A three hour tour...

So yes, I met President Bush yesterday. It was pretty cool, though not as cool as what you might have seen on TV. You see, we weren’t invited to the ceremony with Benin’s President Yayi Boni (that's who I really wanted to meet). We didn’t see President Bush get presented with a sash and a medal, or get to watch the children perform for him…oh, no. We were all in another room, in another part of the airport, waiting two hours while all that stuff took place elsewhere. Members of the embassy staff, Peace Corps staff and volunteers, Fulbright scholars, etc. were all invited to a “meet & greet” AFTER the formal ceremonies took place. Mind you, we didn’t know what we were missing until we saw the news later last night; we just figured he was conferring with Yayi Boni. Ca va…

Still, like I said, it was pretty cool. They had a room set up with a podium, flags, etc. (see photo) in front of a blue curtain. When GWB was done with his other activities, he came over to thank all of us – who, after all, are in Benin representing the United States – for being here, far from home, enduring hardships so that he can brag about how much the US cares about Africa. OK, that might not be exactly what he said, but he did thank us for doing what we’re doing. He talked about the US commitment to Africa, which has been greater under his watch than under any other president in recent memory (i.e., ever). Through programs like PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Program for AIDS Reduction), PMI (President’s Malaria Initiative) and Millennium Challenge, Africa has made enormous strides over the last few years; much of it as a result of aid from the US. Obviously, they aren’t out of the woods, yet. But it’s getting better, and Benin is a prime example of that.

[BTW, as an aside, there are proposals in both houses of Congress right now to reduce the funding levels for the Millennium Challenge Corporation. I know that in the paradigm of beltway insiders, appropriations often become the battleground for partisan politics. There are, however, occasions when such infighting does a concrete disservice to our country and to the world. I believe this is just such an occasion. Reducing the funding levels for MCC would be like cutting off the Republicans’ nose to spite the face of the entire developing world. If this country needs anything right now, it needs initiatives that will restore our standing with the international community. I can tell you from my experience here that MCC is just such a program. Please, encourage your Senators and Congresspersons to support continued FULL funding for Millennium Challenge. It is by far the best thing to come out of the Bush White House and it would be a disgrace if it became the victim of partisan sniping. OK, off my soapbox.]

Back to the presidential visit. I was attired in a traditional Beninese three-piece bumba (see photo) complete with a multi-colored fez. When I say traditional, it is traditional Muslim attire in Benin. As the president reached out to shake my hand, I took his hand and said, “As salaam aleykum, Mr. President.” This is a traditional Arabic greeting that means, “Peace be with you.” This is a very popular greeting in many parts of Benin, and not wholly inappropriate I felt. I had decided to greet him that way to perhaps elicit a moment’s thought from him as he went through the motions of walking the rope line.

His reply, which caught me somewhat off-guard, was, “You must be a Peace Corps volunteer!”

Now right away I’m thinking, “How did he know that? Was it the clothes? The hat maybe? Was it somehow the fact that I spoke to him in a language that isn’t indigenous to either Benin or the United States? What?”

What I said was, “Yes, sir, I am.”

“Do ya love it here?” he asked next.

“Yeah,” I told him, “most of the time. It’s hard. But most of the time I do.”

“Well, thanks for everything yer doin’.” And then he was off to shake the next hand.

I must say he seemed very authentic, down-to-earth and approachable; very easy to talk to. I’m sure that’s why he was elected twice. After that I shook hands with and spoke to Mrs. Bush (who asked where I was from) and Condaleeza Rice (who asked what my work was with Peace Corps; we talked briefly about MCC). They ALL made a point to shake hands with and greet every single person in the room, Americans and Beninese alike. When they finished, the president stood for two group photos with us and then they were off to get back on the plane and head for Tanzania. All told I think they spent about three hours in Benin…all at the airport.

So..."Bon voyage, Mr. President." Don't let the door hit you on the way out!

Life Goes On

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.

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!