Called out

The Beninese culture is a loud culture. And I don’t just mean the motos that are constantly driving behind your house or the roosters that crow whenever they want or the lone man who gets a hold of a megaphone and feels the need to broadcast his thoughts to everyone in your neighborhood.

I mean that a conversation with a Beninese person can rocket from friendly chatter to screaming in a matter of seconds. I’m no longer phased when I hear my neighbor yelling because she yells almost everyday. At my girls club, it sometimes feels like I am a mediator instead of a facilitator as small disagreements can lead to a complete derailment of that afternoon’s meeting.

I hadn’t realized that I had gotten used this aspect of my life, or even that it was becoming ingrained in my personality until my trip to Burkina Faso over Christmas.

We were at the taxi station just over the border trying to find a driver who would take us to Ouagadougou. We started talking to the taxi driver like we would normally talk to a driver in Benin: we assumed he was trying to rip us off from the very beginning, so we were pissed off before we even started the negotiation.

The taxi driver stopped and looked us over.

“Did you just come from Benin?” he asked, although at 10km over the border, this was highly likely. “You people in Benin all just need to calm down. You get mad too easily.”