Unwelcome roommates

Last night, after my cat once again failed to catch the mouse that has been living off of peanuts from a plastic bag he tore open months ago in my spare room, my neighbor (Modeste. He’s 13 and so, generally up for whatever I ask him to do. His past adventures in wildlife in my house include removing dead bats and lizards.) and I set out to find where exactly it was calling home.

I knew it was somewhere in the corner where I had been piling empty boxes for the past three months. Stupid idea. But I didn’t realize how stupid it was until Modeste held up the box in which my water filter came to show me the two-inch hole the mouse had chewed in the quarter-inch thick cardboard. And the three mouse babies nestled inside.

Operation Reclaim my House from Mice started after class today. Two trash bags and four trips to throw out dirt after I’d swept and I think it’s back to being just me and my lazy cat in my house.

To project or not to project

When I first got here, after talking to volunteers who were leaving and those who still had a year left, the consensus seemed to be that if you complete one major project during your two years, one project where you have to wait a coupe months for the grant money to come through and when it does is more than you make the entire time you are here, then you can call your service a success.

And I think that’s the expectation of most people back home as well: build a school, build a health center, build a water pump. Leave something behind so people will still know that you were there.

And now, I find myself here: Nine months left of service and no large physical projects to remind my village that once upon a time, someone named Emily lived here.

It’s not that I haven’t tried. Circumstances led to one project being ruled out due to cost and one project being stopped before it could start due to changing policies.

So, the question becomes, if there’s no physical remainder of my existence after I leave, will the nonphysical be enough?

In which the reliably unreliable nature of this culture helps me out again

Last week, I decided I wanted to start my girls club for this year. I followed all the appropriate channels: found a time every class was free, asked the director if it was ok and wrote a formal letter declaring my intentions to start the club today at 3 p.m.

Then, last Monday at the flag ceremony the vice principal had something to say. The school grounds were not proper, yet. Every student was expected to be at school that Wednesday at 3 p.m. with a hoe and a machete to weed, chop and sweep the grounds into shape.

This was not the first time I’d been in a situation such as this. The hardest part of starting a club is actually starting the club, establishing a specific time on a specific day as your club. I had already pushed back starting the girls club this year two weeks because a class was having a make-up class during the time. I did not want to push the start date back once more.

So, I showed up at school anyway this afternoon. And at 3 p.m., I rounded up the girls that I saw, and I had my club. And we talked about what we wanted to do this year, when we would elect a president and we colored until 4:15 p.m.

The vice principal never showed.

The best that I can be

When I was in high school, I took my fair share of AP classes. I learned a lot, but there was always some element of learning to the test that would have to take at the end of the year. The problems we used in calculus were problems that previously appeared on an AP test. Our biology exams were actual old AP exams. I can’t tell you how many document-based-questions I answered in history. 

And now, as I find myself on the other side of the desk, I’m doing the exact same thing. I made my 4eme grade class do an activity on synonyms purely because I knew the concept would be on their exam. And I’m not secure enough in my ability to teach to not take my students’ exams grades as a direct reflection of my ability to teach.

It’s also, though, that I want my students to have the highest grades. I want to have the highest percentage of students passing my class. I want other students to want to be in my class. I’m a native English speaker, and I’ll be damned if my student’s aren’t going to be the best taught students, even if it’s just a comparison of grades.

I came to this school as a stranger with a different expectation of education and teaching and students than what was here. And when I arrived, my administration and colleagues and students had the impression that I knew what I was doing. I’ve had enough fumbles in the past 14 months that I’m trying to at least get this one thing right.

Luckily, Beninese men are reliable unreliable.

(I can’t say that my parents are going to like this post very much after the conversation we had Sunday.)

I was walking to my work partner’s house this morning when it happened. I saw someone that used to work at the middle school near me and was transferred before I started working in my village, so I stopped to say hi to him.

It was really just that. I was just trying to be polite. Then, I found myself in a conversation of which I was desperately trying to get out. He had invited me to go on a “promenade” with him tonight (means to take a walk, but in the current cultural context, it’s him asking me out) and wouldn’t accept my numerous excuses of why I couldn’t. At this point, I just wanted to be done with this conversation. So, in a move that I hoped would allow me to move on, I said, “OK,” then walked away.

I cursed myself as I walked down the street. I hated that I couldn’t walk to my friend’s house without this happening. I hated that I was still at the point that I cared that much about what other people thought about me. I hated that I wasn’t strong enough to just walk away.

After over a year in this culture, I have felt helpless more times than I would ever want to admit. More than just the sometime lack of language, was this culture where I supposed to say, “yes” to everything a man asked me to do rubbing off on me? How could I lead my students by example when I still couldn’t find the words to say “no” when someone asked me to do something that I really didn’t want to do?

Tonight, after pausing the Wire every five minutes to check what time it was, after thinking of all the things I could say to keep him from coming in my house, after vowing to myself that I would not be getting on his motorcycle, he never showed. 

The voiceless

A week ago, a UN expert finished her 10-day trip here and released a statement condemning the rampant violence committed against children in Benin.

Last night, a woman in my village beat her son so hard and so long that he started bleeding, his eye was swollen shut and he was taken to the hospital. 

There are laws in place that condemn this sort of behavior. There are also laws that define sexual harassment and rape. There are also laws that make corporal punishment illegal.

The problem is no one cares to enforce these laws. There are no truant officers if students don’t come to school. There are no advocates for girls who have been victims of aggression. There is no child protective services  to take children away from parents who don’t understand what it means to be a parent.

Issues like what happened last night will be handled locally by a combination of traditional and state-sponsored authorities. (Who will have to take a break from charging taxis bribes to pass into the next district.) There will be no police records or booking or criminal charges involved.

I’m by no means saying the US prison system is without its flaws or even should be a model for other justice systems. What I’m saying is that it all means a bunch of nothing when no one is around to enforce it.

The woman is currently being held at the local police station. I’m not sure what will happen to her, but I hope that she’s never able to cause something like this to happen again.

An excerpt from a student’s paragraph about what he did on holiday:

On holiday, I stayed in Mayamon. I studied my copybook and went to the fields. I saw the headmaster. One day, I went to school and saw a crocodile. He was eating the headmaster. Yes, I enjoyed my holidays.

That sinking feeling that your student is illiterate

Last year, I was not a good teacher.

I was way too absorbed in my own problems and trying to figure out my own life that I completely forgot about my role in helping my students solve their problems and figure out their lives.

This year, I’m trying to be better teacher.

I’m trying to notice when a particular student has just stopped coming to class even though all his school fees have already been paid. I’m trying to realize when my students ask to sit closer to board that maybe, they (like I was when I was in elementary school) are trying to work through a vision problem. I’m trying to put together that when a student never volunteers to read the board, always is the last to finish taking notes and hands in a quiz full of words that are neither French nor English, that maybe there’s a larger problem with which I need to deal. 

I have this student, part 2

His name is Florentin. He’s in my 5eme class this year, but he was also in my 5eme class last year. He is reasonably smart, but with about two months left of school, he just stopped coming to all his classes. I don’t even remember if he took his exams at the end of the year. But regardless, here we are, doing the same song and dance that he and I did last year.

This year, though, he’s been named one of the leaders of the class. I was surprised, but hoped that the responsibilities that come with the role would keep him coming to class this time. They have, but the thing is, he’s beginning to care more about his responsibilities of being the leader than his responsibilities of being a student.

Instead of taking notes, he writes down the names of all the students who are chatting. Instead of listening to my lectures, he’s asking his friends which students are absent that day. With 15 minutes left of class, he asks to go take down the flag.

All these things are things that he legitimately has to do now. But, how do I convince him that there are other responsibilities while he’s at school that are more important than his newly-found ones? How do I convince him that watching all his classmates is not as important as the notebook sitting in front of him?

Serve me up another plate of German fries, but please no liver

When I was in elementary school, my Girl Scout troop went on a camping trip. I don’t remember if we were trying to complete a badge or something (I assume we were) but for one meal, we were all supposed to try something new or eat as many vegetables as possible or some other goal that isn’t really the point of this story.

The point is that about halfway through the meal, my mom (our troop leader) brought out a plate of what she called “German fries.” We thought they were just some ethnic version of French fries, so we greedily accepted them.

After the first plate was finished was when we learned the secret of the “German fries.” All eating ceased when we learned what we thought was potato was actually fried eggplant.

To really understand this story, you have to understand how much of a picky eater I was when I was little. I had just finished my phase of refusing to eat pie, but instead just eating whipped cream on a plate at Thanksgiving. I had never tried eggplant, but that gave me all the more reason to hate it.

Two weeks ago, I was at a party. On the plate in front of me was a mixture of green beans, potatoes and meat. More protein and vegetables than I had seen in the past week. I had no idea what this “meat” actually was. As usual, no one told me the specific cut or even animal of which I was about to eat.

A couple bites in, one of the other volunteers I was with looked up from her plate. “I think it’s liver,” she said before going back to eating.

I lost all my desire to continue eating the “meat.” (Some things haven’t changed 15 years later)

The point of both these stories is that until I knew what both of the foods in front of me actually were, I had had no reason to not like what I was eating. (In fact, over 15 years later, I distinctly remember liking the “German fries.”) It was the words that changed everything.

When I’m called the word for “foreigner” it means so much more than just an identification of my skin color. All the cultural implications of the term would fill my empty plate of German fries. When men force me to make the distinction between “Madame” and “Mademoiselle” they are looking to find out so much more than whether they are addressing me by the appropriate title. (As I’m not married, I’m actually a “Mademoiselle,” but I have a hard enough time getting respect from men here to start with, I try to fake my marital status by age association.)

It is the words that have the power. But in so many cases here, I’m not the one who gets to run the conversation. 

Blank slate

In the US, I have this t-shirt that I got junior year of high school from the National Conference on Community and Justice. In bold, white letters across the front, it says, “Nobody’s born a bigot.”

In essence, what the shirt is trying to say is that no one is born recognizing the differences between people. No one is born thinking that one group of people is superior to another. No one is born with racist or sexist or heterosexist thoughts in his or her head.

These thoughts have to be put there by someone else.

I was thinking about this sentiment as I was biking back from Savalou today as the kids on the side of the road chanted for money and presents and ran alongside me asking for me to give them my bicycle. These kids were not born thinking that when you see a white person you should expect something from them. They were not born knowing the “Yovo Yovo” song that is found throughout the country. They were not born with the understanding that it’s acceptable to chase after someone down the street yelling for her to give you a present.

Someone put those thoughts there: parents, siblings, other kids at school. Someone taught these kids to draw these lines between me and them.

I’m not mad at these kids who are interrupting my bike ride. I’m mad at the person who led them to believe it was ok.

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.

'til it's gone

I was packing for a trip to Parakou for the weekend when Modeste walked over to my house. He said a sentence to me in English of which the only part I understood was the verb “to die” at the end. After repeating it to me in French, I got the message: my neighbor’s 2-year-old daughter had passed away the night before.

I’m not particularly close with this neighbor. I’m closer with her kids. And despite their ability to show up at the exact moments when I most want to be alone or their ability to go from happily coloring to screaming in one moment, only three days after the family left for the village of the kids’ father, I miss someone yelling “Auntie” at me as soon as I walk into our compound.

The only thing Modeste could tell me about the cause of death was “disease.” It’s too far into the hot season for it to be malaria. It’s not uncommon for infants to die from dehydration. There’s been an outbreak of cholera in the south.

But what was the cause isn’t what really matters. What matters is that the child that I saw the evening before lying with her mother underneath the citrus tree outside my house is no longer alive, and all that I’m left with each time I walk past the locked doors and windows of their house is the question of whether they are ever going to come back.

Sometimes I wonder if someone were making a film of my experience in Benin which parts would be edited into the “she’s figured it out and getting so much done” montage. 

One thing that I don’t miss about being in high school

This afternoon, I was biking to work at one of my friend’s houses when I stopped outside the large high school by my house to buy some bananas. (One of the things that always returns with the start of the school year is the ladies selling food on the street near the school. Pro tip: some of the best food in Benin can be found in the cafeteria of the local school.)

When more students started appearing on the street, I checked my watch and cursed to myself when I saw I had happened down the street in front of the high school right when the students were getting out of class.

The students who I teach at my school are much younger than the students that attend this high school. At my school, we have what you could call the equivalent of 6-8^th grade. This high school has 6^th grade to senior year.

This fact plus a tendency for Beninese students to start school later than you would in America meant that a lot of the students who were streaming out the schoolyard across from me were teenagers. Most of whom were boys. Some of whom were less than three years younger than me.

I generally try to avoid or ignore any interactions with Beninese teenaged boys. Take teenaged boys in the US then add being raised in a misogynistic society then add an extra dose of cockiness and you would get a typical Beninese teenaged boy.

As I was paying for my bananas, one started yelling at me in English.

“Do you like the fruit?” he asked.

I ignored him.

He tried again. “White lady. Do you like the fruit?”

I still ignored him. The idea that I did not want to talk to him did not enter into his perception of this interaction.

“She must speak Spanish,” he said to his friends as they walked down the street.

Another story about an interaction that makes me remember why I like being a teacher

I was teaching my 6eme class this morning. These are the youngest and tend to be the most shy students at the school.

Each class has two students (usually a girl and a boy) who are supposed to be the leaders of the class. (the prefects, if you will) These students are in charge of lining the class up for the flag ceremony, taking attendance and doing anything (within reason) that a teacher asks them to do.

I had 10 minutes left in this particular class period when I realized I hadn’t signed the attendance sheet yet for that day. In ordinary Beninese teacher fashion, I whispered to one of the students in charge (the girl) to go get the attendance book from the director’s office. 

I continued to walk through the class to make sure the other students were still working. When I made a pass back by her seat, I noticed she wasn’t back yet. I looked over to the director’s office and saw she was still standing outside in an apparent effort to conjure the bravery to step into the room.

I knew there were important people in the building at the moment. (the director, the vice principal, the president of the PTA) And I knew that she needed to learn how to not be scared to talk to people in authority.

But I also remembered how I used to feel at her age when I was afraid to make phone calls and talk to waiters at restaurants and bring a book with me everyone so I wouldn’t have to answer questions.

So, I retrieved the attendance book myself that day.

A short paragraph on what I've been up to:

My work partner’s fiance had a baby. He’s asked me to give him a good American name in addition to the traditional Beninese name he has already given the boy; I started teaching again. This is my second year at the same middle school, but almost all the teachers who were there for my first year are no longer there. But the director and all the students know who I am, so I seem to have some street cred; I’ve been named the homeroom teacher for one of my classes. All this really means is that I have control over their seating assignments and have to help them calculate their overall semester grades, but I had almost all of the kids in the class in my English class year, so I would say it’s the group of students I know best. And vice versa; It’s hot again. Can’t-sleep-at-night hot. I’m backing to contemplating jumping in the well and consuming water at an all-time high rate; I’ve started training for the (half? full?) marathon again. Time will tell on the answer to those questions; I’ve been handing out presents my parents brought me for my students and community since I got back in village. As much as I talk about being sick of people asking me for things, it’s been fun to play Santa Claus; I’m starting to think a lot about what I’ll be doing in 9-10 months. This means I’ve spent a lot of time re-editing blog posts. It’s weird to be back where I was 17 months ago.

I have this student:

Florent is young and adorable and still a little naïve. He’s also smart (He had the second-highest grade in my class last year) and catches on fast to concepts and likes being at school. (Once, he refused to go home when he was sick until he was sick all over my classroom.)

He’s rarely in trouble. He’s usually in a good mood and doesn’t really get into fights with the other students.

He and I get along well. I appreciate that he studies for my class, and he seems to appreciate that I’m not like his other teachers.

And there’s something about him. Like he’s not quite yet chosen to believe that as a Beninese man, he’s entitled to everything before everyone else.

And I’m afraid I saw that being literally beaten out of him today at school.