Thoughts from places: living in the second unhappiest place in the world

At the beginning of September, Benin was named the number two most unhappy country in the world, according to the UN-sponsored World Happiness Report. 

So, while I’ve been here in a removed environment where I am continuously forgetting that I live in Benin (the Peace Corps office in Cotonou), I tried to think about whether the people that I’ve surrounded myself with for the past year seem particularly more unhappy than the society that I left behind.  

My neighbor doesn’t seem so unhappy when he’s riding my bike around our compound. My host father doesn’t seem so unhappy when we’re eating pounded yams together. My students don’t seem so unhappy when we’re singing and dancing through the village.

More than being unhappy, the Beninese people want more. They want more than they have now, but don’t know what to do to have more. They perceive that other countries have found the answer to how a person can have more than he or she does now, while their own country has been left in a state where the best solution is to leave. They see others advancing (Nigeria, Ghana, the US) while the rest of the world continues to label their country as “developing” and “third world.”

Because they come from a society based on strong patriarchal ideals, the Beninese take statements from people of power (the western media, the UN) to heart. More than just reading this report with interest, the people that I know will believe this to be true. They will continue to believe that their country is failing in comparison to the rest of the world. And they will continue to believe that the answers to the problems in their life lie outside their own country. 

You can talk about what was the real purpose of this report was. You can talk about our western indicators designed to quantify an unquantifiable idea. You can talk about internalized oppression. 

Just don’t forget that you’re talking about real people who have real issues who are really trying to make the lives of their children better than their own.

Thoughts from places: South African safari campfire

It was about three days into my vacation in South Africa that I realized how much I had needed this vacation. I was sipping red wine (from a bottle not a box) and talking to other guests at our safari lodge when I realized that this was the most comfortable I had felt in a long time.

I love Benin. I love the path that I have chosen to walk for the next 15 months. And really, I don’t want to be working anywhere else right now. But that doesn’t mean that path is easy all the time.

What I realized that night while I spoke in a language where I didn’t have to stop to think about any words before I said them, where I didn’t feel like I was a substitute for television for any kids, where I didn’t have to worry about anyone asking my for money was that I had not failed. My overwhelming need need to get out of the place that I’ve called home for the past year did not mean that I wasn’t integrated into my community, that I wasn’t good at what I’m doing, that I had chosen the wrong path.  It simply meant that I needed a break.

I realized that night that the person I was in South Africa was different than the person I had been in Benin for the last three months. And I liked the former much better. 

I realized that I had needed these 10 days off in order to allow that person to still be there when I walked off the plane in Cotonou the next Sunday.