A Whole Lot of Randomness

I’ve been working on finishing this post for a weak, so this was started August 14th and finished August 20th.

What to write, what to write…. What is worth putting down? My head is full of things that I’m trying to process, to just take it all in, but I’m overwhelmed, and here I am without a word to write. This is why it’s been so long since I’ve posted. Maybe I’ll just work my way into it…. After all, when I spoke to my father yesterday for the first time since my arrival, I felt like I couldn’t shut my mouth. My new world came spewing out of me in all sorts of stories and information, and I know he must have been as overwhelmed as I am all the time. It’s got to be a common feeling. It’s just a completely different world!
So much to say…. So little space to express so much reality…. Here I go. I’ll try. Maybe if I put it all in short, clippy thoughts I will get it all out.
I’m going to be posted in Boukoumbé, which is really close to where I am now. It is an extremely animist village where people still live in Tata somba’s, sacrifice animals for ceremonies and keep the skulls in their kitchens, and build piles by the doorway that represent each person in the family (called gri gri’s) It’s actually a really big tourist place, and it’s just beautiful around there. I’m so excited to go exploring. The village is perfect. I’ll be only really close to the nearest Volunteer, and they are actually in Togo. Haha. I’m really excited about it. Apparently I will be living next door to a Tata somba, and they say there is a Gri gri in front of my house that looks like Cousin It, because over time someone built a ballcap into it. Hahaha.
Papa just sprayed insecticide down the latrine, and now there is a steady trail/march of mosquitoes leaving the latrines… needless to say, I’m doing my best to hold it till the parade is over.
I visited a friends house today and used her latrine, and there were maggots crawling out of the whole. Also, you could see the bottom of her latrine because of the way it was built; it’s a sea of maggots down there. You can see them wiggling and squirming in piles of you know what…. Lovely.
Yesterday one of the twins in my family got a black eye, and my family has a refrigerator and ice, and I tried to tell them to put ice on it to reduce the swelling… they looked at me like I was crazy. I said it politely 3 times… they had to have understood me… but they still didn’t put any ice on it. I guess it’s just not heard of here. Besides, what do I know. I’m the stranger. What would I know about their lives?.... if they only knew my country’s obsession with health, healing, and wellness.
Yesterday I bought 1,500 francs worth of food ($3) for the whole group of us…. It was enough fried food to feed one person for a weak… and it was good.
A lot of men in this country spend the whole time drunk while the women and children do all the work. One of the girls in our group has a host father who hasn’t had a job in 4 years. The wife makes tchucke (a local alcoholic drink, very cheap), and she slaves away to support them…. And the husband drinks the tchucke.
We had our first chance to teach a group of artisans, in French, about basic credit and savings. I was working with one other Stagiere (trainee), and we taught a class of a little less than 10 people. At least 2 of the people in the group couldn’t read or write. We were explaining to them why it is good to save money in a bank instead of at your home, why you should keep track of the money you spend, and what the benefits of saving are.
In the Beninese culture it is extremely common for someone to come up to you and say, “Give me that.” If a friend needs money, they come to you and ask for money. It’s very common. If someone likes something they will ask for it, and they may or may not be a little upset if you don’t give it to them.
In the Beninese mindset all white people are rich. The Yovo Song is taught to children by their parents, because if you see a white person it is like finding a penny on the street, and if you sing the Yovo Song to them they will give you money… and it’s not completely a lie. There are missionaries everywhere here, all building something or throwing money at something else and then leaving. They never teach the people how to build something or how to earn the money they need. It’s just completely anti-productive.
People don’t eat with their left hand because that’s the hand they wipe with. That didn’t really occur to me till a weak or so ago.
Everyone in the Peace Corps has crapped their pants at least once in their service. I’ve only had close calls thus far.
The Beninese people are naturally amazingly beautiful people, especially the women. Most people have scars on their cheeks that can be used to figure out what region they came from. These scars are just as beautiful as they are, and it adds to them very well.
In Benin, 50% of the population is Muslim, 50% are Christian, but 100% are Voodoo. That’s the truth of it.
Some towns have ‘strong magic’…. This is usually said in a good way it seems.
You can buy anything you need in a buvette (a bar) if you wait long enough. Sit down, have a Coke, and wait for the right vendor to stroll through…. Volunteers have coined the phrase ‘walking walmarts’ for these people… There is always the sunglasses guy, the electronics guy, the bra guy, the tissue guy (again, tissue is clothing material), the fashion clothes guy, the watch guy, the guy selling phone cards, and the walking walmarts, which have a mixture of everything you could ever need. Need a light for your bathroom?... wait for Walking Walmart; 500 francs for the cord and 1000 for the light, and that’s getting ripped off. Need sandals? Wait for the sandal guy… he’ll come eventually.
The rainy season is not a joke. When they say ‘rainy season’ they mean it. Apparently it’s starting late this year, but for every day lately it will rain for 2 or 3 hours straight, and it’s that rain that kind of rain that drenches you in about half a second. It’s relentless, but it’s also your ally. With the rain comes the coolness, and while it is raining it is still comfortable to be in as long as you don’t mind getting drenched.
When it is cool outside (and by cool, I mean 80*F), it is completely appropriate to wear a coat if you have one… Last weak we played soccer and catch with a kid who was wearing a seriously heavy ski coat…. It was about 80*. I guess ‘cold’ is just as relative of a thought as any.
Apparently it takes about 2 years before the average t-shirt ends up over here. If only some of these people knew what their t-shirts said. Haha. The most common shirts seem to be Old Navy first and foremost, and then I would say I see a lot of pop star shirts more then any others…. Brittany Spears, Eminem, Nelly… All went out of style about 2-4 years ago in the US. Oh yeah, and one of the walking vendors is always selling t-shirts too.
The Marché is the place to buy anything that can’t be found on Walking Walmart, and it makes me question what is defined as necessity and luxury. Toilet paper is 250 francs per roll!! Who can afford that? Tissue (clothing material) is 2,000 francs for 2 meters (1 pagne) of okay quality material. 1 pagne is about half an outfit or half a simple bumba, and a taylor should run 500-1500 francs for a bumba. (In case you need a refresher, 500 francs = $1usd). Many other things can be bought at the Marché as well. There always seems to be the guy selling alcohol, the ladies selling fish and sardines, all sorts of people selling all the options for food you could ask for, and the guys/women selling the voodoo fetish supplies. There are all sorts of people in the marché.
Peanut butter is widely available here. In fact, from what I assume, peanuts are one of the main crops after corn and cotton. It’s known here as ‘pâte d’arachid’, and appropriately so, because that translates to ‘paste of peanut’.
It is traditional to eat everything with your hands. I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I thought it was interesting enough to throw out here again. … ahhhh, if they only knew I wiped with my right hand, then they might understand why I like eating with my left hand. Stupid yovo.
People randomly give gifts here. I met this one girl while walking down the street, and we got to talking (as much as we could with my tattered French), and she ended up insisting that I come to her house and meet her whole family, and once I was there she gave me some mango juice that her family had maid… that is one of their main forms of income; selling juice… anyway, she wouldn’t let me pay for it. Then, the next day I saw this same girl probably 5 times. It’s almost like she was looking for me. Well, to make a long story short I ended up at her house again with a friend and she kept giving us stuff again. I told her that we had come to buy some of her juice, and that I had told my friends about it and they wanted to buy it from her, but she refused to take our money. She just kept giving us her juice! I felt so awkward. These people were making this stuff to sell, to survive off of, and for the life of me I couldn’t get her to let me pay for it. I asked my Mama about this, and her answer was almost too logical for me to handle…. “Except the gift, it’s normal. She wants to be your friend. She will eventually stop giving you things. It’s normal.” … I wish she understood the culture I came from. I wish she knew how truly odd of a concept this is for me. I have money. This girl doesn’t. I NEED to pay for what I asked for. …I’ve got to learn to deal with this. You would think this wouldn’t be a big deal, I mean, I’ve never had problems taking free stuff before. In fact, I was a connoisseur of living off of free food back in Stillwater. I was that person that would hit up all the college events for the free food, and sometimes I would stock up too. But here it’s different. These people don’t have a lot more to loose. Whether they sell this bottle of juice might make the difference of whether all of them eat tonight. Why won’t they just take my money?
Life is definitely interesting here. I’m still having a great time, but I have to admit that it would be nice to flash home for a second and just feel ‘at home’ and ‘comfortable’… even if it were for just a few minutes. The real question is, would I really feel comfortable there now? How much have I adapted to my life here? … I don’t know. Some days I wake up hearing my mothers blow dryer as she’s getting ready for work down the hall, or the soft murmur of my parents talking as they get ready for work, or I might even feel the air conditioner kick on… and then I open my eyes, and for a moment I’m completely at home… and then, second by second, reality seeps in, and with it comes the heat, the humidity, the sounds that are so profoundly common for me now… the cock crowing outside my window, the gentle sound of the domestiques (servent girls) sweeping the hallways, the petite voices of the children as they slowly wake up in the room across the hall from me, the rain splattering against the tin roof and gently dripping down outside of my window… this is it. This is my home. I like it, but I’ll never forget my real home. … the smell of pancakes, my parents sitting there watching the news every night, going to the bathroom and not smelling something what’s beneath me, the taste of something like an Arby’s market-fresh Reuben sandwich, my good ol’ bike at home (which is sitting there in the pool room right where I left it), my mom, my dad, Andrea and Shannon (the best friends I might have ever had), the color of lamplight as it hits the living room in my parents house …there aren’t any lamps here… it all seems light a pleasant thought, like a happy painting that might have been the scene of a modern Jane Austen book…..
But then I think about my life here again, and compare a little. The biggest plus that Benin has for it is that I really like what I’m doing here, and that’s really really important. They have us working with artisans in groups every weak, and we’re actually teaching them about simple things that I think they might be getting a lot out of. Last weak it was the benefits of Credit and Savings, this weak it was Marketing and the 4 P’s… I really get quite a bit pumped up about it! I mean, it’s crazy! These people are just sponges, just loving to soak up this information… I managed, without the help of my partner (2 PC trainees to about 10 local artisans for these classes), to explain why they should save their money in a bank instead of at home. I saw it click for them, too. It may seem like a simple concept to the typical American, but here the banks aren’t stable, and instead of earning interest many times you are charged a fee when you want to withdraw. Because of this, many people save money in their homes… maybe under their pillow, maybe buried in their bedroom or in a field, and a lot of times money is stolen, lost, or used for other things because it is so accessible. For instance, it is very common for a friend to come ask you for money if they need help and they know you have it. The thing is, if you have it you give it to them, but if it’s in the bank then you really don’t ‘have it’. This is the point that I made that really clicked for them. It felt good. It felt really good.
Well, that’s about all of my news as of now. I’m exhausted from typing for so long. Sorry it’s been so long since my last post. I will update it more often… things just got a bit wild these last few weeks…. So much to learn and take in that it’s hard to find time to sit and put it all down. Honestly, it really is overwhelming to try to review it all like this, but I think it’s good for me in the end and I’ll do better at keeping it updated now that I’ve got you guys all caught up. Well, until next time! Best of luck, and I hope everything is amazing wherever you find yourselves. Eat an Arby’s Reuben for me!

Sarah