Breakdown in Erevan

One of my friends asked me recently what I miss most about the US. I responded minus my friends and family, the knowledge that for whatever I want (within reason) there is a store within driving distance that under fluorescent lights, neatly placed on a metal shelf, that item will be sitting.

I visit the closest thing to that for Benin last week when, after our swear-in ceremony, we had 5 hours in Cotonou. That place is called Erevan. It is the first store that I’ve walked into in three months that had fluorescent lights. The first store I’ve visited that had metal shelves. The first store with a tile floor. And shopping carts.

There were aisles with numbers. And fruit imported from a different continent. And cookies packed in plastic containers. And scented candles. And an aisle just for pasta.

There was a clothing section. And an electronics section. And an art supply section. And a small kitchen appliances section. And hair straighteners with the correct voltage and correct plug.

After three months of believing these things didn’t exist and forgetting these things existed, I didn’t know whether to blow my entire pay check on frivolous items, curl up into a ball or find a place to hide so I would never have to leave ala the Smithsonian museum in the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.

I live without a lot here, but I also live in many ways entirely different than what my perception of “living in Africa” would be like. I live in a house with a locking front and back door. I have electricity and a cellphone and relatively high-speed and relatively reliable Internet access. I know several places where I can watch satellite television in English. I know even more places where I can get an ice-cold Coke. I have experienced air conditioning at three different locations. Before I left, my western-world formed opinion of what it would mean to live in Africa included none of these items.

I’ve heard stories of volunteers who are disappointed when they get to their posts because they are not living in a hut with a pet lion (which yes, I joked about doing before I came here). They are disappointed because they feel they aren’t having the “real African experience.”

But who are we to say we know what is the real African experience? I have seen no stampedes of wildebeests; there is not an elephant graveyard next door and there are not lions that wander my village at night. But this really is my Beninese experience.