~~Disaster Strikes!!!~~Satan Claus~~Pilgrimage~~

December 26, 2007

No, I did not catch a dose of the bird flu that has claimed the lives of at least a few Beninese poultry. No, I did not succomb to malaria, intestinal parasites, yellow fever, hookworm or any other tropical disease. I'm fine, its my (formerly) trusty ibook laptop who is teetering on the brink of death. Every time I try to boot up, the apple screen comes up, and then it freezes with the little pinwheel spinning...after a few minutes, the screen will go blank and the computer will go to sleep :(

If you notice that I have given an overly-detailed description of the symptoms, maybe you have guessed already that I am hoping some mac-saavy friend or reader will be able to diagnose and cure the malady from la-bas.

**cultural note*

La-bas means "over there", but in Benin it frequently is used to mean "back home" or "where-ever-the-hell you come from". As in "Et les gents de la-bas?"--("How are your folks back home?")

Recently at a Christmas party for orphans I heard the most fitting use of the phrase. Santa asked some little kids where Santa comes from, and one responded with an indisputable opinion--"la-bas"

Well, my blog readers, I call on you to join me in prayer, for much as I hate to admit it, the health of my blog depends on the health of my laptop. Not being able to write posts when inspiration strikes, in the (relative) comfort of my home, may make the blog suffer in quantity and quality. I also may have lost 90% of my photos from Benin :( Let's cross our fingers.

Well, I had a most interesting Christmas. First there was a Christmas party for a group of orphans in a fellow volunteer's village. A month ago, my friend had been looking for a hotel in Cotonou, and was helped by a rather colorful guy. His name is Papa Boni, and he is an animateur (mascot) for the Benin Squirrels, the national soccer team. With little dreads, a goatee, clownishly colorful clothes, and a painted bicycle laden with fake flowers, hand-painted signs, bells, whistles and and assortment of other kitchy ornaments, Pa Boni reminds me of Central Park in NYC. It is rare to see such a colorful character outside of Manhattan. Well, my friend is a fellow lover of adventure and nutty people, so they struck a fast friendship. Pa Boni agreed to come out to the village and be Santa for the orphans, for no pay.

It was a noble gesture, and I will forgive the fact that he showed up about four hours late only because a)he is Beninese and that is acceptable here b)his every waking moment is a performance, and that means that he finds himself swept up in little side-plots and mini-dramas at every turn.

While we were waiting, the kids would take turns performing, and I was very impressed. For vocal numbers, a few older boys (8-13 yrs) played drums while one girl would take the mic and belt out some great traditional songs. At least one managed to improvise some praise for my friend who had brought a gift for the kids. They recited poems, told short stories and danced. I would have been floored if I weren't already used to the incredible talent, strength and all-around amazingness of many children here.

Anyway, the kids loved Satan--I mean Santa. (Check out the picture, it's not hard to confuse the two...)

The yovo with the fancy camera is my friend Kaitlyn who is one of three Americans who started an organization called Unseen Stories to create documentaries designed to raise awareness about problems in the world and help people see how they can help.

My friend had plans to go on a Christmas pilgrimage with the president of the NGO where he works (who is also a responsable (pastor) of his church). Every year, the Celestes, known for wearing no shoes and dressing in white robes, gather at the beach for a midnight mass and prayers. I figured it would be interesting, but I didn't realize I was in for one of the most surreal experiences of my life.

Churches came from all of Benin, and delegations arrived even from Nigeria, Senegal, Togo, France and other countries. Each Church set up their straw mats under an awning to protect against the strong sun. Vendors, Celestes and non-Celestes alike, set up stalls or wandered, hawking goods from large backpacks or baskets on their heads. Mostly they sold food and prayer neccesities like perfume, candles, fake flowers, etc., but there were tupperware, sandals, instruments, videos, and a little bit of everything.

It was very intense--I was there for over 24 hours and saw no other white people aside from my friend. Everyone was curious about the yovos who had arrived at their pilgrimage, and it was difficult to walk anywhere without someone stopping me or calling me over to talk. A number of times, my path would cross that of a child, and they would literally jump away, startled and spooked.

By chance, amid the crowd of easily over ten thousand, we ran into my friend's friend from village, along with his friend, who immediately told me that he loved white people, and insisted on holding my hand everywhere we went. I can hold hands--no problem--but this guy, Moise, was ridiculous. After I got fed up, I seized an opportunity to steal back my hand, and did my best to keep it busy scratching my head, holding my other hand behind my back, or hiding it in my pocket. He would grab my wrist, and try to pull my hand from where ever I had stashed it, and I would just look around, pretending not to notice. All this while, for about fifteen minutes while we were walking around with , there was a robed fou (crazy man) who was nearly hyperventilating and yelled at everybody in Fon to watch out for the devils (us). He was bumping into people and scared women left and right, walking ahead to warn the people that we were coming, and coming back to eye us nervously. Luckily, he once strayed too far and we managed to slip away. I later heard that the Gendarmes had taken him in and most likely beaten him.

Returning to camp, the pastor asked if we would like to meet the head of the entire church, whom I and my friend later started to call "the pope". Well, that should be interesting, we thought, but we didn't yet realize just what we were in for. We were lead through the crowd to a huge church, brightly lit with long flourescent lights. There were no walls, and people had gathered all around the outside to peer in from afar, as only the Grands and special invitees were allowed in.

Inside, there was a brass band--about twenty trumpets, one saxophone, and some drummers. We entered, leaving our sandals on the steps as we were ushered past the guards. The floor was sand, and along the sides of the central space, important members of the church were sitting in their robes, rank indicated by varying degrees of color and ornamentation added to the basic white robe. At the end of a long purple runner, in an upholstered throne, the focal point of several cameras, video cameras, and electric fans, sat the Reverend Pasteur. Sporting a regal purple robe with golden embroidery, nonchalant behind his large, tinted glasses, he was a man with presence.

Unshaven, with wrinkled pajama pants and hair slightly unkempt, the "American Delegation" was led up to kneel before "the pope". We were presented with ceremonial flair, and it was explained breifly by the pastor how we had arrived in Benin as volunteers, and noticing that there was a pilgrimage, we had decided to come and see how they celebrate Christmas. All this, mind you, was far from the private meeting that we had expected. Loudspeakers broadcast the proceedings within as will as outside the church. Movie cameras lurked, recording for national news coverage and for posterity.

Had we watched any delegation arrive before us, if we weren't walking into a trippy, alternate reality, we might have realized that we would be handed a microphone and asked to speak a few words, and accordingly, would have prepared a few cogent thoughts and well-chosen words of thanks. Instead, the microphone was handed over, and our minds frantically scrambled for the right words. My friend had the presence of mind to explain that we were here to work with the people of Benin for the good of Benin, and I took the opportunity to wish everyone a happy holidays with the fon "Mi kudo hwe!"

After our moment of glory, we were ushered over to a loveseat of honor, next to the Minister of the Interior, two big-shots representing the Gendarmes, and other Invitees of note. From there we watched as delegations from various countries danced up to the Pasteur, accompanied by the raucous brassband, and knelt down to share their gratitude and a few thoughts.

Afterwards, we were led into an inner sanctum with the Grands Invitees where we shared cold cans of soda in a somber silence.

Midnight mass started surprisingly at midnight, as a slow hymn wafted from the church to our distant camp. Simulcast by radio, the Church's sounds arrived from all directions and washed through the crowd as the congregations added their voices to the waves of sound sweeping across the expanse of people. The first hymn struck me as quite like an enormous group om, and sleepy people slowly stood from their mats, lifted their hands to the sky, and immersed themselves in prayer.

I joined in the repetitive prostrations and standing-up for some time before looking around, noting that about half of the pilgrims were still fast asleep, and deciding to join them.

The next day, after my Church as well as most others started to leave in the early morning, I packed my backpack and went off walking down the beach in search of a fisherman friend who lives in a simple house among tall palm trees on the beach. He goes out on the ocean in his large (very large),motorized Pierogue (canoe) and lays nets to catch fish. This is not his house, but it looks quite similar.

I walked for hours, stopping to swim with a bunch of naked playful men (sorry ladies, no pictures ;) ), and found many nice pieces of beach glass and beach-washed pottery shards which will decorate my home nicely. Eventually I found my friend who promised to take me out for a day of work whenever I choose to return. His young boys deftly climbed these 40-foot trees to find me some delicious fresh coconuts.

After a quick visit to my host family in Lokossa, I've come back to Cotonou to stock up on food and such, and it's back to village to fete-up the new year...

So happy holidays, mi kudo hwe, and enjoy a few random pictures...

The famous mosque in Port Novo. Originally built as a Portuguese Church, it was eventuallty taken over by the muslims and seems to be a popular hang-out for the blind and disabled.

Not too hard to make friends with the kids that wander around their neighborhoods lookin for kicks.

Caught in the act--classic Beninese hand-holding.

I am restored § School Life § Late night mischief § Sax and Gota

Saturday, November 17, 2007 - I am restored

*******Before you begin to read this, let me warn you—I have just read all of what follows, then magically traveled up to the beginning of the post and back in time to warn you against wasting your precious time—this post is just self-indulgent rambling, and if you are reading this to contribute to your understanding of Benin, Africa, or “developing” (i.e. poor) countries in general, you will be greatly disappointed. This post is a firm defense of the blogger’s right to blindly follow the whims of his flitting mind, going on and on without really saying much of anything at all. I didn’t write this post for you, I wrote it for me, and if you have a problem with that I shall have to ask you to step outside. Caveat emptor—consider yourself warned!!*******

It’s almost midnight and the rain has just begun, gently sizzling on my corrugated metal roof. As I write this sentence, the sound is increasing, becoming more of a deafening roar which evokes an irrational fear. I have just run around and closed the windows to prevent leaks, by which I mean I have pushed up on the series of horizontal wooden slats that cross the opening that we call “the window”, regardless of the fact that I have seen very few actual glass “windows” in this or any other village here. “Windows” here are square holes in walls. Sometimes they are crossed by wooden slats, sometimes metal, sometimes (in schools, for instance), they are basically a cluster of concrete blocks that have been formed with holes in them to let light and air enter. Almost nobody has screens, despite the fact that malaria, caused by mosquitoes, is much more deadly here than HIV/AIDS. I digress…
Almost every blog entry I write is sparked by some enthusiastic urge to share a thought or experience with somebody else. In this sense, I am finding blogging much more fulfilling than keeping a diary would be. Ever since my first diary entry of Dec 25th 1987, when my earnest third-grader self wrote something like:
“Today is Christmas day. My gramma got me this diary.
I also got a fishtank. My family is in the process of moving.”
I have repeatedly attempted to keep a diary, sometimes keeping up with it for a week, sometimes a month, but inevitably letting it slip into disuse. <<>> Anyway, the point is, having an audience (you! ;) ) not only motivates me to write, but I consider it very therapeutic. Thanks for listening!
So the impulse for this entry was the utter joy of the discovery that my ipod still works, and is not dead as I had feared… You see, it hasn’t worked for about two months now, and I only just had a chance to restore it (this is a super-cool process by which somehow my ipod, connected through my laptop’s wi-fi connection, talked to the server located probably in the states somewhere, and convinced it to restore it to its factory-original state. Kind of an electronic version of born-again’s re-baptism.) This has incredible ramifications. Now I can lie in bed and drift off to the sweet shahnai of Ustad Bismillah Khan, or wake up to the haunting eloquence of Charlie Parker speaking from on high on “Bird of Paradise”. Now I can gleefully accompany my cooking with the uplifting, delicious flavor of brazilian samba, make cleaning house a joy thanks to the passion of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, come home from a rough day at school and laugh at incomprehensible virtuosity of Art Tatem, or sit my ass down and close my eyes, letting the insistent, glittering, relentless grooves of West Africa’s Kora masters wash over me and restore me. I restore my ipod, it restores me—one hand washes the other.
G’night and thanks for indulging…

Thursday, December 6, 2007 — School Life

I have been teaching now for over two months, and I am settling into the job alright. As you may imagine, it’s not easy, but there are plenty of rewards for the work. I will try to describe my school for those of you who are curious…
I teach at the secondary school of my village, on a large plot of land just outside of town on the main road. There are five large buildings, each with four or five classrooms, arranged in a semi-circle around an open space. I would call it a yard, but that would imply its having grass, of which there is none. I believe it is in order to avoid having snakes that every Wednesday afternoon the students have no class and instead spend an hour turning the dirt with hoes to keep the grass at bay. Where American sensibilities lean toward grass and greenery, Beninese seem to prefer large expanses of dirt. In fact, for a new student to enroll, they must furnish a hoe and a broom (which is actually a few palm leaves tied together). I was chatting today with a teacher under the teachers’ tree (our version of a teachers’ lounge), and he said that if you let grass grow in the dirt around your house, people will say you are dirty. So dirt isn’t dirty…hmmm… (cue the mantra—our way isn’t better, it’s just different…not better, just different…)
The classrooms are large open rooms with holes for windows and corrugated metal roofs (no ceilings), and they are full of two-seater wooden desks which have no backs. (This detail becomes more significant when you realize that most classes last two hours and they will do four hours with only one fifteen-minute break). The school bell is a large piece of iron—maybe an engine part?—hanging from one of the large trees in the “yard”. There is a roofed patio where women sell breakfast. Nobody seems to eat at home, they wait for the 10am break and eat fried bread or fried mashed manioc or bouilli (sweetened boiled corn-flour). Teachers often eat pate and fish. There is a large soccer field for P.E.
Teachers arrive on their motos, park under the teacher tree, and systematically make their rounds, shaking the hand of every other teacher or administrator. Sometimes it is a classic European handshake, but more often it is punctuated with a satisfying, synchronized snap. This, however, leads to the inevitable question—“to snap or not to snap?” that you must ask yourself every time. With equals, it is rarely difficult to answer—snap. It gets tricky with administrators and students, with whom snaps are usually avoided, but are not out of the question. A snap between habitual non-snappers can be a mutual recognition, even if on an unconscious level, that a conversation has led to deeper intimacy, even if you do not always snap after that. Snapping with your own students would be entirely inappropriate, although it is acceptable with older students who have become friends outside of the context of school.
It becomes awkward, however, when one person goes for the snap, and is not met halfway. The unrequited snap is not necessarily a slap in the face, but it just makes you feel socially off-balance.
Another possibility is the old Beninese arm-shake. If you encounter somebody who is eating with their hand, you are not pardoned from shaking, you still go for the shake. He or she will then extend a limp dirty hand, which is an invitation to grab their forearm and proceed with the shake (sans-snap, of course). This is not hard to accept. What still feels a bit weird to me is the limp-handed forearm shake with the clean hand. If I try to shake hands with one of my students, or someone who wants to show deference, they will instead offer their arm, as if to say “I’m not worthy of touching your hand”. With students, I can accept it, but it always feels funny if it is a grown man who feels that as an un-educated farmer or mason he must humble himself to me. Sometimes I grab their hand anyway.
Today, I witnessed my first double-dirty-handshake. (I like the sound of that). One teacher with a chalk covered hand offered his forearm to another teacher who was eating. It was incredible, a handshake with no hands!
Friends can display their mutual warm feeling by various modifications. They may also choose to just prolong the handshake throughout a short conversation. This felt weird at first, but in certain cases, usually with old men, I enjoy it very much. When a man and a woman do it, it is flirting, and it is awkward to be a part of, or even just to watch.
An even more insistent kind of flirting is the dreaded “dirty finger”. I don’t know if it is ever used in the states, but I have a feeling it would be well-understood anywhere. The pursuer tickles the palm of his desired’s hand with his middle finger. It is a blatant proposition which is well-hidden enough to go unnoticed by onlookers—pretty slick, or pretty sleazy, it just depends on which side of the dirty finger you are on.
On the subject of prolonged hand-holding—this is common between friends. Walking through the school-grounds or the market, you will sometimes see boys or men absent-mindedly holding hands. This lack of homo-phobia may come from the widespread belief that homosexuality does not exist at all in Benin-it is a white-man’s disease like ADD or depression. What puzzles me, though, is how sensual the hand-holding often seems to be—this is more like stroking than any kind of manly iron-grip. I have participated a few times in this sort of thing, and open-minded as I try to be, I don’t know if I could ever really be comfortable with it.

Now, back to school—students do not move, teachers do. Each class (30-60 students) has one assigned classroom, unless they are a “flying” class who has to squeeze in here and there wherever classrooms are open. Each class elects a “responsable” who is like the class president and taskmaster. He keeps the attendance, keeps the class informed of news and is responsible for making sure the assigned students sweep the class and attend the Wednesday hoe-ing sessions. I like the system, because it does seem to encourage students to take more responsibility on themselves. On that note, the more serious students often help to control the class by telling others to behave or to be quiet. They make my job a lot easier.
Every Monday morning at quarter to eight we perform the ritual of the drapeau (flag). Students arrange themselves by class around the flagpole, and the school’s head responsable gives orders—stand at attention—at ease—stand at attention for the raising of the colors…and one lucky boy (always boys so far…hmmff) somberly and slowly raises the Beninese flag. Then one class is chosen to sing the national anthem. There is an earnest patriotism on display which is growing on me, but for one reason or another, the serious tone seems to always crumble into some kind of joking or another—refreshingly un-military-like. I am standing shoulder-to-shoulder with all the other teachers, and the early morning sun often makes me break out into a sweat. The Director will then give a few words, all but indecipherable to me, send the students off to class, make his way down the line of teachers with handshakes and greetings, and we start another week.
I suppose I have only touched the tip of the iceberg that is school, but in order to keep my readers wanting more, I’ll leave it at that for the moment. I’m off to Bohicon to do a bit of banking, shopping, and internetting. It should be a busy weekend with at least three music rehearsals, my first official Fon lesson (local language) with a fellow English teacher, at least a hundred mid-term exams to finish grading, and another mid-term to write (half the students of one of my classes were given the midterm for the wrong grade level!?!?, so I have to write a new test for them). So in case anyone was worrying, I seem to be keeping myself busy-it’s pretty much an NYC pace of life in a small African village (except for that sweet 3-hour midday repos J).

To everyone who secretly wished me a happy birthday yesterday, many thanks.


Thursday, December 13, 2007 - Late-night mischeif

It’s Thursday night, so it’s my weekend and I’m stoked. Work is work, man. But rather than watch Die Hard, which I was actually considering, mostly because I remember my brother saying something about how great all the Die Hard movies are, I will catch y’all up a bit on things chez moi.
Well it’s Oro season in my village! Sounds like an exotic fruit or something, right? Well the truth is a bit more bone-rattling than that. In a nutshell, it’s a secret society whose members roam around the village after midnight “protecting” the village. If you are a woman or an un-initiated man, it is inadvisable to leave your house after about 10pm. Luckily, I am never out past 10, so mom, don’t worry (yeah, right J). I’d like to share more details but I hesitate to blab to the world about something which I do not really understand yet.
I found out it’s Oro season because yesterday afternoon I saw a procession passing the market on the main road. A man had a goat draped over his shoulders, and he was walking with a bunch of guys in grass skirts, some of whom were playing drums. I was thinking about following them, which is what I usually do when I see a procession, but I first started talking to a friend of mine. He told me they were Oro and this one week they are allowed to go out. They are forbidden from operating the rest of the year.
My friend described a kind of Oro catechism—a bunch of questions that the initiates are taught—in the Yoruba language—which allow them to see if others are initiated or not. If you are out late, during their announced time to go out, it might not be pretty. I don’t really know the details of what they will do, and it depends on the region and a lot of other factors.

Sax and Gota

On a lighter note, I’ve played my saxophone a couple times with a group that plays traditional music called Gota. It’s really fun and they seem to love it—it may be the first time some of them have seen a saxophone. They often call it a guitar. There is a lead singer who sings verses, and then everybody sings choruses and people take turns dancing in the middle. We meet in a small enclosure nestled between a couple houses and some banana trees. It’s a cozy tropical open-air rehearsal studio.
There is a lead cowbell playing a repeated clave-like phrase, and another supporting part played on three cowbells. One guy plays a bass part on a huge gourd with a hole cut in it at the top. One hand slaps the body while another hits the hole with a flaccid piece of sole from an old sandal. Another guy plays two medium sized half-gourds which are floating face down in two buckets of water. He plays simple repetitive patterns with sticks wrapped with rubber. One guy sometimes plays a traditional three-note flute, which he will hand off to me if he is going to play the bass gourd. Melodies are unpredictable (to me at least) and interesting. The phrases start and stop in places that are not so obvious, and sound pentatonic, sometimes a bit asian.
Whoever is not playing something is clapping and singing. There is a grandma who always comes, and a guy whose legs are crippled, maybe from polio, and there are so many kids around that they are literally held at bay with a stick, and only a select few are let inside the enclosure. Mama is singing and clapping with a toddler standing in front of her nursing. Yes, Toto, we are not in Bushwick anymore…
They are not as polished as the other Gota group I have seen, but they have a lot of fun and they have been the most welcoming of the four music clubs I have seen here in my village. They have a recording scheduled, and they say they want me to play my saxophone. I’ll believe it when I see it, but I am excited at the prospect. In the meantime, I will start to bring my field recorder to sessions and record us myself …

many more pictures will be forthcoming!!!!!!

Wow, even more pictures! :)

This is a funeral procession in my village. I followed, and was shown the hole in which the person would be buried IN THE SAME BEDROOM WHERE THEY LIVED. Wild partying, wild--they make Michigan frathouses look like nunneries.
Professional drummers at another funeral in ABOMEY.
Me looking fly in tissue with a friend at the Abomey funeral.
Beautiful sunsets happen too often to count, almost once a day. This is at a nearby village where I went to look at a Peul family's collection of cow dung; Parfait was interested in scoring some "shit" :)
Just some guys in the bush-- you will recognize Parfait and the two fishermen...

Tech issues mean I can only post pix today, more blogs on the way...

News-- avian bird flu in benin? hmmmmmmmmmm love to all. Till next time...