Monday in Cotonou and it’s actually very nice today. A fresh breeze has been blowing through the night, taking with it the poisonous haze that often lingers over the city and bringing in its place a layer of familiar overcast and cool temperatures. Very pleasant.

Not quite pleasant enough to make me forget the “incident” of last Sunday. I hate euphemisms like “incident.” They reduce experience to statistics and then assign them to conveniently discrete categories. They take no notice of the bruises (visible or not) left behind. They don’t account for the insomnia that lingers long after the “incident” is officially over. And they’re unable to penetrate those extra layers of armor erected as a result, for our own sake and the sake of those we love and wish to protect.

Forgive me for being cryptic. I was attacked last weekend; “mugged” as you might say in America. Rest assured, I am fine. The physical marks have almost entirely faded already, and I am dealing with the rest as well as I can. The details of what happened are unimportant. All I lost were my prescription sunglasses – which, though a pain to lose aren’t that big a deal. The two women who were with me were not accosted in any way – Thank God – and were able to get help before the situation escalated beyond control. I’ve gotten great support from Peace Corps and my fellow volunteers and I really am OK.

What remains can best be described, I think, as…vexation. I am vexed! My vexation is made up of approximately equal measures of anger, frustration and confusion. I’m angry that it happened at all, and also of the result: meaning that the little bastard took something of no value to him but that had enormous value to me that I had taken great pains to protect for the last year and a half. (I would have liked to have been there, though, the first time he put them on and realized he couldn’t see shit! I wonder if he thought I put gris-gris on him…)

I’m frustrated that I was so unable to do anything to stop it; on both the small and the grand scale. My resistance – even after he hit me – did not, in fact, keep him from hitting me again. And nothing I’ve done here has made it appreciably less likely that he will go out and do the same thing to someone else. Only time will tell if the conditions that made him so desperate in the first place will improve.

My confusion swirls around the question of what to take away from the experience. At first I was just pissed off! I was easily a foot taller than this guy and had probably 100 pounds on him, yet he came straight for me. And even after he should have figured out I wasn't just gonna roll over and give him what he wanted, he still hit me! I took it personally. I just wanted to lash out; to take my anger out on someone or something. I wanted to give up, say “Fuck Benin” and go home. Obviously, I haven’t done that.

Because after some reflection I realized it wasn’t personal. It couldn’t have been. He didn’t know me. He didn’t know who I was or why I was there. He had no idea I had volunteered to come to this country to try to ameliorate the very conditions that made it necessary for him to target me in the first place. (Not that I think it would have made much difference if he had.)

When he looked up that street and saw me coming, he didn’t see ME. He saw an image that has been ingrained in him since birth. He saw someone who, in his eyes, had everything they needed and more. The vast majority of Beninese have no experience of white westerners who are NOT exceedingly rich, by their standards. (This image is vividly perpetuated by such culturally sensitive exports as MTV’s “Pimp My Ride” and “My Super Sweet 16.”) And even as poor as I am by American standards, I am still far wealthier than the average Beninese. He just chose an unpleasant way of trying to redistribute a little of that wealth.

Do I romanticize my diminutive antagonist? Have I taken a violent ruffian and transformed him somehow into Jean Valjean? No, I don’t think so. Confronted with the same situation again, I would resist at least as strongly; perhaps more so. No, our role here can’t be just to give the Beninese what they think they need. It needs to be to show them how to achieve it and then get out of the way and let them try. Otherwise we’re just wasting our time.

So you might be wondering if I am reconsidering my decision to go to South Africa – which is a notoriously crime-ridden place – in light of this “incident.” The short answer is, no. It’s a question that came up during my interview in DC last month, if I had any qualms about going to a place that I knew could be dangerous.

Notwithstanding that Cape Town is a place I am already familiar with and am thus also familiar with the dangers there, I settled this question for myself some time ago. If I’m serious about doing this work there are certain realities that I have to face. One is that those parts of the world that are the poorest, that are most in need of people to do the kind of work I’m called to do, are also some of the most dangerous. The conditions make them so. Another is that in places like that I’m going to be a target for people who have decided it’s easier to take what you need than to earn it, or less humiliating than to have to accept it as charity. Doing this kind of work in places like that necessarily entails accepting a certain level of risk. That doesn’t mean being foolhardy or putting yourself in harm’s way. But it does mean that all else being equal, and even taking prudent precautions against the dangers that exist, the risks are just gonna be higher. This means that, in all likelihood, this is probably not the last time this is going to happen.

C’est la vie.

So, there has been a very long gap since my last post. Part of that is because I went back to America for the holidays. It was fabulous...and horrible...and totally worth it. I ate LOTS of great food and drank lots of really good beer (there is only average beer in Benin).

While I was in Seattle, I got a call from the Congressional Hunger Center, where I had applied for a fellowship back in November. (see previous post) They said they wanted to interview me. Not only that, they wanted to interview me in person, so could I come to Washington, DC - on their dime - for an interview. Sooo... I went to bed at 10:00pm on New Year's Eve so I could get up at 4:00am on New Year's Day to catch a 7:00am flight to DC. Got in around 5:00 that evening, checked-in to my hotel, got some dinner, went to bed and got up the next morning for a 10:00am interview. Finished the interview around 11:00, went back to the hotel, checked-out, had lunch with a friend from MCC and flew out that evening at 7:00.

The interview was fabulous. I have done quite a few in my lifetime, but never one that went as well as this one. I was in the room with the Director of the fellowship program, the Associate Director of the program and the Deputy Director of the entire Center. It didn't even feel like an interview; it was more like a conversation. We talked for about 45 minutes and it was effortless. I answered their questions from my heart and everything was just...right. If it had been a gymnastics routine it would have been a 9.95. I was on cloud 12 as I walked back to my hotel - even though the shoes I had bought for the trip were making KILLER blisters on my heels.

Needless to say, I was pretty stoked when I got back to Benin.

But, as has been the case lately, there is no rest for the weary. I flew out of Seattle on Monday, landed in Accra Tuesday, got to Cotonou on Wednesday and then turned right around and went up to Parakou on Thursday so I could give two presentations for the PSL 21 SED/ICT In-Service Training on Friday. When I got to Parakou after no email for three days there was a message from CHC telling me I had been selected as a finalist for BOTH of the fellowship placements I applied for. Yeah! Better still, later the same day I got another email from the organization in South Africa saying they wanted to schedule a finalist interview with me. So suddenly, an interview I thought I would have weeks to prepare for was going to happen in FOUR DAYS!

That Wednesday, I sat down in a small conference room in the Peace Corps bureau and took a conference call with five other folks, two in DC, two in South Africa, and one in Chicago. This one wasn't quite the perfect "10" that the previous one was, but I'd put it at a solid "8" - so I couldn't complain too much. That was on January 14th. On January 16th, I received the following email:

Dear Steven,

We are happy to inform you that you have been selected as the AFR-02 ANSA/NASTAD Fellow for the 2009-2011 class of Mickey Leland International Hunger Fellows! The CHC staff, ANSA, NASTAD and Ikamva Labantu are impressed with your motivation and qualifications for the position. Moreover, we believe you will be a valuable addition to the upcoming class of Fellows.

Please notify us by Friday, January 23 if you are willing to accept this Fellowship placement. We of course would be happy to answer any specific questions that you may have about the Leland Fellowship as you make your decision.

Thank you for your interest in our program, and congratulations!

That's right, I'm going back to South Africa! I will be leaving Benin in late June - whether by COS or ET I don't yet know - and I will be in Cape Town by August. World Cup 2010, here we come!!!

For information on the Congressional Hunger Center click here. For information about my specific fellowship placement, click here.

The following was written on November 16, 2008:

Sorry it’s been a while since I posted. Once you’ve read this, the reasons should become clear. Obviously, I am using this blog as basically a substitute for a journal. If, as a result, I end up subjecting you to the random crap that goes on in my head... well, I hope you enjoy some of it.

One of my PCMI cohorts recently referred to Peace Corps life as simply, “the roller coaster” which is a pretty apt description. [Shout out to Abby! Keep up the good work. I know it gets tough, but it sounds like you’ve got some pretty good folks there who support and care about you. I’m sending only my best thoughts to you from Benin!] My particular instantiation of the roller coaster has been pretty active lately, to say the least.

As I think I’ve described previously, I got through the 40th anniversary with flying colors. The video project finally came together and was a huge success. I got a lot of very positive feedback from PCVs, from staff, even from the Regional Director, who insisted on getting a copy before he flew back to DC. It was even broadcast on Beninese state television, courtesy of the good folks at the US Embassy. Now we’re negotiating with PCHQ (some controversy over the copyright on the music I used for the video) about putting it up on YouTube. Ah, my 15 minutes…

Following the anniversary, work started to really pick up. There were a series of public information meetings to promote CAMeC and the work we do to the business and legal communities around the country. The first two were here in Cotonou and in Porto Novo, the capital. We drew large crowds and the exchange was really productive. Everybody was quite happy with the results. Then, my homologue and another staff member took the show on the road in the southern part of the country while I got to attend “life skills” training.

Three days of my life that I’ll never get back.

The program was designed to include PCVs and a host country work partner who would attend together and learn how to teach life skills related to reproductive health and HIV/AIDS. This is great for health volunteers, and maybe even for environment and TEFL volunteers. But for small enterprise volunteers, especially for those working at the level I’m working at, it’s pretty much a waste of time. (And that’s notwithstanding the fact that I could have TAUGHT most of what was presented.) But because this training was funded by a grant, and the grant was dependent on a certain number of people attending, no one was allowed to miss it. And all the while I could have been executing the marketing plan I submitted to CAMeC back in January! So, by the end of the week my enthusiasm for all things Peace Corps was at a low ebb…

Then things really went to shit.

We were supposed to continue the road show in the north of Benin the week after Life Skills. We were leaving on Sunday. Friday morning I got a text message from my homologue saying (I thought) that there was a meeting at MCA at noon. Well this was around 11:00am and I was still in Porto Novo so I couldn’t make it. Later that night (around 9:30) I got another text saying my homologue was unable to get me per diem and could I cover the cost of the trip and then be reimbursed. There was no way I could come up with enough money on such short notice. So after several more exchanges of texts, including one sequence where I told her how upset I was for the short notice and saying I felt disrespected, it was finally decided I would not go on the tour. She left as scheduled on Sunday morning.

One small problem…the initial message wasn’t telling me to go to a meeting, it was telling me to go to MCA for my “frais de mission.” What is that, you might reasonably ask? That’s my per diem. Obviously, I only discovered this after the fact. But thus, everything that happened after the first message was a result of me misinterpreting her messages in light of what I (mistakenly) thought was going on. Needless to say, I felt like a complete asshole…AND I ended up not going on this tour that we’ve been planning for four months.

To quote a line from Bill Murray, “And then...depression set in.” I wrote the following the next day…

Among the cardinal rules in life, right up there with, “Never get involved in a land war in Asia” and “Don’t bullshit a bullshitter” are the following: 1) Never go grocery shopping when you’re hungry and, 2) Never sit down to write when you’re depressed. Why? For approximately the same reason in both cases; you invariably end up with more than you bargained for. On va voir…

One of the most amazing things about this journey I’ve been on for the last few years has been the absolute certainty that I’ve been on the right path. As I have described [previously], I have carried this sense with me; not like I-have-analyzed-this-thoroughly-and concluded-that, but more as a part of the fiber of my being. No doubts, no hesitation, no detours, u-turns or dead ends. I’ve been living a Yogi Berra-ism, “When you get to a fork in the road, take it,” I have been, and every time it’s been the right one. It has been a source of enormous strength and reassurance for me for going on five years now.

Not anymore.

I have lost my way. Like Hansel and Gretel, I look around me only to find that someone has eaten all the bread crumbs. All of the bright positive signals the universe had been so kindly providing have disappeared, replaced by…nothing. I don’t want to sound too melodramatic, but it really is quite profound. An accumulation of circumstances and events over the course of the last few months has left me bereft. My purpose for being here has been lost. My sense of my place in the world has been displaced. My confidence is in tatters. And the way forward looks very much like the slippery slope into the abyss. I am consumed with a deep and abiding sense of disillusionment which admits very little in the way of hope or optimism. I am, in a word, lost.

The one thing I am still fairly certain of is that quitting is not the answer. There is still work to be done here, even if I may not be the right person to do it. I have a plane ticket to Seattle leaving in a little over a month, which should give me an opportunity to gain some perspective. I need to decide whether to finish my degree program, and if so, why? And either way…then what?

What do the Germans call it? “Sturm und Drang?” Yup. That was about two weeks ago. Since then, I’ve gotten much better…maybe I’m bipolar… Anyway, I sat down with my APCD and explained what had happened and he was incredibly supportive. He tried very hard to get me to believe that “things like this happen all the time.” [He told me a little story that only really makes sense if you know French. It seems a couple of PCVs went to a restaurant and wanted to order bread. But they got the article wrong – instead of “le” they used “la.” So instead of bread they ended up with rabbit! (bread = le pain, rabbit = lapine)] He and I went to speak to my homologue together and she was very understanding. There seem to be no hard feelings and we are back to working well together, thank heavens.

With that resolved I followed some very good advice and went back to the beginning, trying to rediscover why I had embarked on this journey in the first place. One of the things I realized was that my descent into lostedness pretty much coincided with my starting to try to figure out what comes after Peace Corps. But it wasn’t that, per se, that was the problem.

The problem was that all my planning revolved around the idea that it was time to do for me now, instead of for others. As soon as I started caring more about what I could get out of this experience, and how I was going to turn it to my advantage (i.e., “good” job, better paycheck, more credibility or perks or whatever) that’s when the universe turned off the lights. Instead of being concerned with, as I have written before, “Bringing more of the world’s advantages to more of the world’s people” I was trying to see how I could bring more of the world’s advantages to ME! And basically the universe said, “Oh yeah? Fine. If you’re gonna be like that, you’re on your own.” Okay. Message received and understood.

So, in restarting the process of figuring out what comes next I went looking, first and foremost, for ways to continue to serve the greater good while, hopefully, also improving my circumstances and my future prospects. It certainly helped that this also coincided with election night, which dramatically improved my outlook on a host of things, Peace Corps included. (Yeah! I get to come home after my service is over!) Anyway, I’ve found some promising opportunities, several of which I am actively pursuing.

In particular, I have decided to apply for the Mickey Leland International Hunger Fellowship. It’s a two-year program through the Congressional Hunger Center that puts fellows into the field for a year and then at an organizational HQ doing policy work for the second year. If I get it, training starts in mid-July and field work starts in August (in either Uganda or CAPE TOWN!). Yes, that puts the Masters degree on hold. But, since the point of the Masters degree is to be able to actually work in international development, I figure doing that sort of trumps the degree.

But that’s getting well ahead of ourselves at this point. Because, the PC roller coaster has taken another very interesting turn just this past Friday.

By way of background, PC has three work stations around Benin, in three of the larger cities in the north of the country. These are buildings PC provides for volunteers to work, to sleep, to rest over as they are traveling around the country and also to gather in the event of an emergency. They have kitchens, sleeping quarters, TV/VCR/DVD, computers w/ internet access...basically all the comforts of "home" as far as those are available in Benin. Each of these has a PCVL (Peace Corps Volunteer Leader) who manages the workstation, hires and pays the guards and other support staff, provides support for the volunteers in each region, and is generally the go-to guy/gal for PCVs who have problems or concerns or complaints for PC staff. These PCVLs are generally volunteers who extend for a 3rd year to accept a PCVL position.

Now, because the PC bureau is down south in Cotonou, it is considered the "southern workstation." However, it doesn't really function like a workstation for many reasons, not the least of which is that there is no southern PCVL. There are also no sleeping quarters at the bureau, except for those in the Medical Unit for PCVs with legit medical problems. Ditto for TV/VCR and kitchen. PCVs who come to Cotonou generally stay in hotels (or with Cotonou PCVs) and if they are on PC business they should get reimbursed - several weeks after the fact. All of this is managed by PC staff and comes out of the PC budget. Despite that, all PCVs - north and south - pay workstation dues...go figure.

So, for quite some time, southern volunteers have been agitating for a southern PCVL who can provide the same kinds of support for southern PCVs as the three existing PCVLs do for northern volunteers. For a host of reasons, including those differences I outlined above, PC Admin has never authorized a PCVL for the south. However...by the end of this year we are going to be moving into a new Bureau that will include volunteers sleeping quarters, kitchen, work area, lounge, etc. that will be in the same compound but in a separate building from the administrative offices. This area will be accessible to volunteers 24/7, unlike the current bureau which has an 8 o'clock curfew.

By now you're probably way ahead of me, but the upshot is that on an interim basis - sort of a proof of concept - I am going to take on the responsibility of the southern PCVL. Lots of details have yet to worked out - including a formal job description. The idea is that we'll do it for a few months and try to measure whether or not having a southern PCVL actually makes a difference in the level of volunteer support - or in the volunteers' perception of how well they are being supported, which is nearly as important. From there, PC will make a final decision about a permanent PCVL in the south.

What impact will this have on me, my work, my degree program, etc.? I have no idea, but those will be active considerations as we hammer out the details over the next few weeks. This all came out of a "Town Hall" meeting the southern PCVs had on Friday morning with the Country Director and the Admin Officer, so it's all brand new territory. The move is currently scheduled to happen while I'm in Seattle, so it should be up and running by the time I get back. As if the culture shock of coming back here isn't going to be enough all by itself...

How’s that for a loop-de-loop?!?

So, this is a video taken by another PCV of me and Ben Fouty (PCVL in Parakou) performing at the All-Volunteer conference Talent Show back in March. We are performing a song entitled C-U-B-A, by Irving Berlin...though not in the original style. (Shout out to the Austin Lounge Lizards!)

One of the hardest things for me to adjust to while living here has been the consequences of failed technology (NOT an unusual occurrence around here). In the States when a computer fails, for example, you just call up tech support and get someone to fix it. To my ongoing frustration, such is not the case here. Thus, the reason why I haven’t written for a while. My computer continues to resist all efforts to revive it (perhaps a new verb is needed: to lazarise, i.e. to bring back from the dead) so I continue to try to make due without much of the essential information of my life. This includes things like my email address book and my resume(s), but also all of my music (all on iTunes) and all of the data for the 40th anniversary video project I was working on. Needless to say, I haven’t been getting a whole lot done lately.

Now mind you, that’s not the only reason I haven’t been working much. As I recall, the last time I wrote I had just returned from working stage in Porto Novo and I was on my way to Grand Popo for the weekend. My friend Jaren’s parent were visiting and she and Steve had planned a vow renewal ceremony for them, which they had asked me to officiate. What a wonderful weekend! Annie and Greg (Jaren’s parents) are great and basically made me feel like one of the family from the get-go. (I think it’s safe to say at this point I am one of the family. I’ve already been invited to Husky tailgate parties and the family 4th of July at Liberty Lake...oh yeah, they're from Washington.)

We stayed in a beautiful little auberge right on the beach, run by a Frenchman named Guy who has lived in Benin for over 20 years. He is the stereotypical French ex-pat: he hates it here but he can’t imagine leaving; he is always “busy” but never too busy to be welcoming and generous with his guests; he is always working on the next scheme to improve his business (he recently bought and refurbished an old train, which he now runs between the auberge in G Po and the one he owns in Dassa); and, of course, he knows everyone and has stories about all of them – which he prefers to tell over a bottle of wine or a glass of whiskey. Quite a character, to say the least.

We held the ceremony on the beach, next to a lonely palm tree. Jaren and Steve had matching outfits made for Annie and Greg from local tissu in their original wedding colors. Jaren walked her mom down the “aisle” (across the sand) as local drummers played in the background. It was really very lovely. Afterwards we retired to the deck, under the umbrellas, for a celebratory dinner, to the accompaniment of more drumming and the sound of waves crashing on the beach. I’m not sure it gets much better than that. We came back to Cotonou the next day to send Greg off to the States and Annie continued on to visit Tchaourrou, where Jaren and Steve are posted.

I spent most of the next week trying to get my computer fixed. I won’t bore you with a litany of all the things I tried (with the help of an IT volunteer), but suffice it to say none of them worked.

It was the following weekend that I started to feel sick; fever, aches, alternating sweats and chills – all the classic symptoms of malaria. So I began a course of anti-malaria drugs (Coartem for you doctors out there). Only problem is, I had 3 malaria tests come back negative! The only thing worse than being really sick and not knowing what you have is being 8,000 miles from home and not having anyone to take care of you. Now, of course, the doctors took care of me, but only in the barest clinical sense. What I would have given for a bowl of hot chicken soup and some saltines...!

After about five days I started to feel better. But then a rash of little red spots started showing up all over my body and the next day the fever was back (though milder). So the doctors took more blood (and various other samples) and ran a multitude of tests. As of this writing, I still have no idea what was wrong with me. Actually, that's not true. I have a pretty good idea what I had, I just have no clinical confirmation. (Again, for you medical types, I'm pretty sure I had Dengue Fever. The symptoms match pretty well.) That notwithstanding, I seem to have fully recovered; both the fever and the rash are history. I have returned to my “work,” such as it is, and life is more or less back to normal.

***GREAT NEWS ALERT*** Within the last few hours I have finally – FINALLY!!! – managed to rescue the 40th anniversary video data from my hard drive, so I should be able to finish it in time for the big celebration on September 5th. (For you techies in the audience, I was able to boot my laptop using a bootable linux disk – Ubuntu – and get to my hard drive through a Windows-like shell. Then copied the files to an external drive and voila!) The computer is still not operational, strictly speaking, but at least I have access to my data. When my new hard drive gets here, then the real fun begins. I get to try to “lasarize” my laptop! Wish me luck. ***

OK, gotta go. Next big thing is the 40th anniversary celebration. We're having a big ceremony here in Cotonou, with speeches, booths, and the swearing-in of the new volunteers. The PC Regional Director for Africa is coming from Washington. He and President Yayi Boni are supposed to sign a new Memorandum of Understanding. (Our current MOU was signed by the government of Dahomey!) Finally, if everything works out, the president of Benin is going to host a banquet for all PCVs and PC staff that night. I'll believe it when I see it...

Tuesday, 15 July 2008

A lot has happened since my last post. The final weekend in June a bunch of volunteers organized Pork Fest (aka Pork-a-palooza). We all got together in Parakou and chowed down on a couple of pigs. (A few adult beverages might also have been consumed.) We had pork of some kind for every meal: breakfast sausage, pulled pork sandwiches, hand-made bratwurst (yes, we cleaned the intestines, ground the meat and stuffed them ourselves), and - of course - a whole roast pig. A fine feast was had by all. And it was a nice way to let loose before the next major event - the arrival of the new stagiaires!

They arrived on the Fourth of July and were greeted at the airport with great enthusiasm. We spent a few days in Cotonou, staying at a monastery just outside the city. The new trainees got their initial briefings, medical checks, immunizations, language evaluations...etc. And, of course, their first taste of "Peace Corps life", i.e., bucket showers, latrines, waiting, bush taxis, zemidjans, pate, waiting, nescafe, bureaucracy...did I mention waiting? They are a great group and I think most of them will still be around for swear-in. Of course there will be some who decide that either Peace Corps or Benin is not right for them (there have already been a couple) and I have to respect them for having the courage to make that decision and stick to it. There is nothing noble about being miserable for no reason.

After Cotonou, we all picked up and headed for Porto Novo where they met their host families for the first time. During stage, all of the trainees live with Beninese families so they can learn about the language, culture and customs first-hand. This group is pretty spoiled, however, because most of them are living with very well-to-do families. Almost all of them have electricity 24/7, indoor plumbing (toilets and showers), tile floors, blah, blah, blah. (OK, so I'm a little jealous, but can you really blame me?) They are in for a bit of a rude awakening when they get to post, I'm afraid. In Porto Novo they've gotten their first technical, cross-cultural and language sessions, initial bike training, more shots and of course more waiting.

Sadly, while in Porto Novo my computer finally died. I got one BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) on Friday and by Sunday I had a "Hard Disk Failure Imminent" warning whenever I booted. I am trying to get a new hard drive ASAP because, of course, I haven't backed up any of my data. C'est la vie.

At the moment I am in Cotonou. When I arrived last night I found out that the maman in my concession had passed away over the weekend. So there was music blaring away until 3am that started up again this morning at seven. Needless to say I got very little sleep last night. Now I'm headed for the beach at Grand Popo. My friends Steve and Jaren Schwartz are there with Jaren's parents, who are visiting from la bas. They (her parents) have renewed their wedding vows every few years in different parts of the world, so Steve and Jaren have put together a vow renewal ceremony for them out in Grand Popo. And they have asked me to officiate the ceremony! The best part is that her parents don't know about it yet! They are actually going to get invitations to their own ceremony. Steve and Jaren have arranged local musicians and dancers to perform for the ceremony...it should be very cool.

After that it's back to work and sleeping in my own bed...for a change.

I’ve decided that it takes too much work to try to remember everything I want to share when I only send out big, infrequent updates. So…here is (what I hope will be) the first of many smaller, more frequent updates. Salut!

It is the middle of the rainy season here in Benin. Rain here doesn’t fuck around, either. Back home we get stretches of days on end when “it rains.” Usually that means there has been some minuscule, yet measurable, amount of precipitation. Not here. No, in Benin we had a two week stretch that just ended yesterday, when we had a good 2-3 inches of rain every day…every day for two weeks! Needless to say, the drainage system – such as it is – was massively overwhelmed. The roads around my house have up to a foot of standing water. And the best part, the drain behind my house got clogged with leaves and I had an inch of water in my bedroom and bathroom. Yippee!!! There is also paint flaking off of my bedroom ceiling in huge patches and the walls are all clearly soaked from the inside out; huge areas of dark sogginess are everywhere. Even the front door has expanded from the wetness to the point where I have to use my shoulder to get it open or closed. I think we must have arrived after the worst of last year’s rainy season, because I don’t remember it being anything like this when we got here.

The flip side of the rainy season is that it is also pineapple season…mmmmmmmm. Ginormous, yellow-orange, spiky footballs of deliciousness. Women walk around all over Cotonou with platters of whole, fresh pineapples on their heads. For 100f (about $0.25) they’ll peel one, slice it up and give it to you in a bag with toothpicks to make it easier to eat. THE perfect snack or dessert. Canned pineapple…never again.

A couple of stories from the “Cultural Adjustment Never Ends” file:

Was having lunch at a café not far from the bureau yesterday. It’s called Chez Tony and it serves what I think of as Lebanese comfort food: felafel, schwarma sandwiches, hommous, babaganouje and my personal favorite – sheesh taouk. (For those of you who know how much I love the sheesh taouk at The Mediterranean Kitchen in Seattle, this is nothing like that. But it’s still delicious. I digress.) Anyway, sitting there having lunch in the outdoor seating area and I felt something rub up against my leg under the table. When I looked down and saw a brown, furry thing I figured it was a small dog that wandered in from the street. But when it came out from under my chair it turned out to be a kid. NO! Not a child, a baby goat! C’est l’Afrique! (We actually have a little game we sometimes play here. We try to guess whether the screams we are hearing are coming from a child or a goat. They sound remarkably similar.)

And from the category of, “You ain’t all that enlightened, dude” comes the following incident:

I was buying grilled chicken from a street vendor near my house the other night. I do this a couple of times a week, so I know which ones are safe and which will leave me regretting it later on. Anyway, while I was waiting for my chicken a guy approached me and said that he had just arrived from Ghana and hadn’t found work yet and could I give him some money so he could get something to eat. As you might imagine, something like this happens frequently here in Benin – one of the ten poorest countries on Earth. I determined very early on that the only way for me to deal with these situations without going rapidly broke or crazy was to politely and consistently decline. So I said, “Sorry, I can’t give you any money.”

He asked again for money and I said, “I can’t give you any money, but if you want food you can have some chicken.”

He told me he needed money for him and his family, so I said, “Okay. Sorry, then. Good Luck.” And I left with my chicken.

As I said, this is a fairly common occurrence. I have long since gotten over any feelings of guilt I had about not being able to help every single person who asks. But as I was walking home I realized I was feeling guilty. WTF? Why, after months of routinely being confronted with the same situation, was I suddenly feeling guilty about this one?

I thought maybe it was because I was buying food at the time, but I offered him food and he didn’t take it. Then I thought maybe because he mentioned his family, but I’ve actually been waylaid by mothers with children in-tow, so that wasn’t it either. It wasn’t until I got back to the house that I realized what it was. He was from Ghana…so this entire exchange occurred in English. Unlike most other times when I can dismiss the situation with a quick, “Ce n’est pas possible.” or the somewhat more deceptive but always effective, “A la prochaine.” (basically, “I’ll get you next time.”) this guy engaged me in my own language. Something about the fact that we were speaking English made it seem worse when I had to refuse his request. Why? The only thing I can come up with is that by speaking English he seemed more like me; there was less distance between us – he was less ètranger – and so it was harder. ♫ We are the world…♫ My ass!

So…a couple big things coming up. Next Friday, July 4th, there will be a big shindig at the Ambassador’s house to celebrate Independence Day. Then, after the festivities it’s off to the airport to greet the next batch of volunteers. There are 65 in total, including 12 SED and 3 ICT volunteers who I will be working with for the first week of training. Should be fun!

Then, toward the end of July we are going to execute the first step in the Marketing plan for CAMeC; a series of public information meetings all around the country to promote the use of arbitration and mediation as a way to resolve commercial disputes. We will have at least one stop in each of the 12 departments (basically, provinces) of Benin. It should last from 2-3 weeks and I’ll get to see most of the country in the process. More details as they become available.

This last month or so has been a challenging time for me, both physically and emotionally. In my last post I mentioned having strained a muscle in my side…well, it turns out that’s not what it was at all. After a week or so of the pain getting worse instead of better I went to see the PC Medical Officer (PCMO). He poked and prodded and asked lots of questions and came to the same conclusion I had already come to after consulting the Internet (aka, the oracle of all human truth) – that is, it might be a gall stone. So he sent me off to get an ultrasound and, sure enough, there was about a 2cm stone in my gall bladder. Yikes!

So, back to the PCMO who ran a bunch of more tests to try to eliminate every other possible cause of the pain. In the meantime, he got in touch with the Regional Medical Officer to discuss possible treatment options. As we were discussing these possibilities, including being MedEvac’d to either Senegal or the US for surgery, I developed a lovely case of shingles. This was bad on many levels. First, it put any treatment for the gall stone on hold, because it is caused by a virus (the chicken pox virus, actually), so nothing more could be done until the rash was entirely dissipated. Second, of course, is the fact that shingles are really painful…no REALLY painful! Like codeine-before-bed-so-you-can-get-to-sleep painful. No shit. And the kicker is that the pain from shingles can manifest up to a week before the rash appears, which meant that it was entirely possible that the pain I initially went in for was caused NOT by the gall stone but by the shingles, and the ultrasound had simply revealed an asymptomatic stone that was just hanging around in my gall bladder minding its own business.

All of which adds up to the fact that there was nothing to do but wait, endure the pain (!!!), and see if the pain was still around after the shingles went away. The good news, I guess, is that once the shingles passed, the pain went with them. Which on the one hand means no surgery (yeah!), but on the other means no free trip home or to Dakar (boo!). So I think that one comes up a wash.

While I was spending most of the week with the PCMO, my counterpart was in Burkina Faso at in international conference on arbitration. Apparently, because we were both away, MCA took that opportunity to move us into our new office space. This should be good news. We’ve been waiting for this since I got here. It’s one of the reasons the business plan was such a priority; we couldn’t move until the funds were disbursed, which couldn’t happen until the business plan was approved. Unfortunately, the building where our new space is located is brand new…or more accurately, unfinished. There is power, but there are no phone lines, no Internet connection, and no AC. There is also almost no furniture; just the few pieces that came over from the old office. So now we are in place in a huge new space with almost nowhere to work and almost no way to do work. Needless to say, I’ve been spending a lot of time at the PC bureau.

One recent weekend was the first time since I got here that I actively wished I could have been at home. The Northwest Chamber Chorus just celebrated its 40th anniversary. The mayor actually proclaimed a Northwest Chamber Chorus Day in the city of Seattle. My mom has been singing with the chorus for all 40 of those years. The Chamber Chorus has been a part of my life for almost as long as I can remember. Of course, I didn’t always appreciate it as much as I have come to in my adult years. There were times, admittedly, when I hated Monday nights because mother was always in a hurry to get out the door to rehearsal. But I also have very fond, if somewhat sketchy, memories of singing with the chorus when I was a young boy. I remember in particular singing “Food, Glorious Food” in the sanctuary at University Unitarian Church. (This may have been with the church choir, I’m not entirely certain.) These days, it’s not really Christmas-time until I’ve heard the NWCC version of A Child’s Christmas in Wales – preferably in a live concert. And, of course, I have very clear and wonderful memories of going with the Chorus on their tour to France and Italy back in 2000 (was it really that long ago?) and being able to join in the warmth and camaraderie that have sustained their 40-year tradition. What a marvelous experience and what a great group of people to have it with! I am sad that I wasn’t able to be there to hear the anniversary concert and to help my mom and my friends in the Chorus celebrate this wonderful milestone. Birthdays and holidays come around every year, but something like this that only happens once makes me realize that life la bas really does go on without me.

All of this stuff has me, really for the first time in my life, confronting the fact that I’m getting older (NOT old, just older). I am closer to the next big round number than I am to the last one, and that next one is a big one. I’m effectively embarking on what could fairly be described as my third career. A big part of me feels like I’ve been all these places and seen and done all these things and yet I don’t have a lot to show for it. But if you were to ask me what more I would want I’m not sure I could give you an answer. C’est la vie?

And seemingly in the blink of an eye another month has passed. I think it was Marx who said, “Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.” (If you’re having trouble locating that reference in your copy of The Communist Manifesto, look under: Marx, Groucho.) Mother’s Day and Father’s Day have slipped by (not unnoticed – I love you and miss you both) and the 4th of July is rapidly approaching.

Speaking of the 4th of July, it is going to be a HUGE day for PC-Benin because the next group of trainees arrives in Cotonou that day. Yes, 65 more poor misguided souls have decided to give up their comfy little lives to spend two years in our little corner of Hell. (Mostly kidding!) Preparations are well underway for their arrival; a load of new mattresses (beware!) arrived at the bureau the other day, water bottles and gas bottles are blocking multiple passageways around here, and there are probably a hundred bicycles in various states of repair out in the courtyard. Stage will be held in and around Porto Novo this year, which should make the logistics a lot easier. I will be working as a trainer for the first week so I get to initiate the newbies into PC life and life here in Benin. Last year’s trainers did a great job of making us feel welcome and bringing us up to speed on la vie du Benin, so we have a lot to live up to. I have also recently been selected as co-coordinator for the Peer Support Network, a group of volunteers who are trained to provide confidential support and counseling to PCVs who need it. So, I will be visiting the stagiaires occasionally throughout their training to make sure all is well and to give them ideas for things they can do to ease their adjustment and better deal with culture shock.

I guess that’s about all the news for now. Keep those cards and letters coming.

Sitting here safe inside my office while a heck of a storm blows around outside. It looks a little like those pictures you see on CNN of the approaching hurricane; lots of wind, sideways rain and a few brave or foolish souls running for what appears to be their lives. Litter and loose objects clattering down the street headed G_d knows where. It’s really quite intense. I guess I won’t be going out for a while.

Many aspects of Western culture have found their way to West Africa and been fully embraced here in Benin. Hip-hop is HUGE here. There are even indigenous rappers who get massive play on Beninese radio. (…at full volume, at all hours of the night. I’m not sayin’; I’m just sayin’…) Cell phones, obviously. Most of Africa is just blowing right past the land line infrastructure, which is time consuming and expensive, and going straight to building cell towers. And, I might add, their pricing and service are much easier and more progressive. You buy a phone, then you buy a SIM card for whatever network you want (more often than not, several) and install it in your phone. Then you purchase credit for that network and load it on the SIM card and its good for TWO YEARS!!!!! No predatory, penalty-laden contracts like we have in the States. And the sale of “recharge” cards is an enormous part of the informal economy here. The cell companies allow you to purchase them in bulk at a discount, so there are 2-6 people at every major intersection in Cotonou selling credit for whatever network you might need.

[Just looked outside again and it now looks much more like the hurricane has arrived. Ten times more rain, the wind has probably doubled, huge fronds blowing off the palms outside…I just had to get up and put a chair in front of the door because the wind had blown it open. Big fun!]

Street vendors are a ubiquitous feature of life in Cotonou, by the way. The array of goods that it is possible to buy on a random Cotonou street corner is truly astounding. I think I mentioned before that the typical Beninese gas station is a table on the side of the road covered with recycled bottles and jugs full of smuggled Nigerian gasoline. But, I’ve also seen blenders, alarms clocks, wall clocks, watches, purses, belts, shoes, luggage, stereos, DVD players, guitars, mattresses and even small appliances. You gotta see it to believe it.

Speaking of mattresses…one aspect of Western society that has yet to reach this (…not exactly G_d forsaken, but at least divinely neglected) part of the world is modern mattress technology. I have three beds in my house (not counting the fold-away cot). None of them has a spring mattress. There are mattress stores all over Cotonou. None of THEM has a spring mattress. They are non-existent here. Mattresses in Benin consist of nothing more than foam (of widely variable thickness, density and quality) surrounded by fabric. Regardless of the various qualities of the foam, none of these mattresses are terribly durable or long lasting. The big double mattress on my bed has a very distinct valley in the middle from having been slept on for seven months. It has gotten to the point where it is self-exacerbating, because regardless of how hard I try to sleep nearer the edge where the good foam is, as soon as I fall asleep (and thus relax) I roll down into the valley for the rest of the night.

Writing that now it sounds almost comical, but I assure you it’s not. A few nights ago I was attempting to find a comfortable position on the limp tortilla that passes for a mattress on one of the guest beds and I managed to pull an oblique muscle in my rib cage. Any of you who have had such an injury know how much it sucks. If you haven’t, it is easily the most inconveniencing injury I’ve ever had (and I’ve had quite a few in my day). It is nearly impossible to carry on a normal daily life without using your oblique muscles almost constantly. This, of course, prompts one to try to compensate for the lack of regular mobility, so that now my whole trunk – from my neck to my ass – is out of whack. So from trying to get comfortable, I now wake up with a sharp pain SOMEWHERE every time I even move in my sleep.

Anybody got a spare mattress?

I’ve been enjoying very much having a refrigerator. I had no idea the heights of rapture that could result from a simple bowl of Jell-o. Never again will I doubt Bill Cosby.

A new side project has come my way since our All-Vol conference. During the conference we viewed a video that was made to commemorate the 45th Anniversary of PC in Togo. It turns out this year is the 40th anniversary of PC-Benin and our Country Director wants to make something similar to show at the big fete. So I have volunteered to take the lead on this little project. I get to go through 1,000s of photos and slides, as well as a couple boxes of video tapes, and try to distill the history and experiences of PC-Benin over the last 40 years; all in under 10 minutes. Should be fun!

It has lately become clear to me that PC is not primarily a development organization. Now this may have been obvious to many of my cohorts (and to many of you for all I know) before we left, but it was not to me. I came here believing that my primary purpose was to improve the lives of the Beninese people. Now mind you, if I can actually do that…so much the better. But the real reason we are here is to appear to be making the lives of the people better. We are really nothing more than poorly paid goodwill ambassadors for the good ol’ U. S. of A. As long as we can live within the culture and make it look like our intentions are good (which, don’t get me wrong, they are for the vast majority) then we have done our jobs well. Honestly, anything we accomplish beyond that is gravy. This realization has taken a lot of the pressure off of me to “accomplish something.” It has also made me want even more to go to work for an actual development organization once my degree is finished; if only to see what that would look like.

On that subject, some things to consider: I will probably take the Foreign Service exam in November, either at the embassy here or in Abidjan. Why? Because there are FS positions with USAid that I will qualify for once I have my MPA. Now, this depends entirely on who wins the election in November, but it’s a possibility. Equally dependant upon that outcome is the possibility of applying for a Presidential Management Fellowship. A PMF would most likely put me in DC, working for a similar agency, USAid, Millennium Challenge, State Dept., USDA, etc. There is also a small possibility that I could get an overseas appointment as a PMF. Also, anyone who knows or has connections to anyone in the international development arena, please mention that you know a PCV who will be coming home to complete an MPA next year – I need all the contacts I can make. Finally, from perusing various web sites that aggregate job listings in this area it seems quite likely that I may end up working in a post- (or even an active) conflict area at some point in the not-too-distant future. Ethiopia, Sudan, Angola, East Timor, Somalia, even Afghanistan and Iraq all figure prominently in the development world right now. This is by no means a certainty, but I mention it mostly to make the possibility explicit so I can mentally prepare for it. C’est la vie…

April 14, 2008

Please forgive the (latest) loooong delay between my updates. It has been a difficult few weeks for me here and I didn’t want to just vent my frustrations at everyone. That being said, it has by no means been “all bad” and I have no intention of leaving early as have some of my erstwhile colleagues. I am beginning to make plans for my Masters Degree project and am actively looking for ways to become more engaged in my (or some other) community. As with all things, PC is what you make of it and I am determined to make something I can be proud of when all is said and done. So…

Many of you have enquired as to what my daily routine is like. Oddly, it isn’t very different from many of you…for better or worse. Unlike “normal” PCVs who live and work primarily in small towns and villages far from Western amenities, I work in an office in Cotonou, with AC and internet. I work a normal “9-to-5” work week, although with a tad more flexibility than most of you probably have. I’m working on the marketing aspects of our little operation right now, so I spend time making contacts with press, business groups, gov’t officials, etc. – anyone who is in a position to help us get the word out. I spend what seems like an inordinate amount of time in meetings – many/most of which are frustrating on multiple levels. Often my French ability (STILL) proves to be inadequate for me to understand much of what is being discussed. Often, even when it is clear, we end up discussing (i.e., arguing over) trivialities. (An hour and twenty minutes deciding whether or not to offer a cocktail at our opening reception; I kid you not!)

I proposed a Marketing Plan for CAMeC back in December (I think) and a major source of my frustration is that it has yet to be addressed in any meaningful way. We’ve had one meeting about it in which we spent an hour and a half wordsmithing the first page. No one appears to want (or maybe to be ready) to discuss the substance of the proposals. One potentially interesting idea in the proposal is to create a radio serial with a lawyer/barrister as the protagonist. Each week he handles a new case and shepards it through the arbitration/mediation process, all to the satisfaction of both parties. Programs like this have been effective in other parts of Africa regarding other issues (HIV/AIDS, female genital cutting, domestic violence). We’ll have to see if it works for us or if we can even afford it, as I have no idea how much it would cost to produce here; especially since we would probably need to produce it in at least six languages (French, Fon, Yoruba, Bariba, Dendi and Adja)

Such are the pitfalls of having the least PC-like job in all of PC. Having a “real job,” I keep expecting things to happen at the pace of a real job in the USA. Such is distinctly NOT the case here. I don’t know if they just don’t yet understand that a deadline is actually a deadline, or if they just think that “somehow” the work will magically get done, or if they think the money will keep coming whether or not anything gets done…I just don’t know. And I don’t have any authority to act on my own. I can give them advice, I can cajole them, I can make suggestions – often very pointed ones – but I can’t actually DO any of the real work. I had a chance to have lunch with the Country Director for Millennium Challenge and her deputy on Friday and we’re going to stay in contact and see how things develop.

While all of that has been building, I have not been sitting still, however. I recently traveled all the way up to the Nigerien (not Nigerian) border to a town called Malanville, where another PCV had asked me to help with her women’s group. She is teaching them to make things like handbags and coin purses out of recycled plastic bags (there are A LOT of them in Benin). So she asked me to come up and talk to them about how to sell the stuff she is teaching them to make. For almost a week I got a taste of what “real” PCVs do on a daily basis. It was very eye-opening. Malanville is the farthest north PCV in Benin – and it’s f’ing HOT there. I think one day it only got to 98 degrees, every other day was over 100. THIS is why everyone goes inside and closes their doors between 12:30 and 3:00pm every day. You would die of dehydration otherwise. We spent one entire day at the only nice hotel in town, lounging by the pool and sipping the occasional beverage. Ultimately, we did a little work, had a lot of fun, and generally just enjoyed being out of Cotonou for a week. Everything up there is very different, from the weather to the landscape, to the people, to the food. It was a nice change.

Then the last weekend in March was our All-Volunteer conference. All the Benin PCVs got together at a nice hotel here in Cotonou for three days of workshops and drinking…um, I mean…training. The hotel has a pool, HOT showers (nobody in PC has a water heater) Wi-Fi in the rooms, a great restaurant and bar (DRAFT beer) with a patio that overlooks the lagoon…very nice place. It was a lot of fun – and surprisingly relevant. We had a general venting session called “Rumor Busters” where everyone had a chance to voice whatever rumors they had been hearing and got more or less frank answers from PC Admin. We had sessions on what is or is not working with PC Benin and got the opportunity to suggest our own solutions. And we had lots of sector-specific sessions where we got to share experiences and compare notes with the other PCVs in our sector. That was actually the least valuable for me, since I’m doing the least PC-like job in PC. Not much to “compare” to, I’m afraid. Of course, when we weren’t in session we were hanging out by the pool, drinking cold draft beer and eating pizza. ;-)

One of the highlights of All-Vol is the annual talent show (and date auction). Yes, I performed in the talent show. My friend Ben and I did a duet of an Irving Berlin tune, C-U-B-A (shout out to the Austin Lounge Lizards). Someone got it on video, so as soon as I get it I’ll post it here. We were a big hit, though we didn’t “win” on account of we had to go first and the judges had to leave room in their scores for the later acts. (Sour grapes, anyone?) The date auction (think, Bill Murray and Chris Elliot in Groundhog Day) is a strictly unofficial event organized by Benin PCVs to supplement the funds raised by the other big highlight of the weekend, the GAD Dinner and Auction.

GAD is the Gender and Development project, specifically intended to ensure that women and girls are accounted for in our efforts to assist the people of Benin. GAD funds a myriad of small projects throughout the country throughout the year and is almost entirely funded by the proceeds from the annual auction(s). All the PCVs have really amazing outfits made and let me tell ya, we clean up pretty good. Most of the ex-pat community in Cotonou is invited and they spend lots of money on lots of stuff to help support GAD. A grand time was had by all. I did my part as well, replacing my poor dead iPod with a brand new iPod Shuffle that was kindly donated by the nice folks at Apple. I also bought a basket of chocolate that somehow had two small boxes of Frangos!!!! in it. They were little boxes of four mints each and they managed to make it all the way here without melting…don’t ask me how.

Luckily, the remaining chocolate hasn’t melted yet because I recently got a REFRIGERATOR! (Full-size with a freezer!) Yes, folks, it’s hardly like Africa at all now that I can make ice, buy butter and store leftovers. Admittedly it cost me a bit of money, but I expect to more than pay for it over the next 18 months as I can now keep food fresh for more than 48 hours at a time. I can also buy things like beverages, meat and cheese in bulk quantities for much cheaper than by the meal’s worth. In the last week I have had ham and cheese and grilled cheese sandwiches. I realize that this may seem insignificant to you, but after 9 months of mostly starch this is HUGE! This alone has made an enormous improvement in my overall level of happiness. (Not to mention the cold beer.)

On the flip side, however, I recently had a zemidjahn driver try to mug me on the way home from a restaurant…so you take the bad with the good. I managed to get away unharmed and without loss, so it’s OK. But it didn’t make me feel very “warm and fuzzy.”

I’m getting involved with some side projects here and there. A volunteer who is working with the national parks department is going to put together a Benin tourism website (probably a wiki) and has asked me to be responsible for the section on Cotonou. I’m going to ask Jacques (my APCD) if I can get reimbursed for eating in restaurants and staying in hotels around town as part of my “research” for this project. Wish me luck…

I’m teaching a class on Business Leadership at a Biz Mgmt school here in Cotonou. I’m teaching it in English which is great for me but sometimes tough on the students. The idea is to expose them to a professional level English vocabulary while at the same time teaching them something about leadership. I try not to resort to French unless I really have to. I’m never quite sure if the students are “getting it” or not. But I get the occasional really intelligent question or insightful counter-argument that let’s me know that at least some of them are getting something. I figure that’s the best I can hope for.

Coming up at the end of April is a workshop on how to start and operate a village savings and loan association – basically, a micro-credit program. This should be very interesting, if not terribly applicable to my primary project. But once I’ve been through it, I can take the information to other PCV’s posts – like Meagan up in Malanville – and help them start programs in their villages. Yet another good reason to get the hell out of Cotonou for a while. (Can you tell it’s not my favorite place on Earth?)

And the thing that I think I’m most energized about. There have been a group of three filmmakers in Benin for the last few months working on a documentary about child trafficking. It is a big and much underappreciated problem in Benin. They recently went back to the states to resume their “normal” lives and to edit and complete their film. (For more on their project go to: http://unseenstories.wordpress.com/about/ ) They are going to be returning next summer with a short animated film in multiple languages that they will tour around the country, giving screenings and educating people about the issue. This tour is going to be largely focused around PCVs and their communities and I am helping to organize the tour. At the same time, lots of PCVs are holding independent events highlighting the problem; the first is a rap concert/party in Parakou on May 17th organized by my friend and fellow PCV Jaren Tichy in Tchaorou.

That’s about it from here. Saturday, I’m going to a Passover Seder at the home of our Country Director. That should be interesting. Other than that, I’m reading lots of books and watching lots of movies. I highly recommend Charlie Wilson's War and a novel called Arthur and George, by Julian Barnes.

So yes, I met President Bush yesterday. It was pretty cool, though not as cool as what you might have seen on TV. You see, we weren’t invited to the ceremony with Benin’s President Yayi Boni (that's who I really wanted to meet). We didn’t see President Bush get presented with a sash and a medal, or get to watch the children perform for him…oh, no. We were all in another room, in another part of the airport, waiting two hours while all that stuff took place elsewhere. Members of the embassy staff, Peace Corps staff and volunteers, Fulbright scholars, etc. were all invited to a “meet & greet” AFTER the formal ceremonies took place. Mind you, we didn’t know what we were missing until we saw the news later last night; we just figured he was conferring with Yayi Boni. Ca va…

Still, like I said, it was pretty cool. They had a room set up with a podium, flags, etc. (see photo) in front of a blue curtain. When GWB was done with his other activities, he came over to thank all of us – who, after all, are in Benin representing the United States – for being here, far from home, enduring hardships so that he can brag about how much the US cares about Africa. OK, that might not be exactly what he said, but he did thank us for doing what we’re doing. He talked about the US commitment to Africa, which has been greater under his watch than under any other president in recent memory (i.e., ever). Through programs like PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Program for AIDS Reduction), PMI (President’s Malaria Initiative) and Millennium Challenge, Africa has made enormous strides over the last few years; much of it as a result of aid from the US. Obviously, they aren’t out of the woods, yet. But it’s getting better, and Benin is a prime example of that.

[BTW, as an aside, there are proposals in both houses of Congress right now to reduce the funding levels for the Millennium Challenge Corporation. I know that in the paradigm of beltway insiders, appropriations often become the battleground for partisan politics. There are, however, occasions when such infighting does a concrete disservice to our country and to the world. I believe this is just such an occasion. Reducing the funding levels for MCC would be like cutting off the Republicans’ nose to spite the face of the entire developing world. If this country needs anything right now, it needs initiatives that will restore our standing with the international community. I can tell you from my experience here that MCC is just such a program. Please, encourage your Senators and Congresspersons to support continued FULL funding for Millennium Challenge. It is by far the best thing to come out of the Bush White House and it would be a disgrace if it became the victim of partisan sniping. OK, off my soapbox.]

Back to the presidential visit. I was attired in a traditional Beninese three-piece bumba (see photo) complete with a multi-colored fez. When I say traditional, it is traditional Muslim attire in Benin. As the president reached out to shake my hand, I took his hand and said, “As salaam aleykum, Mr. President.” This is a traditional Arabic greeting that means, “Peace be with you.” This is a very popular greeting in many parts of Benin, and not wholly inappropriate I felt. I had decided to greet him that way to perhaps elicit a moment’s thought from him as he went through the motions of walking the rope line.

His reply, which caught me somewhat off-guard, was, “You must be a Peace Corps volunteer!”

Now right away I’m thinking, “How did he know that? Was it the clothes? The hat maybe? Was it somehow the fact that I spoke to him in a language that isn’t indigenous to either Benin or the United States? What?”

What I said was, “Yes, sir, I am.”

“Do ya love it here?” he asked next.

“Yeah,” I told him, “most of the time. It’s hard. But most of the time I do.”

“Well, thanks for everything yer doin’.” And then he was off to shake the next hand. I must say he seemed very authentic, down-to-earth and approachable; very easy to talk to. I’m sure that’s why he was elected twice. After that I shook hands with and spoke to Mrs. Bush (who asked where I was from) and Condaleeza Rice (who asked what my work was with Peace Corps; we talked briefly about MCC). They ALL made a point to shake hands with and greet every single person in the room, Americans and Beninese alike. When they finished, the president stood for two group photos with us and then they were off to get back on the plane and head for Tanzania. All told I think they spent about three hours in Benin…all at the airport. So..."Bon voyage, Mr. President." Don't let the door hit you on the way out!

First, my apologies for not posting for so long. The holidays, my safari trip, in-service training and a bout of intestinal parasites have all conspired to keep me away from the internet for much longer than I anticipated. I am on the mend and things are on the upswing here in Cotonou. For me, things are settling into a routine, so there is less that seems “exciting” to write about. For you, of course, that is far less apparent; so my silence can be misinterpreted as something more ominous. Rest assured that all is well here and I am OK.

Second, I want to say an ENORMOUS “Thank You!” to everyone for the packages, cards, letters, emails and all the other demonstrations of love and support you sent my way over the holidays. I got some before I began my travels and some didn’t arrive until I returned, but all were received very gratefully. It was difficult to hold onto the spirit of the holidays in the African heat, but it helped to have a copy of “A Child’s Christmas in Wales” to bring it all back. (Thank you, Julie!)

So let me begin with a bit of a travelogue. I left Cotonou on the 22nd of December for my first real trip into Benin. First stop was the village of Tchaourou (CHA-roo) where my new good friends Steve and Jaren are posted. It also happens to be the hometown of the President of Benin, Dr. Thomas Boni Yayi. As a result, Tchaourou is a really nice town. It has facilities that you would expect in a much larger city, including excellent drainage and garbage collection. Steve and Jaren live right on the outskirts, a stone’s throw from the president’s compound. (They actually met him on their first day in town. He was doing a walkabout and saw two white people walking toward him and stopped to greet them.) I spent two very relaxed days there sitting under the mango tree, drinking cold beer and eating grilled meat. Steve had the metal fabrication shop across the road make him an oil drum-sized grill and we christened it very well.

From there I went north to Parakou (PAIR-a-koo), which is the 2nd largest city in Benin. PC has a workstation there and that’s where I spent Christmas. There were a few other volunteers there but not nearly as many as I expected, so it was pretty chill. We made curry and stir-fry and had movie night on the workstation DVD player. The next day I left for Natitingou to meet up with the safari crew. There ended up being eight of us and unfortunately the guide had wrecked his 4x4 a few days earlier. He managed to find a vehicle, but only half the seats were on the outside, so some people had a not-so-clear view. It was still pretty awesome.

Parc Pendjari was not what I expected. I assumed it would be much more developed and commercial than it turned out to be. With the exception of the hotel where we stayed, which itself was fairly basic, the only other structures inside the park were a couple of viewing platforms that had been erected near some watering areas. Those and the roads were the only signs of human presence in the park. For the most part, the wildlife ignored us and went about their normal routines. We saw pretty much everything EXCEPT cats. No lions, no cheetahs but just about everything else: elephants, hippos, buffalos, more antelope (and the like) than you could count, crocodiles, baboons and other primates, a python (sorry, no pics), a tortoise and a ton of amazing birds. Pendjari contains areas of all the different climates and topographies of Benin. There are savannah-like plains, there are more dry desert-like areas, there are areas of tropical vegetation along the northern border (up against the Niger River), so you get both an abundance and a variety of wildlife. It was fascinating to move through all of these areas over the course of a single day. A selection of the best pictures is available at the link below.

http://washington.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2225413&l=1eb76&id=10713384

The highlight of the trip was probably the buffalo stampede. Early on the morning of the second day we headed out toward the river hoping to see buffalos and/or the lions that sometimes feed on them. As we followed the road around a curve in the river there was a herd of at least a hundred buffalo just off the road to our right. We stopped the truck as a few of them looked around and saw us. They weren’t very happy about it. After a few seconds they were all looking our direction and some were moving toward us. Then they started charging toward us and all the others followed. When they were about 20 yards away our guide blew the horn on the truck and they swung away from us and stampeded across the road in front of us, coming to rest again in a field about 50 yards away. I actually have about a minute worth of video from my digital camera of them turning away and running across the road. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to transfer it off of the memory card yet, but I’m working on it.

The other really adventurous part was trying to put eight people into one hotel room. And when I say room what I mean is a large rondavel – a round hut with a conical peaked roof containing one large bed and a sink. Needless to say, several of us got to test out our sleeping pads and air mattresses. But, hey, it was all part of the bonding experience that is Peace Corps.

I spent New Year’s back in Cotonou with a few other volunteers – very low key – and shortly thereafter started feeling ill whenever I ate. This is not all that uncommon around here so I did nothing at first. Cycles of relative wellness and illness lasting a couple of days each became routine as we got into the middle of January. Our in-service training (IST) was scheduled to start on the 21st in Parakou and I had made big plans for a birthday bash in Tchaourou (which is on the way from Cotonou to Parakou) for Saturday the 19th. About 15 PCVs from all over Benin – mostly my stage-mates, but some other folks, too – descended on Tchaourou for grilled meat, wood-fired pizza and much beer. A fine time was had by all. That was also the last day before I got really sick.

I won’t disgust you with the details, but suffice it to say that I had an intestinal parasite that made my life both uncomfortable and difficult. It wasn’t real great for my companions, either. Luckily the PC Medical Officer was in Parakou for the first day of our training and was able to diagnose my malady and arrange for the correct medication before she left town. So now, happily, I am much better now and back to my daily routine which is not much different from that of many of you. I will say more about that in my next update, which will be MUCH sooner than this one – I promise.

Last night there was another amazing thunderstorm here in Cotonou. I know I’ve already sent you one rather colorful description of the storms here, but last night took it to another level entirely. I mean, I haven’t been afraid of thunderstorms for at least 30 years; in fact, I quite enjoy them most of the time. But last night I was actually scared. I think it was because I wasn’t entirely certain if I was safe or not. Back home, even in the wildest storms, if you’re inside you know you’re pretty safe – unless lightning hits the tree next door and it falls on your house. :’-( But last night I wasn’t sure what might happen. In a word, I felt vulnerable. Every day a new experience…

So, life has been interesting the last couple of weeks. First some sad news; another volunteer has left early. This time it was the woman who had become probably my best friend thus far among the PCVs. Happily for her, she found the perfect program at a school in California and they had a January admissions cycle, so she’s headed off to school. Sadly for me, that’s one less person on the dwindling list of people I have to talk to about “stuff.” She was the one who helped me work through my initial crisis of conscience back in September. She’s very perceptive and insightful and I already miss having her to talk to.

In that vein, however, there is a group designed for PCVs to have people to talk to. It’s called the Peer Support Network (PSN). It is a group of volunteers scattered all over the country who have been trained to listen and offer support to other volunteers when they need it. With my training in Compassionate Listening I felt like I could be effective in that role, so I mentioned it to one of our Medical Officers and voila! As it turns out, there is a team coming to West Africa from DC to do PSN training. So starting Monday I’ll be in a two-day training workshop on Peer Support in Peace Corps. I’m really looking forward to it. I think with my previous training and the fact that I am older (and presumably wiser, at least in some ways) than most of these “kids” that I will be able to help folks when they’re feeling stressed or lonely. Hopefully, we can intervene and keep a few more PCVs in Benin instead of wishing them good luck on their way back to the USA.

We had some people visit from Millennium Challenge HQ in DC this past week. It was actually a very productive visit. We were able to demonstrate that there are people here who are working hard and are serious about making CAMeC a success. We did a post-mortem on the whole business plan process, which was very illuminating. Hopefully both we and they can now avoid most of the pitfalls that hindered that process the next time we need to submit documentation. We also started discussing our next steps: hiring, training and marketing. My buddy in Tcharrou, Steve Schwartz (aka “encore Steve”), has extensive experience in Marketing and PR so he came up with a 1-3 year plan intended to: publicize the existence of CAMeC and the services it provides; to develop the market by increasing the formalization of the economy; to get the country talking about the legal system in general and arbitration/mediation in particular; to change the perception of the legal system among foreign companies, investors and the international financial community; and ultimately to make Benin a leader in West Africa in the area of legal and commercial reform. Ambitious? Yes, but not impossible. In fact, if we get only half of those things accomplished Benin will be significantly ahead of most other countries in the region. I’d be happy with that.

As for me, personally, my outward life is going along just fine but I continue to struggle with my conscience. As when I was in South Africa the issue of privilege has come front and center here in Benin. I continue to insist that I am not “rich” when approached for money or “cadeaux” (gifts), but come to understand more everyday that rich is a highly relative concept. I feel like I have barely enough money to live on, and yet it is waaaaaaaaaay more than most Beninese will ever have. Although I have had to economize to be able to afford it, I am going on a “safari” later this month. And although it is to a park right here in Benin, nevertheless most Beninese will probably never have that experience. Now, I could assuage my conscience with the convenient rubric about “contributing to the local economy,” but that feels like a massive cop-out. So I’m not sure where that leaves me.

I talked about some of this stuff – albeit in broken French – with the papa in my concession the other night. He was just hanging out on the stoop in his wheelchair, so I pulled out a chair and hung out with him for a while. So we got around to talking about how I was adjusting and I told him how hard it was to always be seen as the rich white guy. He pointed out, correctly, that the vast majority of Beninese have no experience with white people who are not – in their eyes – extravagantly rich. Add that to the fact that most aid agencies, not to mention individual aid workers, are basically in the business of giving out money and then top it off with the images of America that they get from the f@ck!ng television and OF COURSE they think I have money falling out of my pockets. So one struggle is how to adjust the expectations of the people I encounter without having them think I am just rich but stingy or else lying through my teeth.

The other struggle is with the question of what kind of lifestyle to adopt – not an entirely separate question. I came here expecting to live au village, perhaps without running water or electricity. Now that I live in the largest city in Benin, with most of the Western conveniences I’m accustomed to, there is the temptation – the VERY strong temptation – to try to recreate as much of my former lifestyle as I can. I have air conditioning and internet at work and at the Peace Corps bureau, so I have access to news and media. I have electricity at my home, so I can get a little fridge and I’ll be able to store food. I could just create my only little enclave of pseudo-Americana and live in it for the next two years. Of course part of me screams that that is not what I came here for; that that would not be an “authentic” Peace Corps experience. But when I look at the three goals of Peace Corps, I see #2: “To promote better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served” So do I do that by trying to be “bien integrée” or by living an American lifestyle in full view of my friends and neighbors? I don’t know. But I do know that in the absence of an active direction that inertia has a way of taking over, so I need to figure it out.

Sorry it’s been so long since my last update. Life may be different here and hard to handle sometimes, but it is never dull or empty. There has been a lot going on here, so I’ll try to cover it all.

First is the very good news that the folks in Washington, DC have approved our business plan, albeit grudgingly. The message was basically, “There seems to be a framework here for moving forward, but we’re still not convinced that the folks there really understand the job ahead of them.” Duh. This is all entirely new territory here. It’s a completely different paradigm of development and the people I’m working with here are having to come to grips with an elevated set of expectations that they’ve never dealt with before. That’s why it required multiple drafts and the help of an American volunteer before they got the business plan squared away. Nevertheless, we can now move forward with ourreal work; hiring, training and employing arbitrators and mediators to take some pressure off of the court system. For that opportunity, I am thankful. Stay tuned.

All of that happened while I was in the northern town of Natitingou – Nati, for short – for our Early Service Conference. Where the southern part of Benin is lush and humid and mostly green, the north is more arid and dominated by shades of brown. The area around Nati is especially beautiful, being surrounded by rough hills and river valleys. Mind you, what I call hills pass for mountains here in Benin. None of them are over a couple thousand feet high (the highest point in the country is only 600 meters). But they are very rough and angular, not like the nice rounded slopes of the Cascades and their foothills. And the pace is much more laid back than down south, especially Cotonou. It was a really nice break, for which I am also thankful. The conference itself was…well it was fine, except that because I have the least Peace Corps-like job in all of Peace Corps not much of it applied to me. All the other SED volunteers are working with artisans, or women’s groups, or microfinance institutions – all at the grassroots. Me, I’m dealing with bureaucrats – both here and in Washington – and trying to help plan out a national marketing strategy for the Arbitration Center. It’s great for my Masters program, but light years from the “typical” Peace Corps experience.

I have settled into my house a little more, which feels good and for which I am also thankful. I completely rearranged things so now guests can sleep in the spare room and the bathroom door closes. Then I moved the kitchen inside so I don’t have to traipse out back to check on my dinner. All of which is good because, of course, last week was Thanksgiving. I have spent many Thanksgivings away from family and friends over the years. None of them was like this one, however. I actually hosted Thanksgiving dinner at my home for the very first time. There were five of us, myself and four other volunteers (see photo), and we all pitched in and made dinner. It was a little difficult finding all the necessary ingredients, but we made do. We had turkey wings (the only turkey we could find that wasn’t frozen solid…or still alive), stuffing (thank you mother for Gerry’s recipe), green beans and carrots, fried potatoes with cheese (REAL cheese!) and apple crisp for dessert (see other photo). I even downloaded a football game on Wednesday so we could watch football after dinner – ‘cause that’s what you do on Thanksgiving. Though it sounds very pedestrian, it was really very special. They talk a lot about Peace Corps being a family, and it sure was this week. For that, I give much thanks!

But that was only the half of it. On Saturday, I ventured out to the town of Ketou (K2) where there was “another Thanksgiving dinner that couldn’t be beat” (thank you, Arlo). There were at least 25 people and everyone brought or made something. There are two volunteers serving in Ketou and we needed both stoves to get everything done in time. This time there was a full bird (killed and plucked for the occasion), two kinds of stuffing (I made Gerry’s recipe again and it was even better the second time because I found sage – called ‘herbs de Provence’ here – while I was shopping on Saturday morning.), mashed potatoes and gravy, au gratin potatoes, green beans, green salad, macaroni salad, rolls, and four or five desserts including pumpkin pie, cherry pie, brownies and coconut cake. A good time, and a good meal, was had by all! And many thanks were given.

Now, if that sounds like a typical T-day weekend, think again. Even here in Cotonou, lots of that stuff is pretty hard to find. Real cheese, for instance, is both uncommon and expensive. And don’t even try to find pasteurized milk. Vegetables are plentiful, although somewhat unpredictable. As you might have picked up on, spices are pretty hit-and-miss, too. You can get Nescafe at just about any store, but trying to find ground coffee is damn near impossible. On Thursday we went looking for oats to make the topping for the apple crisp…nada. We ended up using crumbled up butter cookies. (Much better, by the way!) And getting back and forth is always an adventure, especially if you’re going beyond Cotonou. The road from Pobé to Ketou, which was about the last hour of the 3½ hour trip from Cotonou, is not much more than a glorified dirt road. By the time we got there we were covered in a red-brown dust. But after all, what did you expect? …C’est l’Afrique.

Happy Halloween!

I have bad news, good news and great news from the past couple of weeks.

The bad news is that my friend and postmate Andy went home. We call it ET’d, which stands for Early Terminated. Early Termination is a purely personal choice and PC does a great job of supporting people who decide to go home. There is no “penalty”; you don’t get a black mark next to your name in the PC ledger or anything. In fact, it is possible to return to PC later to re-apply after you’ve ET’d – many people do. That being said, I’m disappointed both personally at having lost my nearest fellow PCV and professionally because I don’t really think he made a good faith effort to make it work. I won’t go into details because it wouldn’t be appropriate, and I don’t want to judge because as I said ETing is a very personal decision. But I am disappointed.

The good news – though I am perhaps a little ambivalent about it – is that I now have a house full of furniture. Why? Because when Andy left he gave me all of his. I inherited a dining table with four chairs, another coffee table, an end table and three set of shelves: HUGE ones for the living room, medium ones for the kitchen and tall skinny ones for the bathroom. I also got his stove (both his burners work while only one of mine was working), a pagne (PAHN-ya) chair – basically a canvas deck chair – and his single bed frame, but not the mattress. Now I just have to set up the spare room and other volunteers can stay with me when they come to Cotonou. Actually, a few have already done that although the spare bed is currently doubling as my couch. What I really need to do is rearrange the whole place, move my kitchen into the house and use the kitchen space out back for storage – it will make living much easier. So, I guess I know what I’m doing this weekend.

More good news: It looks like I’ve found a secondary project to work on. There is a business school here in Cotonou that is looking for someone to teach some classes on Leadership/Management and the like. One of the other PCVs is going to be teaching some tech classes and she introduced me to the woman who runs the place and it looks like I’ll start teaching in December. That should be fun and it should put me in touch with a different crowd of people; good for broadening the horizons and all.

The great news is that we finished the business plan! Why is this great news? First, it means that LOTS of aid money will now start flowing to the project. We will be able to move into our new office space (getting me out of the lobby) and start hiring and training people to actually DO arbitrations. Second, it means that we can stop operating in “crisis” mode and start working a normal routine. Now at this point I have no idea what that looks like because we’ve been working on the business plan since I got here, so this may or may not be a good thing. I have only a vague idea of what my role will be under normal operating conditions, so we’ll have to play it by ear. Ca va.

Everyday news: Sunday I’m leaving Cotonou for the first time (officially) since swear-in. The Small Enterprise volunteers are all getting together in Natitingou (just like it’s spelled) for our Early Service Conference (ESC). ESC is out first real opportunity to check in and see how things are going for our sector. We’ll get some additional info sessions on funding sources for projects, applying for them, finding secondary projects, etc. But mostly we’ll get to share our experiences with our fellow PCVs. Plus, Nati is way up in the north of Benin, which is totally different from the south. Everyone says it’s just beautiful. I’m REALLY looking forward to a change of scenery right now! I’ll be driving up with a couple of other volunteers and our APCD in a PC vehicle, so instead of cramming into a bush taxi for 14 hours we’ll be riding in a nice, comfy, air-conditioned SUV for 8 or 9. There are some good things about living in Cotonou…

Next time, more pictures!

It’s been a very frustrating week so I thought I’d take my mind off of it by telling you all a little bit about the history of Benin. As some may know, Benin was the very heart of what was once known as the “Slave Coast.” Not surprisingly, it earned that name because hundreds of thousands of Africans were transported from Benin, mostly from the port of Ouidah (WEE-da), to Europe and the Americas. Ouidah also happens to be the spiritual capital of the Vodun faithful. The word Vodun is from the Fon language and it is the source of the English word Voodoo. The practice of Vodun was brought from West Africa to the Americas by slaves and became what we know as Voodoo.

During our training we took a day trip to Ouidah and it was fascinating. Our first stop was the Historical Museum, which is housed in a former Portuguese fort. At one time the Portuguese conducted slave auctions within the walls of the compound. The fort served as the site of the diplomatic presence of Portugal in the area until it was annexed by the government of Dahomey in 1961. After taking possession of the fort the Dahomean government began restoration, and in 1967 the fort became the Ouidah Museum of History. Most of the collections are housed in the former Portuguese representative’s residence. Unfortunately, photos are only allowed outside the buildings.

One of the focal points for Vodun is the Sacred Forest. (As always, trees play a pivotal role in my many travels – I should probably meditate on why that is.) It is perhaps the most hallowed place in Ouidah. The photo at left is of me standing at the entrance to the Sacred Forest. According to the most popular version of the story, sometime around 1550 Kpasse became the second king of Savi (9 km north of Ouidah) and founded the city of Ouidah. When he learned that two jealous enemies were plotting his demise, he alerted his two sons, telling them that although he would never die, he would disappear one day. If he should not come out of his room before sunset, he told them, his sons were not to open the door but to understand that he was already gone. After nine days they would see a specific sign from their father which, once understood, would protect them and their families for generations to come. One day these events did come to pass. Today, the sign is still a secret known only to the direct descendants of the king.

Soon after King Kpasse disappeared, his family living in Savi saw a bird they had never seen before. It led them to the Sacred Forest in Ouidah where, upon entering the grounds of the forest, the bird turned into two growling panthers (male and female). The family was frightened until they heard the voice of the king. He gave them an important message: if at any time they were having problems, they could come to the forest and pray to a specific tree in which his spirit would live forever. The tree was then just a little sprout next to a sacred clay pot. Today, behind the ruins of the old French administrative house in the forest, abandoned because the spirits were "too strong" for the French, stands an enormous iroko tree. One also finds active shrines, including a clay pot, next to the tree in which Kpasse's spirit still resides.

Perhaps the most moving, and the most troublesome, feature of contemporary Ouidah is the “Slave Route.” Whether it is the actual route the departing slaves followed or not is less important than what it represents in terms of a didactic experience for both visitors and Beninese alike. As a reinvention of various aspects of the slave trade from the Ouidah port, the Slave Route appeals to visitors on an emotional level as it follows the footsteps of African captives who walked the three miles to the beach and then onto ships destined for the Americas. The route is marked at critical points by sculptures and monuments depicting the atrocities of the slave trade.

The Slave Route officially begins under a large tree (there it is again), where the public auctions are said to have been held. The tree is located just behind the compound of Don Francisco de Souza, who was born in Brazil in 1754 and died in Ouidah in 1849. De Souza, whose father was Portuguese and whose mother was an Amerindian from Brazil, arrived in Ouidah in 1788 and was intimately involved in the transatlantic slave trade for over 60 years. He was named Viceroy of Ouidah by his friend and collaborator, King Ghezo of Abomey. De Souza's influence in the trade spread east to Nigeria and west to Togo. At the height of his involvement he is said to have supplied more than 100 slave ships traveling between the west coast of Africa and the Americas. Today, the name de Souza is among the most numerous in Benin, as Don Francisco had a dozen wives and about 40 children. Our guide during our trip was a woman named Martine de Souza, who had moved away from the de Souza compound just two years ago.

The next major site on the route is the Tree of Forgetting. Sadly, the tree itself is no longer there. The place where the tree is believed to have stood is marked with a sculpture of a three-headed, three-footed, three-armed Vodun spirit called Mami Wata and a small symbolic tree The story goes that all of the enslaved women marched around this tree seven times, and all of the enslaved men, nine times. The intent was to make them forget their origins and cultural identities. In that way they would lose the yearning to return to their homeland and acquiesce more readily to slave life. This process has been compared to the ritual of “zombification” rumored to exist in Haiti, wherein the work of the sorcerer forces one to lose ones identity and become a “living dead.” The failure of this idea is evident in the fact that such identities thrived and continue to thrive in African diasporas throughout the Americas (witness the continued popularity of the Voodoo faith).

After encircling the Tree of Forgetting, the captives are said to have been led to the Zomai Enclosure. The name, translated as "a place where fire can never go," refers to the darkness of the rooms inside. The building itself is no longer standing, but the spot is now commemorated with a contemporary memorial: a sculpture composed of different faces bearing different scarification markings, representing the many enslaved Africans from a variety of ethnic backgrounds who converged in this dark place before they were sent across the ocean. The six Yoruba markings (three on each cheek), and the ten Fon markings (two on each cheek, temples, and forehead) are readily discernible (click photo at left). The piece also includes a scale to represent the ideal of equality among peoples throughout the world.

The customs house, located in the Zoungbodji quarter of the city, controlled and recorded the movement of enslaved Africans from the Abomey kingdom to the coast. A monument is constructed upon what is believed to be the common grave for slaves who died in the Zomai Enclosure, although there have been no archaeological excavations to prove or disprove this theory. To the rear of a rectangular plaza is a large abstract mosaic mural. Black is used to represent Africans chained together, with blood in red, against a white background (click photo).

Before arriving at the beach where they would be loaded onto ships bound for the Americas, the captives are said to have made one last stop along the Slave Route, at the Tree of Return. This point on the route is represented by an actual tree (!), variously reported to be the real Tree of Return or to have been planted in Ouidah during the reign of King Agaja of Abomey (1708-1732). The enslaved Africans are said to have walked around the tree three times to ensure that their spirits, if not their bodies, would return to their native land.

With the Atlantic Ocean as an ominous backdrop, the final monument along Slave Route is the Door of No Return. In the center is a massive arch, built atop a large circular platform. On the upper facing of the arch are four bas-relief sculptures showing of two rows of Africans chained together, converging upon the beach with the ocean in front of them. Different perspectives of this same scene ornament the front, back, and both sides of the entablature. The columns supporting the arch consist of pairs of kneeling male and female figures repeated from the bottom to the top. One either side, four abstract metal sculptures depict families and Africans broken free of chains who wave good-bye.

Every January 10th since 1993, Benin has celebrated National Vodun Day. The festival's main activity is the reenactment of the slave march to the beach. The procession honors the memory of those ancestors lost in the slave trade and celebrates those who survived and passed down the culture and practices of West Africa that flourish today throughout the African Diaspora. Thus, the art and monuments are both historical markers and active ancestral shrines.

Here's a picture of most of this year's cadre of volunteers here in Benin. I say most because we didn't realize there were a few folks missing before we snapped the shot. That's me in the middle of the back row with my head turned to the side. Oh well...

Now that I've figured out how to post photos I'll go back and update some past posts with pictures. You can always click on a photo to see it full-size. I may also try to add video of the chicken slaughter, but it's pretty big so no guarantees.

This shot is of me with my host papa Bertin Alladayé and his brother Robert, in Azové. Bertin is on the right and Robert on the left. This was taken on one of our many forays around the drinking establishments of Azové.

Well, things here in Cotonou oscillate wildly between the seemingly normal and the utterly surreal. If I were in almost any other setting, it would feel like I’d simply found a new job doing consulting on international development projects; something not outside the realm of possibility for someone with a Masters degree in Public Administration. But here I am in Benin riding to work every morning on the back of a zemi, living in a house where I have to go outside to get to my kitchen, making about $260/month and arguing with the marché mommas over a dime for a kilo of potatoes. (I really need to get out of the habit of converting everything to $$) At the same time, I have an internet connection in my office so I am totally caught up on the terrible fire in the tunnel in California and the latest setbacks for the Huskies and Seahawks. I have a DVD player in my laptop (Glad I brought that!) so I can watch the latest pirated movies from Nigeria (the latest Harry Potter is already on DVD here) or try to watch episodes of Heroes online (slow connections often make that impossible). So, yeah, plausibly normal activities if I weren’t living in one of the poorest countries on earth.

Coming here, I thought the cultural adjustment was going to mean getting used to living without all of the conveniences and gadgets of modern life. Little did I know that it would actually mean learning how to live WITH most of them in a place where very few people have access to that kind of thing. PC does a great job of preparing you to live without, but they make no provision for people who end up having to live with. It’s a very different kind of challenge. In many ways it makes living and working here harder, rather than easier. Like trying to convince your neighbors you don’t actually have any extra money to help them buy their medication when they see you carrying a laptop to work every morning… (Happened to me just this morning.)

So obviously life as a PCV isn’t exactly what I had anticipated before I came over here. I feel a little guilty because I live in a real house with indoor plumbing, electricity 24/7 (more or less), and internet access at work – hardly like a PCV at all. Many, if not most, of my peers here in Benin live at least au village, if not en brousse, with no plumbing, spotty if any electricity and little or no access to media or news of any kind. At the same time, though, living and working in Cotonou isn’t all fun and games. The PC salary doesn’t go nearly as far in Cotonou as it does living in a village. While I’m struggling to make my salary last through the month (actually we get paid quarterly, which makes it even more difficult), there have recently been volunteers en brousee who have banked up to $2000 during their service, because living out there is so cheap. They can literally eat for a week on what I pay for food in a couple of days. Also, most of my fellow volunteers moved into houses that were previously occupied by other PCVs, which were already furnished when they got there. I came to a brand new post, into a new house (at least new to PC) with absolutely no furniture at all. Right now I have a double bed, which I ordered from my host papa in Azové (he’s a carpenter), a single bed which is currently functioning as my couch (the mattress is PC issue, the frame was donated to me by another volunteer), a coffee table (also donated), a work table in my “office” and a table in the kitchen where my gas stove is located (both made for me here in Cotonou since I moved in). It’s pretty bare. I have no storage space, either in the house itself or out in the kitchen; no hooks to hang anything on; no shelves and nothing on the walls. Luckily I have windows, so it doesn’t actually look like a prison cell, and I have some ventilation…oh, and I have a stand-up fan.

I am getting creative in the kitchen, however. The other night I made “Cheesy Tuna Mac” – basically Mac n’ Cheese with Tuna (Thank you, Mom!). Of course we don’t have the blue box from Kraft, so I had to improvise a little. I melted several wedges of la Vache qui Rit (literally, the Laughing Cow – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Laughing_Cow – a brand of processed cheese popular all over the world) to make the cheese sauce then added that to the noodles and finally stirred in the tuna and a little piment (zesty!). I also made “Fajita Fried Rice” last week. My next adventure is going to be some kind of chicken with peanut sauce…Bon appetit!

Plans are afoot for a Christmas safari. There is a rule in PC/Benin that new volunteers can’t be away from their posts overnight during their first 3 months of service. Our three months expires on Dec. 21st, so we’re planning a safari for the week after Christmas. There is a big national park in the northwest of the country called Pendjari that boasts all of the “Big 5” (Lion, Leopard, Elephant, Rhino and Buffalo) plus cheetahs, jackals and hyenas, baboons and tons of other wildlife. The only thing they don’t have there are giraffes, which I’ve seen in South Africa. I’m especially keen to see cheetahs in the wild. Their habitat is steadily declining and huge efforts are being made in some areas to preserve some range for wild cheetahs to survive. Parc Pendjari is the only designated cheetah preserve in West Africa. [Check out the Cheetah Conservation Fund or Earthwatch Institute if you want to come to Africa to help cheetahs.] We’re planning our trip for Dec. 27-29, with a travel day on either side to get to and from the park. So I’ll basically be gone for the entire week between Christmas and New Year’s Day. I’ll try to figure out how to post pictures on my blog before then.

“The world is not to be put in order; the world is in order. It is for us

to put ourselves in unison with this order.”

-- Henry Miller

Tuesday, October 02, 2007, 10:35 AM

Well I suppose it was inevitable, but I didn’t expect it to happen so soon or so fast. I have weathered my first crisis of confidence about just what the hell I’m doing here. But that’s getting a little ahead of myself, so first things first.

We had a great little fete with a bunch of Japanese volunteers on Saturday. They are here doing basically the same kind of thing we’re doing, through the Japanese government. There are about 35 of them in-country; about a dozen were there Saturday. We all met at a house shared by two of them, which happens to be right around the corner from a PCV’s house in Calavi (CAL-a-vee - a “suburb” north of Cotonou). We filled tons of gyozas (pot stickers) by hand and fried them up and had a feast with a massive salad and amazing little rice cakes. We had way more food than we could eat, but nobody went home hungry. It was a really fun time because we’re all sort of in the same boat; here doing the same kind of work, in an entirely foreign culture speaking a foreign language. So we had an automatic bond over that and yet we were also of two different cultures, which gave us lots of stuff to talk about and share with each other. In some other circumstance we almost certainly would have just hung out with our own people, but the shared “fish out of water” feeling really brought the two groups together. They were all very friendly, outgoing, generous, and open. It was great! Next weekend (the 13th) we’re going to return the favor. We have our quarterly Volunteer Advisory Council meeting that day, so we’ve invited them over afterwards and we’re going to cook for them.

So then, as it got later on Saturday, I was talking with the PCV who lives in Calavi about how great it was to have another bunch of folks to hang out with and musing about how they had all made their decision to come to Africa. And then I was talking about how I ended up in Benin with Peace Corps; Sept. 11th, quitting the job, going back to school, South Africa, PCMI, etc. And as I was telling her some of that history I started to think about what I’m going to be doing here, and how it is SO different from what I imagined I would be doing. I mean, I had visions of mud huts out in the bush and being actively involved in the lives of individual people and their community. But the work I’m going to be doing is about as far from that as you can get in Benin. And I started to think that maybe taking this posting had been a HUGE mistake.

Now you may not all understand how I could make that leap, but it started to look a lot like another HUGE mistake I made once; specifically, my decision to become an AF recruiter. In both cases (or so it seemed as I was having these thoughts) I was seduced away from what I should have been doing by an opportunity to get something (I thought) I really wanted. (In the case of the AF, I got to move closer to home; in this case, I get to work on an incredibly important project at a level that seemed impossible when I signed up for PC.) In the case of the AF, it ended up being a colossal clusterfuck that effectively ended my AF career. (Now that was ultimately a GOOD thing, but don’t get ahead of me here.) I suffered through months of agonizing uncertainty and torturous self-doubt, not knowing – or having any control over – my fate. It took me over a year to get back on my figurative feet after that. Only a few of you were privy to how really terrible that time was for me. And now I was afraid I had duplicated the same mistake, just under different circumstances. I was afraid I had “sold out” the chance to make a real difference in people’s lives in order to do “important” work that would look good on my resume and advance my career possibilities; not to mention that it’s a nearly perfect match for my degree program. When I talk about my time as a recruiter I sometimes say that I sold my soul to the lowest bidder. Well, this time the bid is a little higher, but I really started to think I’d sold my soul again.

[We’re in the middle of another one of those amazing thunder storms right now!]

I knew that if I kept up these thoughts, I might easily decide it was time to go home – that’s where my head was at. So, I just started talking it all out with this other volunteer. As I tried to explain my thought process, she got me to talk more about how the whole AF thing had played out. Yes, I ended up leaving the Air Force and yes, I had a very tough time for a while after that. But that also led to me getting hired at PEMCO, where I did interesting work for a good company with some great people. And it was PEMCO that was thoroughly behind me when I made the decision to leave and go back to school. This, in turn, led to me going to South Africa and finishing my degree and applying for the PCMI program and ultimately put me here where I am now. All of these thoughts led me back to my musings about the universe and my place in it. Maybe it was necessary for me to acknowledge my responsibility for making the decision to go a different direction and to acknowledge that this isn’t the same time and I’m not the same person I was back then. Today, I recognize that I am the most powerful force in my own life; I dictate what happens to me, rather than letting what happens to me dictate who I am. Yes, I came here content to make a little difference in the lives of a few people, if that was how the universe unfolded. But that doesn’t mean that if the universe unfolds differently and I have the opportunity to make a BIG difference in the lives of lots of people that doing so is a mistake. It is just a different path, with the same intention.

I have told many of you that my aspiration going into Peace Corps was to bring more of the world’s advantages to more of the world’s people. It still is. I believe wholeheartedly that if brought to fruition, the projects underway through MCA will make an enormous difference in the lives of the people of Benin. So if I’m qualified to assist in that effort then I’m honor-bound to do the best job I can to help make that happen.

And so the universe, as usual, is unfolding just as it should. Who am I to imagine that I know better than the universe?

Wednesday, September 26, 2007, 08:00 hours

Bon matin!

I am now officially a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV). Actually, I have been for a few days, but it has been a very busy few days. We came down to Cotonou on Thursday for “shopping” and administrivia, and had a huge party Thursday night. I think the last revelers got to bed about 3:30 am (which is about what time I hit the sack). Oh, I also saw my house for the first time on Thursday, but it was still being renovated so there wasn’t much to see. Then Friday we went to the Ambassador’s house for the swearing-in ceremony and lunch after. Our facilitators got the time wrong so we had to wait outside the compound for an hour-and-a-half until they got the security arrangements straightened out. Despite that, the ceremony was cool and the food after was great! Later that same day (no rest for the weary) we all had to return to our respective training sites (Azove) to collect all our stuff and have our final goodbyes with the host families. So I spent Saturday driving around the commune with the whole family in tow, saluer-ing (that’s franglais) all of the various brothers, cousins, uncles, and everyone else I met while in Azove. Fun, but tiring. I gave papa a bottle of Amarula as a gift and also a full 12-yard piece of tissue for clothes for the fam. They were very touched. Saturday night was spent cleaning the volunteer house and making a last big meal together. The first of us left for post on Sunday morning. I spent most of the day helping people load their taxis and giving out big hugs. I left for Cotonou Monday morning.

As I write this, I just woke up from my second night in my house in Cotonou. The first night was miserable. No fan in the house, so if I wanted to keep cool, I had to leave the windows open. But also no mosquito net, so if I left the windows open I was at much higher risk for things like…oh, malaria! So I had to choose between getting eaten alive or boiling in a pool of my own sweat. Gotta love Africa! Ultimately, I left some windows open and tried to cover up as best I could with a sheet so as to stay relatively cool and relatively protected; neither of which actually came to pass. I got more mosquito bites in one night than I had in the entire nine weeks in Azove AND woke up on a mattress soggy with sweat. At least that was only one night; last night was much better. I bought a new mattress to go in my double-sized bed frame, bought an extra large mosquito net to fit over my big bed – and installed it before bedtime – and bought a fan to keep me comfortable. Needless to say, last night was a major improvement.

Unfortunately, the bed frame and mattress together cost me about two-thirds of my move-in allowance, so the bed is the only piece of furniture in the house at the moment. The house is pretty nice. It’s in a horseshoe shaped compound with three units. The proprietor lives in the big one at the back, her father (grandfather?) lives on the right and I live on the left. I have a big front room which will serve as living room on one side and dining area on the other. Then behind that is about the same amount of space divided into two rooms – my bedroom on the right and the office/guest room on the left. Behind my room is the bathroom (with sink, mirror, overhead shower and toilet; realizing that many volunteers have a hole in the ground and a bucket) which also has a door to the covered courtyard in the back. Across the courtyard and behind the office is the kitchen, but there is no door directly from the house to the kitchen. You have to go outside into the courtyard and then into the kitchen. This is fairly common in Africa, but is unfamiliar to most westerners. It’s all about the smoke from the cooking fires. Luckily, I have a gas stove – kind of like a camp stove – with two burners and a warmer and two bottles of gas (thank you, Peace Corps), so smoke isn’t really a problem.

I’ve been getting to know the neighborhood, too. I live not far from a place called l’Etoile Rouge (literally, the Red Star). It’s a gigantic roundabout at the intersection of two of the major roads in Cotonou. In the center is a huge monument in the shape of a red star, dedicated to the workers who built the city. Not surprisingly, it’s a remnant of the socialist regime of the 70s and 80s in Benin. Etoile Rouge is also a center for many small vendors who have their stalls either on the roundabout or on the streets that emanate from it. I got my mattress, my fan, an extension cord, and a kilo of potatoes all from vendors there yesterday. There’s a woman and her daughter who have a stand just at the end of my block who sell beignets and other forms of delicious fried dough every evening. I think I’m going to suggest coating them with sugar (they don’t do that here for some reason) and seeing if they can get a better price for them. After all, I am in small enterprise development.

This brings me to an interesting, and frustrating, aspect of the Beninese way of life. The Beninese are hard-working, industrious and often quite entrepreneurial people. But they are not innovative so much as they are imitative. I have both seen this in practice and been told as much by some of our Beninese facilitators. So if someone wants to go into business for himself (or herself) they will look around and see what other people are doing and if it looks like someone is being successful at something, they’ll do that, too. But if you suggest that they try something new or different, they are likely to listen patiently and then not do it. Thus, my hesitancy about the beignet ladies. Even if they could get a better price for sugar-coated beignets, they probably wouldn’t do it because no one else is doing it. This insistence on only doing what is already working is one of the things that makes change here SO slow and SO difficult. And it is definitely one of the obstacles I’m going to have to confront in my work. This project is going to take the Beninese system – economic, commercial, and judicial – into areas where it has never ventured. So I think it is going to be essential to get the powers that be to talk with people and perhaps even visit places where these kinds of programs are already running and demonstrating success. It is happening in other countries in West Africa, so it would not be prohibitively expensive and if it meant that those in charge came away with the sense that this is something worth duplicating it would be more than worth it.

I’m very anxious about starting my work. I’m starting on Monday and I’m very much afraid that they view me as some kind of miracle worker; like I’m going to walk in and fix all their problems, do all their work and magically meet all their deadlines. At this point I still only have about the 10,000 ft. view of what they’re doing. I’m going to need at least a week or two to get into the nitty-gritty of where they are, what’s been done, what needs doing, in what order and by when. And even once I’m up to speed, Randy – the American in charge of MCA-Benin – made it clear when we met during my site visit that my role is NOT to do their work for them. I’m supposed to be a mentor/teacher/facilitator to assist and guide them in doing the work properly, so that it is up to the necessary standard and the project continues to move toward fruition. He explicitly told me that I’m not responsible for meeting their deadlines. I’m not at all sure that they have the same understanding. I’m just afraid it will be awkward getting everyone to the same page, especially in my broken French. Ah well, du courage!

So I guess if I’m going to make dinner tonight I’d better go find some spices and some mushrooms. Just another little adventure within the grand adventure that is Peace Corps. At least Peace Corps/Benin has produced a cookbook so volunteers won’t run out of ideas for things to eat. No more plain white starch with sauce for me!

Monday, September 10, 2007

This past weekend I saw where the tornado touched down outside Azove. Only a couple of buildings got flattened and nobody got hurt. Good news.

Things I know (and how I know them):

1) Most of the time, using the second-least-efficient method possible of doing something will be an improvement in this country. I know this because I have been here for 6 weeks and have yet (I believe) to see anyone using anything but the least efficient method of doing anything. Case in point: In Cotonou I walked past a constructions site (several, actually) of a multi-story building. In order to lift the sand for concrete from the ground up to the floor under construction they build a series of ascending platforms, each one recessed from the one below it. Then, someone on the ground lifts the sand ONE SHOVELFUL AT A TIME from the ground to the next highest platform. This process is then repeated as many times as needed to lift the sand to the proper floor. On a busy day it is not unusual to see a tower of twenty men doing nothing but shoveling sand up the side of a building.

2) Gas stations are an unnecessary luxury. I know this because they are nearly non-existent in Benin, and the few that exist are seldom used. Gasoline (Essence, en francais) is mostly sold here by small vendors who dispense smuggled Nigerian gas from old, reused liquor bottles or five liter palm oil cans. A Beninese gas station is basically a table full of old bottles by the side of the road.

3) Automobiles are also an unnecessary luxury. While there are quite a lot of them in Benin, they are VASTLY outnumbered by “motos”. A moto is anything with two wheels, a seat and an engine. My scooter would make a great moto here – although PC bars volunteers from owning a moto. Nevertheless, the vast majority of inner city taxis are also motos, so PC issues every PCV in Benin a moto helmet so we can get around easier and cheaper. Thus we are still allowed to put our lives in danger, just not to be in control of the level of danger…go figure.

4) Humans can survive on plain white starch with sauce. Is an explanation really necessary?

5) After six weeks of nothing but plain white starch with sauce, most humans will do almost anything for a hamburger. I know this because last Sunday (not yesterday, a week ago) we got someone to go to Bohicon (BOY-cahn) to get ground beef and we made hamburgers and fries for our cooking “class”. Bliss…

6) It is actually possible to make things other than plain white starch with sauce from the things available in the local marche. I know this because yesterday for cooking class we had an “Iron Chef” competition. For the uninitiated, Iron Chef is a TV cooking competition where two world-class chefs compete against each other. Each contest has a theme ingredient that is announced immediately prior to the contest. Well, our theme ingredient was…Peanut Butter! We had four teams and everybody made at least one really great dish. But our team went above and beyond! There were four of us and we each concentrated on one dish. My compadre, the other Steve, made hand-made ravioli filled with a PB, cinnamon, onion and piment chutney. Emma made cole slaw, served with PB-fried raman noodles. Sebastian was in charge of dessert and made PB and pineapple stuffed French Toast. And for the main entrée, I made…yes, a stuffed flank steak! (Sound familiar to anyone? Mom? Julie? Bob?) What, you may ask, was it stuffed with? A stuffing of bread crumbs, onion, celery, garlic, piment and peanut butter! Each dish was then served with/on some form of native vegetation. Not surprisingly, we won the competition hands down.

7) Man’s greatest invention may be the Dutch Oven. See above.

Monday, September 03, 2007

Jesus, Mary and Joseph and all things holy!!!

Sorry, but I just had the most amazing and terrifying weather experience of my entire life (actually, that’s not exactly accurate because it is in fact continuing more or less unabated outside my window even as I write this) – and that’s saying something for someone who has experienced an Oklahoma thunderstorm and a South Korean monsoon. But neither of those can begin to hold a candle to an honest-to-God-holy-shit-the-sky-has-exploded-and buckets-are-coming-down-Jesus-H-fucking-Christ-cats-and-dogs-and-random-farm-animals-falling-from-the-sky-Beninese-tropical-deluge! With lightning that turns pitch black into full daylight for a few fractions of a second. I swear within a minute-and-a-half “la rue” turned into “le riviere.” And moments later I saw my first actual in person tornado, although I had to come halfway around the world to do it.

I was looking at the lights of a nearby (1/4 mile away) cell phone tower and within a few moments it was so dark and raining so hard that they were no longer visible. As I looked beyond the tower I could see in the background the funnel forming about a mile out (just a guess). Just before it got really, really dark I’m pretty sure it was on the ground because there was stuff coming up from the ground as well as falling toward it. Which was about the time the power went out…hmmm, maybe that’s why I couldn’t see the red light anymore. Needless to say, I was scared shitless. Luckily, the funnel did not decide to move in our direction, but at this point I have no idea how long it was on the ground or what kind of damage it might have done. If there’s news to share on that front later I will.

YEAH! The power just came back on! And then it went out again…c’est l’Afrique.

Friday, 24 August 2007

[Yikes, I just went back and reread my last update and realized I hadn’t really finished it before I sent it. I hadn’t intended it to end so abruptly. Or so adamantly. I am constantly confronted here by the exigencies of subsistence living – things like killing chickens. Even here in Cotonou (see below) the vast majority of animals are sold live in the marche. There are some boucheries (butcher shops) but only the richest shop there. The vast majority still lives in what would be described by most Americans as “squalor” and have to do what it takes to survive. We in the West have little or no conception of subsistence living any longer, with the possible exception of some family farmers. Our food doesn’t come from the land, it comes from the supermarket. Our water doesn’t come from a well, it comes from the wall. Instead of mosquito nets we have air filtration systems – because we don’t have to worry about malaria, just allergies. And we wonder why much of the rest of the world thinks of us as soft and over-privileged… ]

Wow!

It’s hard to believe I’ve been here over a month already. And we have less than a month left in our training. I’m in the middle of my post visit, spending a few days in Cotonou getting to meet the folks I’ll be working with, getting to know the city a little bit, sending out all my email updates ;-) , etc. One thing I know for sure; my French is going to need to get A LOT better if I’m going to be effective here. For most volunteers here, it will be enough to speak “villageois” French; not for me. I’m going to need to speak good, professional French and even with four weeks of training left I don’t think I’m going to be at that level by then. The good news is that PC will pay for a private French tutor for up to a year to help me get up to speed. The bad news is that it may take that long.

My housing situation once I start my job has yet to be arranged which makes me slightly uneasy, but PC has been doing this for 45 years so I’m not all that worried. During this visit I’m staying with one of the Assistant Directors of the project and he has a bangin’ house (for Benin). Marble and tile floors, furniture all in teak and mahogany and leather, ceilings custom molded, art works everywhere. It’s about on a par with the PC Director’s house, and she gets paid in dollars! I have my own little mini apartment with its own bathroom (very rare in Benin), a HUGE bed and cable TV. If my place is half as nice when I get there I’ll have the best house in Peace Corps Benin. And I think I already have the best job.

Ok, maybe not the best job. I think that depends on what you expected/desired when you got here. It may, however, be the least Peace Corps-like job in all of Peace Corps. The thing of it is, I could not have imagined, from everything I read or heard or was told, that it would even be possible to come to West Africa with PC and to do this kind of work. Almost everyone else here is going to be living in small-to-medium villages, working with artisans or farmers or with tourism (one girl is going to be doing Hippo conservation in a town not far from Azove), trying to build Benin from the ground up. I’m going to be in the capital (OK, so Cotonou isn’t the official capital – that’s Porto Novo – but it might as well be.), a city of 2 million people, working from the top down so that all the rest of our efforts aren’t in vain. It is not a level at which PCVs usually get to work so I am both excited and a little intimidated by the prospect. I’m having breakfast tomorrow morning with the head of the Millennium Challenge for all of West Africa, who is an American, so I should be able to get a good clear picture – in English – of what the priorities are and what the sequence of work needs to be. From talking to my counterpart it seems that the process of making a plan and working to it is a very new thing in Benin, so I think I have a lot to contribute in that arena.

From a purely self-serving perspective I couldn’t have asked for a better situation. To be able to participate in the fundamental restructuring of an entire nation’s judicial system; to see it from the very beginning and to contribute (hopefully) to it’s success; to be able to shape the experience into a case study for my Master’s degree; and then to be able to put all that on my resume at the end of two (three?) years…somebody wake me up, I must be dreaming. On second thought, if I am dreaming please DON’T wake me up because this is too perfect. Now I just have to hold out against the amoebas, parasites, mosquitoes, cockroaches, boredom, alcoholism, isolation and depression that are the daily risks of every Peace Corps volunteer. C’est la vie! Say la Freak!

Sunday, 19 August 2007

Host family life has settled into something of a routine. I wake every morning between 6:30 and 6:40 when the goddamn roosters start crowing. Up by 6:45, then the 3 S’s (shit, shower and shave), followed by breakfast – coffee and bread six days a week with an omelette on Saturday. We have class from 8:00 until 10:00, a break until 10:30, and then more class until 12:30. From 12:30 until 3:00 is repos (rƏ-po) – siesta, basically. Most activity and nearly all business stops during repos. I eat lunch and then most days I either study or write in my journal or read a book. (Someone here already has the 7th Harry Potter – I’m third in line.) After repos, more classes until 6:00.

Lunch and dinner have also settled into a routine of sorts. Chez moi, we have about five base meals. First, there is pâte (not to be confused with pâté), which is basically congealed corn meal paste. (I think pâte may actually be the French word for paste.) Then there is rice, noodles (spaghetti or elbows), fried potatoes and yams. Now these yams are NOT your grandmother’s holiday favorite. They are basically just big, white, tasteless tubers. The one thing these bases have in common is that they have little or no taste of their own – except maybe the potatoes. This is good because they really only function as a vehicle for the sauce(s) – this is where the real flavor comes from. Beninese cuisine is all about the sauce. Sometimes it’s just sauce – a base of water or oil with tomatoes or some other veggie plus spices. Sometimes it is a mélange of tomatoes, veggies, egg, spices, and maybe some meat or other goodies (like chunks of fried goat cheese – mmmm). Always it is SPICY! Not just hot spicy (although it is also that), but flavorfully, marvelously nuanced and wonderful.

However, there is one inescapable fact about food in Benin. If it’s meat, and you want to eat it, somebody has to kill it. And thus came about another quintessential Peace Corps experience…I killed a chicken on Thursday. (Yes, I recognize the irony of referring to killing as a quintessential PEACE Corps experience, but there ain’t no QFC around the corner over here.) We had planned a big fete for that night after taking our first language exam and we wanted some chicken for dinner. Well, as in the rest of the third world, the consumer is much closer to the food source here, so we had to buy six live chickens at the marche. We could have had the marche lady kill and clean them for us but that triples the price, so we brought the live birds back to the house and then had to do the deed ourselves. Then we boiled the meat off the bones, formed it into balls, dipped them in some egg and breaded them with some spices and Voila! Home-made chicken nuggets! And it was damn tasty, let me tell you. Now to those of you who find this appalling…get over it. This is how at least 75% of the world’s people get protein – they kill animals. It’s not clean, it’s not humane, and it is certainly not pretty, but it is reality.

Monday, 13 August 2007

Well, the other shoe finally dropped from the fiasco on Independence Day.

My host papa is very well-known and very popular around the district here and his normal Sunday activity is to travel all over the area and saluer (greet) all sorts of people who he knows; politicians, policemen, business people, farmers, whoever happens to be home that day. So, yesterday I spent most of the day hanging out at the volunteers’ house here in Azove swapping life stories with other PC types. When I returned home, papa was getting ready to go out and said I should come along – also standard practice, though I had been trying to avoid it yesterday. So I changed my clothes and off we went.

Our second stop was the gendarmerie in Aplahoue, the seat of the commune (district). There we were met by the Commandant himself who, if I understood correctly, is actually the commandant of the entire province. He invited us into his residence behind the brigade and busted out the Irish Cream liqueur – over ICE, which is unheard of in Benin – whence he proceeded to give me his personal apology for the incident at the roadblock on Independence Day. The word he used to describe the actions of the gendarmes that day was “extravagant.” Hmm…ya think? So I told him in my broken French that I understood about security for the president and besides I had learned an important lesson that day…always carry your passport – and I whipped my passport out of my pocket right there just to prove I had it on me. He thought that was the funniest thing ever and proceeded to totally crack up. So we hung around for about half an hour, him speaking a little broken English to match my broken French and he and papa speaking a lot of Adja (the lingua franca of this part of Benin). As we parted he made a point of telling me to be sure and come to him if I ever have any more problems with the authorities. Now, how this meeting came about I have NO idea, but it is certainly nice to know I have a high ranking military official in my pocket if I ever need one.

The problem with not giving God any of the credit is that you can’t give Him any of the blame, either. If I am responsible for bringing all of the positive things into my life over the past few years, then I’m also responsible for all of the shit I’ve put myself and others through over all the years before (and since, for that matter). And by what is one’s life judged? (Leaving aside the question of “By whom?” for the time being.) Is it by the cumulative effect of one’s actions for good or ill; or is it by the quality of the person one has become by the end? Is it by the consistency with which one lives up to a set of values over a lifetime; or by the fervency with which one approaches them once the truth of what is at stake becomes clear? By the amount and quality of one’s work; or by the depth and sincerity of one’s love? Or does the judgment come in those moments of supreme doubt or suffering, when one is forced by life to make the impossible choice on the basis of criteria that no human being can ever reconcile with rational thought? And how can you know until the time comes?

I think perhaps the crux of the dilemma is best expressed by what I think I remember to be a Jewish tradition. (Andrea?) The idea being that, in the beginning God was everywhere and everything. When He decided to make his Creation, He had to withdraw from part of the universe in order to make room for it to exist. And thus He observes his Creation from outside, caring extravagantly for what happens to his Children but no longer able to direct their actions or correct their mistakes. Thus it can be argued that without God nothing else could be possible, yet by the same token without God (having removed Himself from his creation) all things – both good and evil – become possible. It is said that if a single bird falls from the sky, that God is aware of it. But the bird falls nevertheless.

These thoughts come to me unbidden and interrupt me as I am trying to absorb as much as I can about this place, its people and culture. I’ve been re-reading a novel called The Sparrow, about a first contact with an alien culture, and I find my experience here to be similar in many ways. I am constantly torn between what I am learning in the classroom and what I am experiencing on the street and in my home; learning textbook French while at the same time having to adapt to the African version of the language and somehow trying to reconcile the differences; perpetually anxious that out of ignorance or misunderstanding that I will commit some cultural faux pas that I am utterly unaware of and which nevertheless could destroy any sense of rapport that I might have established with my host family or within the community. And constantly aware that no matter what happens, based on my conception of my relationship to the universe, that I AM RESPONSIBLE.

The sense of responsibility is perhaps the most difficult aspect of this experience. The truth that I must take responsibility for all of my actions, and all of their consequences, is palpable in a way that it has never been for me before. At times (this moment is one of those times) the feeling makes me want to retreat into my room and not venture out for fear of making some colossal blunder. At other times I am overcome by the impulse to judge these people and their culture by the standards with which I grew up – most of which are alien to their way of life. This, in turn, makes me feel enormously guilty because I know that down that path lies disaster. It is a razor’s edge, and I marvel that so many have come before me and managed to navigate it successfully. How many of them had these thoughts as they embarked on their task? I have no idea…

If ignorance is bliss, then just call me ecstatic.

Saturday, 11 August 2007

Bon jour la famille et les amis,

I taught my first formation (class) today. My partner and I taught a group of artisans about the importance of savings. It was awkward and difficult trying to teach in (sucky) French to people who speak it fluently. But we got through it and they even seemed to understand what we were talking about by the end. This was primarily a training exercise for us, so I don’t know how many of the “students” (there were only five) were really there to learn and how many were being paid to come. At least a couple seemed to be making notes, so that’s something.

I doubt if I will be doing many formations when I get to my post, as it sounds like that will be a 9-5 type job. I am still amazed at the incredible good fortune of my assignment. My formation partner (also called Steve, although he’s a Stephen) is actually probably more qualified for the post than I am, but he is married and PC had to find a post with jobs for both him and his wife (she’s a health volunteer originally from Seattle). So they are going up country together and I’m going to Cotonou – go figure. Nevertheless, we’ve gotten to be friends through Seattle connections and a mutual love of baseball. They intend to live in Seattle after PC, so that will be very cool!

A brief trip back in time…this group of trainees had our staging in Philadelphia back in late July. I don’t know if PC does it purposely, but being right in the heart of historic Philadelphia was a major dose of perspective on American history and values to get us ready to go out and share those things with people from another culture. I mean come on; in the space of two days I saw the Liberty Bell, toured Independence Hall, and saw early copies of the Declaration of Independence AND the Constitution. If they didn’t do it on purpose they should have. While waiting in line at Independence Hall we met historian and author David McCullough (1776, John Adams). He was there with a film crew shooting a documentary. A group of us spoke to him for a few moments; we told him what we were doing in Philly and he wished us good luck.

But that was nowhere near the most amazing thing that happened in Philly. Many or most of you have heard me mention Lowen & Navarro at least once over the years. They are a musical duo whose music I have adored for a long time. I am listening to them even as I write this. (I played one of their Christmas songs for some of the family a couple of years ago at Thanksgiving.) Back in 1999 I was fortunate enough to go on a fan cruise with them and they have both been friends of mine since then. I don’t get to see them very often, because they seldom tour the NW, but when I do it’s very special and we get to catch up on what’s going on with each other. In 2004, Eric Lowen was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) and his mobility has diminished lately. But Kjersten and I drove out to Minneapolis back in September to visit her grandmother and to see them play in the city – and it was fantastic! They were about to release a new record and they were in fine form. I got to talk to both Eric and Dan for a few minutes, but there was a full house so it was pretty brief. Still, it was a great night.

Now I mention all of this because a group of us PC types were out on our 2nd night in Philly and were looking for a nice place to eat and drink. Standing out on the sidewalk checking out one place, I happened to look up the street and saw a face I thought looked familiar. I was certain it couldn’t possibly be, but then I heard the voice. Walking toward me on a random street in Philadelphia was DAN NAVARRO! He is on the Board of AFTRA (the TV and radio actor’s union) and was in Philly for a board meeting (or convention, maybe). We talked a little right there on the street and he hooked us up at a place nearby where they play when they’re in Philly. The next night we got together just the two of us for dinner at City Tavern (a place where many of the revolutionaries ate and schemed back in the day). We had a great meal from authentic 18th C recipes and some great beer – also authentic 18th C – but mostly we talked.

We spoke of many things, both public and private. I got to tell him at length about what I’m doing and why. He seemed genuinely proud of me, which felt great coming from someone who I respect so much. (Thank you, Dan.) We talked about cultural adjustments, and what happens when I get back, and about what might happen while I’m away. We each talked some about our lives before we ever met and how our paths have been both similar and different. We talked about music and what it means to each of us – he and Eric have started making a new record. (Hope that wasn’t a secret, Dan.) And we talked about many other things that will remain strictly between the two of us. It was one of the most satisfying, most memorable evenings of my life, all the more so because it now marks the line between my old life and my new one. What an amazing thing…

And I am forced to wonder again if the powers of the universe have an intention for me or if simply by standing up and refusing to go quietly into that good night of mid-life and complacency that I have brought these amazing experiences into being for myself. I like to think it’s the latter but more and more I find it doesn’t matter. Viktor Frankl (Man’s Search for Meaning) tells us:

Ultimately man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life…

This is my answer; here, now, today.