tobrè

I have done two major things that have shed much light on what my experience in Benin will be like: last week I visited my post, and I started teaching English.

Arriving to my post required an hour and a half bush taxi ride, and a half our moto taxi ride. The moto part was perhaps one of the most terrifying experiences of my life. The driver hit every bump possible, and there were a couple of times that I swore I was going to fly off and be maimed for life. Luckily that didn’t happen.

I was telling my dad on the phone that before I arrived in Tobre (my village), I thought the puzzle I was putting together had 100 pieces. But then I got there and I realized it actually has 2000. Anything I thought I had figured out about this country is really just the smallest scratch in the surface of what there is to know.

Tobre is small – about 6000 people, and far from electricity, cell phone service, and even a post office. I can walk from one side of the village to the other in about ten minutes. It is exactly what I hoped for. Everyone speaks a local language called Bariba, which I will have to learn in order to get anything I need at the market. My house is in the same concession as the village queen’s, so everytime I go home I’m going to have to do the traditional greeting, which involves bowing and saying “Oh!” about seven times. The nearest well is about 300 meters from my house, so I can either plan on getting some awesome muscles or enlisting any children near me to be my water carters.

I stayed at my school director’s house, since my house is still unfurnished. The way that he runs his house was somewhat shocking, with his wife and daughters quietly working all day as he orders them around. In the mornings while I was there, the daughter and the niece would be sent into my bedroom to stare at their feet and say “Bonjour Madame”, in small pitiful voices.

As soon as I arrived there I was brought around to meet all the important figures of the village, including about 10 elders, the traditional chief, the political chief, the midwife, the nurse, the president of the Parent’s association, the queen, the imam, and the veterinarian.

Overall I’m very pleased with my little village. I kept my eyes open for any signs of need or prosperity, and is an interesting balance. Most houses have tin roofs, as opposed to thatch, but most are also made out of adobe. The school I’ll be teaching at has about 450 students, but less than 70 of those are girls. There are only seven classrooms, but the classrooms that are there are sturdy concrete buildings, as opposed to wall-less huts. It will be interesting to see what sort of secondary projects the community will have me do.

As far as teaching, I taught my first summer-school English class yesterday, and a two-hour class today. And so far I enjoy it completely. The planning is difficult, but at the same time there are many opportunities to be creative. How can I teach classes of over 50 students, without any handouts or books? There are many challenges, but figuring out how to overcome them will be a fun process. I also really like the teaching itself. Teachers here are somewhat more authoritarian than what we are used to in the States, so establishing myself as a no-nonsense, serious educator is what my first goal is. Having students that are almost as old as I am might make that hard.

In other news, yam season has begun, which means good eats for a while. And I haven’t been served gumbo since I last posted, so anyone who was worried about my diet can rest easy.

cuisine

Quick update: I’m in the middle of Benin, doing language, cultural, and technical training, while living with a host family. I love the host family, the town I’m in is nice. And I just got my post assignment – a small village – which Ill be visiting next week.

Meaty-blog part:
One of the things that people asked me about most often before I came to Benin was, “What will you eat there?” Truthfully, I had no idea, but I’d read something about plenty of yams, peanuts, rice, and beans. All things I can handle. As I came closer to leaving for Benin, I read about pate and bushrat and goat. But still, my main attitude toward new food has pretty much always been: if its not going to make me sick, I don’t have a problem eating it.

Being in Benin for three weeks has shown me my limit.

It is not so much the substance of the food I can’t handle. Rice, peppers, corn flour, chicken, tomatoes, okra… all those things are wonderful. It is the way in which they are cooked here that has brought me to the place I am today. And that is the place where I buy a loaf of bread and the entire thing in one day.

To make things more clear, I am not starving. I am given way too much food. Way too much of food I can’t exactly handle. But I have found my limits, and they include something called pate blanche with gumbo – an innocent sounding mix of okra, fish, onions, and corn meal. And I cannot eat it. I have tried, but I can’t.

I also can’t eat most of the cheese and most of the pieces of meat that still have arteries on them. And once again it is not the idea of these foods that I simply can’t bring myself to enjoy eating, it is the way they smell, the way they look, and of course, the way they taste.

And I promise this blog is not going to turn into one of those places where all I can talk about are superficial things like the food and weather. I bring up the food issue only to bring up a corresponding point: things are harder than I expected, and I am not as good at being in Africa as I would hope.

I had hoped that I would arrive in Africa and, knowing that this is a place where people can starve, be able to eat what is graciously given to me. I even practiced eating the cartilage off chicken legs before I came. But surprise. Not only is the chicken somewhat sketchier here, but they eat things I didn’t expect, like okra. I did not expect to be such a spoiled American, whose discarded chicken leg gets handed to the baby so she can suck it dry. I mean, how dare I complain about food when for goodness sakes, I’m in Benin, Africa. But here I am, complaining. And to give myself a little credit, I’m not complaining as much as some of my fellow trainees, but I am still complaining.

But I’m also going to suggest that my complaining may just do some sort of justice to the reality of living in Africa. If I, a middle-class, white, educated, American girl could just slip right into the daily life of a Beninese woman, then it would mean that I am just as capable as a Beninese woman, and that her life does not bear any challenges that I could not overcome. The truth is, it should be hard for me here. Things don’t get to be easy for me, because I have not faced the challenges that women (and people in general) here must face. Washing clothes by hand, cooking over a two-foot coal stove, making ends meet with only a few dollars a day, trying to keep children healthy when there is no health care, teaching a class of eighty students with little or no supplies – these are all things that are new to me and I should not get to handle it with ease and confidence. And to take it even further, I don’t want to think that just because people here know how to deal with some these things, that its okay that they deal with them.