Luckily, Beninese men are reliable unreliable.

(I can’t say that my parents are going to like this post very much after the conversation we had Sunday.)

I was walking to my work partner’s house this morning when it happened. I saw someone that used to work at the middle school near me and was transferred before I started working in my village, so I stopped to say hi to him.

It was really just that. I was just trying to be polite. Then, I found myself in a conversation of which I was desperately trying to get out. He had invited me to go on a “promenade” with him tonight (means to take a walk, but in the current cultural context, it’s him asking me out) and wouldn’t accept my numerous excuses of why I couldn’t. At this point, I just wanted to be done with this conversation. So, in a move that I hoped would allow me to move on, I said, “OK,” then walked away.

I cursed myself as I walked down the street. I hated that I couldn’t walk to my friend’s house without this happening. I hated that I was still at the point that I cared that much about what other people thought about me. I hated that I wasn’t strong enough to just walk away.

After over a year in this culture, I have felt helpless more times than I would ever want to admit. More than just the sometime lack of language, was this culture where I supposed to say, “yes” to everything a man asked me to do rubbing off on me? How could I lead my students by example when I still couldn’t find the words to say “no” when someone asked me to do something that I really didn’t want to do?

Tonight, after pausing the Wire every five minutes to check what time it was, after thinking of all the things I could say to keep him from coming in my house, after vowing to myself that I would not be getting on his motorcycle, he never showed.