Girl fight(s)

I walked out of class today feeling that feeling you get when you know you have just finished work for the next 11 days. 

That feeling faded as soon as I reached my bicycle and saw a circle of about 13 students and in the middle, two of my female students in a verbal argument. My quick escape into spring break completely disappeared when Esther, one of my 5eme students, threw the first slap.

This is not the first time that I’ve had to break up a fight involving Esther. What she lacks in height, she feels necessary to make up for in attitude. Taking everything personally, she is often the instigator in confrontations that quickly dissolve into screaming matches in my classroom. (I want to note that Esther is not a bad student. Minus the tendency toward conflict, she is one of my favorite students. She can be disarmingly sweet, but her inability to not let things hurt her feelings reminds me of myself 10 years ago.)

Most females in Benin have been raised to have a particular sassiness, and Esther seems to have particularly taken to this philosophy of defending herself and what she perceives as hers to the point of irrationality. (This particular fight was prompted by the other student dragging her feet through the square of the courtyard that Esther is responsible for sweeping each morning, thus smudging the pattern that the stick brooms leave in the dirt.) And unfortunately, these outbursts typically occur against other female students. And in an environment that is generally misogynistic, it seems counterproductive to be throwing slaps at your peers and allies.

I have been surprised at the amount of times this semester that I have felt like Tina Fey’s character near the end of Mean Girls, when all the female students are gathered in the school gym. 

This girl-on-girl hate has got to stop.

On judging a student by her cover

I have this student who, even after over 5 months in class, I’m not sure how I feel about. She is a semi-regular member of my Girls Club, but also a member of the group of girls who seek to derail my English class on a regular basis. 

She is not amused by me. But is rather amused by the fact that she can talk about me in her local language while I am standing 3 metres away from her and I won’t understand what she is saying. She has come to visit me twice while I’ve been here, and both times showed an affinity for getting into my things.

So, when I scheduled for my Girls Club to make dinner with me at my house tonight (only after they sat through a lecture on nutrition), she may have been specifically who I had in mind when I spent the afternoon beforehand hiding the things I didn’t want 15 teenage girls asking about or getting into. (This included the copies of the exam they took yesterday that I’ve started correcting.)

This particular student I tried not to let out of my sight for most of the night. When she wandered out my back door, I made sure I was standing at a place in my kitchen where I could see what she was doing.

Turns out what she was doing in my back area was getting water so she could wash all the dishes that accumulated after 17 people made and ate spaghetti. Turns out she was more concerned with washing my oven mitts and towels after dinner than seeing what I wouldn’t notice was missing from my house. Turns out she was one of the last ones to leave, refusing to go home before the dirty water had been tossed and my floor swept.

Turns out, she may not be the student I thought she was.

Show me that money

As Martin, one of our history/geography teachers, and myself walked to our school director’s office this afternoon, we were followed by a trail of students semi-jokingly, but would accept it if we offered, begging for money.

When we stopped outside the 5eme classroom, a small circle of male students formed around us, all asking the same thing: if we would lend them money to pay for their tuition.

It is 12,000 CFA for a male student to attend class at my school. (In a federal program started about two years ago, female students do not have to pay to attend the first four grades of secondary school) Theoretically, tuition is due at the end of the first month of class, October. But, as there were still students who hadn’t finished paying tuition in the last 8 weeks of school, the director had mandated that you could not take this week’s midterm exams unless you finished paying.

Many of the students that surrounded me and Martin had already been sent home this morning from their English exam (meaning theoretically they will take a zero for the exam), but had returned in the afternoon hoping that the director would be more lenient this time around.

Sometimes a student not paying is a case of the family not being able to afford it. But many times, it is a case of the student forgetting to talk to their parents, or even, as happened this morning, a parent giving his son money to pay for tuition and then him buying clothes at the market with it.

“How much do you still owe?” Martin asked Andre, one of the 5eme students searching for money. 

“1000 Francs.”

Martin reached into his pocket, and then came out empty handed. He turned to me.

“Hey, Emily, do you have 1000 CFA Andre can borrow?”

Office space

During college, I spent two summers working in demanding, albeit not challenging, desk jobs. Jobs where in-office catastrophes included things like employees taking an 11-minute instead of 10-minute break and paper boxes that were not correctly stacked. Jobs where I had to drink a second cup of coffee in the afternoon in order to fight falling asleep from boredom. I was crabby and tired. I lost my summer and a relationship over them. I did it for two summers and vowed never to allow myself to be that person again. 

I now have the most demanding full-time job that I most likely will ever have. There are many times when I feel like every exchange with a neighbor, Mama selling rice and beans or motorcycle taxi driver is a job performance evaluation. Every conversation in a local language. Every time I run (literally) down the street. The times I rarely don’t feel like this are when I’m alone in my house. (Although then I am concerned my neighbors are counting the amount of time that I am in my house.)

I thought about this yesterday as I walked down the street to visit some of my colleagues. I thought about how it’s hard to think about my colleagues as friends instead of colleagues. Every time I visit with someone at their house (never take the power of dropping by someone else’s house for granted in the Beninese cultural context), it’s hard to not think of it as a work engagement. When I leave it’s hard to think of it as me being able to cross something off my to-do list for that day.

But also, as I walked away from one of my friend’s house yesterday, I thought about how much this job is always what I wanted if stopping and talking to friends is part of my job’s to-do list for the day. I spend my workdays biking and saying Hi to people and making kids laugh and playing soccer with my students. 

My break room is my tailor’s house. My water cooler is the cashew tree in my school’s courtyard. My cubicle is my entire village. I work 24/7, but it beats my days of office politics and presentations on time theft. 

Failure to communicate, part 2

The sister of the owner of the boutique down the street from my house points to the battery-powered light on the top shelf.

“Not that,” says my postmate Dave, who is trying to buy candles for the first time without knowing the French word for “candle.”

“Below,” he instructs.

She moves her hand to the light to the left of the one at which she was just pointing.

That’s not what he wants either. He motions to the candles which are on the shelf below. She moves her hand to the left again.

Getting colder.

“The light that you don’t need batteries for,” Dave says. Her hand moves two shelves lower, skipping over the candles, to the batteries.

“The things that cost 300 francs,” he says.

“No, batteries cost 150 francs,” she says.

I’m standing behind him not being of much help (I’ve also forgotten the word for “battery” in French) and trying to contain my laughter. The double whammy of my accent and communication in a second language for both me and whomever is trying to sell me something means that I’ve been in this situation several times before. Even when I do know the word in French, the first time trying to buy something is always a wild game of charades. Once, trying to buy oil, I almost walked out empty handed until I ended up spelling the word out loud. 

One of the things that I’m going to be most surprised by when I’m back home is the ability to communicate with everyone with whom I want to communicate, probably on the first try.

Dave finally got his candles.

It took the interference of one of the other people who works in the shop and another customer, who was waiting for this ordeal to be resolved in order to buy milk powder. (Which he was able to communicate in one try in my local language). 

Dave repeated the word for candle back to the woman four times before we left.

My village looks different from the inside of an air conditioned SUV.

This morning, I received my second visit from the assistant director of my program. The SUV bumped up the dirt road to my school as I reviewed the present perfect tense with my class of 5eme students for their exam next week. I was alerted to its arrival by one of my students yelling “Stranger!” and pointing out the door of our classroom.

Vehicles are not common in my village. The narrow dirt roads make driving anything larger than a motorcycle impractical and inconvenient. Even on the highway, most of the taxis are manufactured before I was born. It is not possible to travel inconspicuously through my village when you are traveling by bright white SUV. 

As I rode to the lunch with my assistant director after he had observed my class, I waved to my students who we passed. I saw the people who I normally greet as I pedal by on my way to school stop talking mid-conversation to watch as we drove by. The Mama who sells gas on the side of the road looked up startled, wondering who was inside the car.

When we pulled in front of the house of the president of the PTA, I thought about how I much prefer to travel by bicycle on foot around my village. How I much prefer that there isn’t glass between me and my community.

Small relief.

I heard the first rumble of thunder as I locked my door to head out to buy dinner for both me and my cat tonight.

I felt the first drops of rain as I paid for my cat’s fish and pedaled off to the taxi station to buy rice and beans for myself.

It has been miserably hot here recently. Like even-when-you’re-not-exerting-yourself-physically,-sweat-is-dripping-down-your-hairline hot. And the power has also been out for extended periods of time (meaning my electric fan is useless) for the past three days. All in all, there has been a lot of perspiration in my life recently.

Which is why, when it started pouring as I walked out of the store where I bought dinner, I hopped on my bike and headed off into the precipitation, ignoring the shouts of concern from those around me.

How I ended up spending hours poring over spreadsheets in French.

You know how sometimes there are those times when you show up to meetings not because you really want to do something, but you want people to know that you were there and to give the appearance that you’re involved, but then a lack of individuals who are actually there to do something leads you to being coerced to being more involved than you originally anticipated.

Hello there. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Madam Emily, English teacher and new treasurer of the Journee Culturelle, a two-day music, dancing, arts and eating festival at my school.

And all I originally wanted to do was to sign up to teach some kids the Macarena. 

Things I learned at the Gender and Development committee fundraising weekend in Parakou:

-American expats will pay a lot of money for Velveeta cheese.

-There are a lot of genuinely good people in this country. I’m lucky enough to call a lot of them my friends and many of whom I can already tell are people I will want in my life for more than just two years.

The siren call of the Solani

We don’t get a lot of cold things here. Which goes to say, we also don’t get a lot of ice cream. (Unless you happen to be on medical leave in Cotonou and are well enough to leave the office). It is these circumstances that led me to wander around my village for 20 minutes following the phantom honk of a horn.

There is a company here, Fan Milk, that sells its pseudo-ice cream (it’s really flavored frozen milk) from white carts pushed by men wearing blue vests who have a horn that they honk as they walk down the street. It’s our version of the ice cream truck. Now, Fan Milk will do just fine, unless it’s Solani season. 

No one is really sure where it comes from. I’m told the Fulani people have something to do with it, but it only appears during the hot season and only when you least expect it. Solani uses the same marketing technique as Fan Milk, the incessant honk that is convenient when you want some, but obnoxious when you’re trying to teach class. Instead of logo-d white carts and uniforms, it is a man in street clothes holding a nondescript brown cooler. 

If you want Solani, you cannot want Solani. If you desire it, it will not appear. Instead, you must seize the opportunity while you have the chance.

So, when I was doing laundry in the back of my house at 11 this morning and I heard the telltale honk of the Solani horn from somewhere in my village, I threw the shirt I was holding back into the water, grabbed 100 CFA and headed out the door. I had already missed my chance at Solani yesterday when it took me too long to put on culturally-appropriate pants.

I saw a man holding what appeared to be a cooler turn around a side street as I made it to the main road. He was about 300 feet away from me, but what are dreams if you don’t have to work for them a little.

I quickened my pace and tried to follow the sound of the horn. As soon as I turned down the street, though, it seemed as though the honk was coming from all directions. I picked one way, followed it until I lost the sound and then changed directions. Then chose another and another, until I had retraced my steps so many times my neighbors started asking me what I was doing.

I headed back home Solani-less and broken hearted. I heard the honk several times later today, but just didn’t have the heart to try  and fail again. As I sit here typing, my ears still strain to hear the honk somewhere in the night.

Paper trail

The thirteen students present at my Girls’ Club tonight lined up in front of me while I duct taped a piece of white paper, one by one, to their backs.

In the activity, the second during tonight’s discussion of self-esteem, each girl had to go around to write on the back of each other something they liked or admired about the person. It was one of those activities that seems so cheesy on the surface that no one ever admits to actually liking the outcome.

After 20 minutes of wandering around the 6eme classroom, the girls gathered to read out loud what was written on each other’s backs. When it was time to leave, they asked me what they were supposed to do with the pieces of paper.

I told them it was theirs to do with what they want: throw them away, carry them home or keep them on their backs.

Each girl walked away from the school that night with a white piece of paper still duct taped to their backs.

#never again

Today, in perfect storm of tiredness, lack of patience and miscomprehension about what was going to happen, I became one of those teachers that I used to hate when I was in school.

The VRF

When I first joined the Peace Corps, I figured I would land in a foreign country and then get sent to a village where I would live for two years without seeing Americans on a daily basis and with little to no supervision.

Turns out, most of that was wrong.

Turns out, there are frameworks to guide our projects, with objectives and quantifiable results.

Turns out, I’m expected to report on what I’ve done for the past six months.

(And no, writing, “watching the entire series of the West Wing” is not an acceptable item to list as contributing to community development)

Turns out, we’re not just a bunch of hippies running around a country doing whatever we think is best.

Thoughts from Places: Park Pendjari

Last week, in my extended training/vacation away from post, I headed to Park Pendjari, one of the two wildlife reserves in the north of Benin.

It was my first safari experience, unless you count the wildlife train that runs through the Africa section of the Kansas City zoo. At the end of our six hours in the park, we had found all the animals (except for the elusive lion) that we were promised we could find, sat on the roof of a jeep and realized soon after we got on the roof the grand mistake that was not putting on sunscreen as soon as we got on the roof.

When we were leaving the park, tired and wondering how much of the recently acquired tan was actually just dust, I thought about my students and neighbors who were 299 kilometers south of me. I thought about how they had all been and will be in this country much longer than I will, but most of the people I would be going home to the next day had probably never had the experience that I just had.

During the two days I spent in and around the park, I saw more tourists than I had seen in Benin during the past nine months in this country. What’s weird is that I was not comfortable around these people. These people who were naively willing to pay three times the actual rate from the bus station. These people who were willing to drop the same amount as my monthly paycheck on meals, a hotel room and activities for three days.

In fact, I wanted nothing to do with these people. What I thought about as we passed another group of tourists entering the park as we were leaving, was how their Benin was completely different than my Benin. This fancy hotel up north is not why I am here. These sight-seeing adventures will not be what define my time here.

My Benin is the Benin of being hot and dirty and eating the same thing four days a week. The Benin where “Tuesday” and “Thursday” are usually pronounced the same way. The Benin of dance parties with four year olds. The Benin where it takes 45 minutes to get home from school in order to talk to everyone you know on the way. The Benin 299 kilometers south.

Disaster at the well

After a few minutes of contemplation this afternoon, I decided that I lived long enough in enough of a collective society that my neighbor wouldn’t mind if I used her bucket to get water from the well. 

I was lowering it for my first pass when out of the corner of my eye I noticed the end of the blue striped rope slip over the edge of the metal lip of the well. It appeared to fall in slow motion and then landed with a quiet plop on the surface of the water at least 60 feet below where I was standing.

I had thought of the potential of this happening many times (just as I often contemplate the likelihood of many African mishaps, such as my cellphone falling into my latrine) while fetching water from the well.

What I would do afterward, I had not thought of.

“Shit,” was my first thought after it happened. Followed by, “I can’t be the first crazy Yovo to which this has happened.”

Lucky for me, the four year old knew what to do.

“I’ll be right back,” she said as she disappeared into the front part of my concession. She came back a few minutes later with a grappling hook that seems to be reserved exclusively for this purpose. 

My neighbor who had been watching this entire episode transpire quickly tied the hook to the end of another rope and fetched out the bucket.

“You don’t get water like this in the United States, do you?”

When Momma ain't home

My neighbor is gone for an extended period of time (20 days) for the first time since I moved to my village.

Which means her kids spend even more time in my house, and wandering around the concession than normal.

Which means that I have to seriously consider weekend trips because I have no one who can feed my cat.

Which means I have one less house where I can hang out when I’m not quite sure what to do with myself. 

Which means that I have one less person that I stop to talk to when I’m at the market.

Which means that when I came home from school today, I witnessed for the first time her husband pulling water from the well.

I want to ride my bicycle.

I came home yesterday from a food security meeting to one of the saddest things you can come home to when you are a cyclist: a flat tire. I’m talking rim-sitting-on-the-concrete-floor flat tire.

In an inspired state of I-can-do-it-myself Peace Corps attitude, I decided I was going to fix it myself. Forty minutes of sitting on the concrete floor and several minutes of cussing later, I thought I had been successful. Five minutes later, my post mate yelled to me from my front room.

“Did you already inflate your tire?”

I walked back into the room to see him poking an obviously already deflated tire.

Getting the tire fixed was not the problem. I had a guy in my village who already fixed my front tire and at whose workshop I regularly stop to get air. It was finding the time between now, at what was already 7 p.m., and my classes today at 8 a.m.

Looked like I would be walking to school.

Immediately when I started out on foot this morning the question I received after “did you wake up well?” was “how is the bicycle?”

Looks like I’ve developed a reputation.

Author’s note: One of the perks I’ve found, though, of being a foreigner in a small village is that I can’t get very far on foot. In the four trips I made to school today, I only made it a few steps before someone offered to take me on their motorcycle.

Gimme! Gimme!

I recently returned from my second mandatory training during my Peace Corps service (hence the severe lack of blogs). Four days in air conditioning filled with lectures on school gardens, latrine building, food security, malaria and hand-washing stations (these are the classes I take now) were followed by two days at the office in Cotonou, followed by two days in the north at Natitingou. It was the longest I have been away from my village yet.

I have never been good at the careful dance that balances not spending your entire budget, not hurting people’s feelings and not spending your whole vacation hunting for presents that is giving souvenirs.

The dance is simpler here. If you’re gone, you should have brought me something. End of story. Even if I’ve only talked to you once, even if our entire relationship revolves around buying fish for your cat, even if you are one of 135 students.

As a previously selfish child, I had numerous flashbacks to my childhood based on the number of conversations I had when I got back to my village that stated with the question, “What did you bring me?”

I don’t know that I would say that the people of my village are greedy. I do live at a much higher standard of living than they do and have access to many more things than they do. When you have next to nothing, it’s hard to not ask for whatever you can get.