Last night there was another amazing thunderstorm here in Cotonou. I know I’ve already sent you one rather colorful description of the storms here, but last night took it to another level entirely. I mean, I haven’t been afraid of thunderstorms for at least 30 years; in fact, I quite enjoy them most of the time. But last night I was actually scared. I think it was because I wasn’t entirely certain if I was safe or not. Back home, even in the wildest storms, if you’re inside you know you’re pretty safe – unless lightning hits the tree next door and it falls on your house. :’-( But last night I wasn’t sure what might happen. In a word, I felt vulnerable. Every day a new experience…
So, life has been interesting the last couple of weeks. First some sad news; another volunteer has left early. This time it was the woman who had become probably my best friend thus far among the PCVs. Happily for her, she found the perfect program at a school in California and they had a January admissions cycle, so she’s headed off to school. Sadly for me, that’s one less person on the dwindling list of people I have to talk to about “stuff.” She was the one who helped me work through my initial crisis of conscience back in September. She’s very perceptive and insightful and I already miss having her to talk to.
In that vein, however, there is a group designed for PCVs to have people to talk to. It’s called the Peer Support Network (PSN). It is a group of volunteers scattered all over the country who have been trained to listen and offer support to other volunteers when they need it. With my training in Compassionate Listening I felt like I could be effective in that role, so I mentioned it to one of our Medical Officers and voila! As it turns out, there is a team coming to West Africa from DC to do PSN training. So starting Monday I’ll be in a two-day training workshop on Peer Support in Peace Corps. I’m really looking forward to it. I think with my previous training and the fact that I am older (and presumably wiser, at least in some ways) than most of these “kids” that I will be able to help folks when they’re feeling stressed or lonely. Hopefully, we can intervene and keep a few more PCVs in Benin instead of wishing them good luck on their way back to the USA.
We had some people visit from Millennium Challenge HQ in DC this past week. It was actually a very productive visit. We were able to demonstrate that there are people here who are working hard and are serious about making CAMeC a success. We did a post-mortem on the whole business plan process, which was very illuminating. Hopefully both we and they can now avoid most of the pitfalls that hindered that process the next time we need to submit documentation. We also started discussing our next steps: hiring, training and marketing. My buddy in Tcharrou, Steve Schwartz (aka “encore Steve”), has extensive experience in Marketing and PR so he came up with a 1-3 year plan intended to: publicize the existence of CAMeC and the services it provides; to develop the market by increasing the formalization of the economy; to get the country talking about the legal system in general and arbitration/mediation in particular; to change the perception of the legal system among foreign companies, investors and the international financial community; and ultimately to make Benin a leader in West Africa in the area of legal and commercial reform. Ambitious? Yes, but not impossible. In fact, if we get only half of those things accomplished Benin will be significantly ahead of most other countries in the region. I’d be happy with that.
As for me, personally, my outward life is going along just fine but I continue to struggle with my conscience. As when I was in South Africa the issue of privilege has come front and center here in Benin. I continue to insist that I am not “rich” when approached for money or “cadeaux” (gifts), but come to understand more everyday that rich is a highly relative concept. I feel like I have barely enough money to live on, and yet it is waaaaaaaaaay more than most Beninese will ever have. Although I have had to economize to be able to afford it, I am going on a “safari” later this month. And although it is to a park right here in Benin, nevertheless most Beninese will probably never have that experience. Now, I could assuage my conscience with the convenient rubric about “contributing to the local economy,” but that feels like a massive cop-out. So I’m not sure where that leaves me.
I talked about some of this stuff – albeit in broken French – with the papa in my concession the other night. He was just hanging out on the stoop in his wheelchair, so I pulled out a chair and hung out with him for a while. So we got around to talking about how I was adjusting and I told him how hard it was to always be seen as the rich white guy. He pointed out, correctly, that the vast majority of Beninese have no experience with white people who are not – in their eyes – extravagantly rich. Add that to the fact that most aid agencies, not to mention individual aid workers, are basically in the business of giving out money and then top it off with the images of America that they get from the f@ck!ng television and OF COURSE they think I have money falling out of my pockets. So one struggle is how to adjust the expectations of the people I encounter without having them think I am just rich but stingy or else lying through my teeth.
The other struggle is with the question of what kind of lifestyle to adopt – not an entirely separate question. I came here expecting to live au village, perhaps without running water or electricity. Now that I live in the largest city in Benin, with most of the Western conveniences I’m accustomed to, there is the temptation – the VERY strong temptation – to try to recreate as much of my former lifestyle as I can. I have air conditioning and internet at work and at the Peace Corps bureau, so I have access to news and media. I have electricity at my home, so I can get a little fridge and I’ll be able to store food. I could just create my only little enclave of pseudo-Americana and live in it for the next two years. Of course part of me screams that that is not what I came here for; that that would not be an “authentic” Peace Corps experience. But when I look at the three goals of Peace Corps, I see #2: “To promote better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served” So do I do that by trying to be “bien integrée” or by living an American lifestyle in full view of my friends and neighbors? I don’t know. But I do know that in the absence of an active direction that inertia has a way of taking over, so I need to figure it out.
Sunday, December 9, 2007
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Giving Thanks
Sorry it’s been so long since my last update. Life may be different here and hard to handle sometimes, but it is never dull or empty. There has been a lot going on here, so I’ll try to cover it all.
First is the very good news that the folks in Washington, DC have approved our business plan, albeit grudgingly. The message was basically, “There seems to be a framework here for moving forward, but we’re still not convinced that the folks there really understand the job ahead of them.” Duh. This is all entirely new territory here. It’s a completely different paradigm of development and the people I’m working with here are having to come to grips with an elevated set of expectations that they’ve never dealt with before. That’s why it required multiple drafts and the help of an American volunteer before they got the business plan squared away. Nevertheless, we can now move forward with ourreal work; hiring, training and employing arbitrators and mediators to take some pressure off of the court system. For that opportunity, I am thankful. Stay tuned.
All of that happened while I was in the northern town of Natitingou – Nati, for short – for our Early Service Conference. Where the southern part of Benin is lush and humid and mostly green, the north is more arid and dominated by shades of brown. The area around Nati is especially beautiful, being surrounded by rough hills and river valleys. Mind you, what I call hills pass for mountains here in Benin. None of them are over a couple thousand feet high (the highest point in the country is only 600 meters). But they are very rough and angular, not like the nice rounded slopes of the Cascades and their foothills. And the pace is much more laid back than down south, especially Cotonou. It was a really nice break, for which I am also thankful. The conference itself was…well it was fine, except that because I have the least Peace Corps-like job in all of Peace Corps not much of it applied to me. All the other SED volunteers are working with artisans, or women’s groups, or microfinance institutions – all at the grassroots. Me, I’m dealing with bureaucrats – both here and in Washington – and trying to help plan out a national marketing strategy for the Arbitration Center. It’s great for my Masters program, but light years from the “typical” Peace Corps experience.
I have settled into my house a little more, which feels good and for which I am also thankful. I completely rearranged things so now guests can sleep in the spare room and the bathroom door closes. Then I moved the kitchen inside so I don’t have to traipse out back to check on my dinner. All of which is good because, of course, last week was Thanksgiving. I have spent many Thanksgivings away from family and friends over the years. None of them was like this one, however. I actually hosted Thanksgiving dinner at my home for the very first time. There were five of us, myself and four other volunteers (see photo), and we all pitched in and made dinner. It was a little difficult finding all the necessary ingredients, but we made do. We had turkey wings (the only turkey we could find that wasn’t frozen so
lid…or still alive), stuffing (thank you mother for Gerry’s recipe), green beans and carrots, fried potatoes with cheese (REAL cheese!) and apple crisp for dessert (see other photo). I even downloaded a football game on Wednesday so we could watch football after dinner – ‘cause that’s what you do on Thanksgiving. Though it sounds very pedestrian, it was really very special. They talk a lot about Peace Corps being a family, and it sure was this week. For that, I give much thanks!
But that was only the half of it. On Saturday, I ventured out to the town of Ketou (K2) where there was “another Thanksgiving dinner that couldn’t be beat” (thank you, Arlo). There were at least 25 people and everyone brought or made something. There are two volunteers serving in Ketou and we needed both stoves to get everything done in time. This time there was a full bird (killed and plucked for the occasion), two kinds of stuffing (I made Gerry’s recipe again and it was even better the second time because I found sage – called ‘herbs de Provence’ here – while I was shopping on Saturday morning.), mashed potatoes and gravy, au gratin potatoes, green beans, green salad, macaroni salad, rolls, and four or five desserts including pumpkin pie, cherry pie, brownies and coconut cake. A good time, and a good meal, was had by all! And many thanks were given.
Now, if that sounds like a typical T-day weekend, think again. Even here in Cotonou, lots of that stuff is pretty hard to find. Real cheese, for instance, is both uncommon and expensive. And don’t even try to find pasteurized milk. Vegetables are plentiful, although somewhat unpredictable. As you might have picked up on, spices are pretty hit-and-miss, too. You can get Nescafe at just about any store, but trying to find ground coffee is damn near impossible. On Thursday we went looking for oats to make the topping for the apple crisp…nada. We ended up using crumbled up butter cookies. (Much better, by the way!) And getting back and forth is always an adventure, especially if you’re going beyond Cotonou. The road from Pobé to Ketou, which was about the last hour of the 3½ hour trip from Cotonou, is not much more than a glorified dirt road. By the time we got there we were covered in a red-brown dust. But after all, what did you expect? …C’est l’Afrique.
First is the very good news that the folks in Washington, DC have approved our business plan, albeit grudgingly. The message was basically, “There seems to be a framework here for moving forward, but we’re still not convinced that the folks there really understand the job ahead of them.” Duh. This is all entirely new territory here. It’s a completely different paradigm of development and the people I’m working with here are having to come to grips with an elevated set of expectations that they’ve never dealt with before. That’s why it required multiple drafts and the help of an American volunteer before they got the business plan squared away. Nevertheless, we can now move forward with ourreal work; hiring, training and employing arbitrators and mediators to take some pressure off of the court system. For that opportunity, I am thankful. Stay tuned.
All of that happened while I was in the northern town of Natitingou – Nati, for short – for our Early Service Conference. Where the southern part of Benin is lush and humid and mostly green, the north is more arid and dominated by shades of brown. The area around Nati is especially beautiful, being surrounded by rough hills and river valleys. Mind you, what I call hills pass for mountains here in Benin. None of them are over a couple thousand feet high (the highest point in the country is only 600 meters). But they are very rough and angular, not like the nice rounded slopes of the Cascades and their foothills. And the pace is much more laid back than down south, especially Cotonou. It was a really nice break, for which I am also thankful. The conference itself was…well it was fine, except that because I have the least Peace Corps-like job in all of Peace Corps not much of it applied to me. All the other SED volunteers are working with artisans, or women’s groups, or microfinance institutions – all at the grassroots. Me, I’m dealing with bureaucrats – both here and in Washington – and trying to help plan out a national marketing strategy for the Arbitration Center. It’s great for my Masters program, but light years from the “typical” Peace Corps experience.
I have settled into my house a little more, which feels good and for which I am also thankful. I completely rearranged things so now guests can sleep in the spare room and the bathroom door closes. Then I moved the kitchen inside so I don’t have to traipse out back to check on my dinner. All of which is good because, of course, last week was Thanksgiving. I have spent many Thanksgivings away from family and friends over the years. None of them was like this one, however. I actually hosted Thanksgiving dinner at my home for the very first time. There were five of us, myself and four other volunteers (see photo), and we all pitched in and made dinner. It was a little difficult finding all the necessary ingredients, but we made do. We had turkey wings (the only turkey we could find that wasn’t frozen so
lid…or still alive), stuffing (thank you mother for Gerry’s recipe), green beans and carrots, fried potatoes with cheese (REAL cheese!) and apple crisp for dessert (see other photo). I even downloaded a football game on Wednesday so we could watch football after dinner – ‘cause that’s what you do on Thanksgiving. Though it sounds very pedestrian, it was really very special. They talk a lot about Peace Corps being a family, and it sure was this week. For that, I give much thanks!But that was only the half of it. On Saturday, I ventured out to the town of Ketou (K2) where there was “another Thanksgiving dinner that couldn’t be beat” (thank you, Arlo). There were at least 25 people and everyone brought or made something. There are two volunteers serving in Ketou and we needed both stoves to get everything done in time. This time there was a full bird (killed and plucked for the occasion), two kinds of stuffing (I made Gerry’s recipe again and it was even better the second time because I found sage – called ‘herbs de Provence’ here – while I was shopping on Saturday morning.), mashed potatoes and gravy, au gratin potatoes, green beans, green salad, macaroni salad, rolls, and four or five desserts including pumpkin pie, cherry pie, brownies and coconut cake. A good time, and a good meal, was had by all! And many thanks were given.
Now, if that sounds like a typical T-day weekend, think again. Even here in Cotonou, lots of that stuff is pretty hard to find. Real cheese, for instance, is both uncommon and expensive. And don’t even try to find pasteurized milk. Vegetables are plentiful, although somewhat unpredictable. As you might have picked up on, spices are pretty hit-and-miss, too. You can get Nescafe at just about any store, but trying to find ground coffee is damn near impossible. On Thursday we went looking for oats to make the topping for the apple crisp…nada. We ended up using crumbled up butter cookies. (Much better, by the way!) And getting back and forth is always an adventure, especially if you’re going beyond Cotonou. The road from Pobé to Ketou, which was about the last hour of the 3½ hour trip from Cotonou, is not much more than a glorified dirt road. By the time we got there we were covered in a red-brown dust. But after all, what did you expect? …C’est l’Afrique.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
ET? Phone home.
Happy Halloween!
I have bad news, good news and great news from the past couple of weeks.
The bad news is that my friend and postmate Andy went home. We call it ET’d, which stands for Early Terminated. Early Termination is a purely personal choice and PC does a great job of supporting people who decide to go home. There is no “penalty”; you don’t get a black mark next to your name in the PC ledger or anything. In fact, it is possible to return to PC later to re-apply after you’ve ET’d – many people do. That being said, I’m disappointed both personally at having lost my nearest fellow PCV and professionally because I don’t really think he made a good faith effort to make it work. I won’t go into details because it wouldn’t be appropriate, and I don’t want to judge because as I said ETing is a very personal decision. But I am disappointed.
The good news – though I am perhaps a little ambivalent about it – is that I now have a house full of furniture. Why? Because when Andy left he gave me all of his. I inherited a dining table with four chairs, another coffee table, an end table and three set of shelves: HUGE ones for the living room, medium ones for the kitchen and tall skinny ones for the bathroom. I also got his stove (both his burners work while only one of mine was working), a pagne (PAHN-ya) chair – basically a canvas deck chair – and his single bed frame, but not the mattress. Now I just have to set up the spare room and other volunteers can stay with me when they come to Cotonou. Actually, a few have already done that although the spare bed is currently doubling as my couch. What I really need to do is rearrange the whole place, move my kitchen into the house and use the kitchen space out back for storage – it will make living much easier. So, I guess I know what I’m doing this weekend.
More good news: It looks like I’ve found a secondary project to work on. There is a business school here in Cotonou that is looking for someone to teach some classes on Leadership/Management and the like. One of the other PCVs is going to be teaching some tech classes and she introduced me to the woman who runs the place and it looks like I’ll start teaching in December. That should be fun and it should put me in touch with a different crowd of people; good for broadening the horizons and all.
The great news is that we finished the business plan! Why is this great news? First, it means that LOTS of aid money will now start flowing to the project. We will be able to move into our new office space (getting me out of the lobby) and start hiring and training people to actually DO arbitrations. Second, it means that we can stop operating in “crisis” mode and start working a normal routine. Now at this point I have no idea what that looks like because we’ve been working on the business plan since I got here, so this may or may not be a good thing. I have only a vague idea of what my role will be under normal operating conditions, so we’ll have to play it by ear. Ca va.
Everyday news: Sunday I’m leaving Cotonou for the first time (officially) since swear-in. The Small Enterprise volunteers are all getting together in Natitingou (just like it’s spelled) for our Early Service Conference (ESC). ESC is out first real opportunity to check in and see how things are going for our sector. We’ll get some additional info sessions on funding sources for projects, applying for them, finding secondary projects, etc. But mostly we’ll get to share our experiences with our fellow PCVs. Plus, Nati is way up in the north of Benin, which is totally different from the south. Everyone says it’s just beautiful. I’m REALLY looking forward to a change of scenery right now! I’ll be driving up with a couple of other volunteers and our APCD in a PC vehicle, so instead of cramming into a bush taxi for 14 hours we’ll be riding in a nice, comfy, air-conditioned SUV for 8 or 9. There are some good things about living in Cotonou…
Next time, more pictures!
I have bad news, good news and great news from the past couple of weeks.
The bad news is that my friend and postmate Andy went home. We call it ET’d, which stands for Early Terminated. Early Termination is a purely personal choice and PC does a great job of supporting people who decide to go home. There is no “penalty”; you don’t get a black mark next to your name in the PC ledger or anything. In fact, it is possible to return to PC later to re-apply after you’ve ET’d – many people do. That being said, I’m disappointed both personally at having lost my nearest fellow PCV and professionally because I don’t really think he made a good faith effort to make it work. I won’t go into details because it wouldn’t be appropriate, and I don’t want to judge because as I said ETing is a very personal decision. But I am disappointed.
The good news – though I am perhaps a little ambivalent about it – is that I now have a house full of furniture. Why? Because when Andy left he gave me all of his. I inherited a dining table with four chairs, another coffee table, an end table and three set of shelves: HUGE ones for the living room, medium ones for the kitchen and tall skinny ones for the bathroom. I also got his stove (both his burners work while only one of mine was working), a pagne (PAHN-ya) chair – basically a canvas deck chair – and his single bed frame, but not the mattress. Now I just have to set up the spare room and other volunteers can stay with me when they come to Cotonou. Actually, a few have already done that although the spare bed is currently doubling as my couch. What I really need to do is rearrange the whole place, move my kitchen into the house and use the kitchen space out back for storage – it will make living much easier. So, I guess I know what I’m doing this weekend.
More good news: It looks like I’ve found a secondary project to work on. There is a business school here in Cotonou that is looking for someone to teach some classes on Leadership/Management and the like. One of the other PCVs is going to be teaching some tech classes and she introduced me to the woman who runs the place and it looks like I’ll start teaching in December. That should be fun and it should put me in touch with a different crowd of people; good for broadening the horizons and all.
The great news is that we finished the business plan! Why is this great news? First, it means that LOTS of aid money will now start flowing to the project. We will be able to move into our new office space (getting me out of the lobby) and start hiring and training people to actually DO arbitrations. Second, it means that we can stop operating in “crisis” mode and start working a normal routine. Now at this point I have no idea what that looks like because we’ve been working on the business plan since I got here, so this may or may not be a good thing. I have only a vague idea of what my role will be under normal operating conditions, so we’ll have to play it by ear. Ca va.
Everyday news: Sunday I’m leaving Cotonou for the first time (officially) since swear-in. The Small Enterprise volunteers are all getting together in Natitingou (just like it’s spelled) for our Early Service Conference (ESC). ESC is out first real opportunity to check in and see how things are going for our sector. We’ll get some additional info sessions on funding sources for projects, applying for them, finding secondary projects, etc. But mostly we’ll get to share our experiences with our fellow PCVs. Plus, Nati is way up in the north of Benin, which is totally different from the south. Everyone says it’s just beautiful. I’m REALLY looking forward to a change of scenery right now! I’ll be driving up with a couple of other volunteers and our APCD in a PC vehicle, so instead of cramming into a bush taxi for 14 hours we’ll be riding in a nice, comfy, air-conditioned SUV for 8 or 9. There are some good things about living in Cotonou…
Next time, more pictures!
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Of Past and Present
It’s been a very frustrating week so I thought I’d take my mind off of it by telling you all a little bit about the history of Benin. As some may know, Benin was the very heart of what was once known as the “Slave Coast.” Not surprisingly, it earned that name because hundreds of thousands of Africans were transported from Benin, mostly from the port of Ouidah (WEE-da), to Europe and the Americas. Ouidah also happens to be the spiritual capital of the Vodun faithful. The word Vodun is from the Fon language and it is the source of the English word Voodoo. The practice of Vodun was brought from West Africa to the Americas by slaves and became what we know as Voodoo.
During our training we took a day trip to Ouidah and it was fascinating. Our first stop was the Historical Museum, which is housed in a former Portuguese fort. At one time the Portuguese conducted slave auctions within the walls of the compound. The fort served as the site of the diplomatic presence of Portugal in the area until it was annexed by the government of Dahomey in 1961. After taking possession of the fort the Dahomean government began restoration, and in 1967 the fort became the Ouidah Museum of History. Most of the collections are housed in the former Portuguese representative’s residence. Unfortunately, photos are only allowed outside the buildings.
One of the focal points for Vodun is the Sacred Forest. (As always, trees play a pivotal role in my many travels – I should probably meditate on why that is.) It is perhaps the most hallowed place in Ouidah. The photo at left is of me standing at the entrance to the Sacred Forest. According to the most popular version of the story, sometime around 1550 Kpasse became the second king of Savi (9 km north of Ouidah) and founded the city of Ouidah. When he learned that two jealous enemies were plotting his demise, he alerted his two sons, telling them that although he would never die, he would disappear one day. If he should not come out of his room before sunset, he told them, his sons were not to open the door but to understand that he was already gone. After nine days they would see a specific sign from their father which, once understood, would protect them and their families for generations to come. One day these events did come to pass. Today, the sign is still a secret known only to the direct descendants of the king.
Soon after King Kpasse disappeared, his family living in Savi saw a bird they had never seen before. It led them to the Sacred Forest in Ouidah where, upon entering the grounds of the forest, the bird turned into two growling panthers (male and female). The family was frightened until they heard the voice of the king. He gave them an important message: if at any time they were having problems, they could come to the forest and pray to a specific tree in 
which his spirit would live forever. The tree was then just a little sprout next to a sacred clay pot. Today, behind the ruins of the old French administrative house in the forest, abandoned because the spirits were "too strong" for the French, stands an enormous iroko tree. One also finds active shrines, including a clay pot, next to the tree in which Kpasse's spirit still resides.
Perhaps the most moving, and the most troublesome, feature of contemporary Ouidah is the “Slave Route.” Whether it is the actual route the departing slaves followed or not is less important than what it represents in terms of a didactic experience for both visitors and Beninese alike. As a reinvention of various aspects of the slave trade from the Ouidah port, the Slave Route appeals to visitors on an emotional level as it follows the footsteps of African captives who walked the three miles to the beach and then onto ships destined for the Americas. The route is marked at critical points by sculptures and monuments depicting the atrocities of the slave trade.
The Slave Route officially begins under a large tree (there it is again), where the public auctions are said to have been held. The tree is located just behind the compound of Don Francisco de Souza, who was born in Brazil in 1754 and died in Ouidah in 1849. De Souza, whose father was Portuguese and
whose mother was an Amerindian from Brazil, arrived in Ouidah in 1788 and was intimately involved in the transatlantic slave trade for over 60 years. He was named Viceroy of Ouidah by his friend and collaborator, King Ghezo of Abomey. De Souza's influence in the trade spread east to Nigeria and west to Togo. At the height of his involvement he is said to have supplied more than 100 slave ships traveling between the west coast of Africa and the Americas. Today, the name de Souza is among the most numerous in Benin, as Don Francisco had a dozen wives and about 40 children. Our guide during our trip was a woman named Martine de Souza, who had moved away from the de Souza compound just two years ago.
The next major site on the route is the Tree of Forgetting. Sadly, the tree itself is no longer there. The place where the tree is believed to have stood is marked with a sculpture of a three-headed, three-footed, three-armed Vodun spirit called Mami Wata and a small symbolic tree The story goes that all of the enslaved women marched around this tree seven times, and all of the enslaved men, nine times. The intent was to make them forget their origins and cultural identities. In that way they would lose the yearning to return to their homeland and acquiesce more readily to slave life. This process has been compared to the ritual of “zombification” rumored to exist in Haiti, wherein the work of the sorcerer forces one to lose ones identity and become a “living dead.” The failure of this idea is evident in the fact that such identities thrived and continue to thrive in African diasporas throughout the Americas (witness the continued popularity of the Voodoo faith).
After encircling the Tree of Forgetting, the captives are said to have been led to the Zomai Enclosure. The name, translated as "a place where fire can never go," refers to the darkness of the rooms inside. The building itself is no longer standing, but the spot is now commemorated with a contemporary memorial: a sculpture composed of different faces bearing different scarification markings, representing the many enslaved Africans from a variety of ethnic backgrounds who converged in this dark place before they were sent across the ocean. The six Yoruba markings (three on each cheek), and the ten Fon markings (two on each cheek, temples, and forehead) are readily discernible (click photo at left). The piece also includes a scale to represent the ideal of equality among peoples throughout the world.
The customs house, located in the Zoungbodji quarter of the city, controlled and recorded the movement of enslaved Africans from the Abomey kingdom to the coast. A monument is constructed upon what is believed to be the common grave for slaves who died in the Zomai Enclosure, although there have been no archaeological excavations to prove or disprove this theory. To the rear of a rectangular plaza is a large abstract mosaic mural. Black is used to represent Africans chained together, with blood in red, against a white background (click photo).
Before arriving at the beach where they would be loaded onto ships bound for the Americas, the captives are said to have made one last stop along the Slave Route, at the Tree of Return. This point on the route is represented by an actual tree (!), variously reported to be the real Tree of Return or to have been planted in Ouidah during the reign of King Agaja of Abomey (1708-1732). The enslaved Africans are said to have walked around the tree three times to ensure that their spirits, if not their bodies, would return to their native land.
With the Atlantic Ocean as an ominous backdrop, the final monument along Slave Route is the Door of No Return. In the center is a massive arch, built atop a large circular platform. On the upper facing of the arch are four bas-relief sculptures showing of two rows of Africans chained together, converging upon the beach with the ocean in front of them. Different perspectives of this same scene ornament 
the front, back, and both sides of the entablature. The columns supporting the arch consist of pairs of kneeling male and female figures repeated from the bottom to the top. One either side, four abstract metal sculptures depict families and Africans broken free of chains who wave good-bye.
Every January 10th since 1993, Benin has celebrated National Vodun Day. The festival's main activity is the reenactment of the slave march to the beach. The procession honors the memory of those ancestors lost in the slave trade and celebrates those who survived and passed down the culture and practices of West Africa that flourish today throughout the African Diaspora. Thus, the art and monuments are both historical markers and active ancestral shrines.
During our training we took a day trip to Ouidah and it was fascinating. Our first stop was the Historical Museum, which is housed in a former Portuguese fort. At one time the Portuguese conducted slave auctions within the walls of the compound. The fort served as the site of the diplomatic presence of Portugal in the area until it was annexed by the government of Dahomey in 1961. After taking possession of the fort the Dahomean government began restoration, and in 1967 the fort became the Ouidah Museum of History. Most of the collections are housed in the former Portuguese representative’s residence. Unfortunately, photos are only allowed outside the buildings.
One of the focal points for Vodun is the Sacred Forest. (As always, trees play a pivotal role in my many travels – I should probably meditate on why that is.) It is perhaps the most hallowed place in Ouidah. The photo at left is of me standing at the entrance to the Sacred Forest. According to the most popular version of the story, sometime around 1550 Kpasse became the second king of Savi (9 km north of Ouidah) and founded the city of Ouidah. When he learned that two jealous enemies were plotting his demise, he alerted his two sons, telling them that although he would never die, he would disappear one day. If he should not come out of his room before sunset, he told them, his sons were not to open the door but to understand that he was already gone. After nine days they would see a specific sign from their father which, once understood, would protect them and their families for generations to come. One day these events did come to pass. Today, the sign is still a secret known only to the direct descendants of the king.
Soon after King Kpasse disappeared, his family living in Savi saw a bird they had never seen before. It led them to the Sacred Forest in Ouidah where, upon entering the grounds of the forest, the bird turned into two growling panthers (male and female). The family was frightened until they heard the voice of the king. He gave them an important message: if at any time they were having problems, they could come to the forest and pray to a specific tree in 
which his spirit would live forever. The tree was then just a little sprout next to a sacred clay pot. Today, behind the ruins of the old French administrative house in the forest, abandoned because the spirits were "too strong" for the French, stands an enormous iroko tree. One also finds active shrines, including a clay pot, next to the tree in which Kpasse's spirit still resides.Perhaps the most moving, and the most troublesome, feature of contemporary Ouidah is the “Slave Route.” Whether it is the actual route the departing slaves followed or not is less important than what it represents in terms of a didactic experience for both visitors and Beninese alike. As a reinvention of various aspects of the slave trade from the Ouidah port, the Slave Route appeals to visitors on an emotional level as it follows the footsteps of African captives who walked the three miles to the beach and then onto ships destined for the Americas. The route is marked at critical points by sculptures and monuments depicting the atrocities of the slave trade.
The Slave Route officially begins under a large tree (there it is again), where the public auctions are said to have been held. The tree is located just behind the compound of Don Francisco de Souza, who was born in Brazil in 1754 and died in Ouidah in 1849. De Souza, whose father was Portuguese and
whose mother was an Amerindian from Brazil, arrived in Ouidah in 1788 and was intimately involved in the transatlantic slave trade for over 60 years. He was named Viceroy of Ouidah by his friend and collaborator, King Ghezo of Abomey. De Souza's influence in the trade spread east to Nigeria and west to Togo. At the height of his involvement he is said to have supplied more than 100 slave ships traveling between the west coast of Africa and the Americas. Today, the name de Souza is among the most numerous in Benin, as Don Francisco had a dozen wives and about 40 children. Our guide during our trip was a woman named Martine de Souza, who had moved away from the de Souza compound just two years ago.
The next major site on the route is the Tree of Forgetting. Sadly, the tree itself is no longer there. The place where the tree is believed to have stood is marked with a sculpture of a three-headed, three-footed, three-armed Vodun spirit called Mami Wata and a small symbolic tree The story goes that all of the enslaved women marched around this tree seven times, and all of the enslaved men, nine times. The intent was to make them forget their origins and cultural identities. In that way they would lose the yearning to return to their homeland and acquiesce more readily to slave life. This process has been compared to the ritual of “zombification” rumored to exist in Haiti, wherein the work of the sorcerer forces one to lose ones identity and become a “living dead.” The failure of this idea is evident in the fact that such identities thrived and continue to thrive in African diasporas throughout the Americas (witness the continued popularity of the Voodoo faith).
After encircling the Tree of Forgetting, the captives are said to have been led to the Zomai Enclosure. The name, translated as "a place where fire can never go," refers to the darkness of the rooms inside. The building itself is no longer standing, but the spot is now commemorated with a contemporary memorial: a sculpture composed of different faces bearing different scarification markings, representing the many enslaved Africans from a variety of ethnic backgrounds who converged in this dark place before they were sent across the ocean. The six Yoruba markings (three on each cheek), and the ten Fon markings (two on each cheek, temples, and forehead) are readily discernible (click photo at left). The piece also includes a scale to represent the ideal of equality among peoples throughout the world.
The customs house, located in the Zoungbodji quarter of the city, controlled and recorded the movement of enslaved Africans from the Abomey kingdom to the coast. A monument is constructed upon what is believed to be the common grave for slaves who died in the Zomai Enclosure, although there have been no archaeological excavations to prove or disprove this theory. To the rear of a rectangular plaza is a large abstract mosaic mural. Black is used to represent Africans chained together, with blood in red, against a white background (click photo).
Before arriving at the beach where they would be loaded onto ships bound for the Americas, the captives are said to have made one last stop along the Slave Route, at the Tree of Return. This point on the route is represented by an actual tree (!), variously reported to be the real Tree of Return or to have been planted in Ouidah during the reign of King Agaja of Abomey (1708-1732). The enslaved Africans are said to have walked around the tree three times to ensure that their spirits, if not their bodies, would return to their native land. 
With the Atlantic Ocean as an ominous backdrop, the final monument along Slave Route is the Door of No Return. In the center is a massive arch, built atop a large circular platform. On the upper facing of the arch are four bas-relief sculptures showing of two rows of Africans chained together, converging upon the beach with the ocean in front of them. Different perspectives of this same scene ornament 
the front, back, and both sides of the entablature. The columns supporting the arch consist of pairs of kneeling male and female figures repeated from the bottom to the top. One either side, four abstract metal sculptures depict families and Africans broken free of chains who wave good-bye. Every January 10th since 1993, Benin has celebrated National Vodun Day. The festival's main activity is the reenactment of the slave march to the beach. The procession honors the memory of those ancestors lost in the slave trade and celebrates those who survived and passed down the culture and practices of West Africa that flourish today throughout the African Diaspora. Thus, the art and monuments are both historical markers and active ancestral shrines.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
First Pictures!
Here's a picture of most of this year's cadre of volunteers here in Benin. I say most because we didn't realize there were a few folks missing before we snapped the shot. That's me in the middle of the back row with my head turned to the side. Oh well...Now that I've figured out how to post photos I'll go back and update some past posts with pictures. You can always click on a photo to see it full-size. I may also try to add video of the chicken slaughter, but it's pretty big so no guarantees.
This shot is of me with my host papa Bertin Alladayé and his brother Robert, in Azové. Bertin is on the right and Robert on the left. This was taken on one of our many forays around the drinking establishments of Azové.
Monday, October 15, 2007
PC Update #9/Life in Cotonou
Well, things here in Cotonou oscillate wildly between the seemingly normal and the utterly surreal. If I were in almost any other setting, it would feel like I’d simply found a new job doing consulting on international development projects; something not outside the realm of possibility for someone with a Masters degree in Public Administration. But here I am in Benin riding to work every morning on the back of a zemi, living in a house where I have to go outside to get to my kitchen, making about $260/month and arguing with the marché mommas over a dime for a kilo of potatoes. (I really need to get out of the habit of converting everything to $$) At the same time, I have an internet connection in my office so I am totally caught up on the terrible fire in the tunnel in California and the latest setbacks for the Huskies and Seahawks. I have a DVD player in my laptop (Glad I brought that!) so I can watch the latest pirated movies from Nigeria (the latest Harry Potter is already on DVD here) or try to watch episodes of Heroes online (slow connections often make that impossible). So, yeah, plausibly normal activities if I weren’t living in one of the poorest countries on earth.
Coming here, I thought the cultural adjustment was going to mean getting used to living without all of the conveniences and gadgets of modern life. Little did I know that it would actually mean learning how to live WITH most of them in a place where very few people have access to that kind of thing. PC does a great job of preparing you to live without, but they make no provision for people who end up having to live with. It’s a very different kind of challenge. In many ways it makes living and working here harder, rather than easier. Like trying to convince your neighbors you don’t actually have any extra money to help them buy their medication when they see you carrying a laptop to work every morning… (Happened to me just this morning.)
So obviously life as a PCV isn’t exactly what I had anticipated before I came over here. I feel a little guilty because I live in a real house with indoor plumbing, electricity 24/7 (more or less), and internet access at work – hardly like a PCV at all. Many, if not most, of my peers here in Benin live at least au village, if not en brousse, with no plumbing, spotty if any electricity and little or no access to media or news of any kind. At the same time, though, living and working in Cotonou isn’t all fun and games. The PC salary doesn’t go nearly as far in Cotonou as it does living in a village. While I’m struggling to make my salary last through the month (actually we get paid quarterly, which makes it even more difficult), there have recently been volunteers en brousee who have banked up to $2000 during their service, because living out there is so cheap. They can literally eat for a week on what I pay for food in a couple of days. Also, most of my fellow volunteers moved into houses that were previously occupied by other PCVs, which were already furnished when they got there. I came to a brand new post, into a new house (at least new to PC) with absolutely no furniture at all. Right now I have a double bed, which I ordered from my host papa in Azové (he’s a carpenter), a single bed which is currently functioning as my couch (the mattress is PC issue, the frame was donated to me by another volunteer), a coffee table (also donated), a work table in my “office” and a table in the kitchen where my gas stove is located (both made for me here in Cotonou since I moved in). It’s pretty bare. I have no storage space, either in the house itself or out in the kitchen; no hooks to hang anything on; no shelves and nothing on the walls. Luckily I have windows, so it doesn’t actually look like a prison cell, and I have some ventilation…oh, and I have a stand-up fan.
I am getting creative in the kitchen, however. The other night I made “Cheesy Tuna Mac” – basically Mac n’ Cheese with Tuna (Thank you, Mom!). Of course we don’t have the blue box from Kraft, so I had to improvise a little. I melted several wedges of la Vache qui Rit (literally, the Laughing Cow – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Laughing_Cow – a brand of processed cheese popular all over the world) to make the cheese sauce then added that to the noodles and finally stirred in the tuna and a little piment (zesty!). I also made “Fajita Fried Rice” last week. My next adventure is going to be some kind of chicken with peanut sauce…Bon appetit!
Plans are afoot for a Christmas safari. There is a rule in PC/Benin that new volunteers can’t be away from their posts overnight during their first 3 months of service. Our three months expires on Dec. 21st, so we’re planning a safari for the week after Christmas. There is a big national park in the northwest of the country called Pendjari that boasts all of the “Big 5” (Lion, Leopard, Elephant, Rhino and Buffalo) plus cheetahs, jackals and hyenas, baboons and tons of other wildlife. The only thing they don’t have there are giraffes, which I’ve seen in South Africa. I’m especially keen to see cheetahs in the wild. Their habitat is steadily declining and huge efforts are being made in some areas to preserve some range for wild cheetahs to survive. Parc Pendjari is the only designated cheetah preserve in West Africa. [Check out the Cheetah Conservation Fund or Earthwatch Institute if you want to come to Africa to help cheetahs.] We’re planning our trip for Dec. 27-29, with a travel day on either side to get to and from the park. So I’ll basically be gone for the entire week between Christmas and New Year’s Day. I’ll try to figure out how to post pictures on my blog before then.
Coming here, I thought the cultural adjustment was going to mean getting used to living without all of the conveniences and gadgets of modern life. Little did I know that it would actually mean learning how to live WITH most of them in a place where very few people have access to that kind of thing. PC does a great job of preparing you to live without, but they make no provision for people who end up having to live with. It’s a very different kind of challenge. In many ways it makes living and working here harder, rather than easier. Like trying to convince your neighbors you don’t actually have any extra money to help them buy their medication when they see you carrying a laptop to work every morning… (Happened to me just this morning.)
So obviously life as a PCV isn’t exactly what I had anticipated before I came over here. I feel a little guilty because I live in a real house with indoor plumbing, electricity 24/7 (more or less), and internet access at work – hardly like a PCV at all. Many, if not most, of my peers here in Benin live at least au village, if not en brousse, with no plumbing, spotty if any electricity and little or no access to media or news of any kind. At the same time, though, living and working in Cotonou isn’t all fun and games. The PC salary doesn’t go nearly as far in Cotonou as it does living in a village. While I’m struggling to make my salary last through the month (actually we get paid quarterly, which makes it even more difficult), there have recently been volunteers en brousee who have banked up to $2000 during their service, because living out there is so cheap. They can literally eat for a week on what I pay for food in a couple of days. Also, most of my fellow volunteers moved into houses that were previously occupied by other PCVs, which were already furnished when they got there. I came to a brand new post, into a new house (at least new to PC) with absolutely no furniture at all. Right now I have a double bed, which I ordered from my host papa in Azové (he’s a carpenter), a single bed which is currently functioning as my couch (the mattress is PC issue, the frame was donated to me by another volunteer), a coffee table (also donated), a work table in my “office” and a table in the kitchen where my gas stove is located (both made for me here in Cotonou since I moved in). It’s pretty bare. I have no storage space, either in the house itself or out in the kitchen; no hooks to hang anything on; no shelves and nothing on the walls. Luckily I have windows, so it doesn’t actually look like a prison cell, and I have some ventilation…oh, and I have a stand-up fan.
I am getting creative in the kitchen, however. The other night I made “Cheesy Tuna Mac” – basically Mac n’ Cheese with Tuna (Thank you, Mom!). Of course we don’t have the blue box from Kraft, so I had to improvise a little. I melted several wedges of la Vache qui Rit (literally, the Laughing Cow – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Laughing_Cow – a brand of processed cheese popular all over the world) to make the cheese sauce then added that to the noodles and finally stirred in the tuna and a little piment (zesty!). I also made “Fajita Fried Rice” last week. My next adventure is going to be some kind of chicken with peanut sauce…Bon appetit!
Plans are afoot for a Christmas safari. There is a rule in PC/Benin that new volunteers can’t be away from their posts overnight during their first 3 months of service. Our three months expires on Dec. 21st, so we’re planning a safari for the week after Christmas. There is a big national park in the northwest of the country called Pendjari that boasts all of the “Big 5” (Lion, Leopard, Elephant, Rhino and Buffalo) plus cheetahs, jackals and hyenas, baboons and tons of other wildlife. The only thing they don’t have there are giraffes, which I’ve seen in South Africa. I’m especially keen to see cheetahs in the wild. Their habitat is steadily declining and huge efforts are being made in some areas to preserve some range for wild cheetahs to survive. Parc Pendjari is the only designated cheetah preserve in West Africa. [Check out the Cheetah Conservation Fund or Earthwatch Institute if you want to come to Africa to help cheetahs.] We’re planning our trip for Dec. 27-29, with a travel day on either side to get to and from the park. So I’ll basically be gone for the entire week between Christmas and New Year’s Day. I’ll try to figure out how to post pictures on my blog before then.
Thursday, October 4, 2007
PC Update #8.5/Fellowship and Crisis
“The world is not to be put in order; the world is in order. It is for us
to put ourselves in unison with this order.”
-- Henry Miller
Tuesday, October 02, 2007, 10:35 AM
Well I suppose it was inevitable, but I didn’t expect it to happen so soon or so fast. I have weathered my first crisis of confidence about just what the hell I’m doing here. But that’s getting a little ahead of myself, so first things first.
We had a great little fete with a bunch of Japanese volunteers on Saturday. They are here doing basically the same kind of thing we’re doing, through the Japanese government. There are about 35 of them in-country; about a dozen were there Saturday. We all met at a house shared by two of them, which happens to be right around the corner from a PCV’s house in Calavi (CAL-a-vee - a “suburb” north of Cotonou). We filled tons of gyozas (pot stickers) by hand and fried them up and had a feast with a massive salad and amazing little rice cakes. We had way more food than we could eat, but nobody went home hungry. It was a really fun time because we’re all sort of in the same boat; here doing the same kind of work, in an entirely foreign culture speaking a foreign language. So we had an automatic bond over that and yet we were also of two different cultures, which gave us lots of stuff to talk about and share with each other. In some other circumstance we almost certainly would have just hung out with our own people, but the shared “fish out of water” feeling really brought the two groups together. They were all very friendly, outgoing, generous, and open. It was great! Next weekend (the 13th) we’re going to return the favor. We have our quarterly Volunteer Advisory Council meeting that day, so we’ve invited them over afterwards and we’re going to cook for them.
So then, as it got later on Saturday, I was talking with the PCV who lives in Calavi about how great it was to have another bunch of folks to hang out with and musing about how they had all made their decision to come to Africa. And then I was talking about how I ended up in Benin with Peace Corps; Sept. 11th, quitting the job, going back to school, South Africa, PCMI, etc. And as I was telling her some of that history I started to think about what I’m going to be doing here, and how it is SO different from what I imagined I would be doing. I mean, I had visions of mud huts out in the bush and being actively involved in the lives of individual people and their community. But the work I’m going to be doing is about as far from that as you can get in Benin. And I started to think that maybe taking this posting had been a HUGE mistake.
Now you may not all understand how I could make that leap, but it started to look a lot like another HUGE mistake I made once; specifically, my decision to become an AF recruiter. In both cases (or so it seemed as I was having these thoughts) I was seduced away from what I should have been doing by an opportunity to get something (I thought) I really wanted. (In the case of the AF, I got to move closer to home; in this case, I get to work on an incredibly important project at a level that seemed impossible when I signed up for PC.) In the case of the AF, it ended up being a colossal clusterfuck that effectively ended my AF career. (Now that was ultimately a GOOD thing, but don’t get ahead of me here.) I suffered through months of agonizing uncertainty and torturous self-doubt, not knowing – or having any control over – my fate. It took me over a year to get back on my figurative feet after that. Only a few of you were privy to how really terrible that time was for me. And now I was afraid I had duplicated the same mistake, just under different circumstances. I was afraid I had “sold out” the chance to make a real difference in people’s lives in order to do “important” work that would look good on my resume and advance my career possibilities; not to mention that it’s a nearly perfect match for my degree program. When I talk about my time as a recruiter I sometimes say that I sold my soul to the lowest bidder. Well, this time the bid is a little higher, but I really started to think I’d sold my soul again.
[We’re in the middle of another one of those amazing thunder storms right now!]
I knew that if I kept up these thoughts, I might easily decide it was time to go home – that’s where my head was at. So, I just started talking it all out with this other volunteer. As I tried to explain my thought process, she got me to talk more about how the whole AF thing had played out. Yes, I ended up leaving the Air Force and yes, I had a very tough time for a while after that. But that also led to me getting hired at PEMCO, where I did interesting work for a good company with some great people. And it was PEMCO that was thoroughly behind me when I made the decision to leave and go back to school. This, in turn, led to me going to South Africa and finishing my degree and applying for the PCMI program and ultimately put me here where I am now. All of these thoughts led me back to my musings about the universe and my place in it. Maybe it was necessary for me to acknowledge my responsibility for making the decision to go a different direction and to acknowledge that this isn’t the same time and I’m not the same person I was back then. Today, I recognize that I am the most powerful force in my own life; I dictate what happens to me, rather than letting what happens to me dictate who I am. Yes, I came here content to make a little difference in the lives of a few people, if that was how the universe unfolded. But that doesn’t mean that if the universe unfolds differently and I have the opportunity to make a BIG difference in the lives of lots of people that doing so is a mistake. It is just a different path, with the same intention.
I have told many of you that my aspiration going into Peace Corps was to bring more of the world’s advantages to more of the world’s people. It still is. I believe wholeheartedly that if brought to fruition, the projects underway through MCA will make an enormous difference in the lives of the people of Benin. So if I’m qualified to assist in that effort then I’m honor-bound to do the best job I can to help make that happen.
And so the universe, as usual, is unfolding just as it should. Who am I to imagine that I know better than the universe?
to put ourselves in unison with this order.”
-- Henry Miller
Tuesday, October 02, 2007, 10:35 AM
Well I suppose it was inevitable, but I didn’t expect it to happen so soon or so fast. I have weathered my first crisis of confidence about just what the hell I’m doing here. But that’s getting a little ahead of myself, so first things first.
We had a great little fete with a bunch of Japanese volunteers on Saturday. They are here doing basically the same kind of thing we’re doing, through the Japanese government. There are about 35 of them in-country; about a dozen were there Saturday. We all met at a house shared by two of them, which happens to be right around the corner from a PCV’s house in Calavi (CAL-a-vee - a “suburb” north of Cotonou). We filled tons of gyozas (pot stickers) by hand and fried them up and had a feast with a massive salad and amazing little rice cakes. We had way more food than we could eat, but nobody went home hungry. It was a really fun time because we’re all sort of in the same boat; here doing the same kind of work, in an entirely foreign culture speaking a foreign language. So we had an automatic bond over that and yet we were also of two different cultures, which gave us lots of stuff to talk about and share with each other. In some other circumstance we almost certainly would have just hung out with our own people, but the shared “fish out of water” feeling really brought the two groups together. They were all very friendly, outgoing, generous, and open. It was great! Next weekend (the 13th) we’re going to return the favor. We have our quarterly Volunteer Advisory Council meeting that day, so we’ve invited them over afterwards and we’re going to cook for them.
So then, as it got later on Saturday, I was talking with the PCV who lives in Calavi about how great it was to have another bunch of folks to hang out with and musing about how they had all made their decision to come to Africa. And then I was talking about how I ended up in Benin with Peace Corps; Sept. 11th, quitting the job, going back to school, South Africa, PCMI, etc. And as I was telling her some of that history I started to think about what I’m going to be doing here, and how it is SO different from what I imagined I would be doing. I mean, I had visions of mud huts out in the bush and being actively involved in the lives of individual people and their community. But the work I’m going to be doing is about as far from that as you can get in Benin. And I started to think that maybe taking this posting had been a HUGE mistake.
Now you may not all understand how I could make that leap, but it started to look a lot like another HUGE mistake I made once; specifically, my decision to become an AF recruiter. In both cases (or so it seemed as I was having these thoughts) I was seduced away from what I should have been doing by an opportunity to get something (I thought) I really wanted. (In the case of the AF, I got to move closer to home; in this case, I get to work on an incredibly important project at a level that seemed impossible when I signed up for PC.) In the case of the AF, it ended up being a colossal clusterfuck that effectively ended my AF career. (Now that was ultimately a GOOD thing, but don’t get ahead of me here.) I suffered through months of agonizing uncertainty and torturous self-doubt, not knowing – or having any control over – my fate. It took me over a year to get back on my figurative feet after that. Only a few of you were privy to how really terrible that time was for me. And now I was afraid I had duplicated the same mistake, just under different circumstances. I was afraid I had “sold out” the chance to make a real difference in people’s lives in order to do “important” work that would look good on my resume and advance my career possibilities; not to mention that it’s a nearly perfect match for my degree program. When I talk about my time as a recruiter I sometimes say that I sold my soul to the lowest bidder. Well, this time the bid is a little higher, but I really started to think I’d sold my soul again.
[We’re in the middle of another one of those amazing thunder storms right now!]
I knew that if I kept up these thoughts, I might easily decide it was time to go home – that’s where my head was at. So, I just started talking it all out with this other volunteer. As I tried to explain my thought process, she got me to talk more about how the whole AF thing had played out. Yes, I ended up leaving the Air Force and yes, I had a very tough time for a while after that. But that also led to me getting hired at PEMCO, where I did interesting work for a good company with some great people. And it was PEMCO that was thoroughly behind me when I made the decision to leave and go back to school. This, in turn, led to me going to South Africa and finishing my degree and applying for the PCMI program and ultimately put me here where I am now. All of these thoughts led me back to my musings about the universe and my place in it. Maybe it was necessary for me to acknowledge my responsibility for making the decision to go a different direction and to acknowledge that this isn’t the same time and I’m not the same person I was back then. Today, I recognize that I am the most powerful force in my own life; I dictate what happens to me, rather than letting what happens to me dictate who I am. Yes, I came here content to make a little difference in the lives of a few people, if that was how the universe unfolded. But that doesn’t mean that if the universe unfolds differently and I have the opportunity to make a BIG difference in the lives of lots of people that doing so is a mistake. It is just a different path, with the same intention.
I have told many of you that my aspiration going into Peace Corps was to bring more of the world’s advantages to more of the world’s people. It still is. I believe wholeheartedly that if brought to fruition, the projects underway through MCA will make an enormous difference in the lives of the people of Benin. So if I’m qualified to assist in that effort then I’m honor-bound to do the best job I can to help make that happen.
And so the universe, as usual, is unfolding just as it should. Who am I to imagine that I know better than the universe?
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Peace Corps Update #8
Wednesday, September 26, 2007, 08:00 hours
Bon matin!
I am now officially a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV). Actually, I have been for a few days, but it has been a very busy few days. We came down to Cotonou on Thursday for “shopping” and administrivia, and had a huge party Thursday night. I think the last revelers got to bed about 3:30 am (which is about what time I hit the sack). Oh, I also saw my house for the first time on Thursday, but it was still being renovated so there wasn’t much to see. Then Friday we went to the Ambassador’s house for the swearing-in ceremony and lunch after. Our facilitators got the time wrong so we had to wait outside the compound for an hour-and-a-half until they got the security arrangements straightened out. Despite that, the ceremony was cool and the food after was great! Later that same day (no rest for the weary) we all had to return to our respective training sites (Azove) to collect all our stuff and have our final goodbyes with the host families. So I spent Saturday driving around the commune with the whole family in tow, saluer-ing (that’s franglais) all of the various brothers, cousins, uncles, and everyone else I met while in Azove. Fun, but tiring. I gave papa a bottle of Amarula as a gift and also a full 12-yard piece of tissue for clothes for the fam. They were very touched. Saturday night was spent cleaning the volunteer house and making a last big meal together. The first of us left for post on Sunday morning. I spent most of the day helping people load their taxis and giving out big hugs. I left for Cotonou Monday morning.
As I write this, I just woke up from my second night in my house in Cotonou. The first night was miserable. No fan in the house, so if I wanted to keep cool, I had to leave the windows open. But also no mosquito net, so if I left the windows open I was at much higher risk for things like…oh, malaria! So I had to choose between getting eaten alive or boiling in a pool of my own sweat. Gotta love Africa! Ultimately, I left some windows open and tried to cover up as best I could with a sheet so as to stay relatively cool and relatively protected; neither of which actually came to pass. I got more mosquito bites in one night than I had in the entire nine weeks in Azove AND woke up on a mattress soggy with sweat. At least that was only one night; last night was much better. I bought a new mattress to go in my double-sized bed frame, bought an extra large mosquito net to fit over my big bed – and installed it before bedtime – and bought a fan to keep me comfortable. Needless to say, last night was a major improvement.
Unfortunately, the bed frame and mattress together cost me about two-thirds of my move-in allowance, so the bed is the only piece of furniture in the house at the moment. The house is pretty nice. It’s in a horseshoe shaped compound with three units. The proprietor lives in the big one at the back, her father (grandfather?) lives on the right and I live on the left. I have a big front room which will serve as living room on one side and dining area on the other. Then behind that is about the same amount of space divided into two rooms – my bedroom on the right and the office/guest room on the left. Behind my room is the bathroom (with sink, mirror, overhead shower and toilet; realizing that many volunteers have a hole in the ground and a bucket) which also has a door to the covered courtyard in the back. Across the courtyard and behind the office is the kitchen, but there is no door directly from the house to the kitchen. You have to go outside into the courtyard and then into the kitchen. This is fairly common in Africa, but is unfamiliar to most westerners. It’s all about the smoke from the cooking fires. Luckily, I have a gas stove – kind of like a camp stove – with two burners and a warmer and two bottles of gas (thank you, Peace Corps), so smoke isn’t really a problem.
I’ve been getting to know the neighborhood, too. I live not far from a place called l’Etoile Rouge (literally, the Red Star). It’s a gigantic roundabout at the intersection of two of the major roads in Cotonou. In the center is a huge monument in the shape of a red star, dedicated to the workers who built the city. Not surprisingly, it’s a remnant of the socialist regime of the 70s and 80s in Benin. Etoile Rouge is also a center for many small vendors who have their stalls either on the roundabout or on the streets that emanate from it. I got my mattress, my fan, an extension cord, and a kilo of potatoes all from vendors there yesterday. There’s a woman and her daughter who have a stand just at the end of my block who sell beignets and other forms of delicious fried dough every evening. I think I’m going to suggest coating them with sugar (they don’t do that here for some reason) and seeing if they can get a better price for them. After all, I am in small enterprise development.
This brings me to an interesting, and frustrating, aspect of the Beninese way of life. The Beninese are hard-working, industrious and often quite entrepreneurial people. But they are not innovative so much as they are imitative. I have both seen this in practice and been told as much by some of our Beninese facilitators. So if someone wants to go into business for himself (or herself) they will look around and see what other people are doing and if it looks like someone is being successful at something, they’ll do that, too. But if you suggest that they try something new or different, they are likely to listen patiently and then not do it. Thus, my hesitancy about the beignet ladies. Even if they could get a better price for sugar-coated beignets, they probably wouldn’t do it because no one else is doing it. This insistence on only doing what is already working is one of the things that makes change here SO slow and SO difficult. And it is definitely one of the obstacles I’m going to have to confront in my work. This project is going to take the Beninese system – economic, commercial, and judicial – into areas where it has never ventured. So I think it is going to be essential to get the powers that be to talk with people and perhaps even visit places where these kinds of programs are already running and demonstrating success. It is happening in other countries in West Africa, so it would not be prohibitively expensive and if it meant that those in charge came away with the sense that this is something worth duplicating it would be more than worth it.
I’m very anxious about starting my work. I’m starting on Monday and I’m very much afraid that they view me as some kind of miracle worker; like I’m going to walk in and fix all their problems, do all their work and magically meet all their deadlines. At this point I still only have about the 10,000 ft. view of what they’re doing. I’m going to need at least a week or two to get into the nitty-gritty of where they are, what’s been done, what needs doing, in what order and by when. And even once I’m up to speed, Randy – the American in charge of MCA-Benin – made it clear when we met during my site visit that my role is NOT to do their work for them. I’m supposed to be a mentor/teacher/facilitator to assist and guide them in doing the work properly, so that it is up to the necessary standard and the project continues to move toward fruition. He explicitly told me that I’m not responsible for meeting their deadlines. I’m not at all sure that they have the same understanding. I’m just afraid it will be awkward getting everyone to the same page, especially in my broken French. Ah well, du courage!
So I guess if I’m going to make dinner tonight I’d better go find some spices and some mushrooms. Just another little adventure within the grand adventure that is Peace Corps. At least Peace Corps/Benin has produced a cookbook so volunteers won’t run out of ideas for things to eat. No more plain white starch with sauce for me!
Bon matin!
I am now officially a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV). Actually, I have been for a few days, but it has been a very busy few days. We came down to Cotonou on Thursday for “shopping” and administrivia, and had a huge party Thursday night. I think the last revelers got to bed about 3:30 am (which is about what time I hit the sack). Oh, I also saw my house for the first time on Thursday, but it was still being renovated so there wasn’t much to see. Then Friday we went to the Ambassador’s house for the swearing-in ceremony and lunch after. Our facilitators got the time wrong so we had to wait outside the compound for an hour-and-a-half until they got the security arrangements straightened out. Despite that, the ceremony was cool and the food after was great! Later that same day (no rest for the weary) we all had to return to our respective training sites (Azove) to collect all our stuff and have our final goodbyes with the host families. So I spent Saturday driving around the commune with the whole family in tow, saluer-ing (that’s franglais) all of the various brothers, cousins, uncles, and everyone else I met while in Azove. Fun, but tiring. I gave papa a bottle of Amarula as a gift and also a full 12-yard piece of tissue for clothes for the fam. They were very touched. Saturday night was spent cleaning the volunteer house and making a last big meal together. The first of us left for post on Sunday morning. I spent most of the day helping people load their taxis and giving out big hugs. I left for Cotonou Monday morning.
As I write this, I just woke up from my second night in my house in Cotonou. The first night was miserable. No fan in the house, so if I wanted to keep cool, I had to leave the windows open. But also no mosquito net, so if I left the windows open I was at much higher risk for things like…oh, malaria! So I had to choose between getting eaten alive or boiling in a pool of my own sweat. Gotta love Africa! Ultimately, I left some windows open and tried to cover up as best I could with a sheet so as to stay relatively cool and relatively protected; neither of which actually came to pass. I got more mosquito bites in one night than I had in the entire nine weeks in Azove AND woke up on a mattress soggy with sweat. At least that was only one night; last night was much better. I bought a new mattress to go in my double-sized bed frame, bought an extra large mosquito net to fit over my big bed – and installed it before bedtime – and bought a fan to keep me comfortable. Needless to say, last night was a major improvement.
Unfortunately, the bed frame and mattress together cost me about two-thirds of my move-in allowance, so the bed is the only piece of furniture in the house at the moment. The house is pretty nice. It’s in a horseshoe shaped compound with three units. The proprietor lives in the big one at the back, her father (grandfather?) lives on the right and I live on the left. I have a big front room which will serve as living room on one side and dining area on the other. Then behind that is about the same amount of space divided into two rooms – my bedroom on the right and the office/guest room on the left. Behind my room is the bathroom (with sink, mirror, overhead shower and toilet; realizing that many volunteers have a hole in the ground and a bucket) which also has a door to the covered courtyard in the back. Across the courtyard and behind the office is the kitchen, but there is no door directly from the house to the kitchen. You have to go outside into the courtyard and then into the kitchen. This is fairly common in Africa, but is unfamiliar to most westerners. It’s all about the smoke from the cooking fires. Luckily, I have a gas stove – kind of like a camp stove – with two burners and a warmer and two bottles of gas (thank you, Peace Corps), so smoke isn’t really a problem.
I’ve been getting to know the neighborhood, too. I live not far from a place called l’Etoile Rouge (literally, the Red Star). It’s a gigantic roundabout at the intersection of two of the major roads in Cotonou. In the center is a huge monument in the shape of a red star, dedicated to the workers who built the city. Not surprisingly, it’s a remnant of the socialist regime of the 70s and 80s in Benin. Etoile Rouge is also a center for many small vendors who have their stalls either on the roundabout or on the streets that emanate from it. I got my mattress, my fan, an extension cord, and a kilo of potatoes all from vendors there yesterday. There’s a woman and her daughter who have a stand just at the end of my block who sell beignets and other forms of delicious fried dough every evening. I think I’m going to suggest coating them with sugar (they don’t do that here for some reason) and seeing if they can get a better price for them. After all, I am in small enterprise development.
This brings me to an interesting, and frustrating, aspect of the Beninese way of life. The Beninese are hard-working, industrious and often quite entrepreneurial people. But they are not innovative so much as they are imitative. I have both seen this in practice and been told as much by some of our Beninese facilitators. So if someone wants to go into business for himself (or herself) they will look around and see what other people are doing and if it looks like someone is being successful at something, they’ll do that, too. But if you suggest that they try something new or different, they are likely to listen patiently and then not do it. Thus, my hesitancy about the beignet ladies. Even if they could get a better price for sugar-coated beignets, they probably wouldn’t do it because no one else is doing it. This insistence on only doing what is already working is one of the things that makes change here SO slow and SO difficult. And it is definitely one of the obstacles I’m going to have to confront in my work. This project is going to take the Beninese system – economic, commercial, and judicial – into areas where it has never ventured. So I think it is going to be essential to get the powers that be to talk with people and perhaps even visit places where these kinds of programs are already running and demonstrating success. It is happening in other countries in West Africa, so it would not be prohibitively expensive and if it meant that those in charge came away with the sense that this is something worth duplicating it would be more than worth it.
I’m very anxious about starting my work. I’m starting on Monday and I’m very much afraid that they view me as some kind of miracle worker; like I’m going to walk in and fix all their problems, do all their work and magically meet all their deadlines. At this point I still only have about the 10,000 ft. view of what they’re doing. I’m going to need at least a week or two to get into the nitty-gritty of where they are, what’s been done, what needs doing, in what order and by when. And even once I’m up to speed, Randy – the American in charge of MCA-Benin – made it clear when we met during my site visit that my role is NOT to do their work for them. I’m supposed to be a mentor/teacher/facilitator to assist and guide them in doing the work properly, so that it is up to the necessary standard and the project continues to move toward fruition. He explicitly told me that I’m not responsible for meeting their deadlines. I’m not at all sure that they have the same understanding. I’m just afraid it will be awkward getting everyone to the same page, especially in my broken French. Ah well, du courage!
So I guess if I’m going to make dinner tonight I’d better go find some spices and some mushrooms. Just another little adventure within the grand adventure that is Peace Corps. At least Peace Corps/Benin has produced a cookbook so volunteers won’t run out of ideas for things to eat. No more plain white starch with sauce for me!
Peace Corps Update #7
Monday, September 10, 2007
This past weekend I saw where the tornado touched down outside Azove. Only a couple of buildings got flattened and nobody got hurt. Good news.
Things I know (and how I know them):
1) Most of the time, using the second-least-efficient method possible of doing something will be an improvement in this country. I know this because I have been here for 6 weeks and have yet (I believe) to see anyone using anything but the least efficient method of doing anything. Case in point: In Cotonou I walked past a constructions site (several, actually) of a multi-story building. In order to lift the sand for concrete from the ground up to the floor under construction they build a series of ascending platforms, each one recessed from the one below it. Then, someone on the ground lifts the sand ONE SHOVELFUL AT A TIME from the ground to the next highest platform. This process is then repeated as many times as needed to lift the sand to the proper floor. On a busy day it is not unusual to see a tower of twenty men doing nothing but shoveling sand up the side of a building.
2) Gas stations are an unnecessary luxury. I know this because they are nearly non-existent in Benin, and the few that exist are seldom used. Gasoline (Essence, en francais) is mostly sold here by small vendors who dispense smuggled Nigerian gas from old, reused liquor bottles or five liter palm oil cans. A Beninese gas station is basically a table full of old bottles by the side of the road.
3) Automobiles are also an unnecessary luxury. While there are quite a lot of them in Benin, they are VASTLY outnumbered by “motos”. A moto is anything with two wheels, a seat and an engine. My scooter would make a great moto here – although PC bars volunteers from owning a moto. Nevertheless, the vast majority of inner city taxis are also motos, so PC issues every PCV in Benin a moto helmet so we can get around easier and cheaper. Thus we are still allowed to put our lives in danger, just not to be in control of the level of danger…go figure.
4) Humans can survive on plain white starch with sauce. Is an explanation really necessary?
5) After six weeks of nothing but plain white starch with sauce, most humans will do almost anything for a hamburger. I know this because last Sunday (not yesterday, a week ago) we got someone to go to Bohicon (BOY-cahn) to get ground beef and we made hamburgers and fries for our cooking “class”. Bliss…
6) It is actually possible to make things other than plain white starch with sauce from the things available in the local marche. I know this because yesterday for cooking class we had an “Iron Chef” competition. For the uninitiated, Iron Chef is a TV cooking competition where two world-class chefs compete against each other. Each contest has a theme ingredient that is announced immediately prior to the contest. Well, our theme ingredient was…Peanut Butter! We had four teams and everybody made at least one really great dish. But our team went above and beyond! There were four of us and we each concentrated on one dish. My compadre, the other Steve, made hand-made ravioli filled with a PB, cinnamon, onion and piment chutney. Emma made cole slaw, served with PB-fried raman noodles. Sebastian was in charge of dessert and made PB and pineapple stuffed French Toast. And for the main entrée, I made…yes, a stuffed flank steak! (Sound familiar to anyone? Mom? Julie? Bob?) What, you may ask, was it stuffed with? A stuffing of bread crumbs, onion, celery, garlic, piment and peanut butter! Each dish was then served with/on some form of native vegetation. Not surprisingly, we won the competition hands down.
7) Man’s greatest invention may be the Dutch Oven. See above.
This past weekend I saw where the tornado touched down outside Azove. Only a couple of buildings got flattened and nobody got hurt. Good news.
Things I know (and how I know them):
1) Most of the time, using the second-least-efficient method possible of doing something will be an improvement in this country. I know this because I have been here for 6 weeks and have yet (I believe) to see anyone using anything but the least efficient method of doing anything. Case in point: In Cotonou I walked past a constructions site (several, actually) of a multi-story building. In order to lift the sand for concrete from the ground up to the floor under construction they build a series of ascending platforms, each one recessed from the one below it. Then, someone on the ground lifts the sand ONE SHOVELFUL AT A TIME from the ground to the next highest platform. This process is then repeated as many times as needed to lift the sand to the proper floor. On a busy day it is not unusual to see a tower of twenty men doing nothing but shoveling sand up the side of a building.
2) Gas stations are an unnecessary luxury. I know this because they are nearly non-existent in Benin, and the few that exist are seldom used. Gasoline (Essence, en francais) is mostly sold here by small vendors who dispense smuggled Nigerian gas from old, reused liquor bottles or five liter palm oil cans. A Beninese gas station is basically a table full of old bottles by the side of the road.
3) Automobiles are also an unnecessary luxury. While there are quite a lot of them in Benin, they are VASTLY outnumbered by “motos”. A moto is anything with two wheels, a seat and an engine. My scooter would make a great moto here – although PC bars volunteers from owning a moto. Nevertheless, the vast majority of inner city taxis are also motos, so PC issues every PCV in Benin a moto helmet so we can get around easier and cheaper. Thus we are still allowed to put our lives in danger, just not to be in control of the level of danger…go figure.
4) Humans can survive on plain white starch with sauce. Is an explanation really necessary?
5) After six weeks of nothing but plain white starch with sauce, most humans will do almost anything for a hamburger. I know this because last Sunday (not yesterday, a week ago) we got someone to go to Bohicon (BOY-cahn) to get ground beef and we made hamburgers and fries for our cooking “class”. Bliss…
6) It is actually possible to make things other than plain white starch with sauce from the things available in the local marche. I know this because yesterday for cooking class we had an “Iron Chef” competition. For the uninitiated, Iron Chef is a TV cooking competition where two world-class chefs compete against each other. Each contest has a theme ingredient that is announced immediately prior to the contest. Well, our theme ingredient was…Peanut Butter! We had four teams and everybody made at least one really great dish. But our team went above and beyond! There were four of us and we each concentrated on one dish. My compadre, the other Steve, made hand-made ravioli filled with a PB, cinnamon, onion and piment chutney. Emma made cole slaw, served with PB-fried raman noodles. Sebastian was in charge of dessert and made PB and pineapple stuffed French Toast. And for the main entrée, I made…yes, a stuffed flank steak! (Sound familiar to anyone? Mom? Julie? Bob?) What, you may ask, was it stuffed with? A stuffing of bread crumbs, onion, celery, garlic, piment and peanut butter! Each dish was then served with/on some form of native vegetation. Not surprisingly, we won the competition hands down.
7) Man’s greatest invention may be the Dutch Oven. See above.
The Wonderous World of Weather
Monday, September 03, 2007
Jesus, Mary and Joseph and all things holy!!!
Sorry, but I just had the most amazing and terrifying weather experience of my entire life (actually, that’s not exactly accurate because it is in fact continuing more or less unabated outside my window even as I write this) – and that’s saying something for someone who has experienced an Oklahoma thunderstorm and a South Korean monsoon. But neither of those can begin to hold a candle to an honest-to-God-holy-shit-the-sky-has-exploded-and buckets-are-coming-down-Jesus-H-fucking-Christ-cats-and-dogs-and-random-farm-animals-falling-from-the-sky-Beninese-tropical-deluge! With lightning that turns pitch black into full daylight for a few fractions of a second. I swear within a minute-and-a-half “la rue” turned into “le riviere.” And moments later I saw my first actual in person tornado, although I had to come halfway around the world to do it.
I was looking at the lights of a nearby (1/4 mile away) cell phone tower and within a few moments it was so dark and raining so hard that they were no longer visible. As I looked beyond the tower I could see in the background the funnel forming about a mile out (just a guess). Just before it got really, really dark I’m pretty sure it was on the ground because there was stuff coming up from the ground as well as falling toward it. Which was about the time the power went out…hmmm, maybe that’s why I couldn’t see the red light anymore. Needless to say, I was scared shitless. Luckily, the funnel did not decide to move in our direction, but at this point I have no idea how long it was on the ground or what kind of damage it might have done. If there’s news to share on that front later I will.
YEAH! The power just came back on! And then it went out again…c’est l’Afrique.
Jesus, Mary and Joseph and all things holy!!!
Sorry, but I just had the most amazing and terrifying weather experience of my entire life (actually, that’s not exactly accurate because it is in fact continuing more or less unabated outside my window even as I write this) – and that’s saying something for someone who has experienced an Oklahoma thunderstorm and a South Korean monsoon. But neither of those can begin to hold a candle to an honest-to-God-holy-shit-the-sky-has-exploded-and buckets-are-coming-down-Jesus-H-fucking-Christ-cats-and-dogs-and-random-farm-animals-falling-from-the-sky-Beninese-tropical-deluge! With lightning that turns pitch black into full daylight for a few fractions of a second. I swear within a minute-and-a-half “la rue” turned into “le riviere.” And moments later I saw my first actual in person tornado, although I had to come halfway around the world to do it.
I was looking at the lights of a nearby (1/4 mile away) cell phone tower and within a few moments it was so dark and raining so hard that they were no longer visible. As I looked beyond the tower I could see in the background the funnel forming about a mile out (just a guess). Just before it got really, really dark I’m pretty sure it was on the ground because there was stuff coming up from the ground as well as falling toward it. Which was about the time the power went out…hmmm, maybe that’s why I couldn’t see the red light anymore. Needless to say, I was scared shitless. Luckily, the funnel did not decide to move in our direction, but at this point I have no idea how long it was on the ground or what kind of damage it might have done. If there’s news to share on that front later I will.YEAH! The power just came back on! And then it went out again…c’est l’Afrique.
Peace Corps Update #6
Friday, 24 August 2007
[Yikes, I just went back and reread my last update and realized I hadn’t really finished it before I sent it. I hadn’t intended it to end so abruptly. Or so adamantly. I am constantly confronted here by the exigencies of subsistence living – things like killing chickens. Even here in Cotonou (see below) the vast majority of animals are sold live in the marche. There are some boucheries (butcher shops) but only the richest shop there. The vast majority still lives in what would be described by most Americans as “squalor” and have to do what it takes to survive. We in the West have little or no conception of subsistence living any longer, with the possible exception of some family farmers. Our food doesn’t come from the land, it comes from the supermarket. Our water doesn’t come from a well, it comes from the wall. Instead of mosquito nets we have air filtration systems – because we don’t have to worry about malaria, just allergies. And we wonder why much of the rest of the world thinks of us as soft and over-privileged… ]
Wow!
It’s hard to believe I’ve been here over a month already. And we have less than a month left in our training. I’m in the middle of my post visit, spending a few days in Cotonou getting to meet the folks I’ll be working with, getting to know the city a little bit, sending out all my email updates ;-) , etc. One thing I know for sure; my French is going to need to get A LOT better if I’m going to be effective here. For most volunteers here, it will be enough to speak “villageois” French; not for me. I’m going to need to speak good, professional French and even with four weeks of training left I don’t think I’m going to be at that level by then. The good news is that PC will pay for a private French tutor for up to a year to help me get up to speed. The bad news is that it may take that long.
My housing situation once I start my job has yet to be arranged which makes me slightly uneasy, but PC has been doing this for 45 years so I’m not all that worried. During this visit I’m staying with one of the Assistant Directors of the project and he has a bangin’ house (for Benin). Marble and tile floors, furniture all in teak and mahogany and leather, ceilings custom molded, art works everywhere. It’s about on a par with the PC Director’s house, and she gets paid in dollars! I have my own little mini apartment with its own bathroom (very rare in Benin), a HUGE bed and cable TV. If my place is half as nice when I get there I’ll have the best house in Peace Corps Benin. And I think I already have the best job.
Ok, maybe not the best job. I think that depends on what you expected/desired when you got here. It may, however, be the least Peace Corps-like job in all of Peace Corps. The thing of it is, I could not have imagined, from everything I read or heard or was told, that it would even be possible to come to West Africa with PC and to do this kind of work. Almost everyone else here is going to be living in small-to-medium villages, working with artisans or farmers or with tourism (one girl is going to be doing Hippo conservation in a town not far from Azove), trying to build Benin from the ground up. I’m going to be in the capital (OK, so Cotonou isn’t the official capital – that’s Porto Novo – but it might as well be.), a city of 2 million people, working from the top down so that all the rest of our efforts aren’t in vain. It is not a level at which PCVs usually get to work so I am both excited and a little intimidated by the prospect. I’m having breakfast tomorrow morning with the head of the Millennium Challenge for all of West Africa, who is an American, so I should be able to get a good clear picture – in English – of what the priorities are and what the sequence of work needs to be. From talking to my counterpart it seems that the process of making a plan and working to it is a very new thing in Benin, so I think I have a lot to contribute in that arena.
From a purely self-serving perspective I couldn’t have asked for a better situation. To be able to participate in the fundamental restructuring of an entire nation’s judicial system; to see it from the very beginning and to contribute (hopefully) to it’s success; to be able to shape the experience into a case study for my Master’s degree; and then to be able to put all that on my resume at the end of two (three?) years…somebody wake me up, I must be dreaming. On second thought, if I am dreaming please DON’T wake me up because this is too perfect. Now I just have to hold out against the amoebas, parasites, mosquitoes, cockroaches, boredom, alcoholism, isolation and depression that are the daily risks of every Peace Corps volunteer. C’est la vie! Say la Freak!
[Yikes, I just went back and reread my last update and realized I hadn’t really finished it before I sent it. I hadn’t intended it to end so abruptly. Or so adamantly. I am constantly confronted here by the exigencies of subsistence living – things like killing chickens. Even here in Cotonou (see below) the vast majority of animals are sold live in the marche. There are some boucheries (butcher shops) but only the richest shop there. The vast majority still lives in what would be described by most Americans as “squalor” and have to do what it takes to survive. We in the West have little or no conception of subsistence living any longer, with the possible exception of some family farmers. Our food doesn’t come from the land, it comes from the supermarket. Our water doesn’t come from a well, it comes from the wall. Instead of mosquito nets we have air filtration systems – because we don’t have to worry about malaria, just allergies. And we wonder why much of the rest of the world thinks of us as soft and over-privileged… ]
Wow!
It’s hard to believe I’ve been here over a month already. And we have less than a month left in our training. I’m in the middle of my post visit, spending a few days in Cotonou getting to meet the folks I’ll be working with, getting to know the city a little bit, sending out all my email updates ;-) , etc. One thing I know for sure; my French is going to need to get A LOT better if I’m going to be effective here. For most volunteers here, it will be enough to speak “villageois” French; not for me. I’m going to need to speak good, professional French and even with four weeks of training left I don’t think I’m going to be at that level by then. The good news is that PC will pay for a private French tutor for up to a year to help me get up to speed. The bad news is that it may take that long.
My housing situation once I start my job has yet to be arranged which makes me slightly uneasy, but PC has been doing this for 45 years so I’m not all that worried. During this visit I’m staying with one of the Assistant Directors of the project and he has a bangin’ house (for Benin). Marble and tile floors, furniture all in teak and mahogany and leather, ceilings custom molded, art works everywhere. It’s about on a par with the PC Director’s house, and she gets paid in dollars! I have my own little mini apartment with its own bathroom (very rare in Benin), a HUGE bed and cable TV. If my place is half as nice when I get there I’ll have the best house in Peace Corps Benin. And I think I already have the best job.
Ok, maybe not the best job. I think that depends on what you expected/desired when you got here. It may, however, be the least Peace Corps-like job in all of Peace Corps. The thing of it is, I could not have imagined, from everything I read or heard or was told, that it would even be possible to come to West Africa with PC and to do this kind of work. Almost everyone else here is going to be living in small-to-medium villages, working with artisans or farmers or with tourism (one girl is going to be doing Hippo conservation in a town not far from Azove), trying to build Benin from the ground up. I’m going to be in the capital (OK, so Cotonou isn’t the official capital – that’s Porto Novo – but it might as well be.), a city of 2 million people, working from the top down so that all the rest of our efforts aren’t in vain. It is not a level at which PCVs usually get to work so I am both excited and a little intimidated by the prospect. I’m having breakfast tomorrow morning with the head of the Millennium Challenge for all of West Africa, who is an American, so I should be able to get a good clear picture – in English – of what the priorities are and what the sequence of work needs to be. From talking to my counterpart it seems that the process of making a plan and working to it is a very new thing in Benin, so I think I have a lot to contribute in that arena.
From a purely self-serving perspective I couldn’t have asked for a better situation. To be able to participate in the fundamental restructuring of an entire nation’s judicial system; to see it from the very beginning and to contribute (hopefully) to it’s success; to be able to shape the experience into a case study for my Master’s degree; and then to be able to put all that on my resume at the end of two (three?) years…somebody wake me up, I must be dreaming. On second thought, if I am dreaming please DON’T wake me up because this is too perfect. Now I just have to hold out against the amoebas, parasites, mosquitoes, cockroaches, boredom, alcoholism, isolation and depression that are the daily risks of every Peace Corps volunteer. C’est la vie! Say la Freak!
Peace Corps Update #5.5
Sunday, 19 August 2007
Host family life has settled into something of a routine. I wake every morning between 6:30 and 6:40 when the goddamn roosters start crowing. Up by 6:45, then the 3 S’s (shit, shower and shave), followed by breakfast – coffee and bread six days a week with an omelette on Saturday. We have class from 8:00 until 10:00, a break until 10:30, and then more class until 12:30. From 12:30 until 3:00 is repos (rƏ-po) – siesta, basically. Most activity and nearly all business stops during repos. I eat lunch and then most days I either study or write in my journal or read a book. (Someone here already has the 7th Harry Potter – I’m third in line.) After repos, more classes until 6:00.
Lunch and dinner have also settled into a routine of sorts. Chez moi, we have about five base meals. First, there is pâte (not to be confused with pâté), which is basically congealed corn meal paste. (I think pâte may actually be the French word for paste.) Then there is rice, noodles (spaghetti or elbows), fried potatoes and yams. Now these yams are NOT your grandmother’s holiday favorite. They are basically just big, white, tasteless tubers. The one thing these bases have in common is that they have little or no taste of their own – except maybe the potatoes. This is good because they really only function as a vehicle for the sauce(s) – this is where the real flavor comes from. Beninese cuisine is all about the sauce. Sometimes it’s just sauce – a base of water or oil with tomatoes or some other veggie plus spices. Sometimes it is a mélange of tomatoes, veggies, egg, spices, and maybe some meat or other goodies (like chunks of fried goat cheese – mmmm). Always it is SPICY! Not just hot spicy (although it is also that), but flavorfully, marvelously nuanced and wonderful.
However, there is one inescapable fact about food in Benin. If it’s meat, and you want to eat it, somebody has to kill it. And thus came about another quintessential Peace Corps experience…I killed a chicken on Thursday. (Yes, I recognize the irony of referring to killing as a quintessential PEACE Corps experience, but there ain’t no QFC around the corner over here.) We had planned a big fete for that night after taking our first language exam and we wanted some chicken for dinner. Well, as in the rest of the third world, the consumer is much closer to the food source here, so we had to buy six live chickens at the marche. We could have had the marche lady kill and clean them for us but that triples the price, so we brought the live birds back to the house and then had to do the deed ourselves. Then we boiled the meat off the bones, formed it into balls, dipped them in some egg and breaded them with some spices and Voila! Home-made chicken nuggets! And it was damn tasty, let me tell you. Now to those of you who find this appalling…get over it. This is how at least 75% of the world’s people get protein – they kill animals. It’s not clean, it’s not humane, and it is certainly not pretty, but it is reality.
Host family life has settled into something of a routine. I wake every morning between 6:30 and 6:40 when the goddamn roosters start crowing. Up by 6:45, then the 3 S’s (shit, shower and shave), followed by breakfast – coffee and bread six days a week with an omelette on Saturday. We have class from 8:00 until 10:00, a break until 10:30, and then more class until 12:30. From 12:30 until 3:00 is repos (rƏ-po) – siesta, basically. Most activity and nearly all business stops during repos. I eat lunch and then most days I either study or write in my journal or read a book. (Someone here already has the 7th Harry Potter – I’m third in line.) After repos, more classes until 6:00.
Lunch and dinner have also settled into a routine of sorts. Chez moi, we have about five base meals. First, there is pâte (not to be confused with pâté), which is basically congealed corn meal paste. (I think pâte may actually be the French word for paste.) Then there is rice, noodles (spaghetti or elbows), fried potatoes and yams. Now these yams are NOT your grandmother’s holiday favorite. They are basically just big, white, tasteless tubers. The one thing these bases have in common is that they have little or no taste of their own – except maybe the potatoes. This is good because they really only function as a vehicle for the sauce(s) – this is where the real flavor comes from. Beninese cuisine is all about the sauce. Sometimes it’s just sauce – a base of water or oil with tomatoes or some other veggie plus spices. Sometimes it is a mélange of tomatoes, veggies, egg, spices, and maybe some meat or other goodies (like chunks of fried goat cheese – mmmm). Always it is SPICY! Not just hot spicy (although it is also that), but flavorfully, marvelously nuanced and wonderful.
However, there is one inescapable fact about food in Benin. If it’s meat, and you want to eat it, somebody has to kill it. And thus came about another quintessential Peace Corps experience…I killed a chicken on Thursday. (Yes, I recognize the irony of referring to killing as a quintessential PEACE Corps experience, but there ain’t no QFC around the corner over here.) We had planned a big fete for that night after taking our first language exam and we wanted some chicken for dinner. Well, as in the rest of the third world, the consumer is much closer to the food source here, so we had to buy six live chickens at the marche. We could have had the marche lady kill and clean them for us but that triples the price, so we brought the live birds back to the house and then had to do the deed ourselves. Then we boiled the meat off the bones, formed it into balls, dipped them in some egg and breaded them with some spices and Voila! Home-made chicken nuggets! And it was damn tasty, let me tell you. Now to those of you who find this appalling…get over it. This is how at least 75% of the world’s people get protein – they kill animals. It’s not clean, it’s not humane, and it is certainly not pretty, but it is reality.
Peace Corps Update #5
Monday, 13 August 2007
Well, the other shoe finally dropped from the fiasco on Independence Day.
My host papa is very well-known and very popular around the district here and his normal Sunday activity is to travel all over the area and saluer (greet) all sorts of people who he knows; politicians, policemen, business people, farmers, whoever happens to be home that day. So, yesterday I spent most of the day hanging out at the volunteers’ house here in Azove swapping life stories with other PC types. When I returned home, papa was getting ready to go out and said I should come along – also standard practice, though I had been trying to avoid it yesterday. So I changed my clothes and off we went.
Our second stop was the gendarmerie in Aplahoue, the seat of the commune (district). There we were met by the Commandant himself who, if I understood correctly, is actually the commandant of the entire province. He invited us into his residence behind the brigade and busted out the Irish Cream liqueur – over ICE, which is unheard of in Benin – whence he proceeded to give me his personal apology for the incident at the roadblock on Independence Day. The word he used to describe the actions of the gendarmes that day was “extravagant.” Hmm…ya think? So I told him in my broken French that I understood about security for the president and besides I had learned an important lesson that day…always carry your passport – and I whipped my passport out of my pocket right there just to prove I had it on me. He thought that was the funniest thing ever and proceeded to totally crack up. So we hung around for about half an hour, him speaking a little broken English to match my broken French and he and papa speaking a lot of Adja (the lingua franca of this part of Benin). As we parted he made a point of telling me to be sure and come to him if I ever have any more problems with the authorities. Now, how this meeting came about I have NO idea, but it is certainly nice to know I have a high ranking military official in my pocket if I ever need one.
Well, the other shoe finally dropped from the fiasco on Independence Day.
My host papa is very well-known and very popular around the district here and his normal Sunday activity is to travel all over the area and saluer (greet) all sorts of people who he knows; politicians, policemen, business people, farmers, whoever happens to be home that day. So, yesterday I spent most of the day hanging out at the volunteers’ house here in Azove swapping life stories with other PC types. When I returned home, papa was getting ready to go out and said I should come along – also standard practice, though I had been trying to avoid it yesterday. So I changed my clothes and off we went.
Our second stop was the gendarmerie in Aplahoue, the seat of the commune (district). There we were met by the Commandant himself who, if I understood correctly, is actually the commandant of the entire province. He invited us into his residence behind the brigade and busted out the Irish Cream liqueur – over ICE, which is unheard of in Benin – whence he proceeded to give me his personal apology for the incident at the roadblock on Independence Day. The word he used to describe the actions of the gendarmes that day was “extravagant.” Hmm…ya think? So I told him in my broken French that I understood about security for the president and besides I had learned an important lesson that day…always carry your passport – and I whipped my passport out of my pocket right there just to prove I had it on me. He thought that was the funniest thing ever and proceeded to totally crack up. So we hung around for about half an hour, him speaking a little broken English to match my broken French and he and papa speaking a lot of Adja (the lingua franca of this part of Benin). As we parted he made a point of telling me to be sure and come to him if I ever have any more problems with the authorities. Now, how this meeting came about I have NO idea, but it is certainly nice to know I have a high ranking military official in my pocket if I ever need one.
Musings on God and Culture
The problem with not giving God any of the credit is that you can’t give Him any of the blame, either. If I am responsible for bringing all of the positive things into my life over the past few years, then I’m also responsible for all of the shit I’ve put myself and others through over all the years before (and since, for that matter). And by what is one’s life judged? (Leaving aside the question of “By whom?” for the time being.) Is it by the cumulative effect of one’s actions for good or ill; or is it by the quality of the person one has become by the end? Is it by the consistency with which one lives up to a set of values over a lifetime; or by the fervency with which one approaches them once the truth of what is at stake becomes clear? By the amount and quality of one’s work; or by the depth and sincerity of one’s love? Or does the judgment come in those moments of supreme doubt or suffering, when one is forced by life to make the impossible choice on the basis of criteria that no human being can ever reconcile with rational thought? And how can you know until the time comes?
I think perhaps the crux of the dilemma is best expressed by what I think I remember to be a Jewish tradition. (Andrea?) The idea being that, in the beginning God was everywhere and everything. When He decided to make his Creation, He had to withdraw from part of the universe in order to make room for it to exist. And thus He observes his Creation from outside, caring extravagantly for what happens to his Children but no longer able to direct their actions or correct their mistakes. Thus it can be argued that without God nothing else could be possible, yet by the same token without God (having removed Himself from his creation) all things – both good and evil – become possible. It is said that if a single bird falls from the sky, that God is aware of it. But the bird falls nevertheless.
These thoughts come to me unbidden and interrupt me as I am trying to absorb as much as I can about this place, its people and culture. I’ve been re-reading a novel called The Sparrow, about a first contact with an alien culture, and I find my experience here to be similar in many ways. I am constantly torn between what I am learning in the classroom and what I am experiencing on the street and in my home; learning textbook French while at the same time having to adapt to the African version of the language and somehow trying to reconcile the differences; perpetually anxious that out of ignorance or misunderstanding that I will commit some cultural faux pas that I am utterly unaware of and which nevertheless could destroy any sense of rapport that I might have established with my host family or within the community. And constantly aware that no matter what happens, based on my conception of my relationship to the universe, that I AM RESPONSIBLE.
The sense of responsibility is perhaps the most difficult aspect of this experience. The truth that I must take responsibility for all of my actions, and all of their consequences, is palpable in a way that it has never been for me before. At times (this moment is one of those times) the feeling makes me want to retreat into my room and not venture out for fear of making some colossal blunder. At other times I am overcome by the impulse to judge these people and their culture by the standards with which I grew up – most of which are alien to their way of life. This, in turn, makes me feel enormously guilty because I know that down that path lies disaster. It is a razor’s edge, and I marvel that so many have come before me and managed to navigate it successfully. How many of them had these thoughts as they embarked on their task? I have no idea…
If ignorance is bliss, then just call me ecstatic.
I think perhaps the crux of the dilemma is best expressed by what I think I remember to be a Jewish tradition. (Andrea?) The idea being that, in the beginning God was everywhere and everything. When He decided to make his Creation, He had to withdraw from part of the universe in order to make room for it to exist. And thus He observes his Creation from outside, caring extravagantly for what happens to his Children but no longer able to direct their actions or correct their mistakes. Thus it can be argued that without God nothing else could be possible, yet by the same token without God (having removed Himself from his creation) all things – both good and evil – become possible. It is said that if a single bird falls from the sky, that God is aware of it. But the bird falls nevertheless.
These thoughts come to me unbidden and interrupt me as I am trying to absorb as much as I can about this place, its people and culture. I’ve been re-reading a novel called The Sparrow, about a first contact with an alien culture, and I find my experience here to be similar in many ways. I am constantly torn between what I am learning in the classroom and what I am experiencing on the street and in my home; learning textbook French while at the same time having to adapt to the African version of the language and somehow trying to reconcile the differences; perpetually anxious that out of ignorance or misunderstanding that I will commit some cultural faux pas that I am utterly unaware of and which nevertheless could destroy any sense of rapport that I might have established with my host family or within the community. And constantly aware that no matter what happens, based on my conception of my relationship to the universe, that I AM RESPONSIBLE.
The sense of responsibility is perhaps the most difficult aspect of this experience. The truth that I must take responsibility for all of my actions, and all of their consequences, is palpable in a way that it has never been for me before. At times (this moment is one of those times) the feeling makes me want to retreat into my room and not venture out for fear of making some colossal blunder. At other times I am overcome by the impulse to judge these people and their culture by the standards with which I grew up – most of which are alien to their way of life. This, in turn, makes me feel enormously guilty because I know that down that path lies disaster. It is a razor’s edge, and I marvel that so many have come before me and managed to navigate it successfully. How many of them had these thoughts as they embarked on their task? I have no idea…
If ignorance is bliss, then just call me ecstatic.
Peace Corps Update #4
Saturday, 11 August 2007
Bon jour la famille et les amis,
I taught my first formation (class) today. My partner and I taught a group of artisans about the importance of savings. It was awkward and difficult trying to teach in (sucky) French to people who speak it fluently. But we got through it and they even seemed to understand what we were talking about by the end. This was primarily a training exercise for us, so I don’t know how many of the “students” (there were only five) were really there to learn and how many were being paid to come. At least a couple seemed to be making notes, so that’s something.
I doubt if I will be doing many formations when I get to my post, as it sounds like that will be a 9-5 type job. I am still amazed at the incredible good fortune of my assignment. My formation partner (also called Steve, although he’s a Stephen) is actually probably more qualified for the post than I am, but he is married and PC had to find a post with jobs for both him and his wife (she’s a health volunteer originally from Seattle). So they are going up country together and I’m going to Cotonou – go figure. Nevertheless, we’ve gotten to be friends through Seattle connections and a mutual love of baseball. They intend to live in Seattle after PC, so that will be very cool!
A brief trip back in time…this group of trainees had our staging in Philadelphia back in late July. I don’t know if PC does it purposely, but being right in the heart of historic Philadelphia was a major dose of perspective on American history and values to get us ready to go out and share those things with people from another culture. I mean come on; in the space of two days I saw the Liberty Bell, toured Independence Hall, and saw early copies of the Declaration of Independence AND the Constitution. If they didn’t do it on purpose they should have. While waiting in line at Independence Hall we met historian and author David McCullough (1776, John Adams). He was there with a film crew shooting a documentary. A group of us spoke to him for a few moments; we told him what we were doing in Philly and he wished us good luck.
But that was nowhere near the most amazing thing that happened in Philly. Many or most of you have heard me mention Lowen & Navarro at least once over the years. They are a musical duo whose music I have adored for a long time. I am listening to them even as I write this. (I played one of their Christmas songs for some of the family a couple of years ago at Thanksgiving.) Back in 1999 I was fortunate enough to go on a fan cruise with them and they have both been friends of mine since then. I don’t get to see them very often, because they seldom tour the NW, but when I do it’s very special and we get to catch up on what’s going on with each other. In 2004, Eric Lowen was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) and his mobility has diminished lately. But Kjersten and I drove out to Minneapolis back in September to visit her grandmother and to see them play in the city – and it was fantastic! They were about to release a new record and they were in fine form. I got to talk to both Eric and Dan for a few minutes, but there was a full house so it was pretty brief. Still, it was a great night.
Now I mention all of this because a group of us PC types were out on our 2nd night in Philly and were looking for a nice place to eat and drink. Standing out on the sidewalk checking out one place, I happened to look up the street and saw a face I thought looked familiar. I was certain it couldn’t possibly be, but then I heard the voice. Walking toward me on a random street in Philadelphia was DAN NAVARRO! He is on the Board of AFTRA (the TV and radio actor’s union) and was in Philly for a board meeting (or convention, maybe). We talked a little right there on the street and he hooked us up at a place nearby where they play when they’re in Philly. The next night we got together just the two of us for dinner at City Tavern (a place where many of the revolutionaries ate and schemed back in the day). We had a great meal from authentic 18th C recipes and some great beer – also authentic 18th C – but mostly we talked.
We spoke of many things, both public and private. I got to tell him at length about what I’m doing and why. He seemed genuinely proud of me, which felt great coming from someone who I respect so much. (Thank you, Dan.) We talked about cultural adjustments, and what happens when I get back, and about what might happen while I’m away. We each talked some about our lives before we ever met and how our paths have been both similar and different. We talked about music and what it means to each of us – he and Eric have started making a new record. (Hope that wasn’t a secret, Dan.) And we talked about many other things that will remain strictly between the two of us. It was one of the most satisfying, most memorable evenings of my life, all the more so because it now marks the line between my old life and my new one. What an amazing thing…
And I am forced to wonder again if the powers of the universe have an intention for me or if simply by standing up and refusing to go quietly into that good night of mid-life and complacency that I have brought these amazing experiences into being for myself. I like to think it’s the latter but more and more I find it doesn’t matter. Viktor Frankl (Man’s Search for Meaning) tells us:
This is my answer; here, now, today.
Bon jour la famille et les amis,
I taught my first formation (class) today. My partner and I taught a group of artisans about the importance of savings. It was awkward and difficult trying to teach in (sucky) French to people who speak it fluently. But we got through it and they even seemed to understand what we were talking about by the end. This was primarily a training exercise for us, so I don’t know how many of the “students” (there were only five) were really there to learn and how many were being paid to come. At least a couple seemed to be making notes, so that’s something.
I doubt if I will be doing many formations when I get to my post, as it sounds like that will be a 9-5 type job. I am still amazed at the incredible good fortune of my assignment. My formation partner (also called Steve, although he’s a Stephen) is actually probably more qualified for the post than I am, but he is married and PC had to find a post with jobs for both him and his wife (she’s a health volunteer originally from Seattle). So they are going up country together and I’m going to Cotonou – go figure. Nevertheless, we’ve gotten to be friends through Seattle connections and a mutual love of baseball. They intend to live in Seattle after PC, so that will be very cool!
A brief trip back in time…this group of trainees had our staging in Philadelphia back in late July. I don’t know if PC does it purposely, but being right in the heart of historic Philadelphia was a major dose of perspective on American history and values to get us ready to go out and share those things with people from another culture. I mean come on; in the space of two days I saw the Liberty Bell, toured Independence Hall, and saw early copies of the Declaration of Independence AND the Constitution. If they didn’t do it on purpose they should have. While waiting in line at Independence Hall we met historian and author David McCullough (1776, John Adams). He was there with a film crew shooting a documentary. A group of us spoke to him for a few moments; we told him what we were doing in Philly and he wished us good luck.
But that was nowhere near the most amazing thing that happened in Philly. Many or most of you have heard me mention Lowen & Navarro at least once over the years. They are a musical duo whose music I have adored for a long time. I am listening to them even as I write this. (I played one of their Christmas songs for some of the family a couple of years ago at Thanksgiving.) Back in 1999 I was fortunate enough to go on a fan cruise with them and they have both been friends of mine since then. I don’t get to see them very often, because they seldom tour the NW, but when I do it’s very special and we get to catch up on what’s going on with each other. In 2004, Eric Lowen was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) and his mobility has diminished lately. But Kjersten and I drove out to Minneapolis back in September to visit her grandmother and to see them play in the city – and it was fantastic! They were about to release a new record and they were in fine form. I got to talk to both Eric and Dan for a few minutes, but there was a full house so it was pretty brief. Still, it was a great night.
Now I mention all of this because a group of us PC types were out on our 2nd night in Philly and were looking for a nice place to eat and drink. Standing out on the sidewalk checking out one place, I happened to look up the street and saw a face I thought looked familiar. I was certain it couldn’t possibly be, but then I heard the voice. Walking toward me on a random street in Philadelphia was DAN NAVARRO! He is on the Board of AFTRA (the TV and radio actor’s union) and was in Philly for a board meeting (or convention, maybe). We talked a little right there on the street and he hooked us up at a place nearby where they play when they’re in Philly. The next night we got together just the two of us for dinner at City Tavern (a place where many of the revolutionaries ate and schemed back in the day). We had a great meal from authentic 18th C recipes and some great beer – also authentic 18th C – but mostly we talked.
We spoke of many things, both public and private. I got to tell him at length about what I’m doing and why. He seemed genuinely proud of me, which felt great coming from someone who I respect so much. (Thank you, Dan.) We talked about cultural adjustments, and what happens when I get back, and about what might happen while I’m away. We each talked some about our lives before we ever met and how our paths have been both similar and different. We talked about music and what it means to each of us – he and Eric have started making a new record. (Hope that wasn’t a secret, Dan.) And we talked about many other things that will remain strictly between the two of us. It was one of the most satisfying, most memorable evenings of my life, all the more so because it now marks the line between my old life and my new one. What an amazing thing…
And I am forced to wonder again if the powers of the universe have an intention for me or if simply by standing up and refusing to go quietly into that good night of mid-life and complacency that I have brought these amazing experiences into being for myself. I like to think it’s the latter but more and more I find it doesn’t matter. Viktor Frankl (Man’s Search for Meaning) tells us:
Ultimately man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life…
This is my answer; here, now, today.
Peace Corps Update #3
Saturday, 4 August 2007
Greetings from Azove! (A-zo-vay)
First things first…buckle your seatbelts because the ride is about to get a lot more interesting. I am being posted to the capital, Cotonou (KO-te-noo), working with the Beninese Ministry of Justice. As part of something called the Access to Justice Project, they have formed a group of lawyers and other legal types who are going to be responsible for dispute resolution between individuals, private enterprises and the government. This includes contract enforcement, consumer protection, property rights (including intellectual), etc., with a particular emphasis on empowering and protecting women. This group is brand new and is currently getting most of its budget from the Millennium Challenge Account. However, over the next four years this budget gets progressively smaller so that at the end of that time they are supposed to be a self-sufficient enterprise, deriving their budget from fee-for-service or ongoing grant funding or something. The crux of my work, as far as I can tell, is to help them get from here to there. This may include market analyses to determine the needs of the private sector in this arena as well as to determine a fee structure for those services; creating one or more marketing campaigns to promote the availability of the services; project and/or system management either for specific initiatives and/or for the entire five year program; and God only knows what else.
Though to some of you this may seem boring as all hell, I am incredibly excited about this opportunity. It is an important step toward making the rights that you and I take for granted actually REAL for the people of Benin, rather than just words on a piece of paper somewhere. Think of all of the ways that the laws of the US protect both people and businesses from one another and from the government. None of that currently exists here. They are attempting to fix that in only 5 years! What an amazing case study! (MKG – think DP.) And I get to be part of it. While I am somewhat ambivalent about being in Cotonou, I couldn’t have imagined having the chance to do work anywhere near this exciting; so fundamental to the future of this country. I anticipate both satisfactions and frustrations in equal and enormous measure. What else is new?
How perfectly ironic is it that having started out intending to do conflict resolution, and having found CHID instead, and having moved on to Peace Corps and the Master’s International Program in Public Administration, that I should arrive here – exactly the right place in exactly the right time – to find that I will ultimately be working in conflict resolution? It’s almost enough to make one believe that God has a plan for us after all…
Now on to more mundane stuff. I have been incommunicado because the government has shut down two of the four cell companies in the country and the one satellite ISP that provided most of the internet service. Why? Because the companies were operating under contracts negotiated with the previous government and never enforced, so they owed the government somewhere in the tens of millions of CFA francs in license fees that had never been collected (a textbook example of the problems the Justice Project is designed to prevent). The government said, “Pay up or shut down.” and these companies chose to test the government’s resolve – to their regret as it turns out. Unfortunately, it is to our regret as well. There is one working fiber-optic line from Cotonou to Parakou (PAIR-a-koo) which is about half way from the coast to the northern border, and that’s it for internet access. The two remaining cell companies have, predictably, jacked their rates sky high as a result of the decreased competition so cell phone service is a bitch to get at the moment also. There are only about 46,000 land lines in the country, which may seem like a lot until you realize there are 8 million people here. Imagine having only 46,000 phones in New York City…
Certain aspects of this experience so far have been reminiscent of Alice’s Restaurant. Two in particular come to mind. First: In the song, Arlo refers to the draft board in NYC where you go to get “inspected, injected, detected, infected, neglected and selected.” Well, so far Peace Corps has been very much like that. I have received no fewer than eight vaccinations thus far, with several more to go. I have been interviewed four times, examined twice, tested multiple times and neglected more than I can possibly describe (mostly in the form of “Hurry up and wait.”). That being said, I cannot deny that they are taking very good care of us. They have done a great job of making sure we have everything we need to succeed and thrive in our new environment. Their emphasis on safety and security is no joke, which leads me to the other Massacree-esque experience.
August 1st was Independence Day in Benin and like in the US on July 4th there is a huge fete on that day – actually many fetes all over the country. All of the stagiaires (trainees) were invited by the mayor of Aplahoue (AH-plah-way) – the biggest town in the district – to attend the fete there. I, on the other hand, was invited by my host family to attend the fete in Abomey (A-bo-may) – the largest in the country this year with the presidents of Benin, Nigeria, Cote d’Ivoire and South Africa in attendance. Well that was too good an invitation to turn down, so I told several of the trainers and my APCD that I had been invited and their universal reaction was, “Have a great time! It should be incredible.” So that morning we all got dressed up – me in my first Beninese tissue – and headed out to Abomey. About five minutes from the city we came upon a gendarme roadblock. And I didn’t have my passport with me. Not good. I was told politely, but firmly, that I couldn’t proceed without my passport. When we suggested that we would simply turn around and return to Azove to retrieve the passport we were informed that I would be required to stay AT THE CHECKPOINT until my passport arrived, since they had no guarantee that I would return if I were allowed to leave.
Now understand, they were very cordial, very professional and very insistent this whole time. So…I waited at the checkpoint, sitting in basically a grass hut, while my host papa first got his other relatives into another car headed for Abomey and then drove back to Azove (about 40 mins) to get ALL of my baggage (I wasn’t sure which bag the damn passport was in!) and drove it all back to the checkpoint. I dug through all my bags and found my personal passport and the photocopy of my PC passport and we showed them to the chef de gendarmes. At which point he told us we would then have to go to the Gendarmerie in Klouekanmey (CLICK-a-may) to get permission from the Commandant of the Brigade to pass the checkpoint. So we piled into the car, with an armed gendarme in the backseat (I kid you not), and drove to the Brigade in Klouekanmey. The gendarmes there had to track down the Commandant, who interviewed us for about half-an-hour, took down all our information, made copies of all my documents and explained that it was all due to presidential security and he hoped we weren’t “inconvenienced.” He then got in his personal vehicle and drove us back to the checkpoint, where we were finally allowed to proceed. From our first arrival at the roadblock until we were allowed to pass was ultimately FOUR HOURS! And the whole time I was sitting in the little grass hut all I could think about was Officer Obey and “the twenty-seven 8x10 color glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explainin’ what each one was to be used as evidence against us.”
Needless to say the parade was long over and all that was left of the fete was the drinking part (a BIG part of any fete in Benin). So we picked up the relatives, ate a little, drank a little and drove back to Azove none the worse for the experience. It was the quintessential example of our motto here in Azove, ”C’est l’Afrique” or as we like to put it – Say la Freak!
Hopefully my next update won’t be so long in coming and maybe I’ll go back in time a little, because our staging in Philadelphia was an experience unto itself. In the meantime, be well and in light. And remember that you are exactly where you are supposed be; and if you’re not – get up and move!
Greetings from Azove! (A-zo-vay)
First things first…buckle your seatbelts because the ride is about to get a lot more interesting. I am being posted to the capital, Cotonou (KO-te-noo), working with the Beninese Ministry of Justice. As part of something called the Access to Justice Project, they have formed a group of lawyers and other legal types who are going to be responsible for dispute resolution between individuals, private enterprises and the government. This includes contract enforcement, consumer protection, property rights (including intellectual), etc., with a particular emphasis on empowering and protecting women. This group is brand new and is currently getting most of its budget from the Millennium Challenge Account. However, over the next four years this budget gets progressively smaller so that at the end of that time they are supposed to be a self-sufficient enterprise, deriving their budget from fee-for-service or ongoing grant funding or something. The crux of my work, as far as I can tell, is to help them get from here to there. This may include market analyses to determine the needs of the private sector in this arena as well as to determine a fee structure for those services; creating one or more marketing campaigns to promote the availability of the services; project and/or system management either for specific initiatives and/or for the entire five year program; and God only knows what else.
Though to some of you this may seem boring as all hell, I am incredibly excited about this opportunity. It is an important step toward making the rights that you and I take for granted actually REAL for the people of Benin, rather than just words on a piece of paper somewhere. Think of all of the ways that the laws of the US protect both people and businesses from one another and from the government. None of that currently exists here. They are attempting to fix that in only 5 years! What an amazing case study! (MKG – think DP.) And I get to be part of it. While I am somewhat ambivalent about being in Cotonou, I couldn’t have imagined having the chance to do work anywhere near this exciting; so fundamental to the future of this country. I anticipate both satisfactions and frustrations in equal and enormous measure. What else is new?
How perfectly ironic is it that having started out intending to do conflict resolution, and having found CHID instead, and having moved on to Peace Corps and the Master’s International Program in Public Administration, that I should arrive here – exactly the right place in exactly the right time – to find that I will ultimately be working in conflict resolution? It’s almost enough to make one believe that God has a plan for us after all…
Now on to more mundane stuff. I have been incommunicado because the government has shut down two of the four cell companies in the country and the one satellite ISP that provided most of the internet service. Why? Because the companies were operating under contracts negotiated with the previous government and never enforced, so they owed the government somewhere in the tens of millions of CFA francs in license fees that had never been collected (a textbook example of the problems the Justice Project is designed to prevent). The government said, “Pay up or shut down.” and these companies chose to test the government’s resolve – to their regret as it turns out. Unfortunately, it is to our regret as well. There is one working fiber-optic line from Cotonou to Parakou (PAIR-a-koo) which is about half way from the coast to the northern border, and that’s it for internet access. The two remaining cell companies have, predictably, jacked their rates sky high as a result of the decreased competition so cell phone service is a bitch to get at the moment also. There are only about 46,000 land lines in the country, which may seem like a lot until you realize there are 8 million people here. Imagine having only 46,000 phones in New York City…
Certain aspects of this experience so far have been reminiscent of Alice’s Restaurant. Two in particular come to mind. First: In the song, Arlo refers to the draft board in NYC where you go to get “inspected, injected, detected, infected, neglected and selected.” Well, so far Peace Corps has been very much like that. I have received no fewer than eight vaccinations thus far, with several more to go. I have been interviewed four times, examined twice, tested multiple times and neglected more than I can possibly describe (mostly in the form of “Hurry up and wait.”). That being said, I cannot deny that they are taking very good care of us. They have done a great job of making sure we have everything we need to succeed and thrive in our new environment. Their emphasis on safety and security is no joke, which leads me to the other Massacree-esque experience.
August 1st was Independence Day in Benin and like in the US on July 4th there is a huge fete on that day – actually many fetes all over the country. All of the stagiaires (trainees) were invited by the mayor of Aplahoue (AH-plah-way) – the biggest town in the district – to attend the fete there. I, on the other hand, was invited by my host family to attend the fete in Abomey (A-bo-may) – the largest in the country this year with the presidents of Benin, Nigeria, Cote d’Ivoire and South Africa in attendance. Well that was too good an invitation to turn down, so I told several of the trainers and my APCD that I had been invited and their universal reaction was, “Have a great time! It should be incredible.” So that morning we all got dressed up – me in my first Beninese tissue – and headed out to Abomey. About five minutes from the city we came upon a gendarme roadblock. And I didn’t have my passport with me. Not good. I was told politely, but firmly, that I couldn’t proceed without my passport. When we suggested that we would simply turn around and return to Azove to retrieve the passport we were informed that I would be required to stay AT THE CHECKPOINT until my passport arrived, since they had no guarantee that I would return if I were allowed to leave.
Now understand, they were very cordial, very professional and very insistent this whole time. So…I waited at the checkpoint, sitting in basically a grass hut, while my host papa first got his other relatives into another car headed for Abomey and then drove back to Azove (about 40 mins) to get ALL of my baggage (I wasn’t sure which bag the damn passport was in!) and drove it all back to the checkpoint. I dug through all my bags and found my personal passport and the photocopy of my PC passport and we showed them to the chef de gendarmes. At which point he told us we would then have to go to the Gendarmerie in Klouekanmey (CLICK-a-may) to get permission from the Commandant of the Brigade to pass the checkpoint. So we piled into the car, with an armed gendarme in the backseat (I kid you not), and drove to the Brigade in Klouekanmey. The gendarmes there had to track down the Commandant, who interviewed us for about half-an-hour, took down all our information, made copies of all my documents and explained that it was all due to presidential security and he hoped we weren’t “inconvenienced.” He then got in his personal vehicle and drove us back to the checkpoint, where we were finally allowed to proceed. From our first arrival at the roadblock until we were allowed to pass was ultimately FOUR HOURS! And the whole time I was sitting in the little grass hut all I could think about was Officer Obey and “the twenty-seven 8x10 color glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explainin’ what each one was to be used as evidence against us.”
Needless to say the parade was long over and all that was left of the fete was the drinking part (a BIG part of any fete in Benin). So we picked up the relatives, ate a little, drank a little and drove back to Azove none the worse for the experience. It was the quintessential example of our motto here in Azove, ”C’est l’Afrique” or as we like to put it – Say la Freak!
Hopefully my next update won’t be so long in coming and maybe I’ll go back in time a little, because our staging in Philadelphia was an experience unto itself. In the meantime, be well and in light. And remember that you are exactly where you are supposed be; and if you’re not – get up and move!
Peace Corps Update #2
I am sitting in the volunteer lounge at the PC Bureau in Cotonou (the only room in the building with wi-fi), waiting for my interview with my APCD (Associate Peace Corps Director) to talk about where I might be posted. It sounds like there’s a possibility that I’ll be posted in the capital, working with the Beninese Justice Ministry through the Millennium Challenge – but that post is still up in the air. (MKG, more on this if it comes through.)
It has been an amazing few days here in Benin. The country is unbelievably poor, and yet amazingly resourceful. People here reuse EVERYTHING! Almost nothing goes to waste and what does mostly gets burned. Yes, the pollution can get very bad – especially in Cotonou – but that’s a survival trade-off they’ve had to make. Cotonou is ginormous! It is a city of 2 million sprawled out over 110 square miles. It takes 2 hours to drive from one side to the other. At least 75% of the vehicles here are motos of some kind, motorcycles, scooters, mopeds. We had our moto-taxi orientation yesterday. PC issues everyone a helmet, which is probably a really good idea considering the way most people drive here. Safety first! We’ve also had our bicycle fittings, but haven’t gotten the bikes themselves. Apparently the new bikes and the new moto helmets are on a ship somewhere between here and Dakar, Senegal. C’est la vie.
Speaking of which, we had our first French language classes the other day. I landed in the Novice-High class, which is about what I expected. It was nice that most of our first class was review for me. I had learned most of it already and it came back very easily. The volunteers here mostly speak Franglais (Francais + Anglais). This has introduced a number of new terms to my vocabulary which may creep into my emails. Such as:
Stage (pronounced stahj): Training
Stagiaire: Trainee
Bureau: literally, the office – used to refer to the PC office in Cotonou.
Marche: Market
Tissue: Fabric and/or the clothing made from the fabric. (Benin has AMAZING tissue!!!)
Moto: Two wheels and a motor.
Bouffe: to steal
And lots more that I can’t think of right now. It’s really fun.
As I mentioned to a few of you yesterday, this group of stagiaires that I’m in is amazing. I never would have thought that a group of 60 people could bond – as a group – the way that we have. No cliques, no assholes, no loners. The only group that is even identifiable as separate are the smokers, and that’s more out of courtesy than anything else. We all look out for each other, support each other, share whatever we have, and generally just work as one great big team. It’s really incredible. I will be genuinely sad when we all go off to our stage sites tomorrow. … segue…
Tomorrow, we all break up into our sector groups (Ed, Environment, TEFL, and Small Enterprise) and go to live with our Beninese host families for the next 8 weeks. I’m a little nervous about living with a host family, but I’m not sure why. Maybe because I’m older than the normal volunteer, I’m afraid they’ll be disappointed. I don’t know. I’m sure it will be fine. I’ll get to practice my French in a real world setting and actually get to unpack my bags for a little while (YEAH!). All of the SED volunteers will be in the town of Azove (A-zo-vay, emphasis on the first syllable). It’s supposed to have the best tissue marche in the entire south of Benin, so we’ll be stylin’ by the end of 8 weeks. The tradition here is that each sector picks out a tissue design and then they all have outfits made from the matching tissue to wear at the swearing-in ceremony at the end of stage. I’ll send many photos. No photos today, because the bandwidth at the bureau is limited. I should have fairly regular access to internet in Azove, so I’ll send photos from there.
So all is well and we are moving forward past the formalities and into our new world. Bon courage!
It has been an amazing few days here in Benin. The country is unbelievably poor, and yet amazingly resourceful. People here reuse EVERYTHING! Almost nothing goes to waste and what does mostly gets burned. Yes, the pollution can get very bad – especially in Cotonou – but that’s a survival trade-off they’ve had to make. Cotonou is ginormous! It is a city of 2 million sprawled out over 110 square miles. It takes 2 hours to drive from one side to the other. At least 75% of the vehicles here are motos of some kind, motorcycles, scooters, mopeds. We had our moto-taxi orientation yesterday. PC issues everyone a helmet, which is probably a really good idea considering the way most people drive here. Safety first! We’ve also had our bicycle fittings, but haven’t gotten the bikes themselves. Apparently the new bikes and the new moto helmets are on a ship somewhere between here and Dakar, Senegal. C’est la vie.
Speaking of which, we had our first French language classes the other day. I landed in the Novice-High class, which is about what I expected. It was nice that most of our first class was review for me. I had learned most of it already and it came back very easily. The volunteers here mostly speak Franglais (Francais + Anglais). This has introduced a number of new terms to my vocabulary which may creep into my emails. Such as:
Stage (pronounced stahj): Training
Stagiaire: Trainee
Bureau: literally, the office – used to refer to the PC office in Cotonou.
Marche: Market
Tissue: Fabric and/or the clothing made from the fabric. (Benin has AMAZING tissue!!!)
Moto: Two wheels and a motor.
Bouffe: to steal
And lots more that I can’t think of right now. It’s really fun.
As I mentioned to a few of you yesterday, this group of stagiaires that I’m in is amazing. I never would have thought that a group of 60 people could bond – as a group – the way that we have. No cliques, no assholes, no loners. The only group that is even identifiable as separate are the smokers, and that’s more out of courtesy than anything else. We all look out for each other, support each other, share whatever we have, and generally just work as one great big team. It’s really incredible. I will be genuinely sad when we all go off to our stage sites tomorrow. … segue…
Tomorrow, we all break up into our sector groups (Ed, Environment, TEFL, and Small Enterprise) and go to live with our Beninese host families for the next 8 weeks. I’m a little nervous about living with a host family, but I’m not sure why. Maybe because I’m older than the normal volunteer, I’m afraid they’ll be disappointed. I don’t know. I’m sure it will be fine. I’ll get to practice my French in a real world setting and actually get to unpack my bags for a little while (YEAH!). All of the SED volunteers will be in the town of Azove (A-zo-vay, emphasis on the first syllable). It’s supposed to have the best tissue marche in the entire south of Benin, so we’ll be stylin’ by the end of 8 weeks. The tradition here is that each sector picks out a tissue design and then they all have outfits made from the matching tissue to wear at the swearing-in ceremony at the end of stage. I’ll send many photos. No photos today, because the bandwidth at the bureau is limited. I should have fairly regular access to internet in Azove, so I’ll send photos from there.
So all is well and we are moving forward past the formalities and into our new world. Bon courage!
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