Images--ooo la la...

Greetings...I'm but a humble grasshopper, but I'll be your guide for this brief visual tour of Master David's life here in Benin.

I've been living in his backyard spying on him for some time, and although you should never trust a man with red eyes, (or an insect, I suppose,) I tell you, I've got the inside scoop...

I gather he lives a rags to riches to rags to riches lifestyle, pulling water from a well and eating gelatinous corn with his hand during the week......................

..........................and luxuriating in an ex-pat lap of luxury on weekends.

I heard tell he had the great luck to be invited up north to a village near the togolese border for what he later described as "an unforgettable cultural experience--whose intensity nearly made me pee my pants."

Apparently young males engage in a yearly rite of passage in which they flog one another with whips of leather or, more traditionally, vines from the bush. "Fete de chicote", or "whipping fete" is a perennial favorite of volunteers who perhaps find in its raw intensity something quintessentially "African". There is hooting, hollering, drum-beating and chouk(millet beer) -drinking all night to give the young men sufficient courage. One who shows pain or fear on the field of "battle" will bring shame to himself, his family, and his neighborhood.

Older men who have finished with the ritual help to "officiate" the exchanges of blows which usually are delivered in groups of three for each young man. Others dress in miniskirts, bras, tight, short shorts and other feminine attire to encourage the manliness of their younger brothers. This was one of David's favorite aspests of the event, fraternity expressed in drag.

There are three years of whippers. First-years wear a band around the shin. Second years sport one on the bicep, while third years have the honor of coiffing themselves with a pair of horns.

With whistles, elaborate costumes headdresses, and terrifying grimaces and theatrics, the young warriors do their best to intimidate one another, and the result is quite stimulating for the spectators.

This one speaks for itself...

These are ogun, spirits of the Fon Vodoun tradiotion, gathered for the opening of a newly-renovated palace in my friends village. Closely "guarded" by men with sticks, they chase the spectators around or demand a gift of a few coins. Being a Yovo and sticking out like a sore thumb, I was of course hit up for some loose change. This is all accompanied by intense drumming and singing of course...

After the Ogun left, the couple hundred spectators were squeezed into to palace courtyard to listen to Alekpehanhou, the king of Zenli music, and maybe the most celebrated Beninese traditional musician. The dancing was great, as was the drumming and singing, although I think at least half of his appeal was lost on us Yovos. He improvised words for about two hours, weaving narratives with praise, allegory with humor, and captivating everybody. There was about thirty minutes of going around singing about the crowd, praising them and putting them on the spot for a contribution, not unlike what goes on in union square if you gather around the breakdancers.

I rehearse regularly with these guys. Sometimes we practice on the beach, too.

Last weekend I celebrated my birthday in style on the beach with a few friends. The boy cut us up some fresh coconuts. Afterwards I played next door in a beachfront "bar" with a group of a dozen or so percussionists and a few dancers. It was kind of pan-African, not exclusively Beninese, and they were pretty intense.

Just some super-cute neighborhood girls...

Photographs Aplenty (including partial nudity)

The Canopy walk at Kakum in Ghana... the only animal I saw was a stinkin butterfly. But the view over the forest was spectacular, and the guide told us a bunch of cool uses of all the different kinds of trees, like which ones elephants use to scratch their backs (I think it's the ebony tree with its rough thorny bark), and which roots to cut to magically kill your enemies...

My jewfro was making the most of the the salty air. This is next to the Cape Coast Castle, a slave export center almost as beautiful physically as it is sickening ethically.
Fourth of July welcoming posse awaiting the new trainees at the airport. We had a few drinks on the ambassador and provided a raucus reception for the travel-dazed newbies....and yes, I am wearing floral-embroidered pink linen--you got a problem with that?

This is an open-air buvette called Bon Pasteur, amusingly named after the church next door. They blast popular Ivoirian music and the DJ chatters incessantly about the clientelle, singing and carrying on. Once he saluted me as I arrived, saying Blache Niege est arrive...(Snow White is here). It was only the next day that I realized what he had called me...These kids did some insane acrobatics, and something tells me they figured their moves out on their own, no clown schools here...The blond head is attached to the rest of my friend Aaron, who often accompanies me in some of my more interesting adventures.

This one speaks for itself...Their are so many beautiful people here-little people and big people alike...

My school--the kids turn the grass with hoes every wednesday afternoon. The big trees are Mango trees.
The one paved road in my village which is actually kind of a highway that goes all the way north. The bush taxi loaded with an impressive cargo is par for the course. My friend likes to tell me I have turned a truckstop into a quaint village, his way of saying "your village kind of sucks but you're too dumb to notice." Well, I think my village is great, and if he has a problem with that, he can stay in his own little mud-road village...
It's lovely how the uniforms match the walls, isn't it?
I promise even more pictures soon, maybe even video if the connection is fast enough...Oh, sorry, I lied about the nudity.

Life without music is like spaghetti without hot peppers

Tuesday, September 10, 2008

I feel the rentre breathing down my neck. It's an all-too-familiar melange of feelings, one which I have known and loved/hated since I was old enough to know better than to eat my own boogers. (Until I started attending school, my big brother Seth, an unabashed booger-eater, was my cheif role model and hence the arbiter of propriety--eek!)

It will be good to see my students again, and to try to accomplish something, but it is something of a daily grind, and the year is soooooooooo loooooong.

There are some new ideas on the drawing board and they involve--huge shock!--music. I am going to try to scrounge up some money, possibly through a grant, to buy three or four trumpets, maybe a trombone or two, and start working during what is my arch-nemisis in the Beninese education system, the three hour lunch break.

Kids often walk 30 min or even an hour each way before and after school, and to do so again in the middle of the day is, to use my fathers phrase, sheer lunacy. Granted, it is not for no reason--the only food they will find is what is being prepared at the house at midday, and many have chores to do--but still...it is the hugest waste of time (itself a concept all but lost on Beninese).

It is because of the three hour lunch that students finish school at 5pm or even 7 or 8, leaving little time for extracurriculars or even homework. I hope to be able to put together a group of enthusiastic young musicians who will work a couple times a week, and to leave the trumpets at school where they can sign them out to practice during lunch on other days.

I recently worked a week training new volunteers in Port Novo, and made some connections which has opened other opportunity to teach music. A man across the street from our house happened to be the drummer in a group which performs every saturday and sunday at an outdoor bar. They play interminable songs--mostly salsa and African dance hits and classics--and they feature a revolving cast of drummers, singers, percussionists, keyboardists, bassists and guitarists. They were quite happy to let me join them and fish around for a line or two I too could repeat indefinitely, and to solo a few times on each tune.

One thing I really appreciate about the group is their practice of praise-singing, at least that's what I imagine was going on. The singer would start dropping names, and was clearly singing for the benefit of some newly-arrived couple, or a group of dapper men around a table teeming with beer bottles. (Cultural note: At a Beninese buvette, bottles are left on the table until payed for, and it is a status symbol to have a table strewn with bottles. As a result, a group will often buy more than one beer each, letting the second get warm as they drink the first. They will often choose small bottles, too, instead of the more cost-effective large beers which are double the volume, but not double the price, a fact appreciated by most volunteers). After a minute or two, one of them would come up on stage, or approach the singer who was roving around the crowd, and place some money in his hand or against his forhead, the traditional way of honoring a performer.

Although the musicians could keep the songs going for impressive amounts of time, and the singing and drumming were not bad, on the whole I wasn't too impressed, although I was grateful for the chance to play. One young drummer stood out, though, and I made plans to go to his group's rehearsal at the Christian Celeste Church (which astute and dedicated readers will recognize as the Church with whom I went on a pilgrimage to the sea last Christmas).

The jam was awesome, a long-awaited chance to really stretch out and blow with no audience to make me self-conscious. The bassist, guitarist and drummer are all young and recent jazz converts, and it reminded me a bit of playing at the New School with new students. Playing on that level in New York, or the states is one thing, but to figure out how to play jazz in Benin with no real jazz mentors or learning aids is quite impressive. They invited me to come play in Cotonou where they have two weekly jams with some Cotonou based musicians.

The result is that I have a standing rehearsal (of which I have so far played about four) in Cotonou on Thursdays. I bring recordings, sheet music, and patterns and excercises for them to practice, and we play. (It existed before I showed up, but I aim to take over and run the show, which everybody seems to be cool with, and happy about). It is refreshing to teach music on a more advanced level than my piano or theory lessons in the village. Who knows, it could be a good chance to have some positive impact here.

Aside from these musicians, I also met others in the past two weeks, especially the many and very talented brothers of my friend who is himself maybe the best Beninese pianist. They are the pinnacle of the Beninese music scene, and I sat in on a rehearsal that shows why--they rehearse three hours straight every weekday, as if it were a job, albeit a fun one. Inspired by their playing, I spent the next two days serenading the Peace Corps bureau and neighborhood from the rooftop for hours a day. Through one brother, I also found out about another standing gig every Friday and Saturday in a new, swanky little bar. I played one time and aim to be semi-regular there.

So now, after a year, I am suddenly making a bunch of jazz contacts and finding new chances to play and teach. (And I didn't even mention the Dutch smooth-jazz guitarist I recently met). The only thing missing is to meet some musician with his head in the clouds and his feet firmly on the ground who wants help creating a music school.

Yes, I love rice, wow!

Sunday, August 3, 2008

Ghana is another world. A land of paved roads, billboards lit with bright lights, trimmed grass, totally foreign from Benin yet eerily familiar--Accra feels far more like a small American city than Cotonou 6 hours away. Most people dress in western clothes and many throw their trash in boxes or in the occasional actual trash can(!?!?!?!). Reggae oozes out of small bars and passing vehicles. You can buy fried rice in a styrofoam box (cringe) with fried chicken and cole slaw (drool). Their are relatively few motorcycles, and vehicles tend to stay in their lanes and obey traffic laws (applause).

Unaware of the cheaper, easier, more comfortable metro bus, my road-dog and I took a trotro (ubiquitous minibus taxi) to a parking lot where we sat in another trotro in the rain for four hours waiting for our little van to fill for the trip to Cape Coast. Sounds boring, but I assure you, we had a plenty of entertainment in the form of ambulant vendors. A steady stream of people passed the open door and windows hawking the wares on their heads in style.

“Did she just say ‘Yes, I love rice, wow!’ ?“ “I think its Jolof rice”.."oh”…
“Yeeeeeees, biscuits”…”Yeeeeeees yogurt..yeeeeeeeees boiled eggs..perfume, wow..umbrella, umbrella, wow…yeeeees toffee... We ate a five course meal in that ill-fated trotro, and I cracked up at every less and less enthusiastic "wow" .

Cape Coast is the old capital of Ghana, the country formerly known as the Gold Coast. An impressive castle was built there around 500 years ago and the city gradually expanded around it. Originally built by the Swedes (if my memory doesn't fail me) as a secure trading post, it passed through a few countries' hands and soon became the seat of government and a dungeon where slaves were held to wait to be loaded onto boats.

The building and nearby coast are very beautiful (pics to follow…), even if heinous barbarism was practiced there for centuries. I’ll spare you the details--most of us already realize the human potential for cruelty and indifference to suffering, here institutionalized for profit. I learned that of around 60 million captured people, only 20 million made it to the auction block abroad, many dying during the long walk to the coast, many during a 3-9 month wait in the dungeon, and many more during the actual passage. A full 1/3 went to Brazil, 1/3 to the Caribbean islands, and 1/3 to the rest of the Americas. A few went to Europe I suppose, too. Not a pleasant thing to think about, but it's a story that needs to be told, and those who suffered deserve to be remembered.

At a touristy beachside backpacker haven we were lucky to catch a goofy three-man acrobatics show starring a young boy who was quite good at being flung, a contortionist tumbler, and a man who stood on a stool on another stool on 4 upright beer bottles on a table and spun a large bowl on his finger while I nervously cringed, grimaced and flinched .

The canopy walk in nearby Kakum National Park was beautiful even if a single butterfly was the only “animal” I saw (you have to go just after sunrise to be lucky enough to see a far-off monkey swinging from tree to tree.) The highlight at Kakum, though, was the “nature walk” , a 30-minute stroll during which our charming guide shared some of the secrets of the forest.

He showed us a root which, if you cut it with a machete and utter the right words, blood flows out and you can kill a man by speaking his name. He warned us not to try it in the afternoon, though, because if your shadow falls on the root, you yourself will die. Placing a leaf of the same plant on the floor of someone’s room, if they step on it before they see it, you will know their secrets.

He pointed out large ebony trees--which are great to scratch your back on, if you happen to be an elephant—trees which make great boats but crappy furniture, trees which make great furniture but crappy boats, trees with great, flat, upright roots like walls which people bang on to communicate over kilometers (loud, i tell you). Even today, he said, women get lost in the forest collecting snails, and they bang till someone comes to find them . One tree had been sliced with a knife and rubber blood was dripping from the wound (cool, a rubber tree). It was nice just to be in a jungly rainforest, at least closer to my initial expectation of the African bush.

Other highlights of the trip include termite mounds made of dirt towering at ten or twelve feet tall (unfortunately, seen only from the bus), a thorough disorienting venture into an air-conditioned, full of yovos, American-style sports bar for mediocre burritos and margaritas (hey, we'll take what we can get…) where we watched two pretty young ghanaian prostitutes start flirting with some older, fat American guys and go sit with them (what in the world do they have to talk about?), 48 hours of learning drumming, gyll (W. African xylophone), and dance, and making quick friends with the wonderful people at the Dagara Cultural Center outside of Accra (I’ll DEFINITELY be back…)

It was fun finding common points with food and language that after a year in Benin feel like our own. Much easier, though, was pointing out the differences, all too often marveling how Ghana is cleaner, safer, more orderly, more sane. That said, even if there are aspects of Ghana that are enviable from a Beninese perspective, the truth is that were Benin to develop in those ways, they would pay a certain cultural price as more global influence would inevitably eclipse and bury certain stuff that makes Benin "Benin". A ubiquitous trade-off that needs to be carefully negotiated. Good night, and good luck.

~~~quick update~~~

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Porto-Novo is a trip, at least for us villageois who get excited to see a flush toilet. I like to call this training site "Porto-Novo 90210". While I am jealous to witness the luxurious accomodations (tiled houses, second floors, gardens with shrubs and guard dogs, large televisions, spacious living quarters, delicious food, large private bathrooms with showers and toilets and even, gasp, bedets !?! etc) of the stageaires, I definitely don't envy the difficult transition they will face as they go off to live in their muddy, dusty, hot, non-french-speaking, no-vegetable-having villages. I just hope it won't be too much of a shock to their system as they realize first hand what we volunteers have been trying to stress to them--this is not the real "Benin".

Sunday, July 20, 2008

Here we go! Tomorrow I leave Benin for the first time in a year...Interesting that today is our one year mark......I'm going with a friend to Ghana for ten days...WOO HOO... in which we plan to walk high up in the canopy somewhere, play drums for a few days at a music school in a village, and check out the Accra music scene, among other unplanned adventures. Expect a full debriefing in August. Mom and Dad, don't worry, I won't "do anything stupid". At least nothing stupider than anything I've done and lived through in Europe, Central America or Benin. Kisses to all.
.

Camp GLOW~~Dung Beetles~~Tall Tales of the Panther

Saturday, June 28, 2008

Camp GLOW
I spent the last week at a Peace Corps-run camp for girls called Camp GLOW (Girls Leading Our World). It was even more fun and rewarding than I had expected. More tiring, too. For five days I was "on" from 7 am till 10 pm, taking breaks while the girls were in sessions.

About 15 volunteers brought 12-17 yr-old girls from their schools or communities, about 50 in all. The girls were hand-picked, so most were smart, serious, and really nice. We stayed on a University campus in Porto-Novo which was probably the most manicured and stately place many of them had ever seen. One of my three girls had never been to Cotonou, the biggest city which is only 1 1/2 hours away, and none of them had been to PN, their country's capital.

There were many guest speakers and activity facilitators. The girls had 2 hr sessions on hygiene, nutrition, puberty & reproduction, financial planning, gender roles and professions, factors which keep girls from finishing school (specifically teachers who sleep with their students-more common than you might expect), children's rights, a panel with women professionals, the importance of education and study habits, a computer class, crocheting with plastic bags, necklace-making, a talent show, an american-style campfire (very bizarre) a dance party with a DJ, visits to the National Assembly (Beninese Legislature), a museum and the Centre Songhai, an impressive facility where people come for training in gardening, fish-raising, mushroom cultivation, composting and many related skills. Yes, in five days.

Of course, mixed in was free time for sports and games, origami, singing, and hanging out.

The first night, since none of them have watches, and they were so excited to be there, they were up at 3:30 am sweeping their rooms. A volunteer told them it wasn't time to get up yet, but an hour later, they were at it again with their brooms.

On a whim I taught them "Tomorrow" and "I'm Singin in the Rain" while killing time while waiting for a late speaker. They and a few other songs became the theme songs for the week, and a handy way to deal with dead air between other stuff. There are few things more endearing than 50 Beninese girls earnestly singing Broadway tunes.

It was so "Peace Corps" its not even funny, which, of course, is a good thing. I really think it was an unforgettable experience for most of the girls, and most of them came away with some concrete, useful knowledge that they hadn't had access to, as well as more confidence and ambition.

I was very impressed by the talent show skits. We asked them to deal with themes we had covered during the week. They wrote sketches about child trafficking and abuse, sexual abuse in school, villageois fathers who prefer that their kids work in the fields, and most of them acted with flair and spunk, improvising to great effect. A number of these girls had me guffawing at their goofy antics. It was very cool that they had a chance to just look squarely at some of the issues they deal with in a safe, supportive space.

Today on the way home I asked one of my girls what her favorite part was, expecting her to name an interesting session or trip. She told me the best thing was having no boys around for a while. And this is coming from one of the most out-spoken, confident, aggressive girls I know. I can only imagine that the more shy girls felt that even more strongly.

I really liked the girls and I miss them...I can't wait for next year!

Sunday, June 29, 2008

Today riding along the dirt road towards my house, I saw a beetle rolling a brown ball almost an inch in diameter. It was about eight times his size, and he changed direction alot as if the ball itself were deciding which way to roll.

I was told years ago that the scarab beetle in Egypt would roll a ball of dung and lay its eggs in it. Hence "dung-beetle". Their was a faint fecal odor near this fellow, but I guess I didn't feel like getting off my bike to investigate further, i.e. stick my nose in it.

Any time I see something fascinating or amusing like that, there are inevitably people nearby who find my amusement or fascination in turn amusing. I suppose a white guy is more interesting than shit-rolling beetles, circus-like feats of human transport, young children doing big things, bleating goats which sound ridiculously child-like, and any number of odd things.

It has been a big blow to my ego to deal with heat rash (at least that's what I hope it is). For about a month I have had these red dots which recede but never completely go away on my chest, back and forearms. Sometimes they become more prominent and feel prickly, especially when it's hot, or if I'm flushed with emotions such as shame or nervousness, and I get nervous and tell myself I'll go see the doctor right away. Then they lay low for a while and I chill out.

Heat rash is for wimps. For people that get asthma and can't eat spicy food. For people that need air conditioning and two showers a day. For those who sunburn easily and wear a bicyle helmet when nobody tells them to. I thought I was more like Tarzan than Rick Moranis, but I guess I was wrong. I'm gonna see a doctor this week and hope it's not something creepier like a fungus or bed- bugs. But first we'll see if a day or two at the beach can take care of it- I can't help but have faith in seawater for all things skin-related.

Speaking of skin, did you white folks know that black skin is firmer and less stretchy than ours? When Beninese people started telling me that, I found it ridiculous until I pinched my arm-skin, and theirs. Big difference. Great, another emasculating discovery.

The new-jacks arrive friday. Sixty clean, nervous, excited, idealistic, extremely American men and women who don't really have any idea what their life will be like a week from now are frantically shopping and reading books to prepare themselves. We volunteers are eagerly awaiting this transfusion of energy, personalities, and of course, date-able singles.

We will go to the airport and applaud their arrival--it's the most exciting moment of the year for our PC family.

I heard some interesting stuff about Kerekou, the ex-president of Benin, last night, hanging with my friend at a buvette. He said Kerekou never finished primary school. I should have asked if he became literate by some other means. Anyway, he came to power through a coup, and many insist that he got and kept power through gris-gris (a spell). He was always saying "the branch will never break in the hand of the Chameleon" and carried always a stick with a carved Chameleon.

My friend was there in Cotonou one day in 1989 when there was a mob in the streets waving machetes and calling for his head. (I think I was at a Bar-Mitzvah party at some Beach Club). His car stopped and he got out, holding his stick. The people ran away. He called them back and told his bodyguards not to shoot. He walked about 2 km, my friend tagging along, got back in his car, and that was that.

Then again, my friend, whose motives I strongly trust, also told me that the whisker of a Panther is deadly, and can even kill thousands of people. Dry it's harmless, but stick it in some water or any liquid and it creates a deadly poison. It's not gris-gris, but the natural property of the whisker. Of course, since Africans are forever seeking the downfall of those close-by, there are those who collect and sell the whiskers for use as a poison.

Oh yeah, another Panther fact I never knew- apparently, they don't eat the flesh of their prey like lions do, they attack at the neck and suck the beast dry of its blood. Hmmm, that one is interesting but a bit hard to swallow.

My point is you gotta take everything with a grain of salt.
Now I'd better go to bed. G'Night...

**List of Oddities**Mango Madness**

Monday, May 19, 2008

First off, I feel lucky to have a dedicated readership eagerly waiting on news of me and my experiences here in Benin. I have let you down and I hope you have not abandoned me as I may seem to have abandoned you.
Second off, I want to send a shout-out to Rachel, a special girl who is celebrating 30 years today.
Third off, is "second off" correct English?

It becomes harder to decide what to write about. As I mentioned last time, the novelty of this experience is quickly wearing off, and more and more it's just my life. Here's a list of unusual things I have seen:

· A person riding on a motorcyle holding in one hand a chicken by its two wings.
· Five people riding a single motorcycle. (Granted, some were small people).
· Eight people in a five-seat car. (Yes, one was me).
· Four boys riding one beat-up bicycle. (At the same time). (No side-car)
· A twelve year old boy riding a motorcyle in the capital city.
· A man hauling a 400 pound tree trunk on (what else) a motorcyle, nonchalantly rolling up his pants to drive through a foot-deep muddy puddle.
· A pig riding in the trunk of a taxi.
· A man playing a drum on the back of- you guessed it- a motorcylcle
· More bare breasts than I could hope to count. Some belonging to my students. (Only slightly awkward).
· A monkey riding in the back of a pickup truck eating rice and beans.
· Piles of juicy mangos the size of small baby heads (8 for 50 cents).
· Nigerian travelling salesmen being welcomed into my class by a school administrator, hawking in broken french small bars of soap or printed educational pamphlets . And the kids buy the stuff, too.
· Baby chicks dyed punk-bright pink.
· I was served pate at a market "restaurant" by a naked boy of about three. (Granted, I specifically requested him as my server.)


So I have been well, teaching classes, continuing with my music classes which move slowly, but are received enthusiastically by the small group of dedicated regulars.

The school year was prolonged on the spur of the moment by one month, on account of the strikes (which weren't followed at our school). It has forced me to reschedule a tentative trip to Ghana until later in the summer, and everyone is slightly annoyed, students and teachers alike.

I have been noticing improvement in my students but to be honest, an extra month of school will do them some good.

I look forward to having more time during the summer for music (local music, playing piano and composing, and of course playing the saxophone with whomever I can), and for capoeira. I want to teach some students the little that I know, bring this african dance/martial art back home to its roots.

I've been getting to know the club scene in Cotonou. I guess I'm not yet too old to dance until seven in the morning (and I hope I never will be). A typical friday night out in Cotonou involves salsa dancing (slowly but surely I'm getting some slick moves), an intermediate stop at an open-air buvette as we wait for the clubs to "chauffer" (heat up), and then much booty shakin once they do. (If you stay on the dance floor, they don't notice that you're not buying their over-priced drinks--unfortunately, PC doesn't provide a "nightlife allowance")



Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Did you know that there is no commonly used word for "please" in Fon? There may be some obscure phrase which means roughly please, but I have been here almost a year and I haven't learned it yet. People don't think twice about blasting a radio at all hours, and people you hardly know may beep your cell phone at 6:30 am expecting you to call them back on your dime. People call you "yovo" or "le blanc", and ask you incessently for small gifts, even if they are not particularly in need (they find it funny for some reason I haven't yet grasped). You might jump to conclusions and say perhaps they are inconsiderate and rude, but closer examination would quickly prove you wrong, or at least hopelessly confused.

There are at least four ways of saying "thank you". What's more, there are many conventions which show respect and consideration for others which are absent in our culture-immediately offering water to a guest, shaking hands with two hands and bowing with a "grand" (older or respect-worthy) person, greeting every person in a group you encounter, always walking a guest to the gate or to the road to find them a taxi, automatically inviting anyone around to share your plate of food ("wa dunu" / "viens manger"), asking about the health of another's family on a daily basis, the list goes on and on.

I'm quite sure I regularly offend due to my ignorance of the ins and outs of Beninese propriety. On New Year's eve I was at a guy's house, a respected member of the community, and he was not paying me much attention--he was busy meticulously dividing the meat of a just-slaughtered goat in two for two of his five wives. As midnight approached I was becoming frustrated, wanting to be with somebody who I could share the excitement of the New Year with. I decided to run down the road and see Yves, one of my closest friends, at his buvette.

A few minutes before midnight, I told the children of this guy that I was going to leave. They told me I should ask their father's permission to go. I was taken aback-- "Am I a man?" I asked. "I don't need to ask anyone's permission to go anywhere!". Later, when I heard others asking permission to leave in various situations, I understood that this is just a convention. I realized how silly and misplaced my outburst had been.

The moral of the story isn't exactly a revelation--cultures are different, and one should be extra-careful before one judges another's actions as improper. But harder is realizing this in the heat of the moment and keeping a cool head when things rub you the wrong way. Then again, some people are just rude.

******************************************************************************

Mangoes. Did I mention the mangoes? Hefty, succulent, sexy.
It's ridiculous. First, they call to you from on high, immense droplets of heavenly bliss causing even the strongest tree's strongest branches to sag under their relentless pull towards you. Towards your mouth. Colors flowing from green through reds to oranges and yellows, the kiss of the sun falls on any mango lucky enough to be on the right side of the tree and leaves a visible trace, a glow in its cheek.

I leave the small mangoes in the schoolyard for the students. They are sweet, but small and too stringy, and the students rely on them to eat. Every time a mango drops and makes a thud on the ground outside the classroom, or bangs the corrugated tin roof, a few hands shoot up from students who ask to go "to the bathroom". But I have wised up, and now I say "no, you may not go out" even before they raise their hands.

I go straight for the premium product, the large mangos one finds at market, on plates or in basins atop the heads of women and girls, or lining the side of the road. I usually buy about eight at a time, a nickel apiece.

At home, I peel back strips of skin, exposing the glistening orange flesh. If I am inside, I hover over a plate, and nibble, trying not to make embarassing slurping noises that my neighbors would hear. Sometimes I take a mango out back, where we can go at it in a less inhibited fashion. Juice runs down my chin and my forearms, and I thank God for mangoes. Afterwards, I feel guilty, and a little empty.

No matter how much sweet juicy flesh a mango may have, how much life, I have come to learn that within is also the seed of death. Some mangoes, in their prime, give no sign of the death within until teeth hit the bony pit, scraping increasingly meager pleasure from the inevitable end. Others are more forthcoming--mingling with the blend of sour immaturity and sweet full-bodied readiness, one finds an earthiness that keeps one's feet on the ground. Sometimes, one also tastes the fermentation or simple rot of flesh that is already on its way back from whence it came.

Faced with such easy decadence, one might try to limit one's self, preserve a staid distance from a pleasure so tainted by death and guilt. Not me. Make hay while the sun shines, that's what I say. There will come a time when all that remains are the scattered bones, some very lucky ones sending shoots of life from within to find the welcoming embrace of rich soil, the gift of nourishment, and the powerful kiss of the sun.

Then, and only then, will I stop devouring mangoes. I suppose I will have to make do for the intervening months with pineapples.

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I found out today the final exams have been pushed back another three weeks to June 20--again at the last minute... AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!
Everybody is pissed off. I hope they reschedule the PC-run girls camp which was scheduled for june 22-28th...I was gonna bring three of my students for a week of activities and the big city life of Porto-Novo.

Friday, May 30, 2008

False Alarm!! Apparently, the Director of my school misinterpreted a message from DDEPS, the Board of Ed., and gave us all a good scare. There are two grade levels who will continue to work until the end of June, when they take will standardized exams to earn their diplomas (a la les francais, je suppose...). Luckily for the rest of us, final exams start June 9 which means I have another week of classes, a week of proctoring tests, a week to calculate and enter grades, and its off to Porto-Novo for the girls camp.

*******from here on it gets boring, dont feel bad about ignoring the rest***********

I found all this out yesterday when with 15 minutes warning I was forced to end a class a half hour early and come to a teacher's meeting from hell. Not atypical.

Twenty or so teachers sat in a semi-circle, facing the usual panel of Directeur--Censeur (Dean?)--Contable (Acct.)--Surveillant General (The Punisher). Monsieur Le Directeur started off in usual fashion, quietly listing the categories of topics to be discussed. (Important people don't seem to like wasting energy enunciating
or projecting).

The Censeur slowly read a memo from DDEPS and one from the office of the Minister of Education. If I hadn't been surrounded by a number of quiet, respectful teachers seriously taking it all in, I might have laughed out loud or been tempted to scream. The Censeur started something like this (en Francais of course):

"From the desk of the blahblah blah of the blahblah at the ministry of Education and Training of the Youth, we have received this message:

It is Message number 492 DPES//SSAP//1013927 (yes, he read every digit)

My dear Directeurs,

In light of the recent blah blah blah, taking into account blah blah blah and blah, it is my intention to blah blah. There are three directives which I send today in this message.
1. Blah blah blah, ...the standardized tests must take place no earlier then June 20, and finish no later than July 2, blah blah blah.

2. In light of last year's poor test rusults, blah blah blah, it is encumbant upon each of us to do everything in our power to maintain the effective prescence in the classroom of all profeseurs and students until the afore-mentioned dates, blah blah blah.

etc, etc, etc

Of course, the combination of my ignorance of the fancy educated French of Administrators, the mumbling tone of the Censeur, my distaste for beaurocracy in general, and the irrelevance of the message to my personal situation meant that the message pretty much went over my head. In fact, there was much more "blah-blah-ing" than I have noted here.

The meeting then followed typical protocol, which due to my lack of experience with work-related meetings, I can't judge as particularly typical of Benin, the French system, or of beaurocratic organizations in general. All I know is that I would have preferred a marathon of "Friends", and that's saying a lot.

Parties wishing to "intervene" raised their hands, and a list was made. Each speaker, mustering their loftiest language, laboriously made their points one by one, as the Censeur and Directeur seemed to take notes, but did not respond. After all had said their piece, the Directeur, heavy pauses smattering his speech, first re-iterated each point before responding at length.

If I were the Directeur, I would have boiled the whole two-hour affair down to this:

"The big-shots in Porto-Novo have given us the following dates for the exams...For those who teach grade levels who have the exams, the students are tired and they will start cutting class, so make sure you keep your classes interesting, and punish students who fail to show up. If you finish your curriculum, you should plan effective review sessions so that the students do well on the tests. For the rest of you, finals start a week from Monday. That's about it, have a nice day." I'm sooo American.

Visual Blowout

Yeah, I prepared a bunch of posts, and screwed up when I didn't put 'em on my usb key, so you'll have a whole lot to read in a week or two. In the meantime, these pictures should be worth at least a few thousand words...

These are Racine and Deo Gratias, two children that I cannot pass without stopping and shooting the shit, pretty much every day. The whole family is nice, they are good friends. I would be in love with Deo Gratias if she were only about fifteen years older. Neighborhood girls, spontaneously falling into formation. Playing ajido, the national board game of benin, on my front stoop with Grace, my next door neighbor. My AP Calculus and University-level vectors and matrices class put me about on par with her aptitude for the game. We battle it out to the bitter end. DiDi looks on. Me and Clement, my homologue--an English teacher in the school, and my Fon tutor. Yeah, I know my bumba is fly...

The road between my house and the paved main road becomes a lake everytime it rains. Hello, Malaria... Trying to figure out how to deal with this situation...
Issa, a neighbor and a zemidjan driver. This is the main road.
Sunset, having just arrived at Grand Popo. Aaron and I walked down the beach to the Lion Bar, a Rasta-run hotel that plays reggae non-stop and has nice murals everywhere. Trying a bit too hard to be cool, but actually succeeding in being cool. It was Nonvitcha, the big fete for Grand Popo, held every year on Pentecost weekend. We didn't really do anything special, but spirits were high...Aaron is a friend of my feather, and you can belie' that we flock together.

Me and Betsy doin it up at All-Volunteer Conference GAD fundraiser at Hotel du Lac, a ritzy hotel in Cotonou. I laid down smooth African grooves for dinner, she and Sandy brought the rukus for some after-dinner dancing ...needless to say, my bumba was permeated with sweat by the end of the evening. Luckily there was a sweet pool nearby.

Lots of words on their way.......much love to my people all over the world.

Long time no post

No, I haven't been swallowed up by a pit of jungle quicksand (we don't really have "jungle" here in Benin-- the bush in my neck of the bush is mostly scrubby bushes, grasses and weedy thistle punctuated with the occasional towering tree.) (And even if we had jungle, would we have quicksand?)

No, I didn't go out fishing with Albert again only to have our junker of an outboard motor crap out leaving us vulnerable to the Nigerian pirates and arms smugglers who patrol the coastal waters.

No, I haven't misteriously withered after a vindictive villager, hidden away in his room, pronounced curse words calculating my demise.


The real reason I haven't been posting is far less interesting- my computer lost MS Word, so i have no word processing application to work with for the moment.



So life is life... (yeah, I'm a deep, insightful dude) and by that I mean that it doesn't feel much out of the ordinary for me to be here in Africa. The novelty has officially worn off. I have my routines, my coping mechanisms. There are people I won't pass without stopping and shooting the breeze. There are those whose phone calls I stubbornly refuse to answer because I know exactly how pointless the conversation will be. I think I'm a little less smiley than I was a few months ago, although I still stop and shake hands with small children on a daily basis. I've been going more frequently to the clubs in Cotonou-dance is my favorite therapy.

When I got here, I felt like life was the next two years. Now I find myself fretting over my post-Benin future, which is probably healthy for a dude pushing thirty with no clear career trajectory.

In typical fashion, at the very last minute the school year was lengthened by three weeks because of the teacher strikes that have disrupted the year (my school didn't strike). So instead of final exams this week, I can look forward to the hit-or-miss, unpredictable battle of wills called "class".

So I am anticipating a great summer with some travel (Ghana perhaps, northern Benin for sure), some peace corps activity (training the new-jacks for 3 weeks, and taking two girl students to a week-long camp for bad-ass girls), a whole lot of music-makin and booty shakin, and of course, the best--those unplanned adventures that come a knockin at your door every once in a while.

Once I get Word, I will unleash the stories like a flood, I promise. In the meantime, tell me of your adventures and earth-rattling epiphanies...

Bloodsuckers and the Music Club

Friday, February 29, 2008
Happy leap year! Today is a day of recalibration… I just need to figure out if I’m running ahead or behind, fast or slow, hot or cold. In general I feel pretty good, but it’s always hard to diagnose yourself, like it’s hard to notice if you yourself have grown.
One time, I gained 25 pounds without noticing. I was enjoying the pastries and bread of Europe a little too much, perhaps. Only when I got home and my friend Rachel laughed at my big belly did I realize what had happened. So when here, in the space of two weeks, two different village lady friends of mine complimented me on filling out nicely (gaining weight here is a sign of good health), I started to get paranoid. An evil friend of mine seized on my paranoia and surreptitiously laid a foot on the med center scale as I was trying to calm my fears, and she had me convinced I had repeated my impressive 25 pound feat.
Luckily, her fits of hysterics eventually tipped me off and I am relieved to know that I am cruising at my arrival weight.
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I’ve got other news, growing stale, but not too stale to nibble on if you hunger for freakish slightly gross things. About 6 weeks ago, I got my very first blood sucking parasite! And my second, too! It started with a small bump near my heel, which I thought was some kind of wart. I ignored it. Then I noticed the tip of my pink toe was quite swollen, and pretty sensitive. I was studying it the day after I found it, when my friend saw it, laughed and told me I had a gigan. Fearing some exotic foot worm, I asked him what it was.
It turns out, there are these tiny, black, tick-like insects which mainly stick to pigs, but also enjoy human feet, especially soft baby and child feet. My friend was surprised at the size of my gigans because usually they itch like mad as they burrow under your skin and start to suck your blood. Any normal rational adult here quickly deals with it before it really gets in the door. Mine had been inside at least two weeks, feasting quite well.
Stoically, I sat with my foot on the table of my friend’s buvette as a small grinning crowd gathered and Yves went to work with a sharpened stick and a razor blade. Okay, I am lying. I was gripping the table till my knuckles were white as I softly whimpered and pleaded for him to wait and do it tomorrow, promising I would come back. (Sound familiar, dad?)
After fifteen minutes, Yves had harvested two impressive white pea-sized gigans, leaving blood-red holes in my feet. Many times in the next day or two, the image of peering into a hole in my toe and seeing a pearl imbedded there left me with a smile on my face.
Okay, I’m weird.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Okay, I know, you didn’t sign up to read about weight gain (imagined or real), and certainly not about creepy blood suckers (you get enough of that in the Wall Street Journal…badoum, chink!) so I’ll tell you about my music club at school…
It’s in a formative stage, I’ve had 3 meetings with one group and 2 with another. We do solfege and theory and I’m teaching how to read and write music.
I composed a little singing exercise with two part harmony and it opened my eyes-this will be very hard. I want to sing three part harmony but everybody’s intonation is very loose (ie terrible) and they don't know how to listen to their voice (or others' voices)when they sing, so it just doesn’t work—not yet…
Traditional music here is basically percussion and unison voices, so they are not used to hearing much harmony. I don’t know if this contributes to the problem, or if any group of untrained, unexperienced singers is an intonational nightmare. Regardless, it will be an interesting challenge to mold them into a group.
I just need to show them what in tune sounds like before I can expect it of them.
At this point there are kids that can't replicate a pitch I sing. My work is cut out for me...Petit a petit le oiseau fait son nit…little by little the bird builds its nest…
I am scared that when I come home, having become used to using certain French, or even Fon expressions to express certain thoughts, I will be frustrated by English’s lack of a good equivalent—ca y est…petit a petit…bon travail…tu a fait un peut?
Anyway, eventually, I will post some recordings if possible…
Till next time…

A Day at Sea

This is the main road passing through my village. I promise many more and better photos soon. Maybe even videos!!! those bananas are delicious ... This guy was in my house, and he had a few words for me...

Friday, February 15th
--Azan yi aton!
--Dokpo jeji! Literally, “It’s been three days”…“And one more!” (This is the Fon equivalent of “long time no see.”) I first take this chance to thank my dad for buying me the shiny new computer happily humming on my lap as I decadently prop myself up in bed this early Friday morning, with no immediate plans to go anywhere (a luxury even more rare here than it would have been back there in my “real life”).
The thanks don’t stop there, as my brother did the grunt work of buying it and sending it to the friend of a friend who graciously dragged it from Colorado to the bustling road-side market of my village where I fought past the dozen women insistently thrusting bags of oranges, small bags of bocou (boiled corn mixed with boiled peanuts), bags of pur water (“madame, pya wata, pya wata!”) into the open windows of the taxi, or displaying platters of papayas, bananas, pineapples or a delicacy (heehee) called agouti, or “bush-rat” .
I call the market “road-side” because the English language hasn’t had much need for a word to describe a market which is actually in the road. For the length of my long village, taxis and trucks pull over along one side of the road where they need not even open a door to buy the fruit or agouti my village is famous (at least regionally) for. Despite the fact that they have widened the road to accommodate this commerce which is the life-blood of the village, often the stopped cars leave only one lane to be shared by the two directions of traffic. At least this bottleneck forces the cars to roll doucement (gently)…
It’s hard to know where to begin when you are trying to blog the story of your life, and it has been six weeks of new experiences, shifting perspectives, happy discoveries, small triumphs and disappointments since you last had the chance to write. I’ll leave for later the happy stories of my newly formed music club and my other evolving musical adventures, the decadence of swimming at the American Ambassador’s personal swimming pool, the intrigued horror of participating in a chicken sacrifice, and the sorrow of learning of the death of my friend’s teen-age brother. Instead, I’ll tell you about my housemates.
They are generally quiet, and luckily we keep opposite hours. I am generally up and about from 5 or 5:30 in the morning to about 9 or 10 at night, and usually they only get up after I’m sleeping, although we cross paths occasionally during the day. My biggest complaint is that they don’t have the decency to shit in the designated shitting area, they do their business wherever, even while eating (now that’s just wrong), and it doesn’t even cross their minds to clean it up.
Another thing that pisses me off is when they eat my food without asking. Basically, they will eat anything I leave out—bananas, pineapples, bread— they even have the nerve to start a second or even third banana before they finish the first—utterly wasteful and inconsiderate. They’re almost as bad as my recent roommate in Brooklyn who smoked pot every day, made a pathetic attempt to clean every few months or so, and regularly passed out fully clothed on his bare mattress with lights and radio on. (Did I mention it was a railroad apartment and I had to pass through his degenerate world just to go brush my teeth or fix myself a nice cup of herbal tea in the roach-infested kitchen?)
When I do happen to see these messy co-inhabitors, I always make sure to remind them that their days are numbered—a friend of a friend has a kitten that she fears will be eaten by her neighbors if she doesn’t find him a new home, so I will soon have his welcome company here with me. If the mice are smart, they’ll quit while they’re ahead and move on. If they sit too long at the table of bounty they will quickly see the tables turn and who was once eating will soon be eaten.
Well, I have spent about two hours delicately crafting these two pages without really saying much of interest at all. What self-indulgent rambling as usual, now followed by the usual self-effacing and slightly embarrassingly self-conscious criticism. Anyone who is unfortunate enough to have followed my blog regularly should have by now noticed this pattern and stopped reading long ago… If you are unlucky enough to have stumbled across this blog, let me be the first to warn you—you are likely to waste some perfectly good time and leave with a bad taste in your mouth. Till next time! Edabo…

Saturday, February 23, 2008
The worst thing about a party is that it must end. This morning I woke up in Cotonou and did not want to go back to my village. I have spent the last week enjoying my freedom from the daily grind and spending time with friends.
The “party” vibe culminated last night at a brand new night club called Tantra where a number of us danced until the DJ went home at six a.m. He played an eclectic mix of American hip-hop, European club music, African dance music and Lebanese club music. The crowd was weller-to-do Beninese, Lebanese (there are a bunch who do business here), our modest American contingent and a few Frenchies. I had the pleasure of being fought over more than once by friendly (and strong!) Beninese girls who tried to snatch me away from each other on the dance floor.
The slightly pretentious scene at the club contrasted strongly with the place I had left the morning of the same day, a beach not far from Porto Novo. I have a friend in this small, beautiful ocean-side fishing village and I took the opportunity to spend a day and a night there.
The village is set just back from the beach itself, and is scattered with quite a lot of coconut palms, nicely spaced to create an airy tropical atmosphere. The homes are also nicely spaced, and each is surrounded by a thin wall of inter-woven palm leaves. The houses have walls of palm branches and roofs of—you guessed it—palm leaves. The result is quite beautiful, the unity among the homes and between the homes and the landscape.
Albert is in his late forties but seems younger. His lips are discolored in a splotchy pattern, a result, I would assume, of the boat fire which also badly burned his hand and left it scarred. Having spent years in Nigeria working on and eventually captaining a large fishing boat, his English is decent, about on par with his somewhat broken French. His native language is gungbe (pronounced goon-gbay), a sub-dialect of the fongbe language family. This is the language of the Oueme departement of South-east Benin (which includes the capital of Porto Novo).
I met Albert in December as I was walking along the beach with a few friends, enjoying the relative solitude of the place. We came across a group of twenty or so people heaving a canoe out of the water and up the beach. Always wanting a part in the action, I suggested that we help, and we nonchalantly lent our incredible strength to the task.
The people were pretty friendly, and Albert in particular talked to us for a few minutes. After we shot the shit for a while, he mentioned that next time we should come find him and he would cook us some fish. He thus planted a seed which I have patiently kept for three months until I found the conditions to let it flower this week.
Thursday, when I arrived, we went to a nearby buvette where he insisted on buying me three large beers. Then we walked a bit through the village, visiting a few friends. At one house, he grabbed a little fish, thin and about three inches long, off a fire where it was being smoked, and handed it to me. I carried this little fish for about thirty minutes without really considering what to do with it before he asked why I hadn’t eaten it. Ah, now I understand…you just take a whole little animal and nibble it, of course! I did my best to enjoy this gift. Probably they would just bite the whole damn thing and chew it, bones and all, I’m not sure.
Worn out from our grueling afternoon, we lay down on a straw mat that he had laid out in the shade of a –you guessed it—palm leaf roof. He called a young boy, and told him fetch us some coconuts. In other words, “go scale that 30 foot palm tree, risking life and limb”. The boy, with bare feet and hands, climbed in stages, resting every few feet. At the top, he hauled himself up onto the palm branches and with much effort, shoved a few green coconuts off with his foot. I don’t know whether he was fearing for his life, but I definitely was.
With his machete, Albert expertly chopped an opening in several of the coconuts and handed them to me. Green coconuts are quite juicy I learned, and the juice is mmmmm… sweet. The flesh is somewhat thin and very moist, tender and delicious. I had three or four.
For the evening’s entertainment, Albert took me with his twin sons of four years to his friend’s house, where a gas-powered generator ran a tv. Just what I was craving—some nice modern technology to relieve me of the oppressive boredom of a sky speckled with glittering stars, fringed by towering palm trees, swaying gently in the constant breeze to the relentless rhythm of waves beating the shore.
The feature was a rather low-budget affair, a series of vignettes taking place on the streets of nearby Porto Novo, in which a rambunctious midget wandered around getting into trouble and loud arguments (quite a common theme in Fon movies) with various people—a bread seller and a sugar-seller, among others. A mixture of boredom and distaste for unabashed midgexploitation drove me to retreat into my book, the sci-fi masterpiece Ender’s Game.
At my insistence on sleeping outside, Albert spread a large straw mat in his fenced-in front “yard” and I had restless sleep until he in turn insisted that we move inside onto the all-too-solid concrete floor to escape the feared early morning dew of the harmattan.
Having been told that we would not be fishing since recently the sea had not been giving many fish, I was pleasantly surprised the next morning when Albert told me that his friend was going out, and would be happy to have me tag along. Albert decided to come along, too, and his seniority put him at the helm.
The boats are made in Ghana, the bulk of the body carved from a single large tree. About 18 feet long, these canoes are quite stable and handsome, if somewhat sea-worn. A small triangle juts out to the side near the back, seating a large 25 horsepower outboard motor.
When I arrived at the boat, it was halfway down the beach, just close enough to the sea that the largest waves came up and licked its belly. Having stowed nets, a large container of drinking water (ratty old engines can fail, after all) and little else, we got ready for a day on the sea. I reluctantly entrusted my cell phone to Albert’s friend who was staying back, but only after checking and memorizing my pre-paid credit balance. (Recent events have given me trust issues-more later…)
About ten of us now took advantage of every large wave which washed up under the hulking boat to heave it a foot or two farther into the water. At a certain point, we seemed to wait for nothing at all in particular, until Albert gave a shout, we all pushed to boat to full buoyancy, and we leaped in. With the speed and precision of a well-practiced football team, one guy lowered the motor into the water, pull-started it, and gunned it. Albert stood on the rear bench and grabbed a ten-foot oar-shaped rudder, directing us into the on-coming waves.
He had timed the launch well, and the boat easily scaled and crested three or four waves before they became harmless swells. It was only after we passed out of that hairy situation that it occurred to me to ask if they often tip during the launch. He said it depends on the captain. The captain must study the sea, grok the waves which come in sets, and carefully time the launch so that it takes place between the sets of larger waves. Call me reckless, but my captain’s age and demeanor had given me full confidence in him.
I’d like to interrupt this narrative for a moment to say that just because you, the reader, are likely sitting in a nice chair in a climate-controlled home or office, enjoying a nice cup of fresh coffee and a blueberry scone, or an avocado roll with green tea, or a mozzarella and fresh basil sandwich on organic 16-grain bread, I’m not jealous, no! I’ve got a gigantic half-papaya in front of me, roughly the shape, if not the size, of the very boat on which our narrative takes place. Back to the story…
Call me short-sighted, but it wasn’t until we got out into the sea, with the coastal palm and pine trees slipping behind the morning fog that I thought to wonder how on earth we would navigate. How did they used to do it? Oh yeah, stars…well there aren’t too many of those during the day. Actually, there’s exactly one, and it’s called…………………………………………..that’s right—the sun.
Albert claims he uses his “experience” to know where he’s going. Okay, I can understand that waves generally head towards the land. I can accept that the wind in turn heads away from land. But that doesn’t explain how he headed out for about 20 min, at an angle to the shore, and without much difficulty found the little flag and buoy that mark the nets that the crew had cast the previous day.
Before hauling in this catch, we cast another net, about 200 meters long. While one guy gently rowed us along and Albert kept our course true, the other two let out the net. About four feet wide, it was lined with floaties (mostly pieces of old flip-flops) along one side, and sinkies (small bits of metal) along the other. The floaties aren’t strong enough to overpower the sinkies and keep the net at the surface, they are intended to keep the net upright along the sea-bed.
Pulling in yesterday’s net, one guy kept laying these crabs, still stuck in the net, on the top edge of the side of the boat, an improvised anvil, and bashing them with a stick until glittering bits of crab shell and flesh rained down in the water, manna for some little guys, I’m sure. Turns out these crabs, which numbered at least one of every two animals caught, are inedible.
Among the edible catch were other crabs—these were removed from the net with a bit more delicate touch—a couple handsome well-red snappers about two feet long, some medium sized flat silvery-white fish, and a lot of what I think may be flounder. Flat, they fly through the water by creating wave motions which run along the side of their bodies. They have long rattails and their mouths are found on the lower surface of their flat bodies, well-positioned to scavenge the ocean floor, I imagine. Not too attractive if you ask me.
As they worked, the crew passed the hours joking and telling stories which were obviously unintelligible to me. I passed the hours alternately gazing at the horizon, similar in every direction, and watching the men work much as I studied construction workers as a young boy.
Eager to get to Cotonou to see which other volunteers were in town and cook up some week-end festivities, I decided not to wait long enough to eat the fish which we had earned (I did bail a little! ). Instead, My buddy quickly steamed about seven crabs, which we ate with gari and sauce. Gari is a rough flour made of manioc. It is often mixed with cooked beans and can be eaten dry as a snack, or countless other ways. Today it was mixed with water to create a slightly sticky, subtly bitter, kind of rough dough. Taking a bit between the fingers, you roll a ball, dip it in the sauce (tomatoes, hot pepper, crab fat, and water) and enjoy. Enjoy I did. Albert spoiled me by deftly cracking open the crabs and tossing chunks of white flesh onto the plate of sauce.
My sojourn at the beach had come to an end, and in fact 24 hours seemed like enough. Hanging out with Beninese, even quite nice and pleasant people, is different from hanging with other friends. We are truly from different worlds, and there is a divide there which has not shown signs of dissolving in my seven months here.
He welcomed me to bring a friend or two next time, and I will surely take him up on his offer. Maybe having a third wheel along will make a stay of two or three days more appealing.

More soon...lots of love...