With love from Lokossa

Thursday August 9, 2007

First, in case of confusion I want to explain the apparent disorder of the posts. Since the computers in the cyber-café are painfully slow, I write these posts at home on my laptop, and then post a bunch of them all at once when I can…so the most recent “posts” are always at top of the blog and go down in reverse-chronological order. The sub-posts within each post are dated by the day I write them and are in chronological order. I hope I have confused you even more now…
Well, today was the long-awaited post-assignment day. I now know the (village/town?) where I will spend the next two blissfully grueling (gruelingly blissful?) years. Due to security concerns, I’m not allowed to actually name the place on my blog, but suffice it to say its on the gudron (paved road) between Cotonou and Abomey. See the map in my links on the top right of this blog (It also begins with the same letter as my brother’s name and ends with the second letter of my brother’s name. I hear it has electricity, and its position on a main road an hour and a half from the biggest city in Benin means something, although I’m not quite sure what. I do hear that there will be an abundance of fruits and vegetables (compared with more remote villages in the dry north). I’m pretty sure it is mostly Fon people (who dominate Benin), and they will mostly practice vodun, although here in Lokossa there are a lot of Christians, so that wouldn’t surprise me there either.
Being in the south means that it will be less hot, and greener than the north. The people are said to be more fiery here, more intense. Sunday, the Director of the school where I will be teaching is coming here for a conference, and he will take me back to the post for a three-day visit. I will have some sense of my new home when I come back next Friday.

I have been getting up at 6am to go running every morning. Its fun to explore different directions and get out of the city and have a taste of the rural outskirts. People seem a bit surprised to see a Yovo (white guy) running alone in the middle of nowhere, and they are quite friendly. Women and kids often carry baskets of stuff or bundles of sticks on their heads, and some of the men have machetes. The other day I passed a tree that had thousands of roosting bats hanging in clumps from the branches, making a racket.
Saturday, a few of my friends and I went to Bar Dancing Vince to see a live group play. They never showed up, but there was a DJ instead. I brought along my 9 year-old brother and 14 year-old sister. My brother was the first brave guy to jump on the stage and start the dancing. I followed, and soon we had a small but enthusiastic crew of PCT’s and local kids dancing around the stage. I have learned a few local moves, mostly from kids, and they love it when I bust them out.
Tonight I’m supposed to go meet the trumpet player from Papa’s group. There’s also another guy who plays Bob Marley tunes on guitar in the buvettes (bars) who I have talked to. He told me he also plays some kind of traditional drums which are (unless I completely misunderstood) tubs or basins upside-down on water (tam-tams aquatique or something like that…) So I’m happy to have made a few musical contacts…
Other than that, life goes on—I’m getting used to peeing in a hole in the cement shower, sometimes missing the hole and splashing my legs (one unlucky friend has no hole in the shower). I’m becoming a regular sight outside of my host-mama’s photo shop where I sit each night after dinner talking to my sister and photo-shop apprentice/house-help. I’m almost comfortable enough to tell my mama straight-up what foods I do and don’t like. I helped wash dishes and I aim to help with that, and even cook once in a while…
It ain’t half-bad…

Friday, August 24, 2007

It’s been a while—a busy couple of weeks—since my last post…

The village visit was good, although for three days the only time I had to myself was when I bathed or slept. My worries about the village being too “modernized”, cosmopolitan or otherwise tainted due to being on the “highway” have been put firmly to rest. True, a more remote village farther from the big cities of Benin would be a different experience, but I am happy from my first acquaintance with my new home.
The “highway” is a two-lane, well-paved country road. Between villages, as well as in the villages, rickety bikes and motos cling to the side, as do walking people, while rickety taxis and trucks speed past each other. All along the paved road there are tables with bottles of yellowish liquid--small bottles, gin bottles, huge round bottles. I was surprised to find out that these are gas stations.
The most common form of long-distance transport is taxi. Just when you think they are full, they will stop to pick up a few more passengers, squeezing three or sometimes four people in the front, and maybe five in the back of a regular size car.
Entering my village, the cars pull over to stop in front of the market positioned just beside the road. Marche Mamas and girls with trays of bananas, tomatos, bread, peanuts and other snacks swarm the cars, competing for the passengers’ attention.
The houses are cement or terre-rouge, a reddish mud. Roofs are corrugated metal, or at times thatch for smaller huts. It turns out there are a lot of Christians in the area, but many still participate in more traditional African ceremonies. Walking by the Catholic church, I saw a band inside for the Mass of the Assumption or whatever it is. There was a tenor saxophonist! I didn’t hear him, but it might be interesting to talk to him sometime.
I stayed with a man who has somewhere between three and five wives, depending on who you ask. On two consecutive mornings, I introduced myself to two baby goats who had been born overnight. I ate pate (mushy cornmeal porridge cooked until it is almost firm) with green leaf sauce and fish with my hand. It was the best I’ve had yet here.
They watched a ton of music videos, but the good new is that most of them are of traditional music, just drums and cowbells and voices, and they are great.
My house is brand new, made of cement, with a large living room, two bedrooms, an outside cooking area, “shower” (a cement space with a hole in the floor) and a latrine ( a cement toilet seat over a hole in the ground). I had a covered cement space in front of my door to sit and receive visitors. My house is in a concession—it is built within a wall and I share a yard with four small connected “apartments” and another house. I have a well just outside my front door, so I suppose no one should worry that I am not getting exercise (water is heavy!!the well is deeeeep!!).
I only got a small taste of my post, but it seems great, and I am excited to be going there in about three weeks. I must admit I am a bit jealous of some of my friends who will be in more remote and exotic villages, but I would find somebody to be jealous of no matter where I was posted, so I don’t dwell on that.
We are a week and a half into model school, I have been teaching real classes of up to 75 students, but I will write about that later. Suffice it to say it has been challenging and exciting. E yi hwedevonu! (until next time!)