Ten Things

This week marks two very big milestones in my Peace Corps service. As of July 24th, 2010, I have officially been in Benin for one year. Even writing that sentence takes my breath away. It has been a wild, frustrating, eye-opening, wonderful year, and its anniversary brings a sense of achievement, peace, and excitement that I have never really felt before. Also, on August 1st, the country of Benin celebrated its 50th anniversary of independence from French colonial rule. For fifty years, Benin has been one of the few African country to remain a stable, functioning peaceful democracy - and that is a feat worthy of much celebration of acclaim (and trust me they did! - with parades, parties, and lots and lots of celebratory t-shirts).

In honor of these two events, I’ve decide to make a few Top Ten lists (assembled in no particular degree of superiority or inferiority) showing how I've changed, how I've grown, what I’ve learned, what I’ve accepted, and what I still want to conquer. And the lists go on…

Ten Things I Love About Africa

1. Tissu: Tissu is the French word for fabric, and no place does amazing fabric like Benin. They sell tissu everywhere - no matter how small the village, and everyone wears it all the time. You can wear it to be formal (in dresses and suits) or you can wear to be casual (in robes and sarongs you wear around the house or in your concession). It can multi-task as a towel, a shawl, a blanket, a sponge, as curtains and furniture upholstery …it’s very versatile. And the colors and prints - gold, deep purple, fiery orange, sunset pink, sky blue, crimson, and floral green with everything from animals to airplanes incorporated in the design. It’s a wonderful way to express your fashion sense, and it magically keeps you warm in the early morning breeze and cool during balmy afternoons. I love tissu, and I will be bringing lots of it back to America with me.

2. Igname Pilé: I never thought the day would come, but there is actually a bit of African cuisine I very much enjoy. In French, it’s called igname pilé (pounded yams for the non-francophones). Basically, it consists of mashed up African yams (similar in taste and texture to potatoes), salt, and water and has a gluey, firm consistency. But the thing that makes igname pilé great is the sauce. You can have it with tomato meat sauce, okra sauce (a.k.a. snot sauce because the resemblance is uncanny), or even peanut sauce (which is marvelous when done right). You eat it with your hands, taking off chunks from a plate sized portion of the yams and dunking it in a side dish of sauce. Rainy season means yams are out-of-season, so it’s a hard dish to find right now, and to my shock and bewilderment…I have actually found myself craving it. Hats off to all the African women who wake up at the crack of dawn to pound those yams in their large, carved wood basins - it is so good!

3. Harmattan: Harmattan is the perfect season. Imagine a time and place where for five months straight you can wake up knowing that the weather will be perfect - seventy degrees, sunny with a cooling breeze in the morning and at night, and zero chance of rain, EVER. It’s glorious, it’s fun, it’s refreshing - it’s the good life.

4. Salutations: It’s a crucial part of African culture to greet every person you meet during your day with a series of questions to get caught up on their daily life. The questions are the same everywhere (and granted, sometimes it gets to be too much when I'm not feeling all that friendly), but it is custom to ask: How is your day? Your work? Your health? Your family? Your children? You currently energy level? The thing that blows me away is that none of it is superficial. People are actually genuinely interested in the answers to these questions everyday and are offended if you do not take the time to ask them in response. West Africa is an open and friendly place, and it is quite nice coming from the Middle Atlantic region of the U.S.A. where you barely make eye contact with people walking down the street - let alone actually going out of your way to smile or say a simple, “Hello.”

5. Gri gri: Gri gri is a voodoo term for the evil spirits that curse you or generally just cause problems in your life. A child dies? It was the gri gri. Your plants never blossomed? You got gri gri-ed. You caught a nasty case malaria? You dissed the gods, and now the gri gri is after you. But it’s also an excellent scapegoat if you are so in need. Students forgot their homework? Forget that lame old “my dog ate it” excuse - it was the gri gri! It’s also a wonderful way to get people or children from touching things that are important to you (examples: computer, iPod, hand sanitizer). Ah! All those items have been mysteriously cursed by gri gri. People avoid touching it like a hot pot.

6. Naps: In this culture, it is not only accepted, but expected!, that you should take at least a three hour nap during the day at some point. The generally accepted period of time is between noon and 3 p.m. everyday, but you can easily find people lying sprawled out on a mat in the shade or in the branches of a tree at any time of day, snoozing away in a La La Land far, far away. If it’s a shopkeeper that’s asleep on the job, it is acceptable to wake them up to ask a question or make a purchase, but by and large, I just leave them conked out and move on to the next boutique. Everyone sells the same stuff at the same price anyway.

7. The 20-Hour Work Week: In Beninese culture, if you put in a twenty-hour week at work, you are overexerting yourself. In parts due to the fact that people are malnourished (and therefore lack energy reserves), the weather affects what you can do (if it too hot, working is difficult and no one goes anywhere if it rains), and most people are not consistently employed (crop-gatherers, tree-cutters, carpenters, or health care works are all seasonal jobs or work on a case-by-case basis). As a teacher, I have one of the most consistent, time-controlled jobs in this country, and it commands a decent amount of respect. To earn that respect, I all have to put in is a measly 20-hours per week.

8. Petit Culture: The social and work system here is sustained off of seniority and age-related hierarchy. Thus, if you are a child - be you boy or girl (a.k.a “petits“- the French word for “small“)- you are constantly in a state of doing obligated chores or favors to the older people around you. Therefore, I can essentially sit in my house like Jabba the Hutt and have small children come by my house to get anything or do anything I need - my laundry, sweeping my house, buying milk powder, toilet paper, phone credit. Picture this: You’re cooking and realize you’ve run out of salt - no problem: you’ve got a petit for that. You’ve just taken a shower and realize you have no phone credit to call your best Peace Corps friend - fuggedaboutit!: you’ve got a petit for that. Generally, I tend to overpay my petits, because they do better work and then there is always a healthy competition to see who I will hire to do my housework. But, often times, the smaller kids don’t want money - they want in on my awesome stash of American candy (Jolly Ranchers and Werther’s Originals are a huge hit over here). At least they have their priorities straight.

9. The Exchange Rate: I have some understanding that impending global contagion is a worldwide fear right now, but having American dollar bills in West Africa right now is better than gold. The exchange rate is awesome, and the amount of stuff you can buy for pennies on the U.S. dollar is almost absurd. Here’s what you can get in Benin for one American dollar: 60cL of beer, 40 cL of sangria, a five minute phone call to America, a Coke and a packet of cookies, a 20-pack of the most expensive cigarettes on the market, two rolls of toilet paper, a watch, a pair of sunglasses, a round-trip motorcycle taxi fare across Parakou, five pineapples or ten mangoes (in-season), and my personal favorite: a chocolate ice cream cone with sprinkles from Sun Foods.

10: The Fashion/Color Free-For-All: There is no gender/color bias in Benin. So, for ten year-old Beninese boy, it is completely acceptable for his favorite color to be pink and NO ONE in the school yard is going to beat him up after class for having that predilection. The colors men and women wear are astounding! No one bats an eye or questions the sexual orientation of a grown man walking down the street in a tight, hot pink, mesh t-shirt and skin-hugging, bell-bottom jeans bedazzled in rhinestones in the shape of butterflies: he is just expressing himself and looking very good doing it. Plastic flip flops and a suit is a completely acceptable, put-together outfit for a government official to wear to work. It has really made me rethink what is fashionable self-expression and let go of my own color biases. Yes, my dear little student Mohammed, your plastic purple sandals look very fetching today.

Ten Things I Hate About Africa

1. Gastro-intestinal Distress: There is no two ways around it; you live here long enough, you drink here long enough, you eat here long enough, and your internal plumbing will start to revolt against you. Every time I put something into my mouth here, I am taking a huge gamble, and I have lost on many, many occasions. Most Volunteers - grown men and women - have pooped their pants at least once in their service due to parasite habitation inside their innards (luckily, to date, this tragedy has yet to befall me). Chronic diarrhea, flagellation, and cramping is a way of life for all of us here, and it is miserable. There is no amount of Imodium to cure what I’ve got.

2. Transport: This is a mathematical truth: In hours, it takes LESS time to go from Philadelphia to Paris to Cotonou than it takes to get from Kalale to Cotonou. Getting anyway in this country is an expedition of Odysseus proportions. I am four hours from the only paved “superhighway” that goes through Benin, thus most of my travel is on beat-up, pot-hole ridden dirt paths that are impassable in the rain. A week straight of rain means I am literally trapped in my village until the sun comes out again. My main mode of transport is by bush taxi, which is essentially a beat-up sedan filled with no fewer than nine people at a time (the Beninese would think clown cars have tons of elbow room by comparison). The taxi station is a mess of drivers trying to grabbing you and your baggage in a desperate attempt to fill their cars. In cities, I get around by using motorcycle taxis which are often operated by drunk drivers or drivers with vision impairments (the practice of optometry has yet to hit Benin). The “safest” mode of transport, which I use the least frequently because they do not run a route to my village, is by public busses (giant, tin Chinese Greyhounds). However, during my service I had seen two horrific busses accidents that have left over thirty people dead and actually passed one as it burned to molten melt on the side of the road. Travel is scary, ridiculous, but absolutely necessary. All that is standing between me and a fatal crash is some luck and a Peace Corps-issued plastic helmet (which I wear ALWAYS).

3. Making Purchases: The main way of buying things for life and survival in Benin is by shanty stands or small boutiques. However, there are never any prices on anything. You must haggle for EVERYTHING. Often times, even the purchase of toilet paper or a bar of soap comes down to a name-calling, screaming match between me and the vender. Once we finally agree to a price, which can take minutes to do, another drama unfolds. No one in this country ever has change for anything, and if they do, they are hiding it from you. It doesn’t matter which size bill or coin denomination you hand the said vender; it is always followed by a sullen look of disappointment and the inevitable response of, “I cannot break this.” Well, of course you can! It’s five o’clock in the evening, your store has been busy all day, and we both know you have the change. Yet, always, it is a fight that ends in “petit” going to search for the change to break my money. We Volunteers hoard small money like it is going to run out, and it upsets us all to have to part with any of it (especially those of us who live in small villages where the problem is infinitely worse). It’s obnoxious and constant, and one of the most annoying aspects of my everyday routine.

4. Lack of Anonymity: I am a white, American woman with flowing, long auburn hair, and therefore, I am a celebrity. It doesn’t matter where I go or who I am with, I am constantly touched, stared at, and asked for my hand in marriage. I can make babies scream in terror or young boys giggle in hormonally-induced delight by just walking through my village on my way to school. Nothing I do is under the radar of the people around me. If I buy a tin of sardines for my cat, the villagers find out and gossip about how much money that silly American spends to fed her cat. If I leave the village for a weekend, everyone knows that I left, where I went, and when I’ve arrived back. I love my alone-time and my privacy, and I find this phenomenon to be quite an invasion, but I suppose it is better than being tortured or tormented for being different. So, I will take it for another year, but with poor grace.

5. “Cadeau” Culture: The French word for “gift” is “cadeau,” and because I am a white American, I am stereotyped as having tons of money. Yet, in so many ways, it’s hardly a stereotype. Although I live on a decent salary by Beninese standards (a little less than $200 dollars per month), I am far, far from the wealthiest person in my village. However, for generations now, it is well known that American, European, and Asian nations give large sums of money to African countries, because they are poor. That trickle down mentality is ingrained into them. Nongovernmental organizations headed by people of mostly white ethnicity come into Benin and just start throwing out money and supplies, and it has completely corrupted the Beninese mentality of work ethic. They honestly believe because I am white, I am rich, and therefore I MUST give them things, because they are African and poor. I am constantly begged for money for food, clothing, rent payments, car payments, and alcohol. The main problem I have is not a lack of generosity or compassion, but that by helping one person in need, I am EXPECTED to help everyone, even those who in relation, are not in need. Every gift is an expectation. Every return from a trip should be rewarded with some token of my travel. It’s disgusting, it’s selfish, it’s impolite, and it only fosters a mentality of Africans accepting hand-outs instead of working to make progress and money.

6. Food: As I have said time and time again, so I will repeat again: the food here sucks. What food there is, there is little of, and absolutely no variety. Food staples are macaroni, rice, tomatoes, onion, corn, and okra, and all fluctuate unexpectedly in-and-out of season and supply. There are also so many things that are just revolting to even think about ingesting: akassa (fermented corn meal dried in the sun for days), pate noir (black, fungus-looking yam mush made black by adding in charred yam skins), and every single part of a cow, sheep, bush rat, chicken, guinea fowl, goat, or pig you can imagine (feet, beaks, heads, tongues, hearts, brains, eyes, ears, intestines, skin, bone marrow). There are blood sauces and snot sauces. There are spices so hot and citrons so sour, you can burn your tongue for days on end. The appearances of real coffee, milk, juices, and fruits and vegetables are so few and far between. And oh, heaven help those Volunteers that discovered latten food allergies here.

7. Chauleur: I spent the majority of my last blog post whining about this particular Beninese season, and I really feel no reason to beat a dead horse, but honestly - it’s not the Sahara; it’s the Sa-HELL. For three months, the sun beats down Benin with a fury so ravenous you would assume it was out for total obliteration of all life on that earth. It’s survivable - I am a living testament to that - but the conditions you are subjected to almost want to make you beg for a swift and easy death. Can’t wait for next year (written with a morose, sarcastic expression).

8. Mosquitoes: Save for a few extremely weird and nerdy entomologists, who really likes mosquitoes? I loathe their very existence. The mosquitoes in Benin are everywhere, during all times of the year, but they seem to thrive in the South where it is humid, in places near water (rivers, lakes, streams, the ocean), and during the rainy seasons. Right now, it’s the rainy season in northern Benin, and there is not enough bug spray or mosquito netting in the world to save my sorry skin from being bitten to smithereens by those malaria-spreading little buggers. Malaria is an easily curable illness, and all Volunteers are on medication to prevent them from actually contracting the illness, but I have seen many of my friends fall victim to the “palu,” as it is called here. Essentially, you get an incredibly high fever, followed by a body-jarring attack of the chills and cold-sweats for about a week. You know you are getting better when you START to lose liver function. Mosquitoes and malaria: the “cadeau” that keeps on giving.

9. Latrines: I’ve officially been defecating into my tiny cement and tin, hole-in-the-floor, lean-to for a year now, and going in there and taking care of business is still the absolute worst part of my days. The latrines smell awful, I’ve had to master my aiming abilities or else I have a shit-load (pun intended) of work to clean up, and the only thing I have found to suppress the never-ending parade of cockroaches that infest my latrine is a small bottle of a white, powdery substance that I was pretty sure was poisoning me. It’s sad but true; one of my favorite sounds in the whole wide world right now is the sputtering whirlpool of a flushing toilet. I guess I have to look on the bright side; at least we have toilet paper in Benin, which is more than I can say for the Volunteers in neighboring Niger (don’t shake hands with those folks - just smile and nod).

10. Harassment: Even though for the most part, white foreigners are considered to be “good” by the Beninese people, it hardly stops them from consistently attacking me for and about everything. I am bombarded with people begging me to give them money, clothing, and food. The marriage proposals and cat-calls are never silenced. Mothers rush up to me with their screaming, terrified babies in hand, imploring me to touch their babies to give them good luck (some Beninese believe that Caucasian and Asian people are lucky) or to cure an illness. Grown men (even colleagues of mine at my school and husbands of friends of mine) touch me constantly, always pushing the boundaries to see what they can get away with. Women pull at my hair all the time, trying to get out strands or convince me to cut it all off and give it to them so they can weave it into their own heads. Once, while in a very large open market in Porto-Novo, I was actually chased by a woman wielding a dull knife trying to lop off all my wavy, auburn, thick, Beyoncé-esque hair. It’s crazy, but c’est la vie.

Ten Things That Africa Has Changed About Me

1. Je parle franÇais: Now, I would hardly go as far as to call myself a “fluent” speaker of the French language, but I can most certainly get around quite easily and efficiently living in a francophone country. I understand most all conversations that go on, and I am getting to a level where I can discuss topics such as politics, social behaviors, societal problems, and formulate arguments while sounding decently articulate in French. The only kicker here is for the first time in my life, I know exactly how it feels to be illiterate. Because I learned the language primarily through speaking it to other people, I cannot really read or write the language well. In fact, I recently founded a copy of the French children’s literature classic Le Petit Prince, and I had no idea what was going on or what the words are. French is very difficult to write, because it is in now way phonetic and many of the same letter combination create similar sounds (as it is in English), so reading and writing French is a loser’s game for me. It’s something to work on; a second-language acquisition hobby I can spend the rest of my life getting better at. For now, I am just working on building a solid foundation, and enjoying calling myself bilingual.

2. I Am One With Nature: Because I have electricity for such a limited period of time each day, my days are literally a race against the sun to get most of the basics accomplished. In order to wash my dishes, get my laundry dried, and take a shower, I have to make sure everything isset-up and done before the dusk begins to fall. My internal clock is now set to wake me up before the sun rises, before the roosters start crowing and the mosques start chanting. I find a ninety degree day to be comfortable and refreshing and a put a blanket over me and a sweater on when then temperature falls below seventy degrees or I’m in air conditioning for too long. I am constantly captivated by the natural beauty of the sunsets and starlit night skies that I have more than once been brought to tears or jumped up and down out of joy. I love the feel of the rain and the wind as it blows through the screen door during a storm, and the sound it makes as it pounds against my tin roof. I walk amongst free-roaming chickens, pigs, cows, goats, and horses with the same frequency and ignorance as I walk amongst people. It’s a beautiful world out there beyond my front door, and I am so glad I’ve been given the opportunity to open my eyes, take it in, and watch the effortless ease with which it unfolds around me.

3. I’ve Accepted The Things I Can’t Change: After living in Benin for a year and immersing myself in the culture, I’ve learned that there are certain things that I just can not and will not change. Professors will continue to bribe their female students with sex for better grades. Food venders will continue to pass out food, wipe their butts, shake hands, and change money with the same hand. I will be harassed and judged and asked for money everywhere I go because I am a American. I will constantly be told that I am fat (it’s a compliment here, but it’s still so very annoying) and that I should get married and have a baby because, at 23, I am very, very old. I have to accept that the majority of students at my school will never get past the seventh grade and will become embittered, whining Africans looking for hand-outs from anyone that will give it to them. I have accepted that the value on human life here is so much less important and that the death of children and adults to what would be easily curable diseases in the Developed World is normal. I can’t change these things. All I can do is educate the people I can, show compassion, live my life here as best as I can, and hope for a better future.

4. I Am a Teacher: With a few school year behind me, I realize that I am now a fully competent teacher. I am good at my job, and what’s more, I love doing it. I have no fear or anxiety getting up in front of a group of people - small or large - and waxing philosophic in two languages. I’ve adopted a slow, annunciated, strong teacher’s voice. I command a presence and can instruction non-verbally using body language, gestures, and tone. Teaching is a well-respected job here, and I love that I feel like I am actually contributing to bettering the lives of my students. It’s fun to watch my students grow and learn and have fun getting an education. I want them all to succeed; I want them all to flourish. It’s a great life skill, and I’m proud to have acquired it here.

5. I Look Different: It’s true. If you saw me now, you’d recognize me, but I would look a lot different. I’ve lost some weight from not really eating healthy for a year, and my recent yoga stint has help bring back some muscle tone and definition. My Italian and Puerto Rican sides have come out in full bloom, and my skin has a nice creamed-coffee perma-tan look now. My hair is crazy-colored. The bleach I put in my bathing water has bleached it so many colors that it looks like a sunset of browns, oranges, reds, and yellows, and it flows waving from the roots in a thick bundle. I look like I’ve been stranded on an island for a while, ship-wrecked and loving it. I’m usually chipper with a big smile on my face. I’m loving my lifestyle and it exudes out of me like rays of bright light. I’ve changed, but it’s all for the better.

6. I’ve Developed Patience: Before I left for Africa, I was as tightly wound and uptight as any other East Coast, Tri-City suburbanite. My patience had a half-life of the amount of time it takes to change the channel on the TV with a remote. But Africa has gotten under my skin. Of course, this change did not happen quickly or fluidly. I spent my first few months here completely frustrated by tardiness, plans that fell through at the last minute, waiting hours in a taxi station for the car to fill with passengers. But at some point, I just let it all go. I can’t tell you where or when it happened, but now it just does. I can entertain myself for hours playing games on my phone. I always keep a book on me for spur-of-the-moment reading-while-waiting material. I can teach the same lessons three days in a row until my students understand without being frustrated at all. This too is another life skill I am so glad I’ve acquired. Just relax. Just let go. Enjoy the ride and watch the scenery fly by you.

7. I Poop Talk: Nothing in America grossed me out more than people talking publicly about their bowel movements. I was always horrified and disgusted when people mentioned the frustration or enjoyment they received from their last trip to the John. But all that’s gone down the Crapper now. Amongst Volunteers and Beninese alike, talking poop is a very important and lively topic of conversation. I can talk poop all day - be it thick or thin, runny or chunky, blood-filled or bile-ridden, whether it’s happening too much or not enough. Poop. Poop. Poop. Everyone poops. I finally just found my own voice on the topic. So, by the way, how is your plumbing today?

8. Blame It On the Alcohol: I have a much, much higher alcohol tolerance now. In Benin, alcohol consumption is rampid, and I have absolutely adapted to that part of the culture. There is always a bar or a boutique selling alcohol, no matter how Muslim or small your village is. The local alcohol, “chuke,” (a fermented millet beverage) is so cheap, and after about two small bowls full, you are a very happy and functional tipsy. I still rarely drink in village, and most of my drinking occurs in big cities when I am with other Americans and Volunteers, but I can pound three 60cL bottles of beer and walk straight. Definitely couldn’t do that in America. I’m not sure it’s something to be so proud of, but it is a notable change nonetheless.

9. International Street Smarts: Growing up in a small, old dairy farm community in the hills of the Pocono Mountains, I never really needed street smarts. We kept our doors unlocked during the day, my sister used to keep her car keys in the ignition of her car, and I rarely looked before leaping across the View to my neighbor’s house. But here, I know I am a target. I watch what I say, not only because I am a single woman living alone, but I’m also a foreigner. I have lots of nice things in my house that my neighbors don’t (a laptop, a camera, porcelain dishware, a mobile phone, a very fat and edible cat). I never go out after the sun goes down by myself. I do consider myself and open and welcoming person, but I am constantly on my guard with male social visits after dark, most often preferring to go outside and join them inside of inviting them in. Again, this is a great life lessons. Sometimes, when you become comfortable in a foreign place, essentially when it becomes your home, it’s easy to forget the very real risks and dangers that are out there. Muggings, robberies, and assaults can happen anywhere in the world; you just have to keep your eyes open and your head in the game to stay safe.

10. I Am Living My Dream: Since my senior year in college, when I applied for the Peace Corps, it was my sole goal to have this experience - to travel, learn, and broaden my horizons. I have had the unique opportunity to see that dream realized. Every single day, I wake up and think to myself, “Holy cow, I live in Africa. This is insane!” And it truly is. Living here is ridiculous, absurd, nutty, and selfish. It’s something I am doing for me, because I think I will be a better person for it in the end, and along the way I may be able to change the lives of the people living life with me. This is probably the greatest change that has overcome me in the last year. If you believe in something long enough, if you pursue it with enough heart and integrity, you really can make your dreams come true. I am living proof of that, and I honestly can’t wait to continue changing, loving, and hating life here in Benin.