Can I get you anything?

The students’ second exams are next week, which means you are able to count the number of days left in the first semester on two hands. Which means my students have started showing up more frequently to ask if they can wash my bicycle or bring me some cashews or do anything that would make me a be a little nicer when grading their exams.

What they don’t know is that I cannot be bribed so easily, or at all for that matter. My bike may be noticeably cleaner, but their grades will still be the grades that they earn.

If they knew that, then they may have spent focused their energies focused on other teachers. I’m not saying my colleagues allows their students to buy their grades, but rather, are more accustomed to a society that sustains itself on bribes.

You want to pass through this village? Better pay the police. You want the school inspector to look favorably on your middle school? Better offer him lunch after your meeting. You want the post office to give you a package on Friday afternoon? Better throw in something in a little extra in that import tax.

The thing is that it’s not sustainable. Eventually, the tax drivers protest, the inspector gets full and I learn to come to the post office on other days. The only thing my students learn when they expect their grades to be influenced by their actions outside the classroom is that their teacher would rather they spend their time buying me things than doing their homework, which would be answered “false” if such a statement was on their exam next week. 

Madam's little helper

I was sitting on a lawn chair outside my house when my six-year-old neighbor wandered up to see what I was doing. 

What I was doing was grading the pop quiz I had given one of my classes earlier that day. In an effort to help pad their grades before the end of the semester, it was the easiest quiz I have ever given (Directions: Identify whether the word is a noun or a verb.)

It is my policy with grades that if the student manages a passing grade, they receive a sticker.

I gave away a lot of stickers today.

I was trying to perfect a system of record grades and putting stickers on quizzes when Mariana walked up. She promptly crawled into my lap and began putting stickers on the quizzes that deserved them. 

Most of them ended up upside-down, but I think my students will still get the point.

On reading about tuberculosis and Haiti and seemingly conceited physicians in Benin

“When others write about others who live on the edge, who challenge their comfortable lives, they use it in a way that allows a reader a way out. You could render generosity into pathology, commitment into obsession. That’s all in the repertory of someone who wants to put the reader at ease rather than conveying the truth in a compelling manner.”

Paul Farmer, Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder

There aren’t many times here that I feel like I’m really making a big change in these people’s lives. There aren’t many times I feel like taking a moment to pat myself on the back and congratulate the choice I’ve made of what to do with my life.

Mostly, my mind is occupied distracting myself from scratching mosquito bites.

I always thought the minute you thought you were influential was the exact moment when you were assuredly not being influential.

Paul Farmer, though, is one of those activists who is self-assured to the point of almost being cocky. (I’ve seen him speak, and he comes off even closer to the cocky side in person.) But when a man had devoted his life to the global eradication of tuberculosis, amongst other things, you still have to give him some credit. 

There is this fine line between having self-confidence and being self-centered. And I think people tend to judge others as wandering more into the latter rather than the former. But when you’re someone like Paul Farmer, someone who is making a tangible difference in the world, are you allowed to relocate to the far side more often?

Watch out for banana peels

After a rather (unnecessarily) emotional conversation with my parents, I decided to take the plunge and travel to the capital to see the Peace Corps doctor about some recent not serious, but utterly this-is-what-it’s-like-to-live-in-a-developing-nation medical problems. 

The medical office is in the land of turkey sandwiches, ice cream, air conditioning and satellite internet (ie the country office in the capital). The only issue is the seven-hour taxi ride that separates my village from this mythical land. 

“Road” is a generous term for the semi-paved strip that runs between from Bohicon and Cotonou. The last 135 kilometers is one giant game of chicken as taxis, motorcycles, semi-trucks and wandering goats dodge the holes that, in the rainy season, would make a good impression of a swimming pool. 

It occurred to me as I watched a semi snake its way across the road directly toward us and then serve out of the way at the last minute, the last time I saw driving like this, I was a cartoon dinosaur hurtling through Bowser’s Castle.

Emily Becker: Nightly routine →

journalwoman:

emilybecker01:

Nightly routine

I close and lock my door and walk the 17 steps out to the street. I turn left and walk the 43 steps to a small structure off the right side of the road.

Beneath the rickety roof of loosely woven palm fronds sits a woman, probably in her late twenties, in frying fish in a large cast iron skillet over a charcoal fire. I do not know her name. In my head, I call her “Fish Lady” although I would never say this to her face.

“Good evening,” she says.

“Good evening.”

“How are you?”

“I’m fine. And you?”

“Fine. And the cat?”

“He’s fine.”

“How much?”

“Two hundred,” I respond, handing her the Tupperware container that now permanently smells of fried fish.

She places four pieces in the container and exchanges it for the two hundred piece in my hand.

We have this same interaction every night I am in my village. She is always in the exact same spot. I usually respond the exact same thing to her questions. (Though I sometimes trying the entire interaction in local language instead of French.) The entire journey will always take me 14 minutes to complete.

But at least someone in my village notices when I’m not there.

“See you tomorrow,” I say, turning to walk the 43 steps back up the street.

I follow this girl in the Peace Corps living in Benin (a small country in West Africa, between Togo and Nigeria) and she posted this cute story about one of her nightly rituals.

I’m not sure why she does this though (care to explain, Emily?) do you buy fish every night for dinner or do you also have a cat?

PS: I also like it that she’s gotten to the point where she knows the number of steps (17, 43) and the exact number of minutes (14) to complete this little task.

Reminds me of that scene from The Count of Monte Cristo where, in prison after several years, Edmond says to the old man that he’s counted all of the stones in his cell.

The old man replies, “Yes, but have you named them…?”

The answer is I have a cat. After I ran out of bagged cat food from the almost-Walmart store in the capital, I started buying him fish to eat on the street. When I did the math, it was actually more expensive, but I like that it gets me out in the community every night.

And then there are those times when it all works out.

When I got in the taxi at 11:25, I had all but given up hope to get to the post office before they closed for the afternoon break at noon. After twenty minutes of searching for a motorcycle to take me and then giving up to wait for a car after I learned it was some kind of motorcycle taxi holiday today, I had finally found someone who would take me the 20 kilometers to Savalou.

The thing about taxis is they like to stop. To pick up more people. To pick up some bags of yams that need to be taken to Cotonou, To “Hi” to someone they know. The fastest I had ever gotten to Savalou by taxi was a half hour, which would put me at five minutes before the post office closed. Based on my previous experience with the work ethic in Benin, I doubted the post office would still be open even it was five minutes until they closed.

We stopped three minutes after we left the taxi station to pick up some more people. This put us at seven, the usual capacity. Some hope was renewed that this meant we wouldn’t be stopping again.

We didn’t.

We didn’t stop for yams, the gendarmie or to say “Hi.”

With a record breaking time, I got to the post office at 11:42. The man working was the one who knows me by face. He happily handed me my three letters and two padded envelopes.

Then I ran into my favorite motorcycle taxi driver from my village who offered to wait for me to bring me back home when I was finished.

Then the boutique in Savalou had both Nutella-knockoff and oatmeal.

Then the cyber cafe printed my tests for my students in less than 15 minutes.

Then my driver got home in enough time to make a spaghetti omelet, eat a spaghetti omelet, watch an episode of the West Wing, take a nap and write a blog before my afternoon class.

I have nothing more to ask from Benin today. 

Coping mechanism

I just had one of those conversations.

The I-have-a-second-bout-of-heat-rash-breaking-out-on-my-hands-and-have-to-be-out-in-public-with-a-poison-ivy-type-rash-on-my-face-because-no-one-told-me-not-to-eat-raw-cashews-to-a-friend-who-has-had-a-sore-throat-and-violent-nose-bleeds-since-this-afternoon-and-has-an-unrelated-bruised-tailbone conversation.

The why-do-I-put-myself-through-this? conversation.

It happens sometimes. But what’s important is what happens afterward.

You know what we did afterward?

We laughed.

Because, this life, this incessantly-dirty-feet-sitting-seven-people-in-a-sedan-living-near-a-city-with-a-cholera-outbreak-because-really-I-live-in-1850 life, is our life.

I plan on giggling my way though the next 20 months.

Nightly routine

I close and lock my door and walk the 17 steps out to the street. I turn left and walk the 43 steps to a small structure off the right side of the road.

Beneath the rickety roof of loosely woven palm fronds sits a woman, probably in her late twenties, frying fish in a large cast iron skillet over a charcoal fire. I do not know her name. In my head, I call her “Fish Lady” although I would never say this to her face.

“Good evening,” she says.

“Good evening.”

“How are you?”

“I’m fine. And you?”

“Fine. And the cat?”

“He’s fine.”

“How much?”

“Two hundred,” I respond, handing her the Tupperware container that now permanently smells of fried fish.

She places four pieces in the container and exchanges it for the two hundred piece in my hand.

We have this same interaction every night I am in my village. She is always in the exact same spot. I usually respond the exact same thing to her questions. (Though I sometimes trying the entire interaction in local language instead of French.) The entire journey will always take me 14 minutes to complete.

But at least someone in my village notices when I’m not there.

“See you tomorrow,” I say, turning to walk the 43 steps back up the street.

Double standard

(I haven’t quite figured out how to put into words the complex relationship that Beninese culture has with sex, gender and sexual orientation. This is a start, but I suspect there will be more over the next two years.)

I have these two students in my class: Fidele and Alain. Separate, they’re pretty smart and are generally good students. Together, they will derail the entire class in less than 20 seconds. The goal of all my seating charts is to put them as far away from each other as possible. The thing about the two of them is that no matter how many desks I put in between them, they always end up sitting on the same bench by the end of class.

In one word, they are inseparable.

Last Saturday, I was teaching a make-up class at 7 a.m. Since we are in the cold season, meaning it gets to about 60 degrees in the morning, my students currently show up to school wearing puffy jackets that usually stay in the closet until at least the end of October in the US. 

In the middle of my lesson about gerunds, I look over at Alain and Fidele. Neither of them had worn a coat that morning. Instead, they are hugging each other tightly in order to combine the forces of their body heat against the morning chill.

Here, friends of the same sex are not taught to suppress a physical display of affection for each other. It is not uncommon for male friends who are my father’s age to hold hands while walking down the street. Among males my brother’s age, play wrestling is still common. While a man would never kiss his wife in public, it is not weird for Fidele and Alain to snuggle together against the cold in my class.

Tonight I dream of Uruk-hai

One would think this band of Peace Corps misfits would be overwhelmingly wanna-be hippies who grew up with the Doors and parents whose stories recall the flower child movement.

I came here one of those people. But, I’ve found the people with whom I’ve surrounded myself, the Americans with who I am closest, have brought out my nerdy side. A side that I have suppressed since my prepubescent years of pining for Middle Earth, a place that I’d never visited and doesn’t exist.

We write and trade crossword puzzles. We have arguments about Franzen and Foster Wallace. We can easily play ten rounds of Boggle and spend hours waiting for NPR podcasts to download.

And today, I completed a lifetime goal: watching all three extended editions of the Lord of the Rings in rapid succession. I took breaks to teach, to sleep, to run and to shower, so it wasn’t entirely a 15-hour binge. But when I woke up on the second day, I contemplated skipping my classes so I could finish the two and a half hours of the Return of the King I had left. I cut my two-hour naptime into 20 minutes in order to maximize my viewing time in between meetings. Last night, I dreamed I was riding a horse with Legolas and Aragorn.

Less than an hour after I finished, I was talking to my friend who was just in Ghana. She was telling me how the Hobbit is basically our lives as volunteers.

These are the type of people who have been entrusted to develop a nation.

Amendment

What is noticeably lacking in my previous post is an intervention from the American who believe what was happening at the flag ceremony was wrong.

Since freshman year of high school, maybe because it was my first foray into being entirely out of my element, I have been a timid person some of the time. Add in a new culture, a second and third language, the longest I’ve ever not lived in Missouri and being surrounded by people who really really don’t know me and that sometimes rapidly approaches most of the time.

This is not a post about finding my footing, but about how even as I do, my gender has kept me slipping more than I can ever remember previously.

The sexism here is subtle. It’s in the way people address my male postmate instead of me when we’re together. It’s in the way females hold their hand, a sign of deferment, when shaking the hand of a male. It’s in the tendency to send male children to school before the girls.

It’s also blatant. Fathers eat before the rest of the family. Girls are late to my class because male teachers have told them to fetch them water or food. I am one of four women that I know who holds a job other than selling products in the market every five days.

The questioning of my knowledge and views and ideas as both an outsider and a woman is more than anything what keeps me quiet in certain situations.

Speaking up is easier said than done. But I’m trying. Not just for my sake, but for the girls that I’m teaching not only English, but how to have power in an utterly male-dominated society.

I will spare the rod.

This morning, eleven students lined up and offered the palms of both their hands as punishment for being late to the flag ceremony. Those twenty-two palms were consecutively whacked with a stick our math teacher found in the schoolyard.

Officially, corporal punishment in schools in against the law. Unofficially, it’s the form of discipline that my colleagues were all subjected to when they were students and it’s the one with which they are most familiar.

It is not uncommon for me to see teachers wielding a stick while the students sweep and pull weeds in front of the school. It is not uncommon for students to insist that it is necessary that I hit another student to stop him or her from causing trouble. I once had a slight slapping match between a student and teacher escalate to a fistfight in class.

I refuse to hit my students. Not only is it contrary to the regulations of my teaching program, but also my beliefs as someone who witnessed her share of spanking and hitting as a child.

When violence is used as a deterrent, it does not breed a relationship of respect. It breeds a relationship of dread. When I raise my hand to tuck my hair behind my ear and the student nearest to me visibly flinches, it a sign that the current system of discipline is not working.

It may be the American student in me, the student who looked at her teachers as someone who not only had the capacity to impact her for one year or one semester, but for a lifetime, that has led me to believe this, but if there is one thing that I want for my students here, it is for them to never fear me. 

He’s never eaten a quarter pounder with cheese.

“So there’s this restaurant, Kokoo, in America, called McDonald’s,” I say to our local barkeep.

My postmate, Dave, and I have been discussing what the chain restaurant would offer on its Dollar Menu if it opened a branch in Benin. Kokoo has been listening but not comprehending. So, I take it upon myself to try to explain the land of Happy Meals, McFlurry’s and Big Macs.

Afterward, Dave turns to me.

“I think that’s the first person I’ve met who hasn’t heard of McDonald’s.”

On the passing of 2012, otherwise known as a brief existential crisis

Two thousand and twelve was one of those years. Since before high school, there were always two years of which I was constantly aware: 2008 and 2012. The years that I would graduate high school and college, respectively.

I could always rattle off those two dates. They were on my mind as goals to reach, but also years of which I had thought so much that these years would actually come to pass seemed at times unreal.

Then I graduated high school.

And then this past May, I graduated college.

And now, 2012, the final year that I have benchmarked in my mind has also passed. Beyond just another 365 days, January 1, 2013 was the end of all the time to which I had every looked forward when I was younger.

I never imagined much past 2012.

I have no more years to which I’m hoping I’ll finally get. The benchmarks by which I now measure actions have yet to be determined.

As with most things in life, it is both utterly exhilarating and utterly terrifying at the same time.

I salute your resolution

-Be more assertive.

-Hate on Beninese men less. (Although the misogyny gets old fast)

-Learn more local language.

-Learn to how to work on projects using a Beninese timetable. (ie everything will take much longer than I anticipate.)

-Continue to blog at least five times a week.

-Hang out with my neighbors more. In general, even when I’m just at my house, be outside my house.

-Not curse at my students in English as much.

-Complete the Parakou half-marathon. (I have been training before just now, so there is a real chance this will happen.)

-Stay in touch with the people who are important to me.

-Not use up all of my gas making chocolate cakes with chocolate icing.

There were no giant balls that dropped

8h: Woke up and completed some chores (sweeping, laundry) that aren’t any different from days that it isn’t New Year’s Eve.

11h: Pounded yams break. This is not particularly important either except that pounded yams is my favorite Beninese dish. Once I ate it four days in a row. Today, the Mama that I buy it from (I am not nearly assimilated enough to be able to make it myself. That is definitely a third-year volunteer project.) had Beninese cheese, which only occasionally makes it to this part of the country.

12h05: Entertained my neighbor’s son while she scrubbed the floor and furniture of her front room for the party tomorrow.

14h30: Nap and West Wing break

15h43: Scavenged the village for ingredients to make couscous and banana cake for the party at my neighbor’s house.

15h47: Almost trampled while buying bananas by church group singing and dancing their way down the street in front of my house.

16h00: Rotated between entertaining my neighbor’s kid, reading the Hobbit and making foccacia bread for dinner.

18h03: Dinner and West Wing break. (Hey, it’s vacation and I’ve already lesson planned for when school starts Thursday.)

20h34: Made banana cake for consumption tomorrow.

21h06: Made coffee for consumption tonight. Because village has turned me into a person who is asleep by ten every night.

21h40: Should have left for mass if church here started on time.

22h00: When mass should have started.

22h27: Actually left for mass.

22h48: Mass actually started.

23h36: Lost power in the middle of the homily.

00h02: Altar server dings bell to interrupt the priest. Congregation erupted in cheers as the priest announced the new year. Singing and dancing begins immediately. Greeted the new year in a church light by the three candles on the altar and the blue glow of cellphones and filled with songs in a language I do not understand.

Shots with the king

Barefoot, I follow my host father and his brother into the dark room. The king is sitting directly next to the door. The first thing he says to us is to greet me by the local language term for a white person.

I kneel, and he blesses me by lightly brushing my head with a bundle of what looks like blonde horse’s hair.

This is our king’s first day at work. The previous one died before I moved to the area, and tradition dictates that the son appointed the new king must stay apart from the public in his house for six months before being presented to the public as our new monarch.

He addresses me in French, and I am momentarily thrown. The past four-hour ceremony had been conducted in Ife, which meant I spent a majority of it daydreaming and hoping I wasn’t committing a grave cultural mistake.

We chat for a moment before he turns to a man standing next to him and instructs him to offer me a shot of sodabe, a liquor made from palm that is basically the moonshine of Benin. There is good sodabe, there is bad sodabe and there is sodabe that will make you go blind.

I have already declined a shot at lunch today, but I don’t want the biggest news of the day to be the American who couldn’t handle sodabe.

It tastes like isopropyl alcohol going down, proving that just because you’re the king doesn’t mean your booze is good.

Dead lizards and other stories of African wildlife

I came home yesterday to a strange smell coming from my back storage area. Some cautious investigating led me to discover a lizard that appeared to have met his untimely death just after I left five days ago for Christmas vacation.

“Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god,” I muttered to myself as I scraped the deceased off the concrete floor. The skin had faded to a gray color. The body was bloated with maggots; around it, a small puddle had formed on the concrete.

I have yet to see any what you probably consider traditional wildlife of Africa. There are not lions that wander my village at night. I do not share a local watering hole with elephants and warthogs.

My encounters with animals here are much more mundane, but I would say much more disgusting:

Cockroaches the size of small puppies inhabit my latrine at night.

My cat has caught a mouse three times in my house. Once he also caught a lizard and left some bits for me to pick up later. Once he left the lizard whole and not quite dead, so while carrying it back outside, I was concerned it would suddenly stop playing dead and I would have a lizard loose in the house.

I’ve carried bats out of my shower four times. Three were alive. One was dead, which my postmate’s dog proceeded to eat immediately after I flicked the body off the plastic dustpan.

They say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

It also triggers your gag reflex. Especially when it winds up dead in places you weren’t expecting.

Dec 21, 2012

“Madam! Do you know that the world is ending today?” is the first thing one of my students says to me this morning.

“I did Andre.” At this, several other students jump in with questions. It seems that if Madam confirmed it, it must be true.

“Is it really?” a chorus of them ask.

“Well, we’ll have to see tomorrow,” is my response. When I see the nervous looks on their faces, I understand my joke has not translated well, in many ways.

I realize that my first discussion of class today, after the date, will be why the world is not ending (although I’m not when the next time my students will use the vocabulary word “Maya”). And when you should take Madam seriously and when you shouldn’t.