Thursday, October 15, 2009

Et voila

This is a long one, hope you have the time. For those of you who do, make yourself a cup of tea, put your cell on silent, and enjoy

This post, like my general train of thoughts here, is a jumble of seemingly disconnected reflections, observations, peculiarities about my new life. Though I always hope to sit down and write a blog post that astounds you all in eloquence, in which images of life in tropical Africa leap from the screen like gazelles, it never seems to happen. I am always rushed, sweating profusely, frustrated at the slow speed of the internet, desperately searching for the man who should be powering it by stationery bicycle and must have fallen asleep. Instead, moments of clarity and refined introspection seem to come at the most inopportune time. When I’m shopping at the market. Eggs, check. Tomatoes, check. Purpose in life, check. Or when I’m hoofing it up a potholed dirt road. The physical exhaustion never seems to make its way into my head; I think the clearest when all I can only hear the deafening sound of blood pumping in my eardrums. Or when I’m one of 8 in a 5-person vehicle, one hand pinned under the mama next to me and the other propping up the head of the dude next to me with supernatural napping abilities, lest he nap in my lap. Perhaps this is because, like many aspects of my experience here, I should hold those moments of clarity for myself, appreciating them for their inherent wealth-the assurance that this experience is continually developing my mind and soul- rather than desiring to trap them into words and corner them into blog posts. What I’m trying to say is Warning: This May Underwhelm.

The longer my stay in Benin, the harder I find it to write about it. Aspects of my life that were once bizarre have become commonplace, and the aspects I’d like to express evade cohesive, eloquent thoughts. I am in both a perpetual state of euphoria and one of confusion. Euphorically confused 24/7. This place is beautiful. Even when it’s hotter than the rings of inferno or pouring buckets and thundering raucously, there is a calm about it that is both unshakeable and infectious. I can’t believe that I live in a place with such awe-inspiring raw beauty. I walk and bike around to surrounding villages and often don’t see another individual for miles. I can be just a 10 minute bike ride away and the language is completely different. The narrow red dirt paths are hedged by deep greens of the lush landscape- palm trees, pineapple fields, stalk upon stalk of corn. Though much of the land is cultivated, cultivators aren’t too particular or efficient with their land so it retains the appearance of land that has been untouched. It’s as though people are working for the land, not that the land is working for people.
Living alone is bizarre. Not lonely, not yet at least, but bizarre. It’s QUIET. It won’t be like that forever; its quiet now because my ipod broke, my hard drive crashed, and the radio I bought in the US doesn’t pick up any stations out here. The first couple hours in the morning and the last several at night, after sunset, I am completely alone. I read a lot, write a lot of letters, journal constantly. It’s a good thing in some ways- knowing that I’ll be alone for so long makes me more excited to get out of my house and see people, and constant interaction and French and Fon speaking when I’m out of the house makes me savor the moments of peace and quiet in my little home. I finally put up some pictures so you all can see what I mean when I talk about home. (I’ve yet to get any pictures that do Ze justice. It’s too beautiful for my 8MP Olympus.)
Every venture outside of my house is a never-ending string of greetings. I greet and am greeted by every single person along the road, and since people’s work is all outside unless you are the mayor or a teacher, there is never a 10 second period without a greeting. People are always staring. Sometimes it feels like I’m a celebrity, other times like I’m a bearded lady centaur, a freak. Most of the time my smiles and greetings are returned with even bigger smiles and warmer greetings (even when they don’t understand French and I don’t understand their greeting, we both get the picture), but sometimes I make a baby cry or an old man pee himself (I think moonshine had something to do with it too). Some people are too friendly, mostly young men who ask me not just my name and what I’m doing here but where I live, what my phone number and relationship status is, if they can get to know me better. I don’t want to burn any bridges so it’s a fine line between being firm and being rude. For instance, the mayor’s assistant asked me where my house was and I responded by saying that it was a Peace Corps rule that men could not come in my house. He said he’d have his wife and kids bring by a dozen oranges then. I felt like such a jerk! Kids often knock at my door, just to say hi they say though I know they’re hoping that I have a never-ending stash of candy to bequeath them. You learn quickly that it is an “if you give a mouse a cookie” kinda society. Don’t give someone something unless you are prepared to continue all day every day, that includes access to your house.
Sometimes people laugh when I pass by. I try to laugh too, make myself feel I’m in on the joke. It’s funny right- only one white girl in town! You gotta make yourself feel like a celeb when that bearded centaur reflection appears.
My job is at best unstructured and at worst non-existent. It’s somewhat the norm for Peace Corps though. Though the mayor’s office pays my rent, they actually have no job for me to do. It boggles my mind. In America, you only pay for someone if there is an expected return. Maybe they thought a white person would boost tourism, or that I would be eating enough to cause an increase in local revenue. I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if they sat me down and said, look, we were really looking for an American that could dance like MJ or sing like Whitney. Right now, my job seems to be meeting and greeting. Like Miss America, I like to think. And since I often can’t understand what is being said around me (if its local language), I just sit and smile, look pretty, hope no one notices the beard. I am one by one greeting the directors and staff of the schools in my area. Tomorrow I will be meeting all the village chiefs in my commune with the mayor. The work day is interrupted by both extreme heat and rain showers, both of which warrant staying inside the house, and also the daily noon-3pm siesta. I just show up to the mayor’s hoping someone will answer questions I have and play Sudoku while I’m not doing anything. Even though I tell them it’s a game, they constantly tell me “good work!” with my Sudoku. I’m in for a rude awakening when I return to the American job market. More than once they have made mention of my Anglo-Saxon work ethic and talk about my punctuality almost as if it’s a fault. If time is money in the US, time is pineapples here. And there are a lot of damn pineapples.
It is the rainy season here, which I absolutely adore. Not just because I get to sit inside and listen to the rain fall on my tin roof (which is sometimes soothing and other times sounds like the apocalypse), but also because I have an outdoor shower so I can shower in the rain! Glam, right? Since I usually shower with a bucket and a scoop, rainfall provides the closest thing to an American shower and water pressure here. The rain here is bizarre in the way it can be POURING just 10 feet from you and you are completely dry. I’ve watched as it slowly envelopes the land, creeping thatched roof by thatched roof. I’ve made a few friends by being caught in rainstorms; someone always motions me to share their covered patio when I’m helplessly soaked and trudging through red mud.
My house has lots of spiders and lizards which I don’t mind when they stick to their place on the walls and ceiling. The first night I had a panic attack and made my dad calm me down while I was sobbing about the scawey spidewrs. I’m okay with it now, except that the one time I left for a couple days I came back to find lizards everywhere- in my bowls, among my books, in my suitcase. I found one caught in my mosquito net a few days ago. I don’t like to think about what else can get in if something as big as a lizard can.

I’m struck by the raw beauty of this place, my new home, at various times each day. I often take long bike rides in the evening, late enough to not risk death by heat stroke, light enough to not risk death by pothole. One dirt path one day, another the next. It’s a legitimate part of my work- creating a map, locating villages and schools, identifying crops and tree species, looking for evidence of different agricultural practices. Occassionally there’s a traditional healer or health center. There is often more goats than humans and more green than imaginable. I’ve had several moments, bumping violently down a rocky hill- being greeted by a group of old women in their local language, being chased by high-pitched toddlers- when I’m so overwhelmed by the beauty and inherent tranquility of this place, that I’m giddy. This surge of emotion erupts in laughter, choked out in gasps of air as I breathlessly pedal. I look crazy, like Clockwork Orange dude status, but they think I’m bizarre no matter what I do so I get away with it. More than once I’ve also been at such a moment of euphoria only to realize that I have no one with which to share it. I feel kinda like the guy at the end of Into the Wilderness, who chases what he sees to be the meaning of life only to realize at the end that for happiness to be real it needs to be shared. I know that having a constant here would drastically change my experience. My comfort circle would be larger, I wouldn’t have to leave the house for human interaction. It’s somewhat like an anchor, though, in that you can’t change too much, can’t stray from what you were when you arrived. That said, I think people who are able to share this experience with someone they love- finding a best friend or future partner within a day’s journey or joining Peace Corps with a spouse- are truly lucky. I envy that experience.

Moving on to lighter topics, a melange of observations:
-People are called by their professions at almost all times, even if its your spouse, even if you have the same job. No last name, just Teacher. Also, Mama is any older woman or any woman whose house you are in, and Tanti (aunt) is any woman selling something. And many children call me and others my age Dada, which means big sister.
-Work and school hours are flexible and both have midday siestas of 2 to 3 hours. Makes the transition from undergrad a lot easier.
-Of the 20 or so designs of school notebooks nationwide, 2 feature Obama and Michael Jackson.
-Some people were looking at pictures of graduation that had the date on them: 6/12/09. Here the date reads date/month/year rather than month/date/year. They asked me if it was already 2010 in the US.
-Typewriters are alive and well in the heart of Africa.
-People sleep in the middle of meetings and as far as I can tell it’s totally okay.
-Though I am definitely the only white person now, at one point there was another white girl here. I know this because several people call my Sonia and my friend told me to watch out for a family whose son had been burned by a white girl and might have it out for the whole lot.

People often ask me if I’ve made friends…that’s hard to answer. I have one friend for sure. She’s 26, a teacher, a mother of 2. Sometimes I spend weekends over there, we go to the dressmaker because she likes to have matching outfits, she helps me buy things in local language at the market. But she works all day and I stay in at night so our socializing is limited. Other than that I don’t have friends like I would use the term in the US. No one to call and hang out with. (Not that I’m looking for a pity party! It’s just another aspect of life here.) There’s a thousand people I greet around village and who greet me, with huge smiles and inquiries about how I slept, my health, my family “over there.” There’s an old woman who always gives me more sweet potatoes than I pay for and another old woman who lets me hang out with her on the side of the road while she sells corn cakes and teaches me words in local language. There are people at the mayor’s office but they have families of their own (it’s actually just one family: the mayor, his wife, his sister, his brother, his nephew, you get the picture. African politics.). There’s a woman who comes by every other day or so and just sits at my table while I read or work. We sit in silence mostly, which would be awkward anywhere else. There’s a girl in high school who helps me get water (and by that I mean she carries the water and I pay) but she’s a lingerer which bugs. I have two neighbors, both men in their 20s, but rules of propriety forbid us from entering the other’s home so our contact is limited to polite convo outside. The guy to my right is a policeman by day, I see him coming home in his intimidating military apparel, but the second he walks in the door he blasts Celine Dion and sings word for word every song of hers ever recorded. There are, of course, other PCVs, but for the first three months we are supposed to stay in our villages for the first couple months in order to be well intergrated.

That’s my life! Keep the emails and letters coming! And if you send one, please send a stamp. I’m about 15 letters behind and completely out of postage!

Thursday, October 1, 2009

A West African Cost-Benefit Analysis

Though I just moved to Ze Thursday (more on that later!), I've had to spend the last 24 hours at the Peace Corps office in Cotonou. What does this entail? Air conditioning 24/7, a hot water pressure shower, a stocked kitchen complete with oven (the only one I've seen since being in Benin), the company of other Americans, a DVD player if I so choose, computers with the fastest internet in the country, insect- and lizard-free rooms, cold water (FREE!), a chance to stock up on books at the book swap, and everything I could need that I can't get in Ze is just a moto ride away: the bank, fabric to make clothes, schwarma, Thai food, burgers, supermarkets with spices, baking supplies, coffee mugs, shampoo and conditioner, and all varieties of fruit.

And what did I have to do to earn such a vacation? Extreme diarrhea for 4 days. I won't go into further detail only to say that words like "inflammatory" and "bacterial" have been thrown around, and that the position of my latrine outside my house, two locked doors and about 40 steps away from my bed, has been an issue. All that included, I would say that it was worth it if I was able to enjoy any of the foods of Cotonou, particularly schwarma. But I couldn't. So, no, not worth it.