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.
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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.
