An early Christmas present

“Pass by the boutique later, ok?” my host papa says to me at school this morning.

“Alright,” I say, in one of those circumstances where I’m not quite sure into what I’m getting.

I forget about it until he calls me again later this afternoon.

“Are you going to come by?” he asks. I’m at a bar with my post mate, not quite sure whether hanging out with Beninese people is a good idea right now.

I stop by the boutique a few moments later. Papa and my Mama wave me into the shop and gesture to the fabric in display cases. Fabric that I’ve always admired, but has always been a little out of my price range.

“Pick whichever one you want,” he says. “For the holiday.”

I am dumbfounded. This is not what I expected from this visit.

I’m touched. I’m touched that they wanted to give me something. I’m touched that they thought of me.

Top 5 Christmas presents of all time.

A petit problem

“Vous n’avez pas le monnaie?” the waitress says, “You don’t have the change?” and she tries to hand me back the bill I just gave her.

“Je n’ai pas de petit monnaie,” I respond. “I don’t have the change.”

I’m lying. I have the change. But I also know that if I wait long enough, she will suddenly find the change. What she doesn’t know is that at almost six months in this country, this game is familiar, and I’m prepared to play.

You have to play this game at restaurants, at bars, at the post office and at some supermarkets. You have to play because of two issues: at the bank, I am paid in bills that are too large for most vendors on the street, and, especially in bigger cities, the general attitude of the Beninese toward change – petit monnaie – is to hoard it, which means lying when foreigners ask if you can break bills.

There are times when you find a boutique that never scoffs at your bills or a street vendor who is willing to run all over the market trying to find change for you.

I never thought I’d miss credit cards as much as I sometimes do. 

Say my name

“Madam Emily! Madam Emily!” the kids chant as I run by them.

I have no idea who these kids are. They are not my students. They have never been to my house. They may have never seen me before. But they know my name.

This is not a rare situation. I ignore people who yell at me when I’m walking around, until I hear someone yell my name. I often can’t remember if I’ve met the person before that particular encounter. When you’re the only white person in a community of 3,200 people tend to know who you are.

I always say hello anyway just in case.

The day I introduced cootie catchers to my middle school.

The past four days, while carpenters have been building new desks for the students, we having been having class outside in the shade of the building. There isn’t a chalkboard, so we haven’t really been having class.

Today, after a game of hopscotch where the students had to spell words in English while jumping the spaces, I was left with an hour of class.

“Take out a piece of paper,” I instructed my students and then proceeded to have them follow as I folded the paper into a fortune teller familiar to middle school teachers across the US.

The students filled in the spaces with English words and English fortunes. “You will become the president of Benin.” “You will be the top of your class.” “You will marry the king of Savalou.”

During the break, the game caught on with students in the other classes. I ended up staying late to fold pieces of notebook paper for other kids. By the end of the morning, I had made 18 cootie catchers.

I only hope I don’t have to confiscate any during my next class period.

The politics of education

“You have to organize,” the director of the school is saying. “There are more teachers like you than teachers that aren’t like you. You have to want change.”

I came to the school for my weekly English department meeting. I walked into what appeared to be a semi-rally of all the teachers of their power to change the governmental policies concerning their profession.

I had heard rumblings of problems with salaries since I returned from my training.

There are different levels of teachers in the Beninese school system.

Permanent teachers, meaning a teacher works at one and only one school, are few and far between in public schools in villages.

Since many villages close to each other have their own small schools, many of which don’t offer the more advanced classes, most teachers are vacateurs, meaning they teach classes of the same subject at more than one school. This allows them to book more classes than are available at the small schools, which means, consequently, that their paycheck is bigger.

For example, my school only has four classes of students (it only offers two of the seven grades you have to complete before taking your baccalaureate exam). Most of my colleagues also work at the larger school near me (which offers all seven grades and has a total of 37 classes) or at the other small schools at villages in the area in order to supplement their income. 

It seems that when vacateurs went most recently to receive their paychecks at our commune capital, there were issues over the number of hours taught and the number of schools where one is eligible to teach. As a result, some of my colleagues did not receive their salary for work they had already done this semester.

It’s too early to use the term “strike” but it is not unheard of here. In the last school year, the teachers were on strike for two months until the government threatened a pay cut unless they returned for the rest of school year. (If there is a strike, I am supposed to continue to teach as long as the school year stays in session.)

That is not to say that the Beninese teachers are not without their faults. They are notorious for starting classes late (sometimes due to traveling in between schools), not showing up at all, bailing on department meetings (which count as part of their paid salary), not completing the curriculum for the school year and leaving class early.

I am not informed enough to pick a side yet. But I can tell you that if the teachers are brought again to strike, the winners in the fight will not be the students. As a result of last year’s strike, only half of the required curriculum was covered in the English classes. I have students in their second year of English that still don’t know the names for the colors.

And aren’t the students the reason we do our jobs anyway?

Favorite things about Benin 2: Lemonade

Step 1: Buy a demi-kilo of sugar from the boutique on the highway.

Step 2: Find another boutique that a, has access to a refrigerator and b, still has bottled water in stock.

Step 3: Stand under the lemon tree outside your house until someone taller with more gangly legs and a better history climbing lemon trees offers to get you some lemons. You’ll need about four.

Step 4: Combine sugar, water and juice of the lemons in a Nalgene.

Step 5: Shake.

Step 6: Enjoy. Before the water reaches room temperature. This is the first cold thing you’ve drunk all day.

The bane of my existence

Most of the roads here are not paved. You only get that luxury if you live in the city or only walk on the government-maintained highways.

The roads here are generally what the locals call terre rouge, red earth. I spend most of my time walking on dirt the color of bricks that have been exposed to years of weathering.

I find the stuff everywhere.

The white (hah) keyboard of my MacBook is now a permanent burnt orange no matter how many times I clean it with a baby wipe. Whenever I do laundry, I am afterward left with water that has turned completely brown. I sweep about a half a kilo of the stuff out of my house every morning. After two months of running on terre rouge, the sight of my Nikes caused another volunteer to comment on the state of their cleanliness. This is someone who also checked general hygiene at the gate in JFK.

And I’m sure some of it will make it back through customs on my way home to the world of asphalt and driveways.

It's a "it takes a village" kind of place

“Auntie?” I hear calling from my front door as I’m making dinner in my kitchen. I peek my head out and see two kids of my neighbor and another neighbor at the door. I greet them then go back to making hummus.

A few moments later I hear the kids and the neighbor in her kitchen in the back of her house. A few moments later the kids are running around the courtyard in front of all our houses.

I used to think that kids just showed up at my door because I was that different. Also, I have a pack of 50 markers and a seemingly endless supply of copy paper on which to color. But it’s also that when you live by someone with kids, it’s partly your responsibility to help raise them. It took me the better part of a month to figure out which kids went where in the houses near mine because they were always together and always coming out of a house that was different than the one I had seen them go into last time.

I spent the better part of my childhood wandering my suburban neighborhood with the kids who lived down the street, but it’s different here. Because there aren’t a lot of DVDs or board games or Playmobil here, when kids come over to your house, they basically just follow you around. It’s up to you to give them something that will entertain them or else all your possessions will soon not be in the places where you left them.

I am not a mom. And I don’t intend to be one for a while. But I would say these kids have taught me some things about how to raise kids. At least how to hide the things that you don’t want broken on the top shelf.

Things that haven't changed about me since I left:

-Coffee and the print issue of Esquire is still my favorite way to start the morning

-I still follow my favorite vlogs, although it takes considerably longer to load and watch them now

-Facebook is still my favorite way to procrastinate blogging

-Red wine and We Are Augustines on loop is still the best way to break that procrastination

-I still get random, intense cravings for macaroni and cheese and grilled cheese sandwiches

-I still download the Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me podcast every Sunday

-My favorite mode of transportation is still biking

-I still get caught having dance parties in awkward places to awful songs (ie Gangnam Style)

-I still tell people I’m a vegetarian, but then sometimes eat meat when I think no one is paying attention

-I still hate washing dishes, although by hand is much worse than by machine

-I still drink at least four Nalgenes of water a day

-Finding the person who is laughing is still probably the best way to pick me out of a crowd (me being white would also help you here)

-I still note things in my head that would be worth tweeting when I next have access to Twitter

As for a list of all the ways I have changed, I couldn’t tell you yet.

How Rihanna made me realize I was really living in Benin

It’s early for the US, but late for Benin. My calves hurt from dancing the past hour, and I am daydreaming about the bucket shower that awaits me when I get home. 

A fellow volunteer is talking to the DJ, trying to communicate a request for Beyonce over loud music and non-native languages. Across from me is another; his arms are flailing around to the opening thumps of a Rihanna song.

When I hear a specific song, especially one that I am familiar with, I can normally tie to a specific time and place in my life where that song had some meaning, whether it be dramatic or small. “True Colors”: a retreat I went on my senior year of high school. “Let it Rock”: sophomore year, dorm room, trying to write a paper for sociology. “In One Ear”: New Orleans, spring break 2012.

I have been waiting for when a song will forever be linked to the memory of a specific moment during my service.

I don’t realize that I’ve found my first until my iTunes selects the same Rihanna song a week and a half later when I’m back at my house in my village.

“We Found Love”: Parakou dance floor, December 2012.

When the CA tells you to eat all your pounded yams, you eat all your pounded yams.

There are certain people here who it is important to have on your side. One is the king of your commune, if you have one. One is the chef of the village, a traditional position passed through lineage. The other is the Chef d’arrondisement (CA), an elected position sort of like the mayor of a large city.

The way to get these people on your side is to visit them, talk with them for a few minutes and then sit in silence, a major part of the culture here.

Today, I went to visit the CA. After what I thought was an appropriate amount of time, I told him I was going to leave.

“Why?” was his response. “What will you do?”

I thought to my plans for the rest of the morning. They included reading Esquire, grading exams and making lunch. Nothing that was more important than whatever the CA wanted to show me. (Although my students may think differently. They really want their tests back.)

So, I hopped on the back of his moto and went wherever this morning was going to take me.

Madam plays soccer

“Give that to me,” I say to Alexandre while motioning to the soccer ball that he and three other students are kicking around in the dirt in front of my middle school.

“Madam!’ he says. “You want to play?”

“Of course,” I respond as I trap the ball.

I am currently wearing a dress and sandals and my class starts in 3 minutes. My bag bangs against my hips when I pass the ball with the boys. I figure this is as good as a time as ever to make their day.

I motion for them to run farther back. I aim, then turn and head to class, leaving the other students laughing as the boys run after the ball.

It doesn't feel like December when it's 95 degrees.

My Thanksgiving two Saturdays ago ended the way all my previous 21 Thanksgivings have ended: sprawled on the ground, vowing to never eat again, but sitting up as soon as someone mentioned dessert.

I spent my Thanksgiving in Save with nine other volunteers. With two gas burners, a charcoal grill, the help of two host country national experts in slaughtering ducks, and a lot of sweat, we managed to pull off a relatively decent feast. Observing American tradition, we started the next day by blasting Christmas songs.

And so began my first holiday season of my service, and my first holiday season that I will not be at the house in which I grew up. It will be the first year that I don’t see the Plaza Lights. It will be the first season that I don’t see snow. It will be the first December that I don’t spend two days baking with my sister. It will be the first Christmas that I don’t sit with my back against our brick fireplace opening presents in age-order with my family.

It will be the first holiday season that I decorate my house with paper snowflakes that my students made. It will be the first year that I will likely eat my Christmas dinner with my hands. It will be the first December that I visit the beach. It will be the first Christmas that I will receive things such as peanut butter, African ignames and oranges as gifts.

I used to wonder, on those holidays where my family stayed at our house instead of traveling to see relatives, when you stop going to holidays with the family in which you grew up and started having holidays with the family that you created. When do you leave some of the traditions you’ve practiced your whole life and start making your own?

Whether I like it or not, it’s happening now. And while I don’t want to think about it (and my parents won’t like to hear this either) these next two years will probably not be the last time that I wake up Christmas morning under my Christmas blanket in the room in which I have, until now, woken up every Christmas. While some things may be coming to an end, this is the beginning of others.

I don’t know how hard this next month will be, but I’m pretty sure I won’t forget it. 

The week tiled floors changed my life.

I spent my last week in my third to last major training during my service as a Peace Corps volunteer. We were back to nine-hour work days, this time followed by nights drinking Beninoise and swimming in the hotel pool.

All last week, my feet were clean, I was living in a climate-controlled environment and I had daily access to real milk for the first time in five months. 

This week was the longest amount of time I had forgotten I live in Benin.

The classic line is that an experience like this is supposed to change what you value. Supposed to make you appreciate what you have so much more.

I used to think lines like those were bullshit. Until I freaked out at what was essentially the Fairfield Inn my family stays at when we visit family in the suburbs of St. Louis. (The first things that my roommate and I did after we checked into the hotel in Parakou were blast the air conditioning, plug in the mini-fridge and jump on the king-sized bed, in that order.)

After another 22 months in my world where a good day is marked by being able to get my hands on cold water, I’ll be back in that world 24/7. I’ll be the one at the airport sitting on the floor in awe of the food court.

Uphill both ways

I am sitting in a bush taxi on my way south looking out the front windshield, but not really seeing what is passing me by on the paved road.

I am trying to distract myself from sweating and daydreaming about the upcoming week of training when I realize that for the past 10 minutes, we have been passing a steady stream of students in their khaki school uniforms.

There are normally people walking on parts of the road where you wonder where they could be coming from and where they could be going. When I see these people I tend to think of the trip that I’m seeing as a rarity, although it probably occurs a lot of more than I would want to know. I know, though, with students that they are all making this walk at least four times today. And I know we won’t pass the secondary school for another 7 km.

Right, now, in the hottest part of the day, their journey is making my hour ride in a taxi, while sitting two people in what most Americans would consider a spot for one, not as bad as I first thought.

My first screaming match

“That’s not true,” I yell back. “In class, I change my English. I don’t teach American English. I teach British English.”

“See!” the other English teachers whose point I just validated exclaim. Our English department meeting dissolves into elevated voices as we continue to argue over the importance of phonetics and pronunciation in the classroom.

It is not uncommon for communication to dissolve into raised voices. The Beninese come from the group of people who escalate the decibel level of their speech as they become excited or impassioned or convinced that the other person will understand them better if the comment is louder. 

For someone who is relatively timid, especially around people I don’t know very well, I tend to just sit back and watch it happen.

This time, though, I had a point to make. (And I had drank coffee beforehand.) So, I yelled my way into the conversation. 

Once I started yelling, I could not stop. It was energizing and exciting to speak in a tone I usually reserve for when someone cuts me off on my bicycle. And I came out from the meeting unscathed. No one’s feelings were hurt. No one made anyone angry. People were probably significantly thirstier, but that was about it. 

I have a feeling this will be my first of many times I will be screaming in public.

Today was one of those days where I felt like an adult.

I make a lot of lists. It’s how I get things done, and when I spend a significant amount of time working on things on those lists, especially things I don’t want to do, I gain a certain feeling of accomplishment.

That sense of accomplishment is what I feel like adulthood feels like.

I have a week of training next week, which has lit my ass on several things that I’ve been putting off doing. So today I proctored three exams, got forms signed that will give one of my girls at school a scholarship for the year, wrote a paper (Something I already thought I would never have to do again. I thought that was why I walked across a stage in a gown and was handed an empty certificate cover.) and made my colleague laugh at a joke that I made in French.

I rewarded myself by making macaroni and cheese and watching Mean Girls.

I needed a break from adulthood.

Everything here is worth it when I make a kid laugh

We were five Americans playing baseball on an abandoned soccer field across the road from a church holding mass in a village about 5 km from the Benin-Togo border. It was impossible that we would remain undiscovered very long. After the third pitch, I looked toward the road. They had found us. They were wandering sneakily outside the church and then running as fast as possible across the street.

The kids were coming.

There are days when I wonder why I’m still here. There are times when all I want to do is lock my door and watch the West Wing the entire day. There are times when I want to start drinking at noon because there was a fistfight in my English class that day.

It all disappears the moment I make one of my students laugh, when I push my neighbor around the courtyard on my bike or when my neighbor’s daughter giggles as I dance with her around my house. The kids might be my best friends in my village, but I’m ok with that.

One of my friends said it best: “There is no feeling like the feeling when a kid runs up to hug you.”