Sitting here safe inside my office while a heck of a storm blows around outside. It looks a little like those pictures you see on CNN of the approaching hurricane; lots of wind, sideways rain and a few brave or foolish souls running for what appears to be their lives. Litter and loose objects clattering down the street headed G_d knows where. It’s really quite intense. I guess I won’t be going out for a while.
Many aspects of Western culture have found their way to West Africa and been fully embraced here in Benin. Hip-hop is HUGE here. There are even indigenous rappers who get massive play on Beninese radio. (…at full volume, at all hours of the night. I’m not sayin’; I’m just sayin’…) Cell phones, obviously. Most of Africa is just blowing right past the land line infrastructure, which is time consuming and expensive, and going straight to building cell towers. And, I might add, their pricing and service are much easier and more progressive. You buy a phone, then you buy a SIM card for whatever network you want (more often than not, several) and install it in your phone. Then you purchase credit for that network and load it on the SIM card and its good for TWO YEARS!!!!! No predatory, penalty-laden contracts like we have in the States. And the sale of “recharge” cards is an enormous part of the informal economy here. The cell companies allow you to purchase them in bulk at a discount, so there are 2-6 people at every major intersection in Cotonou selling credit for whatever network you might need.
[Just looked outside again and it now looks much more like the hurricane has arrived. Ten times more rain, the wind has probably doubled, huge fronds blowing off the palms outside…I just had to get up and put a chair in front of the door because the wind had blown it open. Big fun!]
Street vendors are a ubiquitous feature of life in Cotonou, by the way. The array of goods that it is possible to buy on a random Cotonou street corner is truly astounding. I think I mentioned before that the typical Beninese gas station is a table on the side of the road covered with recycled bottles and jugs full of smuggled Nigerian gasoline. But, I’ve also seen blenders, alarms clocks, wall clocks, watches, purses, belts, shoes, luggage, stereos, DVD players, guitars, mattresses and even small appliances. You gotta see it to believe it.
Speaking of mattresses…one aspect of Western society that has yet to reach this (…not exactly G_d forsaken, but at least divinely neglected) part of the world is modern mattress technology. I have three beds in my house (not counting the fold-away cot). None of them has a spring mattress. There are mattress stores all over Cotonou. None of THEM has a spring mattress. They are non-existent here. Mattresses in Benin consist of nothing more than foam (of widely variable thickness, density and quality) surrounded by fabric. Regardless of the various qualities of the foam, none of these mattresses are terribly durable or long lasting. The big double mattress on my bed has a very distinct valley in the middle from having been slept on for seven months. It has gotten to the point where it is self-exacerbating, because regardless of how hard I try to sleep nearer the edge where the good foam is, as soon as I fall asleep (and thus relax) I roll down into the valley for the rest of the night.
Writing that now it sounds almost comical, but I assure you it’s not. A few nights ago I was attempting to find a comfortable position on the limp tortilla that passes for a mattress on one of the guest beds and I managed to pull an oblique muscle in my rib cage. Any of you who have had such an injury know how much it sucks. If you haven’t, it is easily the most inconveniencing injury I’ve ever had (and I’ve had quite a few in my day). It is nearly impossible to carry on a normal daily life without using your oblique muscles almost constantly. This, of course, prompts one to try to compensate for the lack of regular mobility, so that now my whole trunk – from my neck to my ass – is out of whack. So from trying to get comfortable, I now wake up with a sharp pain SOMEWHERE every time I even move in my sleep.
Anybody got a spare mattress?
I’ve been enjoying very much having a refrigerator. I had no idea the heights of rapture that could result from a simple bowl of Jell-o. Never again will I doubt Bill Cosby.
A new side project has come my way since our All-Vol conference. During the conference we viewed a video that was made to commemorate the 45th Anniversary of PC in Togo. It turns out this year is the 40th anniversary of PC-Benin and our Country Director wants to make something similar to show at the big fete. So I have volunteered to take the lead on this little project. I get to go through 1,000s of photos and slides, as well as a couple boxes of video tapes, and try to distill the history and experiences of PC-Benin over the last 40 years; all in under 10 minutes. Should be fun!
It has lately become clear to me that PC is not primarily a development organization. Now this may have been obvious to many of my cohorts (and to many of you for all I know) before we left, but it was not to me. I came here believing that my primary purpose was to improve the lives of the Beninese people. Now mind you, if I can actually do that…so much the better. But the real reason we are here is to appear to be making the lives of the people better. We are really nothing more than poorly paid goodwill ambassadors for the good ol’ U. S. of A. As long as we can live within the culture and make it look like our intentions are good (which, don’t get me wrong, they are for the vast majority) then we have done our jobs well. Honestly, anything we accomplish beyond that is gravy. This realization has taken a lot of the pressure off of me to “accomplish something.” It has also made me want even more to go to work for an actual development organization once my degree is finished; if only to see what that would look like.
On that subject, some things to consider: I will probably take the Foreign Service exam in November, either at the embassy here or in Abidjan. Why? Because there are FS positions with USAid that I will qualify for once I have my MPA. Now, this depends entirely on who wins the election in November, but it’s a possibility. Equally dependant upon that outcome is the possibility of applying for a Presidential Management Fellowship. A PMF would most likely put me in DC, working for a similar agency, USAid, Millennium Challenge, State Dept., USDA, etc. There is also a small possibility that I could get an overseas appointment as a PMF. Also, anyone who knows or has connections to anyone in the international development arena, please mention that you know a PCV who will be coming home to complete an MPA next year – I need all the contacts I can make. Finally, from perusing various web sites that aggregate job listings in this area it seems quite likely that I may end up working in a post- (or even an active) conflict area at some point in the not-too-distant future. Ethiopia, Sudan, Angola, East Timor, Somalia, even Afghanistan and Iraq all figure prominently in the development world right now. This is by no means a certainty, but I mention it mostly to make the possibility explicit so I can mentally prepare for it. C’est la vie…
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