My holidays were spent in northern Benin, in Kandi, Parakou, and Natitingou. Christmas was spent near Niger eating handmade cheeseburgers. After that I spent a few days in Natitingou swimming in waterfalls and trying to eat as much as possible. There was a huge waterfall downstream of the lagoon we were swimming in. It must have been forty of fifty feet I’m guessing. I climbed down to the edge to look at jumping off of it. I’m sure my mom will be glad to hear that, before I jumped without looking, I climbed down to the lower lagoon to check how deep it was. I swam under where I was going to jump, dove down, and with my feet on the mud, and my arms stretched out, my fingers were above the water. I’m not a veterinarian or an astronaut or anything like that, but I’m pretty sure it’s a good thing I didn’t jump off that cliff. Note to anyone in the Natitingou area traveling to chutes d’eau: don’t jump off the cliff.
Unfortunately, the New Years Bash that was supposed to happen in my neck of the woods down south wasn’t able to happen. On the bus down south, a friend and I both realized that instead of a voodoo new year with the village Chief, we’d be spending Christmas in the Medical Unit in Cotonou.
It went great though. It was the first time I had actually spent some serious time in Cotonou, which is the most developed city in Benin. There are paved roads, street lights, nice restaurants, clubs, ostentatiously interpretively constructed buildings, and lots of white people. It’s overwhelming. But like any good city, if you know where to go and who to go with, it’s always a good time.
What’s especially nice is how easy it is to find huge amounts of good food that you can’t find anywhere else in the country. There’s a new store in Cotonou called Erevan, which is the freakish offspring of target, Albertsons, and Costco. I say freakish because for me, there was nothing more absurd and frightening after two months living in a village and four months of beans and rice in a loaf of bread than walking into a large air-conditioned store that sells above ground pools, books, and real cheese.
There was a quasi-fireworks spectacular in Cotonou, and I saw people throwing fireworks at each other from the window. Just like home. We made Mimosas, had a wine and cheese party with gouda and goat cheese, and made grilled cheese with tomato soup. Hooray for the sick kid spectacular.
I also had time to look at the differences in development between Cotonou, other large cities in Benin, and my village specifically. A week after I got to my post, I wrote a long diatribe about development and aid in Benin. The majority of my argument was centered around the large concrete structures that were paid for by USAID and built by RTI (a private contractor who bought the contracts to build these structures in markets around my village). For the most part, it was a frustrated post fueled more by my initial impressions of development projects than their actual inadequacies. I decided to treat it like a letter to an ex after a breakup, and didn’t post it right away. After more time I’m realizing that I was seeing these structures in the wrong light.
Development in any given country is a difficult and fine line to walk. It’s foolish and ignorant to think every developed city should be developing to the standards of a New York or Los Angeles. Development should be occurring within the cultural standards of a given place. To use the concrete structures as an example, their purpose is to add a degree of legitimacy to the open-air markets that would be occurring there anyways, to get baskets off of the dirt, and to have a recognized area for the market. I think this is good because it allows development to enhance the culture. Anyone coming to visit me here, or anywhere similar to Benin, will realize immediately how interesting the open-air markets are. Finding the good food, finding a good seller, negotiating a price, buying directly from the person who grew or made whatever it is you’re buying. It’s really a great aspect of the cultural experience here (don’t pick things up with your left hand, always ask how their family is, always know the price you’ll pay before negotiating, work quickly). That’s an example of a cross-cultural experience that you don’t want to see disappear. Development can occur best within these parameters, however slowly it may happen, when the culture itself is respected throughout.
In terms of me as a development worker, I had a great opportunity the other day to hold a formation with a visiting group of Americans. I team taught a class in a village called Lalo the other day with my post-mate Miranna in front of a group of twenty education volunteers from New York. What a rush that was. We were introducing instrument vocabulary. The lesson went really well, I acted out how to play instruments, Miranna quizzed kids on their names, and we managed to squeeze in a game of Pictionary at the end (Brownie point: I drew a picture of Barack Obama that a kid guessed correctly. BOOM). More than that though, it was really inspiring to see that many Americans interested in what we were doing and how we were doing it.
We had a Q and A session afterwards that dealt with our style of teaching versus Beninese teachers, why we joined the Peace Corps, what has been the most difficult adjustment so far, etc. Just to elaborate on a few of those topics, Education volunteers in Benin are taught to incorporate creativity very heavily into their lessons. I never really thought about it before living here, but something like creativity is what I’ve started calling a “first-world luxury.” While me and Miranna can look at the textbook, identify what the kids need to know, and structure our own lessons from that; Beninese professors stick strictly to the book because they’re worried the students won’t be able to pass their tests unless they do every activity, follow every direction, and do everything else the book does. It’s interesting to watch lessons by two professors for this reason. (If any of them are reading this, they need to send me those pictures, because I don’t have any pictures of myself teaching)
Devoirs, or tests, are coming up for the end of the first semester at all the schools in Benin, so I’m getting my kids ready for them and giving quizzes and fun staff like that. It’s a really stressful time because I tend to evaluate my teaching abilities against those of the Beninese professors. It’s especially stressful because I’m supposed to be using my creativity to enhance the learning experience, and they hold true to the accepted form.
Moving on from technical conversation…I was in my house the other night eating dinner and watching a movie on my laptop. One of my neighbors’ children came by and came inside to sit with me. I love this kid. He’s always super excited to see me, has a huge head, and always has a mischievous grin on his face. I decided to turn off whatever I was watching and play Finding Nemo. Note: he does not speak French, and he has no idea what they’re saying in English, I can’t explain this movie at all.
So as Nemo is getting ready for his first day of school and swimming through the reef, he starts to let out a serious of confused gasps. Oddly enough, the older a person gets in Benin, the more high-pitched it becomes. It’s gotten to the point with me where I give a short little high-pitched scream every time I get a bad price that I have to haggle down. Anyways, my four-year-old, mischievous, bigheaded friend is watching the movie, gasping all the while, and can only yell out the basic French words for fish and snake. Pretty soon he runs out of the room back to his house, and I thought I blew his little mind and felt a little guilty. But pretty soon he comes knocking on my door again with his older brother, who sits down for a while and then they both run out again. Within two minutes I have the two boys, and their infant sisters sitting on my couch watching CGI fish try to battle their way through an ocean of danger and excitement to save poor little Nemo. It was amazing.
When I got here, I had come with the expectation of having to hide electronics from people to avoid appearing materialistically “better” than anyone. I’ve reached the point now where I want to share with people, and show them the things that exist outside of their village. You can buy computers in Cotonou, but a good percentage of every Peace Corps Volunteer’s village has never been to Cotonou. All the same, I like the idea of sharing possibilities and information with people.
That’s as good of a segue as I’m going to get to talk about my progress with my World Map Activity Packet. I have another volunteer helping me out with creative activities for it, and I think I may have found a Beninese person to help me with translating it into French. Our emphasis has been mostly on the Historical Geography classes and incorporating the world map into the basic curriculum. We are making short descriptions of well-known and lesser-known countries for kids to study and be quizzed on, matching games involving information about a country or culture that students will identify, color coordinated maps of continents, and puzzles of west Africa. We’re both really excited and think it is a really great project to get behind.
Anyways, I think I’ve ranted enough for now.
Peace
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