(This is an example of coordinated trash removal in Southern Benin. This provides the food for many animals, sadly they cannot eat plastic...c'mon evolution)As you can assume I have had to get used to many different things and change many behaviors now that I am living in Benin. It has been a fairly easy transition thus far, without any major problems, but there are two things that are a little more challenging for myself to adapt to.
There is hardly any coordinated solid waste trash removal service in this country, especially in the south where I live now. That means that trash lines the street, flows in the waterways, and grows in the piles behind houses. Ohh wait, sorry, there is one form of trash clean up, which I almost forgot: larger piles of trash do exist where groups of people throw their stuff and every now and again a concerned citizen will light that trash pile on fire. I love riding my bike past those! Furthermore, in the states, I was (and am now even more) a huge fan of trashcans, trash pick up, garbage dumps that are environmental cared for, and recycling. Guess who has to become accustomed to throwing all trash behind the house or on the street as I walk? That would be me, just in case you didn’t know. The one that continually put ‘please recycle’ signs on the front desk’s recycle bin at the Memorial Union now has to throw his plastic bags, food waste, and anything else outside where it becomes a part of this picturesque landscape. In Benin’s defense, the Beninese people don’t consume even close to what American’s do, so what they, and now I throw away is minimal. One fact for you that I read in my book: “The average ecological footprint per person for those in developed nations is 54 acres, while in Africa each person only consumes about 2.5 acres. The earth can support only an average footprint of 39 acres/person.” Regardless, I lose a little bit of my sole every time I have to throw something out, by throwing it outside. The Peace Corps is teaching us nifty things to do with the waste, such as turning these tiny black plastic bags, which everything in this country is carried in, into wallets, coin purses, etc. My friend Johnny and I are going to try and develop a cowboy hat out of them. Also, I will be building a compost pile at my future post and encouraging everyone around me to do the same. So, if you ever feel like not recycling or you want to throw your trash on the ground, please think of me and say, “I am going properly dispose of my trash/recycling for Tony, because he can’t.” Thank you in advance.
Moving onto the other thing that will take some getting used to. Not only are bathrooms with running water (ie flushing toilets) uncommon, public bathrooms or even latrines are next to impossible to find. Next time you are at a bar and have to pee because you have been drinking, imagine that there are no bathrooms. Now what do you do? Guys have it much easier then women. If we can find a discreet place to relieve ourselves we are fine. Then again, discreet is not in the Beninese vocabulary and thus, often you will see people just taking a leak on the side of the road, thankfully facing away from traffic. Despite the fact that guys have it much easier (I am going to describe what women do in a sec), I cannot help but find it unnerving to aim in front of a cement wall, with the equivalent traffic of the southbound exit toward Chicago as you head east into Milwaukee, flying by 40 feet behind you. Women on the other hand... If, and there is a strong emphasis on the if, a woman can find a bathroom as she is out and about, it will most likely amount to nothing more than a hole in the ground, about the size of a small pancake. So, role up your pants ladies, because there is no way you are not going to splash urine all over your feet and legs as you try to balance, assisted by nothing, over said hole. This is all I am going to say about our other form of bodily excrement: Thankfully the diet here is heavy in starch and low in fiber so as long as you can avoid diarrhea-causing parasites, bacteria, and/or viruses this is not as much of an issue. If you don’t know how starch or fiber regulates your BM’s (not building managers, for those Memorial Union folk), go ask a health professional. Ohh, and never forget to carry toilet paper or soap/hand sanitizer, because they have not begun to appreciate either as of yet.
The general rule for all things bathroom related is, if you are far away from your house, where you will have a latrine per Peace Corps housing standards, you just might be shit out of luck.
(Picture: Washing my clothes by hand in the water that I pulled from a well. This quickly became my least favorite chore in Benin)
1. Guys can act rather gay (according to US standards)
For example, guys love to hold hands here. According to Beninese cultural two guys holding hands means nothing more than they are good friends and they are demonstrating that friendship. It is also common for two men who are having a one-on-one conversation to hold hands, which shows to the other person that they have their complete attention, similar to eye contact in the US. Furthermore, it is very common to see two guys dancing together, almost like people dance at the club/bar back in the States. They dance together simply because women are not allowed to go to bars by whatever dominant male figure they have (i.e. father, brother, boyfriend, husband). The only women who you will find at the bars are prostitutes. Overall, guys are much physically closer here. It is not unusual to see guys acting more affectionate toward each other than homosexual couples act in the states, where most places they are hardly allowed to hold hands.
2. Two guys might be allowed to hold hands, but opposite sex couples are not
While two guys are allowed to hold hands in public, if a man and woman couple were to do that in public, it would be the equivalent of two people making out in the states. That is to say, they way we look at those that make out in public is the same way the Beninese look at those opposite sex couples who hold hands.
3. Being gay in Benin is illegal
Even if you were to ask a Beninese man if gay people exist they will deny it. They might have a law against it, but they take it one step further and deny the existence of homosexuality. Despite the fact they see it on American TV and movies, being gay just doesn’t make any sense to them. That being said, there are gay people in Benin, they just must live a very secret lifestyle.
4. If the women in Benin went on strike the country would collapse
I think this is similar to most places in the world that haven’t made huge strides toward gender equality; the men get all the respect, but the women absolutely run the show. It blows me away how much they are responsible for. Their responsibilities consist of everything you would think of, but they may also be a large percentage of the ‘bread-winning’ population since 99.99% of the vendors at the markets are women. I have no empirical evidence to back this up; it is just an observation.
5. Just about everything in this country is ‘la bas’
It is pronounced ‘la bah’ and basically means over there. The majority of times when a question of something’s location arises, if posed to a Beninese person, he/she will say ‘la bas.’ In fact the other day, a motor scooter taxi ended up taking me ‘la bas’ when I didn’t want to go ‘la bas. In fact there was a very specific destination I requested, but since the taxi didn’t know where it was, even though he told me that he did, he ended up telling me my destination was ‘la bas’ when he dropped me off. After a phone call and talking to locals I found someone who was willing to walk me to the place, which was about a 15min walk away from where the taxi took me. So I definitely got lost in a 3rd world country where I am just learning to speak the language, but the locals are nice. If fact this guy was so nice, he wanted my phone number and he tried to hold my hand. Sadly, I said ‘no’ but I wished him luck in his hopeful career as a professional soccer player in the EU.
6. You know those peculiar African American names you see in the States with their bizarre spellings?
Well, as far as I can tell, those names are not African but purely African American. In fact my host brother’s name is Manu (very normal African name), another’s is Bill, I met someone named Pavlov (remember his dogs?), and I met a kid named Elvis. Granted I just got here and I know Benin does not represent all of the names Africa has to offer, but it seems to me that the unique names found in the US, is just a US phenomenon.
Other than the gender relations between men and women, which I wrote about previously, those are the newest cultural differences between the US and Benin that I have experienced.
I received the details about my final post and position description. I probably received one of the best posts, at least for myself! I am not allowed to provide extremely site specific information, but if you look at a map of Benin find the city of Dassa, which is at the top of the bottom ¼ of Benin in the center of the country (if that makes sense), cause I will be living about 7km outside of it.
Ok. I am super excited! I will be working for an NGO to develop and expand the area’s ecotourism. The reason they want me to do this is because this area is supposed to be one of the most beautiful in Benin. I will be developing an ecotourism business to attract rich Europeans and I will be living in the exact same area. You have no idea how many people are jealous of my post. The place is supposed to be gorgeous with woods, green savanna, large rolling hills, and endless walking/biking trails.
My two other responsibilities are environmental education and community development. Environmental ed is pretty self explanatory but for the community development I am going to try to increase the communities political activity. I am reading a book right now, written by someone born and raised in Kenya but educated in the United States, who talks quite a bit about the fatalistic attitude in Africa that contributes to their passivity and tolerance for bad political leaders. Therefore, thanks to WISPIRG, I might try to increase the awareness of the people’s political power. Wish me luck. That is not a small task in a country without any history of political activism where people are forced to spend most of their energy struggling to survive. It has to start somewhere, right? I know that with the Peace Corps, I am not allowed to engage in political activity, so I have yet to figure out my way around that one. Hopefully they will be ok if I simply facilitate others getting involved as opposed to involving myself.
Ok, back to my future post. I am the third volunteer that will be at this post, but the first one who will primarily be working on developing their ecotourism business. One of the things I asked for the ability to do was to combine environment and business, so this post is perfect. Since I am the third volunteer I will hopefully have an awesome house because it will have 4 years of collected stuff that the previous volunteers left there. I will have good cell phone reception, electricity, running water in my concession, a very short bike ride to the nearest market, and only 7km away from the nearest volunteer and post office. I will be able to buy a post office box so you all can send me stuff all the time! Ohh fyi, a concession consists of usually about three houses behind a small fence/wall. Peace Corps does that so that I get very close to my neighbors to help my integration and for safety reasons, aka they will look out for me and make sure I know any important info.
Feel free to send me updates about what is going on in your lives; I like reading emails from family and friends.
Hello from Porto Novo!
The title of this post is a song that all the kids like to start singing when they see me, or any white person for that matter. It loosely translates into White Foreigner, Good Evening, How are you, Thank you. Wherever I go there is a small troop of children either yelling Yovo or singing that song. I dont know if I will ever get used to being starred at everywhere I go, or being called Yovo for that matter. One of the reasons I liked Madison over UW-LAX is the ability to disappear in a crowd of people. Haha, not so much the case here.
Training is fairly intense, but light hearted. We train 6 days a week until the end of September, which is when I will move to my post somewhere in Benin. We are learning anything from how and what to plant in Benin, how to start a tree nursury, how to build a mud stove, how to teach env education, learning about the fauna here and how to use it, weaving plastic bags into fun things, as well as organizing the community, and trying to build up their resources. I will not know exactly where I will be in Benin until next week sometime.
So, I have lived with my host family for almost a week now. I have more space that I could have asked for and an amazing family. My host mom is super patient and helps me with my french whenever i try to say something. She has actually spent time in the United States since her husband, whom I have yet to meet, works for the Beninese Embassy and he was working in DC for a period of time. She also speaks some english, so communication can be frustrating, but accomplished. My french is coming along much faster than I thought it would be and yes, my university education in french has not been exactly helpful. We spend at least 2-hours/day in language class, but since it is strictly conversational, I am learning more here than at UW.
One of the most interesting things about where I live and Benin overall is that, as far as I can tell, the wealthy do not separate themselves from the poor as they do in the United States. I clearly live with a wealthy family and yet across the street lives the poorest of the poor. I was completely surprised by this since the very rich in the US live behind gated communities in McMansions where they even create their own religions (achem...Scientology). Benin's society is not like that and I think it actually creates a much more inclusive society. Instead of having someone go to a grocery story, my host mama walks across the dirt road to the family who bakes bread. By spending her money there, 100% is going diretly to the family (not being spread out in a corporation), which directly supports that family's livelihood. Their children grow up together and are still friends; they go to school together. Their appears to be much less 'us vs them' in Benin and it may be related to that. Just some food for thought.
Ok, i have to go since it is getting dark out and I need to be home before dark. Their roads are absolutly nuts and i would rather not compete on the road with hundreds of scooters in the dark. Know that I found a good cybercafe, more updates will follow more regularily.
(This is an example of coordinated trash removal in Southern Benin. This provides the food for many animals, sadly they cannot eat plastic...c'mon evolution)
