Captain's Log

Captain’s Log: Crossroads of Benin There, and Where the Hell Am I? If this post is somewhat schizophrenically structured, it’s because I’ve been writing it in pieces over the last few weeks, spanning the weeks leading up to swear in, and through my first few weeks at post. I’ll try and do this for the next couple weeks because I won’t have a lot of time to go to the cyber café until around mid-December, when my lockdown is over. Lockdown is the first three months at post during which time I am not allowed to leave my village. A few days before swear-in, all of the to-be volunteers went on a field trip to Ouiddah. Ouiddah is the city where the former slave trade port in Benin was located. There was a lot of incredibly depressing things there. Anyone like “white guilt”? There was a mass grave for slaves who couldn’t “pass” their physical, and there was a huge arch on the beach called “the door of no return.” To emphasize the severity of its name and meaning, there was a gold embossed image on top of the arch depicting slaves chained together walking towards the beach/ship. On the other side, they were walking towards the viewer, and away from the jungle/Benin. I may never be able to correctly process my emotions from that day. I kept imagining what it would have been like to walk through that gate and see a ship waiting a half-mile offshore for me. I thought the walk down to the water would be like a walk on the beach socal style, but then I realized how much broken glass there was and put my shoes back on. My friend made a good point about this tour though, saying that it was a tour of the city of Ouiddah, which didn’t begin or end with the slave trade. That’s a very crucial thing to think about at a place like that. We learned a lot about their early religious practices and lineages of kings as well. For swear in, most of the male volunteers grew mustaches. Yeah bro. Also, because we had progressed from such a low level to such a high level in French, my friend Sarah and I were asked to give a speech in French, which was broadcast around Benin. So if you’ve got yourself a satellite dish and stumble across some eclectic West African news program you paid for to feel worldly, and see a dark-haired fellow looking startlingly like Doc Holliday, wearing some kind of purplish, bluish moo-moo outfit and speaking in awkward French, you may have just spotted me. Swear-in was a lot of fun, and afterwards we all got our Identification Cards and took our first trip to the bank (prior to being given checkbooks at swear-in, PC reps came every two weeks to give us money for food and transport). I don’t like the banks in West Africa, I see no method to the madness. Then a group of us stumbled into a restaurant called Bangkok Terrace, which is similar to American faux-Chinese restaurants, but ran by actual Chinese people living in Cotonou. Amazing. Little breaks from the madness of Benin, and especially Cotonou, have been my saving grace. For instance, when you walk into this restaurant, all the noise of traffic and vendors disappears. There is a small water-powered mill rotating slowly to the right as you walk over a small bridge and small garden into the glass-walled restaurant. They serve water with lemon, and amazing servings of everything. I am planning a trip there soon. That night we had our big “hooray we’re finally volunteers!” party in Porto Novo. It is a well-known Peace Corps fact that you are not a real person until you swear in. Ergo, I felt a lot taller after that. The party was fun, and the next day we all started heading out to post in waves. As of right now, I am at post in Klouekanme (roughly, Klik-a-may: no people don’t speak in clicks). A Peace Corps Rite of Passage among Volunteers emerges through arrival at post. For the first time since your arrival, you really are truly alone. Not in the sense that there are no people around you anymore, but in the sense that you realize how dependant you may or may not (and probably are) on the presence of Americans. At that moment, I really had to take stock of what I had with me that was familiar. Many people react in different ways. Mine wasn’t as bad as most, but it was definitely not on par with “normal human behavior.” It’s one of those things that you have to trust will pass. You have to hope it will so you can be effective in your community. In fact, I am fairly certain that the first few weeks, and possibly months, are more about grit than skill or cultural acceptance. It’s a jolt to your system. You’ve just got to realize that it isn’t supposed to be easy. It isn’t supposed to be comfortable. Not at first anyways. All the same, I’ve been missing Stage lately. Stage is the in-country pre-service training, which lasted 9 weeks in Porto Novo. It’s difficult to go from near-constant contact with Americans, to none at all. Especially since we were playing football and soccer all the time and being super American-y. I didn’t realize how dependant I had become on contact with Americans until I got to post and had none. For the last few weeks, my daily schedule has consisted of waking up around six, taking a bucket shower and eating breakfast. School starts around 8 most days, but I only work three days a week. Either way, still wake up around six every day. My school is a ten minute walk from the house, and usually I leave at the same time as a lot of students, so I end up walking with a flock of students all wearing their tan khaki uniforms. It took a while for classes to get started, and essentially they still haven’t quite started. The school grounds at the beginning of the school year are overgrown with high grass and weeds, so the first couple weeks are spent with all the kids out in the fields hacking away. As of right now, each of my classes has about fifty students in attendance, but since I’m at a bit of a bigger school I can expect around seventy or so once they’ve all shown up. So while I wait I’ve been reviewing verb tenses: simple present, present continuous, simple past, WOOT! Who knows? I may even work in some definite and indefinite articles soon. Booyakasha! One of my classes is in a borderline bamboo hut with a tin roof that gets so hot in the mid-afternoon heat that my small cardboard-ish chalkboard starts steaming. I’ve been surviving that super hot classroom by laughing at the idea of myself teaching, guzzling water, sweating profusely, and steadily dirtying whatever shirt I’m wearing to an unheard of degree in West Africa. That whole living in West Africa thing hasn’t really hit me. After class I walk back home or to buy some food amid the cries of Yovo! Yovo! Apparently that means white, but foreigner seems more appropriate. From what I’ve gathered from volunteers and Beninese, the French missionaries that used to live here taught kids all around Benin to sing a song combining the native language, “Yovo,” with French. So now, all of the kids sing a song to me constantly that feels both condescending and admiring: yovo yovo bonsoir, ca va bien, merci. Okay, maybe not admiring, but not entirely patronizing. The French missionaries may have thought it was cute, but it very well may be the most annoying song I’ve ever heard. Arriving at home, I’ll pull some water out of the well to shower with and boil for drinking water the next day. Then read until there’s no more light, because my electricity doesn’t work very well, and crash around 9. Every five days there is a marche day/market day, where vendors from all over come and sell stuff. They also count the current day, so if Monday is marche day, the next one is Friday. I love being able to tell when the next marche is by looking at my hand. It has a very simple brilliance to it. I had heard during stage that the marche at my post was crazy, but I had no idea. My first day at the marche here in Klouekanme was insane. I’ve never seen so many people. I was hit with a wheelbarrow, and I saw a woman carrying a basin of rice on her head hit with a motorcycle. Yes, motorcycles charge through the marche and crowds of people. I would guess a couple thousand people were circling around the center of town. I’ve found the key for me to deal with it is to set little goals for myself. The other day I found sugar for the first time, and was super pumped. I still haven’t found flour, which is a bummer because I want to start making some bread. Fruits and most vegetables are fairly easy. I can always get pasta and tomato paste, but the first time I actually make a barbequed pizza with chicken and veggies (by the way, I fully intend to kill that chicken myself, another Peace Corps Rite of Passage), oh man, it’s going to be something otherworldly. In case you hadn’t noticed I’m also planning on talking to the blacksmith about building a barbeque. It’s going to be America-ville, Benin! That’s mostly a response to the fact that I had some trouble at first with making my house work for me, but I’m starting to figure things out. It’s not like I don’t have nice things here, or am missing any real necessities, but I’m replacing volunteers. That means that I am living in their house with their stuff. The sense of ownership is not something I’ve developed with this house yet. My post-mates in a neighboring village had no furniture in their house, and I had a ton. So I gave them a fair amount and kept a few things for myself. I’m just one person and don’t need a lot anyways. As of now, I have a bookcase, a coffee table with some chairs, and a couch. That works for me at this point in my service. I may get some more stuff made soon, but it’s expensive to buy a lot of stuff from the carpenter. He seems to like me though, and came over the other day to re-varnish my old furniture for free, so that’s cool. During my free time I’ve started drawing the things I want him to make. I had a table made with holes cut out for big water basins so I can wash my dishes. I’m also toying around with a big cabinet, and some shelves in my shower-ish area in the back yard. I’m starting to lay the groundwork for a secondary project to possibly begin working on soon. Sheena, one of the volunteers I replaced, painted a world map at my school and it looks awesome. The World Map Project is one that Peace Corps pushes for, and I think it would be a fun project to do a couple of them at different schools around Klouekanme and in some neighboring villages. It’s just an idea at this point though, and recently I’ve been more concerned with starting murals on the inside of my house. My latest idea is a silhouette of an elk, but I forgot what they look like, so it’s been interesting to see it develop. Around the house, I’ve been doing a lot of cooking, or trying to anyways. So far, the only things I’m really comfortable making is a sandwich with vache qui rit, mac and cheese, and pasta with white sauce or red. My white sauce has really gotten better the last few weeks. Aside from struggling terribly to cook for myself from scratch every day, I’ve been doing a lot of reading. So far I’ve read Swann’s Way, Lolita, Harry Potter 1,2,3,4,5, Three Cups of Tea, and am currently moving around with Hot, Flat and Crowded, the Poisonwood Bible, and The Plague. The days here a really long…you can fit a lot in. Despite the excess of time, I’ve noticed that relatively simple things become very difficult very fast once you arrive at post. For example, if I want to get some water, I have to pull water out of a well, boil it for about 20 or 30 minutes, then filter it in a water filter which takes about an hour to get enough to fill my water bottle. Then I drink it really hot and am not refreshed because it’s super hot and humid here constantly. If I want to go to the bank, I take a zem (motorcycle taxi) 45 minutes out of town to Azove, then take a bush taxi an hour south to Lokossa, then stand in line at the bank to pull money out. Last time I waited in line for an hour, then was told I’d have to come back later because there was a problem with the system. It takes some getting used to. The only real solution I’ve found is to get a beer and laugh about it. I don’t know if it will translate well, but there are a few really funny things some of the new volunteers and I like to joke about amongst ourselves. Number one: Never ask why in Benin…My buddy Brandon has a habit of saying this a lot. There are things that seem to transpire on a regular basis that don’t make a whole lot of sense, but are really funny to see. For instance, why did that guy just slap someone with a dead chicken? Why are there 40 live chickens attached to the front of that moto? Why are there 20 live pigs hogtied to the roof of that car? Why is this cab driver stopping to pick up more passengers when there are ten of us already squeezed into this five-seater along with livestock, the trunk overflowing, and luggage teetering off both sides of the roof. Never ask why in Benin. Number two: Overall good job…This is a good one for any fans of the aritocrats joke, and I give credit to Dave from Buffalo, currently residing in the Collines, for this one. During model school, we had to receive feedback from other volunteers, stagiers, and Beninese facilitators after our lessons. I’m not going to lie, it can get brutal. The kids in the classes know they’re at a free summer school, grades don’t matter, you haven’t been teaching long, and that you may be easily flustered. Lessons can go wrong—terribly, terribly wrong. But no matter how bad your lesson was, someone will always end with, “But overall, good job.” For the sake of the joke, “a student started throwing chalk at you in class and yelling obscenities at you. You were going to kick them out, but you forgot and they kept doing it. Someone had to go to the bathroom and you said no, and they wet themselves, but you didn’t notice until you slipped in it and were knocked unconscious for five minutes. When you came to, you tried to teach physics instead and only spoke in Spanish. A child started crying. They cried so hard that another student started crying, then more, until everyone in the room was crying, including you. Then they all stopped and you kept crying until class was over, which was about 27 minutes later. But overall, good job.” I don’t care if any of you aren’t laughing, I am. Speaking of absurdities, if Oregon makes it to a BCS Bowl game and the Dodgers make it to the World Series, I will buy a satellite dish and television and watch it at my neighbor’s house because he actually has functioning electricity! Speaking of neighbors and things around me, I haven’t explained my living situation yet. I live in a large concession with a couple other families close to the outskirts of Klouekanme. There are a few carpenters who work around me, and some mechanics. Behind my concession, through a small cornfield, there is a woman who sells spaghetti with sliced hot dogs and fried bananas, which are awesome if you can’t cook, or don’t really feel like it. On the way to the school where I work, I pass an ecole primaire, which is basically an elementary school, although the grades and ages don’t translate well (especially because there are kids who are older than me in the classes I teach, as well as some 10 or 11 year olds). Most of the people in Klouekanme are Christian, but I did find a mosque the other day and was excited about it. Vodoun is big too, but is more incorporated into the Christian ceremonies, as I understand it. I haven’t yet been invited to a service yet though, so I don’t know for sure. There is a vodoun temple in the city, which has murals of people decapitating animals, which is nice. There are vendors of animals corpses at the marche, not for eating, but for medicine. It’s not quite vodoun, but they use the animals in different ways to help cures various ailments and maladies. Haven’t got them all down yet, but my favorite is still the cure for AIDS, which is composed of wild apples, pig, and papaya salad administered for a period of 10 months. Klouekanme is one of the bigger villages/cities culturally in the region. No matter where I am in country, it seems like people are pumped to meet someone from Klouekanme. It’s cool to know that I live somewhere that has more cultural relevance than other posts, but I still can’t figure out exactly what it is. Time for some snooping. One really nice things about my post though that I noticed right away was that the pollution has ceased, and I can breathe better than I could in Porto Novo. It’s not because it’s cleaner, but less dense. Like I said, when I go anywhere, it’s close to an hour or more in any direction. Those rides are really fun though. Zems might be my favorite thing so far about Benin. I’ve gotten into the habit of listening to my ipod while riding Zems, and there are few moments quite so emotionally and psychologically validating than music and zoning out looking at the countryside in West Africa Songs I recommend for Zems, and just in case you’re wondering what I’m listening to (I don’t care if you don’t want it, I’ll give it to you, twss.) -MGMT, Time to pretend -Babyshambles, Albion -Paco de Lucia, La nina de puerta oscura -Otis Redding -Ella Fitzgerald -Holly Golightly and the Brokeoffs, Devil do -Tom Waits -Mountain Goats I wish I could do it at night to look at the stars and possibly fall off the Zem, but I’m fairly horrified of going out after dark. I don’t leave my house after 7:30/19:30h. But anyways, night sky: I can see the Milky Way from my backyard. No one here understands why all the American volunteers like to stare at the stars, and I have yet to decide whether that is a cultural difference, or just a response to the monotony of all things commonplace. Whatever though, stars are pretty and stuff. Perfect example! I was teaching a lesson the other day, and one of my students gave a response in French. I walked up to the chalkboard to where I had written “English class” and drew a star next to English to emphasize that they should not speak French during the lesson. A few minutes later a student walked up to me and asked what the star was and whether he should copy it into his notes. “But overall, good job.” Just one of those things, I guess. Words of wisdom I would like to pass on to those of you who may find yourselves in West Africa at some point. If someone is obviously ripping me off, and not letting me talk to other vendors or Zems or whatever, I’ve started to say, “Je vais appeler Barack Obama!” “I am going to call Barack Obama!” And most times, people think he really is my boss and friend, and they’ll help this brother out. Bear(ack) that in mind. Oh, he just won the Nobel Peace Prize. Ayo! (Also, “ayo” means “no” in Fon, one of the local languages here…I love yelling it at people). Hope this post wasn’t too absurd, I’m still dealing with the shock of living in West Africa, so my ability to analyze and relate situations and surroundings to others hasn’t quite developed yet. Anyways, Go Dodgers! Go Ducks! Go Aztecs! go angels…I guess. ________________________________________________________________