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!!!!!!