Taking it back

It’s not that often that I feel one hundred percent in control of my life here: I get talked into staying places longer than I intended, I get talked into going places I didn’t intend to go and I get talked into sharing things that I didn’t intend to share.

So, when someone breaks the lock on my latrine, the first thing I do the next day is head out to the hardware store, buy the part of the latch that I need to replace and, to the amazement of my neighbors, hammer the piece in myself, effectively repairing my lock in 5 minutes.

It’s the small things.

Your mother doesn’t run this country anymore.

In the Central African Republic, a country currently struggling with sectarian violence and the resulting humanitarian crisis, the newly sworn-in president Catherine Samba Panza recently started she believes she was elected because the country “didn’t want any more male politicians.” 

While I can’t help but grin at this imagery (that all male politicians in the CAR are so corrupt and unable to develop their country that the voting population has thrown their hands up in the air and turned instead to the trustworthy and nurturing female politician who will gently easy the country through their current conflict and crisis) that the most powerful woman in the CAR attributes her political influence to her people wanting a leader “who could calm things, reconcile people,” stereotypes that continue to define women based on their perceived rightful and natural role as mothers and caretakers puts a slight damper on the election of a female leader of a country in an area of the world where women have to fight to be seen as more than the wife of their husband and are lucky to complete an education.

Powerful women must walk a strange dichotomy in our society. On one hand, successful women are judged as being conniving and ruthless and, to put it frankly, as bitches. On the other, when women try to curb this image, they are seen as emotional and unstable and unable to run a country or company for 3-4 days every month.

Samba Panza’s reliance on the latter surprises me. As the leader of a country that needs strength right now, she should own her abilities and power instead of becoming seen as the mother of the CAR who is responsible for focusing on the emotional support of a country, while leaving the politics, economics and development for others.

Why can’t she, and other powerful, just be praised for their effectiveness as leaders? Why can’t she just be seen as the right person to be at the head of her country right now? Why can’t the focus be on past on how she will be different from past leaders, regardless of her gender?

My point is, Samba Panza, don’t comfort your nation. Run it.

To the people

In our feedback session today after my vice principal observed my class, he had two comments: that I was a dynamic teacher and that teachers never erase the blackboard by themselves.

As I looked at the chalk-stained palm of my hand, I kept my thoughts to myself. I’ve experienced the Beninese tendency to focus on the negative several times already here and knew not to take it personally. But I couldn’t really take it seriously that the respect my students hold for me was going to be questioned because I didn’t ask the student who is the designated chalkboard-eraser to do it.

When people are offered positions of power, how little power is that they actually hold, I’ve noticed that they like to flex that power in every opportunity. Over students. Over secretaries. Over women. (There is a section about children’s rights in the 3eme document that teachers teach their students right before making them go fetch the teacher’s lunch.) 

It’s not just at school. It’s older siblings over younger siblings. It’s craftsmen over apprentices. It’s women over children. I know that, as a teacher, I have the power to make students do a lot of things just because I can. But, I just don’t feel the need.

I wasn’t trying to take on the power structure that is the middle school system. I honestly just care if I wiped off the board myself.