People Call Us Renegades 'Cuz We Like Living Crazy

I've been in village for one month today!! AHHHHHH! obviously I'm not in village right now, since I don't have electricity or internet in my village, but it's crazy that I've been living out in the bush for an entire month now, and it's kind of a big deal how NOT a big deal village life is. The village I live in is called Angaradebou, which is quite a mouthful, and I will tell you all about it and it's crazy, kooky inhabitants and beautiful garden and ridiculous children and colonies of goats on another occasion. However, they all really love me, and they gave me a new name: Pamudo. It's Fulani for "one who pays close attention and thinks ahead." 

So, I’ve been blogging the old fashioned way, in my handy dandy journal. But I promise I have been hoarding ridiculous things to tell all you lovelies, about life in Benin and eating soy cheese and reading too many books and gardening under the African sun and jogging in the savannah and all the other things I do and think and watch. A running theme throughout the first month of being in my village are the things that are normal, which otherwise would not be at all. 

Things That Are Just A Part of my Life Now

• Riding around on motorcycles on roads that were probably never good roads but, because it’s the rainy season, are now barely passable. I was riding on a zem the other day to Kalale (the seat of my communes mayor’s office) and it started raining and the roads turned into mud and we were soaked in a minute and lakes formed in what used to be the road and it was a grand adventure. 
• I traded tundra naps for bush naps. One of my first days in village, like a giant fool, I rode my bike to my market village, Peonga, which is about 8km away. (In all fairness, that is not far but bush distances are a whole different ball game.) In the heat of the damn day. I almost died. Instead of dying though, I decided to take a couple of breaks under some shady trees along the way. At one such point I was so tired that I just laid down in the bush and closed my eyes. After about 5 minutes of repose I looked up to discover that I was surrounded by about 30 giant cows, white and black with giant horns and massive shoulder blades and swatting bushy tails. When I sat up and they were startled and ran away like I was an alien. (I guess I kinda am.)
• Haggling. It was a joy in Thailand but incredibly stressful in French but now that I’ve got my language under control I’ve got my groove back. The secret in Thailand was the walk-away but here, it’s the disbelieving “Eh?!”, the all-knowing head tilt (“Now you and I know both know better than that.”) and sometimes it’s the joking and laughing that get you where you need to be. At least that worked when I bought my buckets in the market.
• Siestas on the floor. This has been my life since I’ve been here, and it’s quickly becoming my favorite part of the day. A girl can get used to socially acceptable napping; also it’s completely necessary, as another volunteer told me it was 109 degrees in the shade the other day. 
• Kids coming to my doorstep just to watch. Whether I’m cooking dinner, watching my water boil, or reading on my mat, I seem to provide hours of entertainment to the kids in my concession, mostly on account of being white and having eyebrows that weren’t drawn on with eyeliner. They must listen for the sound of my door to open (it is certainly not quiet, my old creaky door) and then begins a day of trying to sneak in the door, touch my things, peek in windows or, maybe, just the silent watching of a white girl turning oxygen into carbon dioxide. 
• Watching the rain and napping. I absolutely love it. I’ve always loved the rain but here it’s just so earnest... “I’m gonna rain, dammit, and I don't care if you need to go somewhere or do something today. I might rain for 10 minutes or 3 days and you’ll have to deal with it.”
• Goat or baby? It’s my new favorite game. It’s usually goat, for some reason the Beninese goats just shriek every chance they get, and they sound like crazy humans being murdered.
• Sand in my bed. It’s like going to the beach, without the beach. I think my homemade bush broom is my favorite possession, I use it like 5 times a day. There is sand EVERYWHERE.
• Thinking every sickness is malaria. I was deathly ill the other day and all I could think was “Please don’t be malaria! Oh God, I have malaria.” Well, that’s what I though after “Please don’t pass out in the middle of all these people and crash into a pile of soja cheese or get run over by a zem!” Of course it was market day in Peonga at the time, so there were people everywhere buying and haggling and selling and yelling and walking and trying to buy my hair. (I was actually in the market today when somebody asked me for my hair. "Il faut me donner ca! You must give me your hair!" Obviously I declined. My hair gets just as much attention as my clear skin on most days. That's what they say, we're not white we're clear.)
• Sitting and Watching. Not to be confused with Sitting and Waiting, because I’m usually not waiting when I’m S&W-ing. My favorite place to do this is the garden, leaning against the cistern in the shade. You get to watch all kinds of extraordinarily normal things this way - the other day I watched a couple of cows bumble good-naturedly into the garden, and the melee that followed when their young cowherds had to chase them out. It was all quite amusing.
• Not being able to tell if that slide of something under my shirt, across my ankle, down my leg, is sweat or a bug. It is equally likely to be the bug or the sweat, unfortunately, though I’m not sure which one is better or worse. 
• The smell of kerosene. I’m starting to find that I have more in common with the heroines of Jane Austen/sexy historical novels than my formal life. Also, I must write more letters than Elizabeth Bennet ever did. 

Of course there are a million other things, pantomiming and just-say-yes-ing and children touching me and people asking me when I’m going to get married and have kids (or pantomiming it, which is rather amusing) and eating as little pate as possible. But here’s one last thing for tonight, a kismet welcoming present from the fm gods on my first night in my village: I was sitting in my room, taking a break from packing, when I hear from my window... “All I need... is a beauty and a beat... who can make my life compleeeeeeete.” In the middle of the smallest village of this nobody’s-ever-heard-of-it country on this lightyears-behind-any-progressive-culture continent, I hear Justin Bieber singing one of my all time favorite Bieber jams. Welcome to Angaradebou, Pamudo. 

A teut a l'huere, my cheries!