my brother said something that translated to, “I know a guy…”. At this point I was more than willing to give my money to “a guy” because it was just worthless paper in my wallet at the moment and I just wanted to stop walking and to have him quit asking me what I was going to do about “the money problem” We walked up to the guy and he was sitting on a wooden bench and leaning against a building. He had a table in front of him that held an enormous stack of West African money and a calculator. Legit. Too legit to quit! I actually got a really good exchange rate from him and lucked out. Plus, on the walk home, we ran into my brothers funny old English teacher and that was an awesome conversation starter. The teacher sort of reminded me of what Jafar looks like in Aladdin at the beginning when he is pretending to be a toothless old man and he convinces Aladdin to go to the Cave of Wonders or whatever it is called. Except this old man was wearing an impressive hat and was sporting an even more impressive beard. After that, my brother and I bonded and little and I am really glad I forced him to take me to get money.
Some things I am excited about for the near future:
1) I just bought some awesome tissue to make into dresses and I can’t wait to take them to the seamstress person.
2) I should be receiving tons of mail and packages soon (wink)
3) I find out which village I will be teaching in NEXT FRIDAY (August 6)
4) I get to visit my village and meet my school director the week after that!
5) I should be buying a phone soon and will actually be able to talk to people I love for more than 5-10 minute sessions.
Bouvette?!? Oui!
Since the first 9 weeks of Peace Corps life are intense training, they bring in intense trainers who are current volunteers to help! Luckily, these people understand what we are going through and know just the thing to make us feel better: a few beers and lots of complaining. After training today (Tuesday July 27) we walked down the street to a local bouvette (read: shady roadside bar) and actually got to hang out and distress a little bit together. Our days basically consist of intense language and technical training and then sleep so it was a needed relief. It may have been the deux grand Beninoise talking but I really do love most of the people in my staging group for one reason or another. It’s actually kind of surprising how many different types of people and personalities are in our group. I was really worried before I came here that I wouldn’t be able to find people that I could connect with and I’m not really worried about that anymore, which is nice.
After a few hours at the bouvette I figured I should head home since it was getting dark and I cannot even express how many times we have been told not to go out at night. I discovered very quickly that a little alcohol can take you a long way in breaking language barriers. I had to take a Zemidjan home. Zemidjans are these motor bike taxis here that drive real fast and are pretty cheap. You have to “discuter” or argue for a price with them though and that it quite difficult with a limited French vocabulary. But, non, with a few beers, I am almost fluent! I held up my hand, hailed a Zem, and convinced him that he indeed wanted to take me to the school by my house for 200 CFA even though he suggested 300. I also was able to ride a Zem for the first time without being scared shitless. I was so calm on this Zem ride that I even had a moment of deep thought in which I considered how surreal it was that I was riding on the back of a Zemidjan in Africa going home to a family of Beninoise Muslims who spoke Hausa as a first language. After I got off the Zem I had to walk a few blocks to my house. Conveniently, the group of Mamas who I chat with on the road were out so I could try out this new and improved me on them. It was a success! Then I went home and chatted up my family like never before. My sisters appeared to love me more than ever and my mama was glad I was using more French.
This amazing evening came to a skidding halt when my dinner was plopped down in front of me. It was pâte. Pâte (pronounced “pot” ….cue jokes) has become the bane of my existence here in Benin. It is a pasty corn meal business that has the consistency of disgustingly dense mashed potatoes. I have not yet come to love or even like it. I have eaten it twice and gagged like 20 times in the mix. It doesn’t help that it is typically eaten with an accompanying sauce that is slimy and stringy and looks like boogers. I will have you know that in the space of several weeks I have become dramatically less picky about what I eat, but pâte has not made it off my hit list yet. What?! A plate of spaghetti noodles with mayonnaise on top? Wait? Is that a plate full of super spicy whole fish (eyes included)? I’m down. I have managed to convince myself that the mayo spaghetti is just like a casserole that my family makes at home. I even play a little game with myself where I see if I can make myself like something by making pleased noises as I am eating it. That doesn’t work. Saying “yum” and “mmmmm” while eating something you detest just serves to make you bitter and to convince the people around you that you do like the food and that they should make it more often. One thing I do love here is the chicken, the avocado sandwiches, and the bread. I love the fresh made bread they make here. It is delicious. There is a lady that sells avocado sandwiches from a stand near my school and they are delicious. I don’t even like avocados and I am sold. The chicken here is probably the best chicken I have eaten in a while. It is so tasty. My family often gives it to me with a plate of rice and red sauce that they make that is made out of onions and tomatoes and spicyness.
Note: In addition to the cocktail of shots I am receiving I am also eating about 3 oranges a day, so if you have fears about me going pirate and acquiring scurvy you can rest easy. I may be at a high risk for various parasites and “monsters inside me”, but my teeth shouldn’t be rotting out due to a lack of vitamin C.
Second note: After dinner I had a talk with my maman in which she gave me a curfew (8 o’clock) and told me not to come home drunk. I wasn’t sure if she added the “drunk” part because 1) the volunteer they had last year was maybe a drunk, maybe they think all Americans are drunks, or perhaps because she smelled alcohol on my breath and assumed I was drunk and that’s why I was so chatty. Either way it was super awkward and I never want to do it again.
After a few hours at the bouvette I figured I should head home since it was getting dark and I cannot even express how many times we have been told not to go out at night. I discovered very quickly that a little alcohol can take you a long way in breaking language barriers. I had to take a Zemidjan home. Zemidjans are these motor bike taxis here that drive real fast and are pretty cheap. You have to “discuter” or argue for a price with them though and that it quite difficult with a limited French vocabulary. But, non, with a few beers, I am almost fluent! I held up my hand, hailed a Zem, and convinced him that he indeed wanted to take me to the school by my house for 200 CFA even though he suggested 300. I also was able to ride a Zem for the first time without being scared shitless. I was so calm on this Zem ride that I even had a moment of deep thought in which I considered how surreal it was that I was riding on the back of a Zemidjan in Africa going home to a family of Beninoise Muslims who spoke Hausa as a first language. After I got off the Zem I had to walk a few blocks to my house. Conveniently, the group of Mamas who I chat with on the road were out so I could try out this new and improved me on them. It was a success! Then I went home and chatted up my family like never before. My sisters appeared to love me more than ever and my mama was glad I was using more French.
This amazing evening came to a skidding halt when my dinner was plopped down in front of me. It was pâte. Pâte (pronounced “pot” ….cue jokes) has become the bane of my existence here in Benin. It is a pasty corn meal business that has the consistency of disgustingly dense mashed potatoes. I have not yet come to love or even like it. I have eaten it twice and gagged like 20 times in the mix. It doesn’t help that it is typically eaten with an accompanying sauce that is slimy and stringy and looks like boogers. I will have you know that in the space of several weeks I have become dramatically less picky about what I eat, but pâte has not made it off my hit list yet. What?! A plate of spaghetti noodles with mayonnaise on top? Wait? Is that a plate full of super spicy whole fish (eyes included)? I’m down. I have managed to convince myself that the mayo spaghetti is just like a casserole that my family makes at home. I even play a little game with myself where I see if I can make myself like something by making pleased noises as I am eating it. That doesn’t work. Saying “yum” and “mmmmm” while eating something you detest just serves to make you bitter and to convince the people around you that you do like the food and that they should make it more often. One thing I do love here is the chicken, the avocado sandwiches, and the bread. I love the fresh made bread they make here. It is delicious. There is a lady that sells avocado sandwiches from a stand near my school and they are delicious. I don’t even like avocados and I am sold. The chicken here is probably the best chicken I have eaten in a while. It is so tasty. My family often gives it to me with a plate of rice and red sauce that they make that is made out of onions and tomatoes and spicyness.
Note: In addition to the cocktail of shots I am receiving I am also eating about 3 oranges a day, so if you have fears about me going pirate and acquiring scurvy you can rest easy. I may be at a high risk for various parasites and “monsters inside me”, but my teeth shouldn’t be rotting out due to a lack of vitamin C.
Second note: After dinner I had a talk with my maman in which she gave me a curfew (8 o’clock) and told me not to come home drunk. I wasn’t sure if she added the “drunk” part because 1) the volunteer they had last year was maybe a drunk, maybe they think all Americans are drunks, or perhaps because she smelled alcohol on my breath and assumed I was drunk and that’s why I was so chatty. Either way it was super awkward and I never want to do it again.
Je Ne Sais Pas…but I Swear I’m Smart Enough to Get Into MENSA!!!
It is unbelievably frustrating to not be able to speak the same language as the people who surround you on a day to day basis. You know how you talk to people who don’t understand you? You probably talk to them like they are an idiot. I have come to believe that every culture believes that their language is super simple to learn and you could do it if only you just listened to them repeat the same words over and over in an increasingly annoyed voice. That is how I am talked to. I’m almost certain that my host family thinks I am actually here on some program that takes American kids who ate too many paint chips or were raised in an asbestos ridden half-way house and tries to let them see the world. If that were the case, this would be awesome because I would be blissfully unaware of how inept I am at saying even the simplest phrase. Unfortunately, I actually am somewhat intelligent, so I realize how terrible my West African French skills are and am constantly worried about it. Part of my problem is that I took a year of French my freshmen year of college and only kept using the phrases that entertained me after that. Also, the French phrases I remember from the movie Hocus Pocus (“Je voudrait mon livre”) spoken in a funny Bette Midler French accent isn’t going to get me far in West Africa. To my horror, the phrases that entertained me had nothing to do with doing my own laundry or telling a Zemi driver how to get back to my house or even attempting to figure out what time dinner is served at my house. All this complaining aside though, I do think I am learning pretty quickly and at least I am a delightful court jester for my host family to laugh at when I ask for the 30th time what I am supposed to call my water bottle. (Bouteille de l’eau, just in case anyone was left in suspense)
Sarcasm and complaining aside, I really like my host family. There are about a million people who live at my house. It’s actually more like two houses surrounded by a wall with a big courtyard in the middle and a gate. All that sounds fancy, but don’t let it fool you. The women of my family cook almost all of the meals in the alleys behind and next to the house on little hibachi type ovens heated by coal. The men appear to reside in the house across the courtyard. My family is Muslim and I think they are very particular about gender stuff. Although, in reality, the Muslim thing could have very little to do with the gender issues. Most of Benin has different ideas of gender roles than we are not typically used to in the United States. One of the things I am most excited about with my job is that there is a real emphasis on empowering girls in the schools. We got an entire book on it and many of the summer projects we do are girls camps that help girls do better in school and improve their confidence and self-esteem. In my house, the women to all the cooking and housework (and when we think about it, women still do the majority of the work in American houses as well). They sweep the house every morning with brooms that are made out scraggly tree branches or grasses. They cook all day because there are a million people to feed in/around our house. To be honest, I’m not sure who actually lives here and who doesn’t. I have a mama and a papa and then there are tons of children, grandchildren, aunts, uncles, grandparents, nieces, and nephews. Also, there are people who may be distantly related or not related to the family at all who work around the house for their room and board. These are called domestiques. They get treated differently depending on the house they live in. I’m actually not sure which of the younger girls are definitely domestiques in my house because many of the sisters and daughters do a lot of work too. They also do all of the laundry by hand. I haven’t even asked them how to do my laundry yet. They hang it up in the alleys around the house and I’m sure my colorful underwear and bras would prove super entertaining to all the children who run around here.
That’s another thing. There are little kids everywhere here. I walk to school for French class and technical training most days and you would not believe how many kids I see. I can hear them before I see them because they all yell, “YOVO!” which means “white person” or “foreigner”. They even have an adorably annoying little song that goes along with it. Precious. A typical day for me involves waking up and escaping from my mosquito netting around 6:30 AM. I take a cold shower and get ready. Then I go eat delicious fresh made bread that they buy that morning with butter and drink some tea. I take most of my meals in my mama’s dining room by myself. The family insists and I think/hope it is a gesture of respect and not because they hate me so much. I really don’t mind though because it gives me a chance to get some reading in with my busy schedule. Then I either walk/bike/or Zem to school depending on the day and where we are meeting. If I walk or bike I can count on a constant stream of “Yovo!” the entire way there. I have at least convinced the kids who live in/around my house that my name is “Dione” and not “Yovo” so its kind of nice when I come home and they shout “DIONE!” like I am a celebrity. The little girls in/around my house are adorable. The other day I came home and a bunch of them were playing house. The women here carry their babies around their back and wrapped in the fabric of the cloth that they wear in a variety of ways. One of the little girls had an actual blond Barbie doll on her back with the hair sticking out the top of the fabric and the plastic feet sticking out at the bottom at her waist. I didn’t get a look at the face of the Barbie but I am hoping it was one of the really old ones with the creepy faces and it has a long story to tell about how it made its way to West Africa and into the affection of a Beninoise girl. It was the cutest thing ever. The other little girl had a purse full of odds and ends that included a tin can and measuring tape among other things. Today I came home and one of the little boys that runs around the house was wearing the smartest pair of pin striped dress pants, a dirty white button down shirt, and a matching pin striped vest. I have no idea where he got it but he looked like quite the little gentleman.
I have a lot of French lessons and some teaching stuff mixed in to my school day. Also, there are classes on surviving in Africa and such. Today (Tuesday July 27, 2010), we got a morning’s worth of information on diarrhea and how to avoid/prevent/treat it while patiently waiting in line for our Hepatitis shots. After school I usually head home. Besides the main roads, which are paved with stone, most of the roads in Benin are dirt/sand roads with lots of rocks and garbage. It’s a good thing that the Peace Corps gave us mountain bikes because it is quite a trek for me to get to school and it’s really only about a 5 minute bike ride. Once I get home I usually have about an hour or two to myself. I have tried to do some yoga and that is a great stress reliever. I am ridiculously happy with myself that I brought my yoga mat here. When “Alone Time With Dione” is over, I usually go out behind/next to the house and sit with the women while they cook. For the longest time I thought my French was actually worse than it is because I could not understand anything the women were saying to each other while I sat there. Then I learned that the language of the family is Hausa and they mostly speak that at home even though many of them speak French. They tolerate my infantile French though, so I’m not complaining. I’ve already learned some phrases in Hausa to surprise my mama when she comes home and the kids think it is hilarious.
It is custom to call most older women here “mama” as a title so there are actually lots of “mamas” that live in and around my house. There is a group of mamas that live/are on my route home that I am in the process of charming. Salutations and greetings are also really important here and the first time I saw them all sitting and gossiping I decided that they might be a good group to win over so I went over and greeted them. This was actually one of my first real successes here in Benin I think. I chatted with the women and did all the proper greetings and salutations and I’m pretty sure I am their favorite American now. When I walked away I realized that I had just had a conversation in French with natives and I had survived and been successful. These are the small things that get me through the day most of the time here. Every day and really every section of the day is different for me. I’ll have a great evening with my family only to wake up feeling terrible and not wanting to be here at all. Then I will have an awesome French lesson and be super excited to use what I learn. Then I will attempt to use that French only to have people stare at me like I am Jodie Foster in Nell. Then I will have a technical session on teaching and I will get super excited about getting to know my students and becoming a part of my village. Then I will start to think of people back home and what they might be doing. So basically I take it hour to hour and day to day here. There are some days that I love it and can’t believe that I have the opportunity to sit with the women of my family and chat and exchange our lives and culture halfway around the world. There are other days when culture shock hits me and I can’t believe I have gotten myself this far from home.
Sarcasm and complaining aside, I really like my host family. There are about a million people who live at my house. It’s actually more like two houses surrounded by a wall with a big courtyard in the middle and a gate. All that sounds fancy, but don’t let it fool you. The women of my family cook almost all of the meals in the alleys behind and next to the house on little hibachi type ovens heated by coal. The men appear to reside in the house across the courtyard. My family is Muslim and I think they are very particular about gender stuff. Although, in reality, the Muslim thing could have very little to do with the gender issues. Most of Benin has different ideas of gender roles than we are not typically used to in the United States. One of the things I am most excited about with my job is that there is a real emphasis on empowering girls in the schools. We got an entire book on it and many of the summer projects we do are girls camps that help girls do better in school and improve their confidence and self-esteem. In my house, the women to all the cooking and housework (and when we think about it, women still do the majority of the work in American houses as well). They sweep the house every morning with brooms that are made out scraggly tree branches or grasses. They cook all day because there are a million people to feed in/around our house. To be honest, I’m not sure who actually lives here and who doesn’t. I have a mama and a papa and then there are tons of children, grandchildren, aunts, uncles, grandparents, nieces, and nephews. Also, there are people who may be distantly related or not related to the family at all who work around the house for their room and board. These are called domestiques. They get treated differently depending on the house they live in. I’m actually not sure which of the younger girls are definitely domestiques in my house because many of the sisters and daughters do a lot of work too. They also do all of the laundry by hand. I haven’t even asked them how to do my laundry yet. They hang it up in the alleys around the house and I’m sure my colorful underwear and bras would prove super entertaining to all the children who run around here.
That’s another thing. There are little kids everywhere here. I walk to school for French class and technical training most days and you would not believe how many kids I see. I can hear them before I see them because they all yell, “YOVO!” which means “white person” or “foreigner”. They even have an adorably annoying little song that goes along with it. Precious. A typical day for me involves waking up and escaping from my mosquito netting around 6:30 AM. I take a cold shower and get ready. Then I go eat delicious fresh made bread that they buy that morning with butter and drink some tea. I take most of my meals in my mama’s dining room by myself. The family insists and I think/hope it is a gesture of respect and not because they hate me so much. I really don’t mind though because it gives me a chance to get some reading in with my busy schedule. Then I either walk/bike/or Zem to school depending on the day and where we are meeting. If I walk or bike I can count on a constant stream of “Yovo!” the entire way there. I have at least convinced the kids who live in/around my house that my name is “Dione” and not “Yovo” so its kind of nice when I come home and they shout “DIONE!” like I am a celebrity. The little girls in/around my house are adorable. The other day I came home and a bunch of them were playing house. The women here carry their babies around their back and wrapped in the fabric of the cloth that they wear in a variety of ways. One of the little girls had an actual blond Barbie doll on her back with the hair sticking out the top of the fabric and the plastic feet sticking out at the bottom at her waist. I didn’t get a look at the face of the Barbie but I am hoping it was one of the really old ones with the creepy faces and it has a long story to tell about how it made its way to West Africa and into the affection of a Beninoise girl. It was the cutest thing ever. The other little girl had a purse full of odds and ends that included a tin can and measuring tape among other things. Today I came home and one of the little boys that runs around the house was wearing the smartest pair of pin striped dress pants, a dirty white button down shirt, and a matching pin striped vest. I have no idea where he got it but he looked like quite the little gentleman.
I have a lot of French lessons and some teaching stuff mixed in to my school day. Also, there are classes on surviving in Africa and such. Today (Tuesday July 27, 2010), we got a morning’s worth of information on diarrhea and how to avoid/prevent/treat it while patiently waiting in line for our Hepatitis shots. After school I usually head home. Besides the main roads, which are paved with stone, most of the roads in Benin are dirt/sand roads with lots of rocks and garbage. It’s a good thing that the Peace Corps gave us mountain bikes because it is quite a trek for me to get to school and it’s really only about a 5 minute bike ride. Once I get home I usually have about an hour or two to myself. I have tried to do some yoga and that is a great stress reliever. I am ridiculously happy with myself that I brought my yoga mat here. When “Alone Time With Dione” is over, I usually go out behind/next to the house and sit with the women while they cook. For the longest time I thought my French was actually worse than it is because I could not understand anything the women were saying to each other while I sat there. Then I learned that the language of the family is Hausa and they mostly speak that at home even though many of them speak French. They tolerate my infantile French though, so I’m not complaining. I’ve already learned some phrases in Hausa to surprise my mama when she comes home and the kids think it is hilarious.
It is custom to call most older women here “mama” as a title so there are actually lots of “mamas” that live in and around my house. There is a group of mamas that live/are on my route home that I am in the process of charming. Salutations and greetings are also really important here and the first time I saw them all sitting and gossiping I decided that they might be a good group to win over so I went over and greeted them. This was actually one of my first real successes here in Benin I think. I chatted with the women and did all the proper greetings and salutations and I’m pretty sure I am their favorite American now. When I walked away I realized that I had just had a conversation in French with natives and I had survived and been successful. These are the small things that get me through the day most of the time here. Every day and really every section of the day is different for me. I’ll have a great evening with my family only to wake up feeling terrible and not wanting to be here at all. Then I will have an awesome French lesson and be super excited to use what I learn. Then I will attempt to use that French only to have people stare at me like I am Jodie Foster in Nell. Then I will have a technical session on teaching and I will get super excited about getting to know my students and becoming a part of my village. Then I will start to think of people back home and what they might be doing. So basically I take it hour to hour and day to day here. There are some days that I love it and can’t believe that I have the opportunity to sit with the women of my family and chat and exchange our lives and culture halfway around the world. There are other days when culture shock hits me and I can’t believe I have gotten myself this far from home.
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