A Day in the Life

So my friend Melissa's mom and friend came to visit, and since Melissa is one of my close-mates (close being a relative term at about two hours away), I went to visit and fete with them. Melissa had organized a big huge party, inviting the traditional dancers and drummers to come to her house, which in turn drew a huge crowd consisting of almost her entire village. It was incredible: the dancers wore women's clothes and seed pods wrapped around their legs, and danced in a frenzy like you would not believe. I say this to you now because, before having jumped in the circle myself, I thought, hey, that looks easy, I'm actually not that impressed. (Let me tell you, after about ten minutes in the middle of that circle, seed pods itching all up my calves, knees exposed, feet hopping at lightning speeds, I changed my tune. Also, my calves bore the brunt of my ignorance for about four days afterwards, burning every time I moved or thought about moving.) 

But now, to the point of that story, hanging out with Melissa's mom is the first time I've interacted face-to-face with an American stranger. I had to explain myself, and my village, and what I'm doing, and how I live; every funny story, every poignant experience, took about three times as long to describe because I had to explain everything. (And bear in mind, her daughter was a year into her peace corps experience, so she knew what was up. And she had been in Benin for about a week by then, in which I'm sure she soaked up everything Beninese. And that's a lot of things to soak up.) But the question I had the hardest time answering was, so what does your normal day look like?

Honestly, I have no idea myself. This morning I woke up at seven, got on my bike and rode to a nearby village, wrote an official demand for an act of donation of a half-hectacre of land to be given to a women's group to start a garden (IN FRENCH!! I even corrected my work partner's grammar and spelling!!), rode around on my friends motorcycle as we went from one person to the other gathering signatures and official stamps, organized the transport of said letter first to the chef d'arrondissement (kind of like a mini-mayor, for a smaller region) and then to the maire (the mayor of our commune, the equivalent of a county in the states). Then I rode my bike home, took a nap, hand-washed some clothes and hung it up to dry, grilled some corn and soy beans on my stove so I could take it to the mill, and carried the two big bowls of grilled things on my head to my friend Hawaou's house so she could get it milled while I was gone. On my way, I was greeted by the president of my women's group, who has been gone for the last month harvesting cotton in another village, and since she is one of my favorite people, we sat and joked for a while. Then I got a zem-moto and came to Kalale, where I will take a taxi to Parakou tomorrow to feast and fete for Thanksgiving. (I normally listen to music on zems, and at one moment I took my headphones out to greet a friend and my zem driver grabbed it, saying "Musique americaine!! Tres bien!!" It was really cute.)

And that was just one day. And no two days are the same. Yeah they take on a kind of pattern: staff meetings in Kalale every two weeks, women's group meeting in Djega every week, garden meetings and work days every Thursday in Angaradebou; mornings in the garden, weeding and watering and spreading cow manure, afternoons biking to other villages, market days in Peonga haggling for onions and beans, hours of hand-washing my clothes and hanging them up to dry, reading in bed with my cat, going on walks with a parade of children, promenading through village to survey my latrine project, scheduling trainings and then shuttling across the countryside teaching women about nutrition. Some days I never leave the house because I'm all caught up reading the Lord of the Rings, although those days are much rarer now that I'm super-busy. Most days I'm out by eight, either zooming to this place or walking to that place or biking here and there. But believe you me, there is no such thing as the "typical" day. There are good days, and bad days, and boring days, and days where I would trade my left elbow for a nap, but no normal days. 

overheard le dousieme

On writing the VRF:

"What if you had to write up how many hours you spent watching Pretty Little Liars? Or pretending you weren't home when your neighbors knocked on your door? ORRRR how many hours you spend eating popcorn with Furrlock on your belly??"

"Oh my god, can you imagine?"



(Another entry for the dictionary of terms you probably don't understand: VRF. (Yes, another three letter acronym. So Washington.) VRF stands for Volunteer Response Feedback. We have to do them twice a year, a total of four times during our service. It doesn't sound like so much when you put it like that, but it is tedious, and so bureaucratic, and such a painstaking exercise in meaningless numbers and goal-setting and -reaching, monitoring and evaluation, self-examination, and all the dreariness of filling out a very very very long form. There's a part where they ask you to write up a success story, something you felt good during your service. It is hardly indicative of our lives here, but it's a fluffy Washington initiative to make everybody feel good. Blegh.)

Because you know you can

It's not my story to tell, so I'm not gonna tell it. It is a story that involves many characters, some I don't know, one I know and love very well, and I suppose a smattering of those that fall in the middle. Needless to say, someone very dear to me has had a traumatic upheaval, which has not only had a very big effect on her life but on someone very dear to her. While you can choose to see this as just one more situation in which I ask you for money, try to look at it as your opportunity to do something good.

If you have some time, please click here and read about her crazy/beautiful life. If you don't have time, you should make it. If you are exasperated at how little I write, if you are curious about Benin, about Peace Corps, about what its like to be an interesting person in an interesting place, you will very much enjoy your time inside her brain. (I've been meaning to point you her way for a while now. No time like the present.)

If you don't have time, just skip to here, and feel around in your heart, your wallet, your cup holders and couch cushions, and please help someone who truly needs it.

This is a crazy, insane, mixed-up, messed-up, darling, interesting place. Sometimes in a good way. Sometimes in a bad way. Sometimes to good people, sometimes to great people. 

Because another ebola post felt necessary... for SOME reason.

Let me tell you something about living in a concrete house with no electricity: you do a lot of thinking. You think about what makes you mad. (A lot of things.) You think about what makes you sad. (A lot of things.) You go over conversations you had that day and correct your french grammar. You think about what movie or tv show you would watch if you could. (Mindy Project Mindy Project!!) You think about your work, you ponder the past, you dread the future. You think about how outrageously hot you are, and what you would do for a cold fizzy water. 

Also, you think about all the blog posts you would write if you had a computer. (I suppose I could write it the old fashioned way, with a pen and paper, and Lord knows I have the time, but not the patience.) I have a very long list of funny stories about my cat, what it feels like when the rainy season starts, what I’m actually doing here, how I spend my days, the cast of characters I spend my days with. And now here I am, only five minutes spent on facebook, and I am MAD. Everything that I intended to write just flew out the window, because I have something even more important to say.

CAN WE PLEASE CHANGE HOW WE TALK ABOUT AFRICA PLEASE??? Like seriously. I just flipped through my newsfeed and it was such a bipolar mixture of my American friends being so maddeningly flippant and my Peace Corps friends sharing the most interesting, well-rounded, uplifting (mostly) news about Africa. Make whatever assumptions about what you think I’m trying to say here, but there is more to Africa than ebola. 

Let me repeat that, there is more to Africa than ebola.

And you know what, even if there weren’t (shudder) can we please just remember that this is a crippling disease that hurts people, kills people, devastates families and economies and childhoods, in a place where families and economies and childhoods are already incredibly fragile. But fragile like the kind of glass you expect will break when you touch it, but survives fall after fall and proves itself to be incredibly resilient and strong. And beautiful. I don’t know why I have to say this, but this is not about you. It’s not about me because honestly, I LIVE on this continent and the idea of being scared hasn’t even occurred to me. It worries me how my generation has reacted to this devastating epidemic. It is not something to joke about, and it is not something to panic about. Can we please find a middle ground that actually lives in the neighborhood of accurate and truthful? 

Like about how there is more to this continent than this disease? Like there are projects that are really inspiring? Like there are people, Africans and otherwise, who are doing really good things here? Like how I personally have had a meeting or worked on a project every single day for the past two weeks with a handful of EXTREMELY motivated Beninese people, of varying levels of education, doing work in three different villages? I know, dear reader, that it is not your fault, that you are reacting to the reactions of the media. 

Just do me a favor, pretty please. Be better than that. 


http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/31/opinion/dont-let-ebola-dehumanize-africa.html?ref=opinion&_r=0