This is a video of a three day safari in Tanzania in September 2011. We visited Lake Manyara, Ngorongoro Crater, and Olduvai Gorge. Special thanks to our guides, especially Sam, who went out of his way to make sure we got to do everything we wanted to in the price range we needed.

In September of the Year of Our Lord 2011, I and five brave souls set out to tackle the mountain known as Kilimanjaro, roughly translated as "the hill." This is a video documentation of that journey.

So turns out I didn't post much about my life in Benin for the last few months...

My bad.

But to make up for it I am making short videos that span my entire service. The first is my actual Peace Corps service. This has all of the work and friends I made (to the best of my abilities) from my 27 months in Benin.

Coming up next...Kilimanjaro. =)

Travelling in West Africa is always an interesting experience. I was really excited for this trip because I’d get to see a different aspect of West Africa than I’d seen before.

So here it is: My friend Elyse and I just got back from Mali. We traveled there overland. This is the story of that journey. We left from Natitingou on February 11th. We left at 3am on zemijans (moto taxis) to Tanguieta to catch a 5am bus (read: minivan) to Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. We got there late and all the early buses were gone, so we waited for the 10am bus.

In the interim period of time, our driver (with us sleeping in the back) drove all around town picking people up, deciding not to take them, dropping them back off, and loading, unloading, and reloading huge sacks of rice and corn, bikes, motos on and off the top of the van. We ended up leaving around 10 with close to 20 people squeezed into the equivalent of an astrovan.

The border crossing wasn’t too bad. We got off and big dudes in military camo with ak’s checked our passports, stamped them and sent us on our merry way. We had to switch vehicles a couple of times. A lot of taxis and buses won’t go all the way to your destination, but they’ll drop you off somewhere and help you find a car for the next leg of your journey. We switched two or three times before getting into Ouaga, and met a PCV from Burkina Faso on the way. He gave us tips on a hotel and where to eat and useful things like that.

Ouaga was a pretty cool city, but we didn’t have a lot of time to explore. One of the disadvantages of our trip was that, with the presidential elections coming up in Benin, we had a timeline to be back to Benin and in village. We left the next morning to a village called Bobo near the Mali border. Normally you can take a road directly from Ouagadougou to Mopti (our final destination). But a couple months ago, a rogue group of nomads with connections to Al Qaeda in BF nowhere claimed they were going to start kidnapping westerners. So no that road is off limits, and a four to five our bus ride turns into a 20-some-odd hour ordeal over two days to get to Mopti.

Getting to Bobo was super easy. Just a couple hours in a bus. Nap it off a bit. Boom. You’re there. Bobo had good food and a lot of fun things to offer visitors. Our hotel was super cheap with a restaurant that serves chicken and fries and cold beers right across the street.

Next day we took a bus across the border into Mali. Crossing the border into Mali was a little more difficult. We had to get off and on the bus three times so the bus could get cleared for transporting goods (are they smuggling something?), and make sure everyone has the Burkina visa and the Mali one (are they smuggling people?). This bus was “full” before we got on. But that doesn’t really mean they’ll stop loading people on. The aisle is a perfectly good space to start making people sit down on empty gas tanks.

Mine actually had some kind of liquid in it. I think it was urine, but I’m not sure. Anyways, I was sitting on a leaky gas tank full of an unknown liquid for 8 hours or so. Across the border, we got off in Bla, then caught a bus into Mopti. That one was a lot nicer, but we still didn’t get there till after dark. Once there, we caught a taxi to “hotel no problem” and met up with our guide through Dogon, Oumar. He spoke English and works almost exclusively with PCVs. We got along really well.

DOGON COUNTRY

Day 1

We caught a taxi out to a village called Bandiagara to look at some touristy things and then walked to Teli. We had lunch and rested there for a while before going up to soo our first houses on the cliffs.

In the 7th century, the Tellem people used the cliffs of the escarpment to store food and goods. They lived down in the jungle under the cliffs. In the 14th century, the Dogon people arrived and the Tellem left, to live on the border of Burkina/Mali. I think that there’s some variation in the story. I haven’t done an incredible amount of research on early history of Tellem/Dogon relations, but this is what was expressed to me by my 100% Dogon guide. Take the “peaceful transition” idea with a grain of salt.

The Tellem used to climb up the vines of the cliffs to store goods, but didn’t live there. The Dogon lived in the villages up on the cliffs, supposedly as a safety precaution to see advancing enemies.

After that we hiked to Ende, Oumar’s home village. That village is where a lot of goods (read: souvenirs) are made, especially the indigo blue scarves and cloths. They use a stone and grind up indigo to dye cloths. That’s the traditional way at least. Apparently they buy a lot of dye from china now. View it how you will: loss of cultural traditions or modernizing in a global world. I’m not sure exactly where I stand (pluses and minuses all around).

We stayed the night in Ende. We slept on the roof of a mud house, which was really nice but COLD AS HELL. We needed two blankets each, but it was worth it. We woke up at 3 or 4 in the morning because it was so cold but could see more stars than I’ve ever seen in my life. We tried to take pictures, but failed. Epic fail.

Day 2

Woke up early, ate breakfast, then hiked to Yabatalou for lunch. Nothing much to say about Yabatalou. It was basically just a set up for the hike up the escarpment. According to Oumar, there are three ways up the escarpment (top of the cliffs): the easy way, the hard way, and the amazingly scary way. We chose door number three.

The “amazingly scary way” consisted of walking up a staircase of loose stones and boulders through a crack in the cliffs. It was pretty dangerous game of roll your ankle = die. We shimmied our way up “slow slow” (dege dege in Dogon) until we were at the “first top.” We had to cross over two ladder bridges hanging over 50+ foot gaps. Oumar liked to do it no handed. It took a while to get up there, and we had to hike for a little while through a big rock maze till we got to Indeli. We stopped there to see the villages.

Highlights include:

1. Menstruation houses where women live until their menstruation ends. Then they’re allowed to return home.

2. Balls of mashed onion on the roofs of their houses to cook/dry.

Didn’t stay there too long because it was getting dark. But we eventually made our way to Begnemeto, where we got dinner then went to sleep. Highlight of the night was watching Italian tourists complain about their accommodations to their guide. You’re in the middle of the desert in West Africa. What did you expect?

Day 3

Woke up and explored the village. Begnemeto had a lot of cool stuff there. We visited the hunter’s house in the village. He had baboon skins and skulls hanging all over the place. He also had a live monkey tied to a rope in the corner. I don’t think his future looked too bright…

We also talked about circumcisions. Oumar told us that girls get circumcisions around age 3, and boys get circumcisions around age 12 or 13. At a boy’s circumcision, his father will give him the sex talk at the same time. It apparently involves handmade models and tools. Special moments.

There is some mythology attached to the circumcisions. Children are said to be born with two souls: one male, one female. The female aspect of a boy is located in the foreskin, and the male aspect of the girl in the clitoris. Once circumcised, they will be fully male or female. But the leftover skin isn’t thrown away. The Dogon believe it turns either into a scorpion or a lizard, so that a person will always have both souls and always have a twin.

We left there pretty early because we had a lot of ground to cover to get to Dorou for lunch, then to Nombori. To get to Nombori, we had to climb back down the cliffs through a really narrow crevice. It was market day there, so we bought a couple things: scarves and millet beer then went back to our little mud hut hotel compound for dinner.

Day 4

Climbed back up the same way we came down. Wasn’t as bad. It took a lot less time, in fact. Day 4 was pretty quick. We just went back to Dourou and caught a taxi back to Bandiagara, then Mopti.

Here’s a mileage count for the trip in total:

Natitingou to Ouagadougou: 390 km (14 hours)

Ouagadougou to Bobo: 328 km (8 hours)

Bobo to Mopti: 485 km (14 hours)

Mopti to Bobo: 485 km (13 hours)

Bobo to Ouagadougou: 328km (6 hours)

Ouagadougou to Natitingou: 390 (13 hours)

Totals: 2406km (1495 miles)

Driving that distance in the States at an average speed of 60 miles per hour would take 24 hours, give or take. That’s travel both ways. It took us 68 hours of actual travel time, time leaving to time arriving.

68 hours in minivans with 20+ people, overcrowded larger buses, and broken down bush taxis. That doesn’t include time waiting in between taxis/buses (when the taxi decides not to go any further and gives you to another driver who needs to fill up his car before he leaves. That can be as little as 30 minutes, or as much as 12 hours.

Add to that Dogon country: 45 km of hiking in Dogon

Ugh.

Driving back was worse than getting there. We had a bus that left us on the side of the road at night without a hotel within a hundred kilometers.

We had other problems too: buses broke down, ran out of gas, no room at the inn, etc...

It took a super long time, but we made it back exhausted, dirty, and angry. Cold showers were the most amazing thing ever.

I don’t have pictures to upload yet, but I’ll get to it soon. I’ll try and write some more stuff in the meantime if I think of anything I didn’t mention here.

Today I met the King of Klouekanme (aka, Roi Guinunu de Klouekanme, Président Départemental des Tradi-Praticien de Couffo, Président des religions traditionnelles de la commune de Klouekanme)

That was awesome.

I hadn’t had the guts to walk into the voodoo temple before, and my friend Parfait offered to take me whenever I wanted. I didn’t realize that he meant 30 minutes after I asked him. So he picked me up on his motorcycle and we drove through the village to the voodoo temple. It has paintings of practitioners performing animal sacrifices on its walls and statues of the founders in the entryway. All of that is more symbolic than anything. The figures are usually holding symbols of gods who represent something the temple specializes in, or animals that represent certain threats or needs (as far as I understand).

So we walked into the house across from the “voodoo palace” and spoke to the King’s second in charge, who gave us a quick interview to verify who we were and what we wanted. We had to take our shoes off before entering the house (comme d’habitude). Then he went to grab the king and we waited there.

He had pictures of former kings on the walls, a bottle of sodabi on the table next to a horse hair whip and a bell, as well as a poster of the Real Madrid soccer team, another with a picture of Jesus and a Bible quote written in French, and a third the a woman holding Muslim prayer beads with a prayer written in Arabic.

He also had three televisions, two boom boxes, and a collection of glasses all in the same large cupboard.

Then a man came into the room without saying a word and just stared at us for a while. We said hello and he made some sort of motion with his eyes but didn’t say anything.

The king came into the room in a flurry of white. He had white tissue fabric draped all over him, and rising into a hood with two large Mickey Mouse ears on the side of the tight fitting hood. It sounds humorous, but I was super intimidated when he walked in. slash. A little freaked out. He didn’t speak a lot of French, mostly Adja, so we communicated through my friend Parfait.

We got on our knees to show respect and he waved us up real quick. Then we explained our project we’re doing in village and asked him if he would speak at the opening ceremony. He agreed and took us to see the Palace. I put my shoes back on to cross the muddy street to the palace. While we crossed the street a woman got down on her hands and knees in front of him and kissed his feet, then got up and walked away.

Before entering the Palace, we again had to take off our shoes, even though the temple was outdoors and muddy. Inside the Palace walls, he explained what they do there, talked about the former Kings in the village, and invited me back the next morning to give me a proper tour of it. I agreed and we headed back to his house.

He gave me his number and then asked me what I wanted him to provide for tomorrow. I froze. Let me explain this a little further. The king of my village and commune, the president of the practitioners of traditional religions in the Couffo department asked me what I wanted from him. His secretary thought I misunderstood instead of being horrified of not knowing what to say. To refuse a gift is rude. The secretary says, in French, “The king has asked you what you want him to provide for you. Drinks? Food?” All of the people in the room had been giving me the same uncertain look that the other man had earlier. I ended up saying the first thing that came to mind: “sodabi.”

Everyone in the room laughed and the king said, “You really are African!”

Awesome day.

I am currently on my first journey outside of Benin in a year. As if I weren't having enough trouble with the reality of everything already, I watched Inception yesterday. Now I think at any given moment my brain might explode.

I am in Dublin right now, but the journey started out in Paris. I met up with my my cousin under the Eiffel tower and we ate delicious food and spent lots of money. Paris is cool, but really expensive. Dublin is much easier to handle and less expensive.

We're thinking about renting a car and taking it out to Cork or Kinsale tomorrow, we'll see what happens. Also, my good friend met up with us this morning and is here with us in Dublin. Ergo, tonight should be pretty damn fun.

The weirdest thing so far has been how much enjoyment I've found in the most commonplace things. For example, I ride escalators like rides. I still haven't ridden in an elevator, but I'm looking forward to it. It's really nice to have trash cans and consistent internet again.

I do miss the odd conveniences of Benin though, as difficult as that place can be. I miss the convenience of zemidjans and being able to negotiate prices rather than HAVE TO OVERPAY every time I buy a beer. I don't miss having to hand wash my clothes, and it turns out, I really missed laundry machines. My mom will be happy to hear that I bought some new clothes, kinda fashionable ones. So even though they're "new" and "clean" they look just as battered and filthy as my dirt stained pants from a year in Africa. O well.

I like having new music again. I have a lot, but end up listening to the weirder bands because I've listened to my favorites too much.

Anyways, vacation is awesome.

Just got back from Camp Espoir (Camp Hope) up north. It was a boys camp put on for 30 of the best male students at a school. It may have been the best thing I’ve done with my service so far. We gave sensibilizations on sexual health, personal responsibility, gender equality, healthy relationships, substance abuse, and many other topics. Each day ended with an hour of sports: soccer, dodgeball, or a field day/relay race (fyi, they HATED the relay race). It was really rewarding in hindsight, and incredibly exhausting in the midst of it all.

There are a large number of girls camps in each region of Benin. These are a means to empower young girls, give them reason to stay in school, and teach them about sexual health, among other things. However, this was the first year that a boys camp has been organized, and there were two of them. I think that it went a long way for these boys to begin to start asking questions that they’ve never been asked before. Asking themselves if a man really is naturally smarter than a woman, asking them to give reasons “why” instead of just letting them state an answer that they think someone wants to hear.

I don’t think it does any good to educate and work with only girls or only boys. I think that they both need to be taken out of their comfort zone and be asked difficult questions that they may have never been asked before. My favorite session at boys camp was one that investigated what a good man is. It began by asking the students to give words to describe a man. The first answers were “penis” and “no earrings.” After that, we gave each group of boys a situation in French to read and place on a Venn diagram under unhealthy, healthy, or it depends. After that they began to notice how insufficient their first answers were. Now they gave answers like, “a man can be strong without being domineering,” “a man is patient,” “a man is loyal” (I may have fixed the wording slightly). Next they were a given a situation which asked what they would do if their sister was beaten so badly by her boyfriend that she had to be taken to the hospital. At this point there was a lengthy discussion between Beninese facilitators working with us, and the students, which ended at a point where the boys realized they could solve the situation without resorting to violence or rashness. So basically, in one hour, the description of what a man is moved from “penis” to “thoughtful, patient, non-violent strength.”

I am convinced that people just need to be asked questions they either haven’t been asked before, or be asked in a way they haven’t before, and it will work wonders for their views on any number of issues.

It's been a long time since I posted. I'll try to make it a good one.

My parents came to visit for about a week, which was a lot of fun. It's hard to fit everything in with just a week, but we managed pretty well. Their first day, we went to Ganxie marche, which is an open air market in Cotonou, and we bout some tissue to get clothes made. Meme tish, as we say here.

Then we went to the artisans marche to buy masks and bracelets and jewelry. That was a good time but really difficult because I had to negotiate for a ridiculous amount of items and it's tough to get a good price on things that way. But we got it done in the end.

I had to go through a two-day training session, so they took it upon themselves to go out on a hotel tour to Ouiddah and Ganvie on the same day. Ouiddah is the former slave port of Benin and also where one can find "the door of no return." Ganvie is the stilt village, which features some of the worst poverty you'll find anywhere. I guarantee.

Once my training was done we went up to my village, Klouekanme, to meet my Maman in village and see my school, etc, etc...Then the next day we had a chance to meet the village chief and drink sodabi under his tree and have lunch. That was a lot of fun, and a very unique experience, even by Peace Corps Volunteer standards. I regularly make trips with volunteers who want to meet him, Mr. Fagla.

Then it was back to Cotonou, where, after village, poverty doesn't seem quite so bad. They flew out the next day. We rode lots of zemidjans and took bush taxis. I don't think they'll tell you that I babied them, but I may have a little...they did really great though, it certainly isn't easy to deal with the stress of Benin when so much gets squeezed into a week.

Other than that, I just finished my first year of school. I am a little surprised that I survived at all. It was certainly a challenge. If anyone tells you that teaching English to people while using another language as a reference point that neither party understands is easy, they are not you're friend, and you are being lied to. Everyone says that the second year of teaching is easier, and I think that's true. I think that's true mainly because you realize everything you've done wrong over the course of your first year.

We are all already talking about strategies for effective teaching next year, which I think is great.

We also have our new volunteers arriving in a little over two weeks, which everyone is excited about. It'll be weird being top dog, but we'll all be second year volunteers, playing the role of friend and teacher to new volunteers. That's always a tough line to walk, because no one wants to come off as pretentious or arrogant, but we're a fun-loving group of people, so it should all work out.

I guess that's all the news on this front. Any one interested in visiting Benin should speak to my folks, and they will make you want to come more.

I just got back from my last In Service Training session in Porto Novo. It was a lot of fun, my birthday got mixed in there as well and it was fun to be around a lot of volunteers. We had sessions every day from 8 AM to 6 PM with our Beninese counterparts to help facilitate better means of education. It’s difficult to make suggestions in a place where much of the education is a matter of copying what’s written on a chalkboard. There is very little thought put towards creative thinking or critical thinking. It’s a verbatim kind of education. It’s the same thing when dealing with Beninese professors. They know how they were taught, and see themselves as the measurement of the Beninese education system, and so their education is good enough for the others. I found another Peace Corps Volunteer blog who talked about chicken eggs. Without further ado:

Q1: Why doesn't anyone in village sell eggs?

A1: People can't find the eggs. The chickens run all over and we don't know where they lay. Plus, most people want to eat chicken meat, not the eggs.

Q2: Why do people let the chickens go wherever they want?

A2: They have to look for food (i.e. trash).

Q3: Couldn't people make simple pens for the chickens? That way they could sell eggs for people who want them and fatten them up faster?

A3: Sure. But then people would have to feed the chickens.

Q4: Why don't people what to feed their chickens?

A4: They eat the trash.

We had a spirited discussion about being corrected in class. My perspective was, if I am teaching my students something that is WRONG, I want and deserve to be corrected, and they deserve the correct answer. Sometimes I make mistakes and my students can correct me, and my response is always, “thank you.”

A Beninese professor I was speaking with argued that the children look up to the professor in such a way that to believe he is wrong will destroy all of their confidence in him.

I tried to explain that if a professor is giving students wrong information because he fears losing their respect, he does not deserve their respect.

To which he responded, the professor needs to be the king of his class, he needs to be perfect in their eyes, and he must know every answer they pose to them, even if he has to make something up.

Chickens eat trash.

It can be incredibly frustrating, but this is the culture here. Little children are ordered around by anyone older than them. “Petit! Go get me eggs! Petit! Go get me phone credit!” They have a society built on the authority of elders. That is not something easily changed, as we all can easily understand. Convincing someone to sacrifice a level of authority to possibly gain more respect.

I’m getting used to it. Not in the sense that I’m okay with it, but used to it in the sense that I am getting better at discussing these issues with Beninese. I also realized how used to other aspects of the culture I am now. I was in a taxi and noticed a Santa Clause mirror ornament. I was talking to my friend for about fifteen minutes about how weird it was to see a Santa when they don’t really have the same gift giving ideas that we do in America before I realized that there was a horsetail fetish also hanging from the rear view mirror. That’s a bit weirder when you actually realize that you were more entranced by Santa than a voodoo fetish.

I found a rat in my house the other day and have begun my process of eliminating his occupation of my house. I’m about to build, what I like to call, the West African Peace Corps rattrap. Basically, you get a bucket and fill it a quarter full of water. Then you attach a string between each of the handles and hang another piece of string in the middle with a piece of cheese tied to the end. Rats can climb up buckets, but the art of reaching, capturing, and eating the cheese without falling into the bucket, is a little beyond them.

The funny thing is, the journey of the rat does not end there. From my bush taxi vantage point I can see people holding up giant rat carcasses to sell. Why you ask? To eat, of course! It’s called agouti, I haven’t tried it yet because I’m scared of eating rats. But the point is, that’s probably what I’ll end up doing.

I’m currently in the process of grading upwards of 450 quizzes and tests prior to grades being due. On Monday, we start calculating the grades for all of our students and I hope to be done by Tuesday.

Next week I’ll be in Natitingou for the first meeting organizing a boys camp in Bassila. I’ll be one of the counselor’s for the camp in June or July. That means I’ll have to practice my French more prior to the camp. In village I speak a fair amount of English, at school and with my students for instance; and enough French and Aja and Fon to get by in the market and around town.

I’ve reached what I would call a fluency in Franglais, which is what we call our amalgamated cross language of French and English. It’s so hard to turn it off. Whenever I talk to people in the states, asking questions like “How are things la bas?” are a real challenge to avoid. It’s nice to have a couple different languages to work with to explain the more inexplicable experiences to other volunteers here. Talking to the states though….it’s a little more difficult. I struggle to get the point across with a lot of things that go on over here.

I guess that’s how experiences in countries like Benin become to romanticized, because I become so indifferent to the everyday differences between here and America and have to rely on words that don’t really do it justice. So I and others fill in the gaps with less applicable descriptions and expressions and construct a different reality than the one I have here. That’s probably just more of a general problem with trying to relate an encounter with a, in some regards, incomprehensible, experience through text and pictures. It would be better for people to just come here and experience it for themselves. I can’t fill in all the gaps of what people want or need to hear through this blog. And seeing firsthand is much different than reading and imagining.

That seems to be all the news that’s fit to print, so this is Erik English signing off.

You stay classy America.

I have been out of money for about a month now. It’s not really a problem when I’m in my village, but lately I’ve been traveling a lot for work and it really takes a toll. There are only so many days that I can survive off of bean sandwiches.

I’m in Cotonou again doing some research for my World Map Activity packet and attending a seminar on the Foreign Service. I had some money exchanged that I brought with me from America, and so I should be good until payday. It was nice to see and feel U.S. currency again, which was really weird. It was really funny to see the bank teller struggling with it. Here, bills of larger denominations are larger, smaller denominations are smaller, and they are all a designated color: red, green, blue. U.S. dollars aren’t like that, and he had no idea what I had given him. (Don’t worry, I didn’t cheat Ecobank out of money) In case you’re wondering, the current rate is one dollar to 457 CFA. And so he had to ask me, real quite like…”c’est combine?” It was pretty silly.

Afterwards I walked around Ganhi for a while, which is a bit of a ritzy area of Cotonou on the beach. There are large clothing outlets, fancy pants restaurants, and even an art museum. I went to a little buvette down on the beach, which was nice, aside from the large piles of trash. There was also a large gang of children who beg on the beach all day, who I’ve nicknamed the Warriors, and ask them if they can come out to play. It was refreshing to see and smell the ocean again, even though I can’t go in. The riptides are really powerful and dangerous, so NOBODY goes in, unless you’re fishing in a pirogue or something. It looked a lot like long beach, they both have a large number of oil tankers waiting offshore, but apparently pirates are a little more likely here. But only a little, don’t get too comfortable America!

At one point I struck up a conversation with the guy sitting across from me and discovered he was a refugee from Chad who had been displaced by the conflict in Darfur. He showed me his passport and explained how he wanted to go to America to save up money and help his family and friends in Chad. Unfortunately, I can’t do anything for this man. Even if I had the resources, I wouldn’t know where to start. I told him that I’ll be living in Benin for two years and wouldn’t be able to help him until after. At this point he scoffed, and said he couldn’t live in Benin for more than three months. So now I have a new friend from Chad.

After that I went to the market and noticed that there was a horse in the field across the road. I asked my zem if the horse is always there. Yes, always. Why is he always there? Well, the man who moves the horse is not there, so the horse won't be moved. The horse will stay there because the horse is already there and the man who moves the horse isn't there to move it.

Ohhhhh, Benin...ou bien

Happy six month anniversary of living in Benin to me!

I wanted to post some things about my area, so here goes nothing:

This is my buddy Dennis who lives in a neighboring commune to me. This is his village, but it looks a lot like mine.

This is what Benin does to a man.

Well, that about does it. I'll try and get more stuff about my post for next time. I realize I don't have much media up here from my living situation.

My holidays were spent in northern Benin, in Kandi, Parakou, and Natitingou. Christmas was spent near Niger eating handmade cheeseburgers. After that I spent a few days in Natitingou swimming in waterfalls and trying to eat as much as possible. There was a huge waterfall downstream of the lagoon we were swimming in. It must have been forty of fifty feet I’m guessing. I climbed down to the edge to look at jumping off of it. I’m sure my mom will be glad to hear that, before I jumped without looking, I climbed down to the lower lagoon to check how deep it was. I swam under where I was going to jump, dove down, and with my feet on the mud, and my arms stretched out, my fingers were above the water. I’m not a veterinarian or an astronaut or anything like that, but I’m pretty sure it’s a good thing I didn’t jump off that cliff. Note to anyone in the Natitingou area traveling to chutes d’eau: don’t jump off the cliff.

Unfortunately, the New Years Bash that was supposed to happen in my neck of the woods down south wasn’t able to happen. On the bus down south, a friend and I both realized that instead of a voodoo new year with the village Chief, we’d be spending Christmas in the Medical Unit in Cotonou.

It went great though. It was the first time I had actually spent some serious time in Cotonou, which is the most developed city in Benin. There are paved roads, street lights, nice restaurants, clubs, ostentatiously interpretively constructed buildings, and lots of white people. It’s overwhelming. But like any good city, if you know where to go and who to go with, it’s always a good time.

What’s especially nice is how easy it is to find huge amounts of good food that you can’t find anywhere else in the country. There’s a new store in Cotonou called Erevan, which is the freakish offspring of target, Albertsons, and Costco. I say freakish because for me, there was nothing more absurd and frightening after two months living in a village and four months of beans and rice in a loaf of bread than walking into a large air-conditioned store that sells above ground pools, books, and real cheese.

There was a quasi-fireworks spectacular in Cotonou, and I saw people throwing fireworks at each other from the window. Just like home. We made Mimosas, had a wine and cheese party with gouda and goat cheese, and made grilled cheese with tomato soup. Hooray for the sick kid spectacular.

I also had time to look at the differences in development between Cotonou, other large cities in Benin, and my village specifically. A week after I got to my post, I wrote a long diatribe about development and aid in Benin. The majority of my argument was centered around the large concrete structures that were paid for by USAID and built by RTI (a private contractor who bought the contracts to build these structures in markets around my village). For the most part, it was a frustrated post fueled more by my initial impressions of development projects than their actual inadequacies. I decided to treat it like a letter to an ex after a breakup, and didn’t post it right away. After more time I’m realizing that I was seeing these structures in the wrong light.

Development in any given country is a difficult and fine line to walk. It’s foolish and ignorant to think every developed city should be developing to the standards of a New York or Los Angeles. Development should be occurring within the cultural standards of a given place. To use the concrete structures as an example, their purpose is to add a degree of legitimacy to the open-air markets that would be occurring there anyways, to get baskets off of the dirt, and to have a recognized area for the market. I think this is good because it allows development to enhance the culture. Anyone coming to visit me here, or anywhere similar to Benin, will realize immediately how interesting the open-air markets are. Finding the good food, finding a good seller, negotiating a price, buying directly from the person who grew or made whatever it is you’re buying. It’s really a great aspect of the cultural experience here (don’t pick things up with your left hand, always ask how their family is, always know the price you’ll pay before negotiating, work quickly). That’s an example of a cross-cultural experience that you don’t want to see disappear. Development can occur best within these parameters, however slowly it may happen, when the culture itself is respected throughout.

In terms of me as a development worker, I had a great opportunity the other day to hold a formation with a visiting group of Americans. I team taught a class in a village called Lalo the other day with my post-mate Miranna in front of a group of twenty education volunteers from New York. What a rush that was. We were introducing instrument vocabulary. The lesson went really well, I acted out how to play instruments, Miranna quizzed kids on their names, and we managed to squeeze in a game of Pictionary at the end (Brownie point: I drew a picture of Barack Obama that a kid guessed correctly. BOOM). More than that though, it was really inspiring to see that many Americans interested in what we were doing and how we were doing it.

We had a Q and A session afterwards that dealt with our style of teaching versus Beninese teachers, why we joined the Peace Corps, what has been the most difficult adjustment so far, etc. Just to elaborate on a few of those topics, Education volunteers in Benin are taught to incorporate creativity very heavily into their lessons. I never really thought about it before living here, but something like creativity is what I’ve started calling a “first-world luxury.” While me and Miranna can look at the textbook, identify what the kids need to know, and structure our own lessons from that; Beninese professors stick strictly to the book because they’re worried the students won’t be able to pass their tests unless they do every activity, follow every direction, and do everything else the book does. It’s interesting to watch lessons by two professors for this reason. (If any of them are reading this, they need to send me those pictures, because I don’t have any pictures of myself teaching)

Devoirs, or tests, are coming up for the end of the first semester at all the schools in Benin, so I’m getting my kids ready for them and giving quizzes and fun staff like that. It’s a really stressful time because I tend to evaluate my teaching abilities against those of the Beninese professors. It’s especially stressful because I’m supposed to be using my creativity to enhance the learning experience, and they hold true to the accepted form.

Moving on from technical conversation…I was in my house the other night eating dinner and watching a movie on my laptop. One of my neighbors’ children came by and came inside to sit with me. I love this kid. He’s always super excited to see me, has a huge head, and always has a mischievous grin on his face. I decided to turn off whatever I was watching and play Finding Nemo. Note: he does not speak French, and he has no idea what they’re saying in English, I can’t explain this movie at all.

So as Nemo is getting ready for his first day of school and swimming through the reef, he starts to let out a serious of confused gasps. Oddly enough, the older a person gets in Benin, the more high-pitched it becomes. It’s gotten to the point with me where I give a short little high-pitched scream every time I get a bad price that I have to haggle down. Anyways, my four-year-old, mischievous, bigheaded friend is watching the movie, gasping all the while, and can only yell out the basic French words for fish and snake. Pretty soon he runs out of the room back to his house, and I thought I blew his little mind and felt a little guilty. But pretty soon he comes knocking on my door again with his older brother, who sits down for a while and then they both run out again. Within two minutes I have the two boys, and their infant sisters sitting on my couch watching CGI fish try to battle their way through an ocean of danger and excitement to save poor little Nemo. It was amazing.

When I got here, I had come with the expectation of having to hide electronics from people to avoid appearing materialistically “better” than anyone. I’ve reached the point now where I want to share with people, and show them the things that exist outside of their village. You can buy computers in Cotonou, but a good percentage of every Peace Corps Volunteer’s village has never been to Cotonou. All the same, I like the idea of sharing possibilities and information with people.

That’s as good of a segue as I’m going to get to talk about my progress with my World Map Activity Packet. I have another volunteer helping me out with creative activities for it, and I think I may have found a Beninese person to help me with translating it into French. Our emphasis has been mostly on the Historical Geography classes and incorporating the world map into the basic curriculum. We are making short descriptions of well-known and lesser-known countries for kids to study and be quizzed on, matching games involving information about a country or culture that students will identify, color coordinated maps of continents, and puzzles of west Africa. We’re both really excited and think it is a really great project to get behind.

Anyways, I think I’ve ranted enough for now.

Peace

Hey so I have some pictures for the peeps.

This is a lion statue at a sacred forest in Ouiddah, in the South.

Hey that's me!

This is the archway the slaves walked through on their way to reach the ship waiting offshore.

This is me giving a speech in French on Beninese television.

This is me with my host Maman, her son, a friend, and the volunteer who lived with them last year.

This is a dead frog I found in my backyard.

I went for a bike ride to Djakotomey the other day, this is a picture of the road into my village from the gudron (paved road).

This is a recently constructed classroom, not at my school, though.

Also on my bike ride.

More bike ride...it was about 25 kilometers.

This is my new bike. My old one broke due to my bike's confusion about how much it could handle. Concusion: not much.

Anyways, hope you all have a fun Christmas and new years!

Peace

E

Happy late Thanksgiving to everyone. And Merry early Christmas.

I spent my Thanksgiving in Parakou with other volunteers. We had a huge meal and a lot of fun. We bought a couple bottles of Tchook (I don’t know how to spell it), or millet beer, which was pretty good. Unfortunately, it doesn’t do the experience justice when I say I had Tchook. So I will say, I had it in a tin shed on the side of the road. We all sat down on wooden benches on a dirt floor. We each ordered cent francs (100 CFA), which amounts to twenty cents, or a shell full. The vender then walked to the other side of the room, dunked a big bowl in a bucket full of fermenting beer and filled our wooden bowls. We sat there exchanging what little local language phrases we knew, sweating and drinking. It was nice to go in there again later and have the venders get really excited to see me.

I don’t know if the novelty ever wears off. Not so much the novelty of Benin for me, but the novelty of seeing, serving, and talking with a rare white person. It is entertaining, but also incredibly sad. It’s nice to see how excited people get that you are there. But it’s sad to know that too often, all you are is a novelty, like a new interesting toy to play with.

I went to eat pate at a buvette near my house in Klouekanme the other day. I don’t know much Fon, but I tried to greet the non-French speaking vender as best I could. She invited me in and paid for my food. Then she proceeded to run outside yelling in Fon. All I could make out was the word, “Yovo,” meaning white or foreign. She was yelling to everyone outside that the white person in town was eating at her restaurant, that I was her friend. I think the implication was that I was not their friend. She then invited people inside to watch me awkwardly eat really hot food with my hands.

So here we arrive at the novelty of me. Oftentimes, the novelty is all I can expect out of people. Serious friendships so far have been too much to ask.

Anyways, at Thanksgiving, I killed a pentard, which is basically guinea fowl. That was nice closure for someone who was a vegetarian for as long as I was. Although, gutting it was less redemptive. We also killed a turkey, a duck, and another pentard. Then we crammed a pentard inside of the duck, crammed that inside of the turkey, and ate well. Hooray for tur-duck-tard. I’m not too superstitious, but it seemed like a bad omen to kill a duck before the Oregon v. Oregon State game. All in all, I think I made the right decision.

Thanksgiving caused me to contemplate my morphing palate here. For example, I never thought I’d say to myself, “Damn, that needs a lot more mayonnaise,” or “They didn’t use nearly enough oil for this.” One of my favorite meals on the fly has been beans and spaghetti inside a loaf of bread with a hardboiled egg and a hefty helping of mayonnaise.

Avocado sandwiches are good, but few and far between. Also good is buying a wheel of Vache Qui Rit, and smearing a couple slices of that over bread. I haven’t been eating breakfast, but I talk about it all the time, and how much I miss oatmeal with peanut butter and some fruit. So now I think a couple volunteers are slicing bananas into their oatmeal and peanut butter. I really should go find that stuff.

Food here is a bit different than in the States. It’s good, and I like it, but it’s taken some time. It’s not just the taste, but also the temperature. I have calluses all over my fingers now from eating ridiculously hot food with my hands. It’s nice to cook for yourself while at post, but a lot more expensive than buying a plate of beans and rice for twenty cents. I’m getting pretty good at making pizzas from scratch, as well as pastas. I am also getting fairly good at making tacos from scratch, although some of the ingredients are scarce. We can find tomatoes and onions; but cheese, and lettuce are difficult. Ground beef can be found, but I try to stay away from the beef here. We’ve been using pork, which works well. I imagine, though, that not many people would be game for watching the butcher kill and slice up the pig in front of you whil you drink a beer across the street.

The tortillas are from scratch, and beans have to be cooked and mashed and refried by hand, which isn’t all that fun in the heat. However, when those tacos are finished, and loaded up, it’s totally worth it. Ça commence, le food coma.

Anyways, veering away from my daily and extracurricular diets…I just got back from our Peer Support Workshop (PSW) in Parakou. I REALLY like Parakou. At the workshop, we all went around the room to share stories from our classes and work out strategies for success, as well as discuss proper TPS report submission. It was decided that me and two other volunteers are basically teaching in the Beninese inner city. None of our disciplinary tactics learned in model school have worked in our classes at post. Kids fight in class, they yell at teachers, they swear, they don’t do their work, the list goes on… It was nice to hear it though; I thought I was just a terrible teacher. This is much easier on the ol’ self-esteem.

So now I have a few strategies for controlling my kids. Time will tell if they actually work. The good news is, another volunteer taught here before. His name was Eric, so that’s a step in the right direction. There is hope.

While making my way around Parakou, I noticed a sign for the Church of Eckankar (I don’t remember exactly how it’s spelled), which I thought was really interesting. Eckankar was the name of a cult or of a cult leader started by Paul Twitchell, I believe in the 70s. I was hoping that someone might be able to send me some information on the emergence of Eckankar in West Africa. I’d be curious to do some research on that, but any background information that anyone could send me would be helpful.

On another note, it doesn’t look like our annual girls camp in Porto Novo will be funded by the NGO that usually sponsors us. So we will be starting a PCPP, which means that you will all be able to donate lots of money to a good cause. The camp is called Camp GLOW (Girls Leading Our World). It is a way to bring young female leaders from all over Benin to a camp with other girls to discuss good hygiene, female empowerment, sex education, and the importance of education. Lectures dealing with empowerment and education are given by successful Beninese women. If you are interested, go ahead and donate! Even $5 helps. Here is the process:

1. go to www.peacecorps.gov and click on "Donations"

2. at this point, you can search by the last name, "Hurst", OR click on "view all volunteer projects" on the right side of the page

3. you can then search under "Benin"

4. click on the Camp GLOW PCPP. You can then read a short description of the project, see how much of the total has been raised, and make a donation.

Remember, all donations are tax deductible!

FYI: Every kid I’ve met here named “Dieudonne” (God-given) is a total jerk, adults also apparently. What a weird irony. *The more you know*

I can't help but mention one last thing. I scored a copy of Wall-e the other day. Yesterday, when the sun went down and I couldn't grade papers anymore, my power has been out, I decided to watch it and kill the rest of my computer battery. I was sitting in my house watching this movie about a developed country that becomes too developed, and collapses under the weight of it's own consumption. I was watching this in my house in West Africa, where I work to facilitate development. I can't help but laugh at the irony of working towards development in a country that idolizes a country that contemplates it's own destruction from over-development. Food for thought from Benin.

Peace

Hello.

I am currently in Cotonou. I have some kind of bacteria in my stomach (don't ask me which, I am not a doctor). I was able to use a real shower with hot water for the first time in four months. Oh my science. I've never felt satisfaction like that before.

Next week I will be in Parakou for TEFL's PSW. So that's where I'll be for thanksgiving. I doubt I'll have a turkey, but I'll drink a beer to your good health.

Currently the weather is: hot.

Yesterday was: hot.

Tomorrow will be: rainy and hot.

Not too much to report right now. I am clean, fed, and on my way to being healthy. I'm a lot like a dog after the vet.

Oh! I watched an episode of the Daily Show, and Colbert the other day. One thing I've noticed about my current living situation: I don't really know a lot of what is going on in the world. I was watching those shows, thinking, "I know this should be funny, but I'm not laughing. Who is the boy in a balloon?"

Anyways, hope all is well!

I was inspired to write this after having a terribly difficult class. To give some background in my training for teaching, I was trained to speak French to live successfully in Benin, but I teach in English only. This has been a problem for my cinqieme class. Last year, in their first English class they were taught how to speak English with their professor speaking French and Adja. My question is: How do you learn a new language by speaking two completely different ones? The answer is, he said a phrase in English, they repeated, then he explained it in Adja and French.

I don’t want to come off negative, but in my eyes this shows a serious underlying problem with the education system here. A passing grade here is a 50%, and everything is out of twenty, so a ten out of twenty on an exam is passing. These are all averaged out at the end of the year, so a student who receives a 15 in one class 8s in the others can still get a 10 overall and pass. Is this aiming low? Or is it a cultural difference I haven’t quite grasped yet?

My class that inspired this post was angry that I spoke only English in class. They have four hours of English class each week, and six hours of French. I am happy to say that I could speak French in my class exclusively, but what does that even out to? Ten hours of French? And how many of English?

Even more difficult is grappling with how to discipline a class when I have made a commitment to speak English, which they don’t understand. Other professors in Benin hit their students, although I haven’t seen this at my school, and Peace Corps Volunteers do not. So Volunteers have to be more creative than most with controlling their classes. For example, when my class is acting up, I stop teaching. I will wait as long as it takes. I know someone who waited an hour and a half.

Aside from that, Volunteers, especially those new to teaching like myself, have to realize that discipline problems are more a reflection on the teacher than the student. Although I have only been reviewing the basic material from their previous English class so far, they don’t understand any of it. They spent their last English class speaking French and Adja and don’t know how to hear English. So now I have to spend time re-teaching everything they should have already learned. The cold reality for me is that I need to be teaching things that they will be able to understand, which I so far have not, and my classroom discipline has suffered as a result. The students here are intelligent, but have suffered from a system where 50% is enough to get through, and sometimes less than that.

More difficulties are apparent in the ratio of girls to boys in school. Ecole primaire, or elementary school, is free for girls in Benin, but the next high school equivalent costs around 10,000 CFA each year, which is around twenty dollars. Most families cannot afford this, and the girls are the ones whose education will be ignored. There are plenty more boys than girls at most schools. As far as I can tell, this ratio isn’t as bad at my school because I am in a bit of a bigger village. Still, when I go to the market after my classes, there are always school-age girls selling things with their Mamas, and very few boys doing the same.

The kids that do make it to school buy cahiers, or notebooks. None of the students have textbooks. The teacher’s job here is to present a textbook on the chalkboard, and have the kids copy charts and examples into their notebooks. Hopefully the end result will be enough when they go back to study for their exams. The professors use a text called Document d’Accompagnement, which is published by the government. They are riddled with errors and not very thorough. Peace Corps has been revamping them each year, making what changes can be made in a forum with other teachers in Benin. They are steadily getting better and the freshly printed ones are leaps and bounds beyond the previous, from what I can tell.

I’ve inherited an English club from a Volunteer I’m replacing, conveniently named Eric, shout out! I have a couple of ideas for the club so far. Most of the kids who have approached me about it so far are in Terminal or Primiaire, and speak English very well. I’m really excited about their enthusiasm. I want to have things for them to read and engage with, but having enough books sent is too difficult to consider. I’ve thought about newspapers, to split them up into groups in our English club meetings to read and present the articles to the group. I’ve thought about giving weekly assignments using Wikipedia entries and our world map painting. Perhaps assigning a group of students to present on a country and giving them a Wikipedia entry that I could pick out. Somewhere they wouldn’t normally think about, and it could help improve their knowledge of the world as all the groups presented. There are also games that we could play, like scrabble or mad libs. Just some thoughts.

After talking with another volunteer, I noticed that a major problem in Benin is the belief that memorizing will lead to understanding. For instance, in class, many Beninese teachers will have students copy rules, copy examples, and copy texts, but the connection between the words and their meaning is never bridged. This caused me to think a lot about the education system in the United States, specifically in regards to grammar. Grammar has been eliminated from most, if not all, public school curriculums. The idea being that speaking the language enough will result in an understanding of the grammar involved. I am not one to say whether it works for all or any or none. But I know it didn’t work for me until I had to start teaching those grammar principles in Benin.

The problem is that in Benin and the U.S., oftentimes one material to be learned will be sacrificed to emphasize another, which is supposed to result in the grasping of both, in the same way that Adja and French equals English.

A friend gave me an example of the memorizing tactic here. Her friend was studying for her French class and asked for help. My friend agreed and asked what the problem was. The girl said she could not read or write, and needed to memorize a text her professor had given to show that she understood it. She memorized it, and was able to recite it to her professor, but the text made no more sense to her because of it. The words were still words she couldn’t read or write. She didn’t know what the words meant, but knew what they sounded like. Isn’t it the same thing in the U.S.? We can speak English, and use a very formulaic pattern to create meaning out of the sounds we make, but oftentimes can’t make the connection to why we use that formula, what it means to say words in that order.

English teach I Benin in. I can fix that sentence, we all could. But how many can explain the rules behind it? It may seem trivial to many people, but it’s the difference between memorizing and understanding. It’s the difference between saying something, and knowing what it means, being able to explain why it is that way, why it needs to be said that way. In case you’re wondering, there is a reason why I’m spending an inordinate amount of time explaining these things. I spoke to a friend back home in California the other night after she had had a conversation with two men who felt that Europe was socialist and America was great, so screw Europe, socialism sucks.

My question would be, Why does socialism suck? Why is America great? You find the same phenomenon here all the time. Beninese eople LOVE America. When I go to the market and speak French to vendors, they oftentimes think I’m European, and can be incredibly rude (I’ve yelled at a few people after they told me their opinions of me, the European). The second they find out that I’m American, the whole conversation changes, they’ll apologize profusely, ask me about America, tell me what they know about it, and who they’ve met whose been to America.

I played Pictionary in one of my classes, giving them important vocabulary and making them draw for the class. A few noteworthy ones: outer space, playing football, watching TV, drawing, and America. The student drawing America had so many ideas that he became overwhelmed by it. He drew a clean school, cars, and an American flag. Everyone in the class was excited about the America drawing. But why were they excited? Why did they love that picture so much? Why do they love America?

Another incident occurred when I visited the home of a professor at my school. He had a poster up in his living room that was meant to be America. It was a picture of a brand new, red sports car parked in front of a huge white and yellow mansion surrounded by flowers and crisp, clean-cut grass. That was the way he saw America every morning in his living room: consumption, comfort, excess, the ability to buy things that he did not need but wanted. That is something that is found here at times, but on a much smaller scale. Is that why?

People ask me to take them to America. Some volunteers get marriage proposals from individuals and their family, asking to be taken back to America. No one can quite explain to me what it is about America that they love.

This is what I thought of when I heard about Europe and Europeans sucking, and America rocking. What is it about America that rocks so apparently hard? The things I’ve missed most so far have been running water and fast food, and while that COULD be it, I doubt it. The only conclusion I’ve reached so far has been the difference between memorizing and understanding. I can memorize the sounds of the words, “Socialism sucks, socialism has failed, America is the greatest nation that God ever put on this great Earth.” But what does it mean?? The fact that someone memorizes how to say “Socialism sucks, Africa is doomed, Je m’appelle Erik” doesn’t mean they know what it means, or whether they said something correct or not. It’s a reason to avoid the answer to the question, Why isn’t America great? If all your professor wants to hear is you reciting something, what’s the incentive to do more than that?

I have an activity I play with my class sometimes, where I ask them what it means to wash clothes. I have notecards with pictures drawn on them of people playing soccer, washing clothes, reading, etc. I hold them up one at a time and ask whether or not each one is washing clothes. The class all repeats “no,” “no,” “no,” “yes!” It’s a simple exercise, but the fact that they can recognize that it is a picture of someone washing clothes goes a long way to them understanding it. Then I’ll ask if it’s a boy or a girl. What is the boy doing, “He is washing clothes.” So now their understanding has moved from recognizing what washing clothes is, to understanding how to express it when I ask a question that does not have “washing” in it at all. It may seem like a trivial victory, but that’s my work here, the difference between memorizing an understanding: Asking questions differently to understand an answer from multiple angles.

The main issue I want to address here is this difference between memorizing and understanding. This idea that America is great, which people here can’t quite articulate to me. Can Americans? I can’t.

I would encourage you, when you recognize someone memorizing a line like, “America is great!” to ask them, Why? Tell them that there are thousands of people who think America is Shangri La, the land of milk and honey, and cloud 9 all wrapped up in whipped cream, baked until the neighbors can smell, with a cherry on top, left on the windowsill to cool, but just out of reach for everyone but you. Ask them why that is, and then ask them if it’s because socialism sucks, if it’s because America just rocks, because everyone else sucks, because we know the difference between memorizing and under understanding. Ask if it’s because of anything good that America has done for them, or just because people look for something, anything, that can be good, and memorize the line, “America is great,” just like everyone else, and say it enough that people accept it as fact.

There are people out there who love America, and I want to know exactly why that is.

Moving on, if anyone could send me a French press and some good coffee (*hint hint Oregon friends who don’t have stumps for hands and can package things effectively with their fingers from their town to mine), that would be amazing. I already broke the small French press I brought with me. Sorry, Michelle.

Since I was asked recently, I wanted to include some local African salutations. The question was, How do you say ‘what’s up in Adja?’

In Benin, one of the most common greetings, what’s up status, is, Bonjour, tu t’es bien reveille? (I think that’s spelled right). It basically just means, Hey, start your day well?

In Aja, phonetically, (thanks Eric and Sheena) it’s, È fon nyide à?

In Fon, phonetically to the layman named Erik, it’s É fon gandji à?

I hope this post doesn't come off too negatively. These are just some thoughts that have been floating around in my head while I do nothing at post. Hope you're all doing well!!

Captain’s Log: Crossroads of Benin There, and Where the Hell Am I? If this post is somewhat schizophrenically structured, it’s because I’ve been writing it in pieces over the last few weeks, spanning the weeks leading up to swear in, and through my first few weeks at post. I’ll try and do this for the next couple weeks because I won’t have a lot of time to go to the cyber café until around mid-December, when my lockdown is over. Lockdown is the first three months at post during which time I am not allowed to leave my village. A few days before swear-in, all of the to-be volunteers went on a field trip to Ouiddah. Ouiddah is the city where the former slave trade port in Benin was located. There was a lot of incredibly depressing things there. Anyone like “white guilt”? There was a mass grave for slaves who couldn’t “pass” their physical, and there was a huge arch on the beach called “the door of no return.” To emphasize the severity of its name and meaning, there was a gold embossed image on top of the arch depicting slaves chained together walking towards the beach/ship. On the other side, they were walking towards the viewer, and away from the jungle/Benin. I may never be able to correctly process my emotions from that day. I kept imagining what it would have been like to walk through that gate and see a ship waiting a half-mile offshore for me. I thought the walk down to the water would be like a walk on the beach socal style, but then I realized how much broken glass there was and put my shoes back on. My friend made a good point about this tour though, saying that it was a tour of the city of Ouiddah, which didn’t begin or end with the slave trade. That’s a very crucial thing to think about at a place like that. We learned a lot about their early religious practices and lineages of kings as well. For swear in, most of the male volunteers grew mustaches. Yeah bro. Also, because we had progressed from such a low level to such a high level in French, my friend Sarah and I were asked to give a speech in French, which was broadcast around Benin. So if you’ve got yourself a satellite dish and stumble across some eclectic West African news program you paid for to feel worldly, and see a dark-haired fellow looking startlingly like Doc Holliday, wearing some kind of purplish, bluish moo-moo outfit and speaking in awkward French, you may have just spotted me. Swear-in was a lot of fun, and afterwards we all got our Identification Cards and took our first trip to the bank (prior to being given checkbooks at swear-in, PC reps came every two weeks to give us money for food and transport). I don’t like the banks in West Africa, I see no method to the madness. Then a group of us stumbled into a restaurant called Bangkok Terrace, which is similar to American faux-Chinese restaurants, but ran by actual Chinese people living in Cotonou. Amazing. Little breaks from the madness of Benin, and especially Cotonou, have been my saving grace. For instance, when you walk into this restaurant, all the noise of traffic and vendors disappears. There is a small water-powered mill rotating slowly to the right as you walk over a small bridge and small garden into the glass-walled restaurant. They serve water with lemon, and amazing servings of everything. I am planning a trip there soon. That night we had our big “hooray we’re finally volunteers!” party in Porto Novo. It is a well-known Peace Corps fact that you are not a real person until you swear in. Ergo, I felt a lot taller after that. The party was fun, and the next day we all started heading out to post in waves. As of right now, I am at post in Klouekanme (roughly, Klik-a-may: no people don’t speak in clicks). A Peace Corps Rite of Passage among Volunteers emerges through arrival at post. For the first time since your arrival, you really are truly alone. Not in the sense that there are no people around you anymore, but in the sense that you realize how dependant you may or may not (and probably are) on the presence of Americans. At that moment, I really had to take stock of what I had with me that was familiar. Many people react in different ways. Mine wasn’t as bad as most, but it was definitely not on par with “normal human behavior.” It’s one of those things that you have to trust will pass. You have to hope it will so you can be effective in your community. In fact, I am fairly certain that the first few weeks, and possibly months, are more about grit than skill or cultural acceptance. It’s a jolt to your system. You’ve just got to realize that it isn’t supposed to be easy. It isn’t supposed to be comfortable. Not at first anyways. All the same, I’ve been missing Stage lately. Stage is the in-country pre-service training, which lasted 9 weeks in Porto Novo. It’s difficult to go from near-constant contact with Americans, to none at all. Especially since we were playing football and soccer all the time and being super American-y. I didn’t realize how dependant I had become on contact with Americans until I got to post and had none. For the last few weeks, my daily schedule has consisted of waking up around six, taking a bucket shower and eating breakfast. School starts around 8 most days, but I only work three days a week. Either way, still wake up around six every day. My school is a ten minute walk from the house, and usually I leave at the same time as a lot of students, so I end up walking with a flock of students all wearing their tan khaki uniforms. It took a while for classes to get started, and essentially they still haven’t quite started. The school grounds at the beginning of the school year are overgrown with high grass and weeds, so the first couple weeks are spent with all the kids out in the fields hacking away. As of right now, each of my classes has about fifty students in attendance, but since I’m at a bit of a bigger school I can expect around seventy or so once they’ve all shown up. So while I wait I’ve been reviewing verb tenses: simple present, present continuous, simple past, WOOT! Who knows? I may even work in some definite and indefinite articles soon. Booyakasha! One of my classes is in a borderline bamboo hut with a tin roof that gets so hot in the mid-afternoon heat that my small cardboard-ish chalkboard starts steaming. I’ve been surviving that super hot classroom by laughing at the idea of myself teaching, guzzling water, sweating profusely, and steadily dirtying whatever shirt I’m wearing to an unheard of degree in West Africa. That whole living in West Africa thing hasn’t really hit me. After class I walk back home or to buy some food amid the cries of Yovo! Yovo! Apparently that means white, but foreigner seems more appropriate. From what I’ve gathered from volunteers and Beninese, the French missionaries that used to live here taught kids all around Benin to sing a song combining the native language, “Yovo,” with French. So now, all of the kids sing a song to me constantly that feels both condescending and admiring: yovo yovo bonsoir, ca va bien, merci. Okay, maybe not admiring, but not entirely patronizing. The French missionaries may have thought it was cute, but it very well may be the most annoying song I’ve ever heard. Arriving at home, I’ll pull some water out of the well to shower with and boil for drinking water the next day. Then read until there’s no more light, because my electricity doesn’t work very well, and crash around 9. Every five days there is a marche day/market day, where vendors from all over come and sell stuff. They also count the current day, so if Monday is marche day, the next one is Friday. I love being able to tell when the next marche is by looking at my hand. It has a very simple brilliance to it. I had heard during stage that the marche at my post was crazy, but I had no idea. My first day at the marche here in Klouekanme was insane. I’ve never seen so many people. I was hit with a wheelbarrow, and I saw a woman carrying a basin of rice on her head hit with a motorcycle. Yes, motorcycles charge through the marche and crowds of people. I would guess a couple thousand people were circling around the center of town. I’ve found the key for me to deal with it is to set little goals for myself. The other day I found sugar for the first time, and was super pumped. I still haven’t found flour, which is a bummer because I want to start making some bread. Fruits and most vegetables are fairly easy. I can always get pasta and tomato paste, but the first time I actually make a barbequed pizza with chicken and veggies (by the way, I fully intend to kill that chicken myself, another Peace Corps Rite of Passage), oh man, it’s going to be something otherworldly. In case you hadn’t noticed I’m also planning on talking to the blacksmith about building a barbeque. It’s going to be America-ville, Benin! That’s mostly a response to the fact that I had some trouble at first with making my house work for me, but I’m starting to figure things out. It’s not like I don’t have nice things here, or am missing any real necessities, but I’m replacing volunteers. That means that I am living in their house with their stuff. The sense of ownership is not something I’ve developed with this house yet. My post-mates in a neighboring village had no furniture in their house, and I had a ton. So I gave them a fair amount and kept a few things for myself. I’m just one person and don’t need a lot anyways. As of now, I have a bookcase, a coffee table with some chairs, and a couch. That works for me at this point in my service. I may get some more stuff made soon, but it’s expensive to buy a lot of stuff from the carpenter. He seems to like me though, and came over the other day to re-varnish my old furniture for free, so that’s cool. During my free time I’ve started drawing the things I want him to make. I had a table made with holes cut out for big water basins so I can wash my dishes. I’m also toying around with a big cabinet, and some shelves in my shower-ish area in the back yard. I’m starting to lay the groundwork for a secondary project to possibly begin working on soon. Sheena, one of the volunteers I replaced, painted a world map at my school and it looks awesome. The World Map Project is one that Peace Corps pushes for, and I think it would be a fun project to do a couple of them at different schools around Klouekanme and in some neighboring villages. It’s just an idea at this point though, and recently I’ve been more concerned with starting murals on the inside of my house. My latest idea is a silhouette of an elk, but I forgot what they look like, so it’s been interesting to see it develop. Around the house, I’ve been doing a lot of cooking, or trying to anyways. So far, the only things I’m really comfortable making is a sandwich with vache qui rit, mac and cheese, and pasta with white sauce or red. My white sauce has really gotten better the last few weeks. Aside from struggling terribly to cook for myself from scratch every day, I’ve been doing a lot of reading. So far I’ve read Swann’s Way, Lolita, Harry Potter 1,2,3,4,5, Three Cups of Tea, and am currently moving around with Hot, Flat and Crowded, the Poisonwood Bible, and The Plague. The days here a really long…you can fit a lot in. Despite the excess of time, I’ve noticed that relatively simple things become very difficult very fast once you arrive at post. For example, if I want to get some water, I have to pull water out of a well, boil it for about 20 or 30 minutes, then filter it in a water filter which takes about an hour to get enough to fill my water bottle. Then I drink it really hot and am not refreshed because it’s super hot and humid here constantly. If I want to go to the bank, I take a zem (motorcycle taxi) 45 minutes out of town to Azove, then take a bush taxi an hour south to Lokossa, then stand in line at the bank to pull money out. Last time I waited in line for an hour, then was told I’d have to come back later because there was a problem with the system. It takes some getting used to. The only real solution I’ve found is to get a beer and laugh about it. I don’t know if it will translate well, but there are a few really funny things some of the new volunteers and I like to joke about amongst ourselves. Number one: Never ask why in Benin…My buddy Brandon has a habit of saying this a lot. There are things that seem to transpire on a regular basis that don’t make a whole lot of sense, but are really funny to see. For instance, why did that guy just slap someone with a dead chicken? Why are there 40 live chickens attached to the front of that moto? Why are there 20 live pigs hogtied to the roof of that car? Why is this cab driver stopping to pick up more passengers when there are ten of us already squeezed into this five-seater along with livestock, the trunk overflowing, and luggage teetering off both sides of the roof. Never ask why in Benin. Number two: Overall good job…This is a good one for any fans of the aritocrats joke, and I give credit to Dave from Buffalo, currently residing in the Collines, for this one. During model school, we had to receive feedback from other volunteers, stagiers, and Beninese facilitators after our lessons. I’m not going to lie, it can get brutal. The kids in the classes know they’re at a free summer school, grades don’t matter, you haven’t been teaching long, and that you may be easily flustered. Lessons can go wrong—terribly, terribly wrong. But no matter how bad your lesson was, someone will always end with, “But overall, good job.” For the sake of the joke, “a student started throwing chalk at you in class and yelling obscenities at you. You were going to kick them out, but you forgot and they kept doing it. Someone had to go to the bathroom and you said no, and they wet themselves, but you didn’t notice until you slipped in it and were knocked unconscious for five minutes. When you came to, you tried to teach physics instead and only spoke in Spanish. A child started crying. They cried so hard that another student started crying, then more, until everyone in the room was crying, including you. Then they all stopped and you kept crying until class was over, which was about 27 minutes later. But overall, good job.” I don’t care if any of you aren’t laughing, I am. Speaking of absurdities, if Oregon makes it to a BCS Bowl game and the Dodgers make it to the World Series, I will buy a satellite dish and television and watch it at my neighbor’s house because he actually has functioning electricity! Speaking of neighbors and things around me, I haven’t explained my living situation yet. I live in a large concession with a couple other families close to the outskirts of Klouekanme. There are a few carpenters who work around me, and some mechanics. Behind my concession, through a small cornfield, there is a woman who sells spaghetti with sliced hot dogs and fried bananas, which are awesome if you can’t cook, or don’t really feel like it. On the way to the school where I work, I pass an ecole primaire, which is basically an elementary school, although the grades and ages don’t translate well (especially because there are kids who are older than me in the classes I teach, as well as some 10 or 11 year olds). Most of the people in Klouekanme are Christian, but I did find a mosque the other day and was excited about it. Vodoun is big too, but is more incorporated into the Christian ceremonies, as I understand it. I haven’t yet been invited to a service yet though, so I don’t know for sure. There is a vodoun temple in the city, which has murals of people decapitating animals, which is nice. There are vendors of animals corpses at the marche, not for eating, but for medicine. It’s not quite vodoun, but they use the animals in different ways to help cures various ailments and maladies. Haven’t got them all down yet, but my favorite is still the cure for AIDS, which is composed of wild apples, pig, and papaya salad administered for a period of 10 months. Klouekanme is one of the bigger villages/cities culturally in the region. No matter where I am in country, it seems like people are pumped to meet someone from Klouekanme. It’s cool to know that I live somewhere that has more cultural relevance than other posts, but I still can’t figure out exactly what it is. Time for some snooping. One really nice things about my post though that I noticed right away was that the pollution has ceased, and I can breathe better than I could in Porto Novo. It’s not because it’s cleaner, but less dense. Like I said, when I go anywhere, it’s close to an hour or more in any direction. Those rides are really fun though. Zems might be my favorite thing so far about Benin. I’ve gotten into the habit of listening to my ipod while riding Zems, and there are few moments quite so emotionally and psychologically validating than music and zoning out looking at the countryside in West Africa. Songs I recommend for Zems, and just in case you’re wondering what I’m listening to (I don’t care if you don’t want it, I’ll give it to you, twss.) -MGMT, Time to pretend -Babyshambles, Albion -Paco de Lucia, La nina de puerta oscura -Otis Redding -Ella Fitzgerald -Holly Golightly and the Brokeoffs, Devil do -Tom Waits -Mountain Goats I wish I could do it at night to look at the stars and possibly fall off the Zem, but I’m fairly horrified of going out after dark. I don’t leave my house after 7:30/19:30h. But anyways, night sky: I can see the Milky Way from my backyard. No one here understands why all the American volunteers like to stare at the stars, and I have yet to decide whether that is a cultural difference, or just a response to the monotony of all things commonplace. Whatever though, stars are pretty and stuff. Perfect example! I was teaching a lesson the other day, and one of my students gave a response in French. I walked up to the chalkboard to where I had written “English class” and drew a star next to English to emphasize that they should not speak French during the lesson. A few minutes later a student walked up to me and asked what the star was and whether he should copy it into his notes. “But overall, good job.” Just one of those things, I guess. Words of wisdom I would like to pass on to those of you who may find yourselves in West Africa at some point. If someone is obviously ripping me off, and not letting me talk to other vendors or Zems or whatever, I’ve started to say, “Je vais appeler Barack Obama!” “I am going to call Barack Obama!” And most times, people think he really is my boss and friend, and they’ll help this brother out. Bear(ack) that in mind. Oh, he just won the Nobel Peace Prize. Ayo! (Also, “ayo” means “no” in Fon, one of the local languages here…I love yelling it at people). Hope this post wasn’t too absurd, I’m still dealing with the shock of living in West Africa, so my ability to analyze and relate situations and surroundings to others hasn’t quite developed yet. Anyways, Go Dodgers! Go Ducks! Go Aztecs! go angels…I guess.

________________________________________________________________

[This is my extra web based email address. Please respond to armenta@englishlloyd.com to make sure I get your response on my regular email. Thanks.]

SWORN IN!

We're officially all volunteers!

And we all also grew mustaches and I ROCKED a Doc Holiday stache. Rocked.

I also gave a speech in French, which was a lot of fun, and apparently pretty funny, so that's nice.

It seems as though most people have a healthy level of absolute panic now that they're leaving stage. We complained about the challanges of living with a Beninese family, being called Yovo, difficulties breathing, but at least we all suffered through that together. Now, we're essentially on our own.

Stage was easy for its controlled social facets. We could be with Americans when we wanted/needed it.

I don't want to sound down. I'm pumped, but my move to post on Monday just got a whole lot more real.

Anyways, I think I'm going to go pay an exorbitant amount of money for steak and mashed potatoes with a really cold beer. My last in Porto Novo.

Ganvie, stilt village near Cotonou

Kids in dirty water that tried to climb on the boat

Meadow de l'eau

Fishing

Animal skins

Diseases that can be cured with natural medicine (note: AIDS can be cured in 10 months with pork, papaya, and wild apples)

Yep, that is a lion skin

Local animal head vendor in Klouekanme

My CEG in Klouekanme, where I will be working

World map at CEG

More CEG

My backyard

View of my house in Klouekanme

The bike I broke after an hour...

Woot.

Yes, I was really going to write a story about my first trip to the latrine, but I think just mentioning that it didn't go "as planned" will do.

Everything is good, despite that exhaustion stuff.

I've started teching model school, which is basically Peace Corp's free English summer school for kids in Porto Novo, and for us to get teaching practice. It's pretty fun now that I've dont it a few times and am not sweating profusely every time I teach. I use a lot of pictures, which is fun.

Klouekanmé was cool. I met lots of my education counterparts, and some big wigs around town (whom I will apparently never see again).

I wasn't there very long, and it rained for a good portion of that time. I was lucky enough to have a few friends in Djakotomey, so I took an hour long Zem ride down a washed out road instead of a four hour drive to Porto Novo to spend the weekend doing nothing. NOTE: for those planning to visit, bring dance music on your ipod. Zem rides with MGMT qnd Rapture are AMAZING.

Sodabi: West African moonshine. Nuff said.

Still trying to figure out an effective picture uploading formula with these cyber cafes. No pics yet, c'est pas grave. Soon.

I'm picking up my first boomba today, which should be awesome. They're all the rage here, it's really elaborately and flamboyantly designed fabric that can be tailored into outfits. Mine' yellow and maroon.

ALSO: One volunteer here has Michigan State tissue (boomba). Obviously you all know what needs to happen, Erik needs four meters (both) of Oregon Ducks and Dodger fabric. Let's make this happen.

While I'm on the subject of things to perhaps send me:

TAPATIO

add water mixes (taco seasoning; yes i can, and have, made tacos here)

books: infinite jest, in search of lost time vol 2 (hopefully the modern library edition), and a copy of the koran, and whatever else.

movies!

Can't think of much else right now, I can never remember what I need/want to say when I get to the cyber, soon though.

Peace,

E

im really really tired.

my in country training has been really difficult so far, but according to all the volunteers, facilitators, and trainers i just need to make it through stage and im good.

got my post the other day: ill be living in the mono couffo region in the southwest of benin, in a village called klouekamey (i donbt know how to spell it and my internet time is running out)

lots of vodoun (again spelling) and fon and aja speakers...so ill be learning fon and aja soon.

i know you all want pictures, so ill get on that soon hopefully, but an technilogically impaired at the moment in terms of computers and cameras/dont feel like loading all my photos onto a shady cyber cafe computer.

dont worry though, things are happening, wheels are turning (yes, kids really do roll tires down the street with sticks), and hopefully my white blood cells are kicking some ass.

I only have 5 minutes to write this blog entry!

Everything is going well so far.

There is nothing more awkward than meeting the family you will be living with for the next two months when you don't speak their language.

Stage is crazy. We had our first ET (Early Termination) about five minutes ago. I'm in classes all day, and then practice French with my host family at night.

They're super nice and helpful. I have a much better situation than others.

A friend of mine, who shall be called "Riley" for privacy, has a much stranger host family situation. I have a toilet and a shower. He has a hole in the ground and a bucket of water, and diarrhea to boot. He keeps telling me about how he has to step over his papa at night (he sleeps there to protect him) and walk outside to the latrine naked to rock the night away.

It's probably much funnier when you hears this with a bunch of volunteers over beers, like I did. But it's still really funny. If "Riley"survives Stage, he can handle anything.

Speaking of dietary issues, I've decided not to investigate what food is being placed in front of me, EVER.

Last night I almost threw up all over the dinner table eating something called pate noire (pronounced pot noire).

Peace Corps gave me a bike yesterday, and it took me less then an hour to break my rear wheel in half. Woops, so all day today people have been handing me bike repair manuals in English and French.

White people here are called yovos, and little kids here like to sing the yovo song, which goes like this:

yovo, yovo, bonsoir

ca va bien, merci

That's the only thing they think we know how to say, which is true for a lot of us.

I'm running out of time, but after school today I'm going to head to a cyber and hopefully write a full expose of Benin.

For now, all of my clothes are dirty, my water tastes like fish and chlorine, I'm in an air conditioned Peace Corps Bureau, and life is good.

Made it here fine, and it only took 20 hours.

I'm writing from the Peace Corps Bureau in Cotonou.

Rode my first Zemidjan today, which are moto-taxis that everyone gets around on.

On Wednesday I move in with my host family and start Stage officially, which lasts for nine weeks.

Will update again soon.

Erik

Just wanted to lay out my Peace Corps service description and contact info. I leave on 21 July.

I will be a Secondary Education TEFL English Teacher in Benin from September 25, 2009 to September 24, 2011. For the first three months, from July 23 to September 25, I'll be training in Cotonou before being sent to my site. My job will be to introduce students to basic English language patterns, and I'll have classes of up to 60 students, and as many as 200 all together.

To contact me electronically, you can look here:

pawnmower.blogspot.com

skype: wolf_boy_beware

aim: pushherinthewell

facebook: facebook.com/erik.english

email: erikrenglish@gmail.com

And you can mail letters here:

Erik English, Peace Corps Volunteer

Corps de la Paix

B.P. 971

Cotonou, Benin

Don't forget to stay in touch!

I can count how many days of school I have left with my fingers.

I'll go ahead and begin at the beginning.

CAIRO

Emily and I arrived in Cairo on the 21st, and took a cab to our friend Ahmed's apartment in Ma'ady. He is a photographer in Cairo with a really cool apartment, featuring a swing, and a panoramic view of the whole city, and the pyramids.

You can't see the pyramids in that picture, but it's just the smog, we'll see the difference later on.

Our goal for the trip was to not really have goals, or plans that were set and definite. In fact, we visited the Pyramids on our first day just to get it out of the way so that it wouldn't be nagging in our minds for the rest of the trip. It was amazing, I should point out, but I'll get back to that later. I posted a passage about modern tourists a couple posts ago, and it described the kind of visit that I wanted to avoid as much as possible:

"since you are on your holiday, since you are a tourist, the thought of what it might be like for someone who had to live day in, day out in a place that suffers constantly from drought, and so has to watch carefully every drop of fresh water used [...], must never cross your mind."

Take notes.

I saw a lot of tourists, but rarely spoke with any of them. In Cairo, they were confined to their travel buses, packed to the brim with wide eyes and bermuda shorts, looking out the windows with wonder, excitement, and fear. It's so weird that a person would travel to a place, and then move around it in a bubble, avoiding as much contact and interaction with that place as possible. It's not a nature documentary.

Our first night in Cairo, Ahmed took us to a tea and shisha cafe. Egyptians like their cigarettes flowing, and their tea sweet. Man, they had really good tea.

Then the next morning was the pyramids. the way this works is, you get a ride to Giza, which costs about 30 pounds (5 dollars), then deal with one of the many people approaching you and throwing prices and camels at you. Don't be afraid to just walk away from a deal. If you think they're ripping you off, it's typically because everybody gets ripped off. He quoted us about 90 dollars (American) at first. We eventually got him down to about 25 for a horse, a camel, a tour around the Sahara, the pyramids, and some other things we did. The whole procedure is organized in its disorder. There are no fixed prices for anything, no admission fees, and no rental fees. Its just a straight deal made between you, and the guy who owns the camels. Tours work out different arrangements, but if you want to see the pyramids on your own terms, I think it is much more beneficial.

Despite the amazing cultural and human relevance of the pyramids, or perhaps because of it, there is a creeping feeling of "culture for sale." The way that the sellers and guides work in Giza is calculative and completely reliant on the tourists who come through to see them. Most visitors buy the white shawl and headband, recalling Lawrence of Arabia, and buy the souvenirs in the museums and do all of these little things that take away from the magnitude of the pyramids and make them kitsch. It's a way of diminishing and reducing a great human achievement to the level of happy meal gift, making its importance a matter of capital, instead of a matter of appreciation. Again, creeping feeling...

Day three, we visited the mosque of Mohammad Ali and the Citadel.

Muslims pray five times a day, and so five times a day (sunrise, lunch, afternoon, dinner, and evening) mosques will blast prayers through loudspeakers on their roofs. Mosques like this one are older and don't have the loudspeakers, which serve as the third crucial aspect of every mosque. They all have a staircase, from which a prayer leader will lead prayers on fridays (and I think are meant to symbolize the stairs to paradise); they also have a small cubby where they stand and give prayers every day except friday; and they have a platform (substituted by megaphones in modern mosques) where an individual would stand, listening to the prayer leader, and shout out the prayers to the crouds gathering outside.

We spent a long time talking with Ahmed, who studied architecture for five years, about how mosques, with their huge size and ornate detail, make a person feel inspired and submissive at the same time: inspired by the beauty of the mosque, and intimidated by the absolute magnitude of it.

Here is the view of Cairo from the Citadel/mosque of Mohammed Ali:

And some locals:

After that, we spent a long time trying to figure out how to get to Sharm el Shiekh, a city on the coast of the Red Sea, about 5 or 6 hours to the East. I ended up staying awake all night, watching the sunset and sunrise.

In the morning, since it rained the day before, the sky was clearer than normal, and the view was better.

SHARM EL SHIEKH

Sharm was a very strange place for me. Highlighted by the fact that I had just started reading Marcel Proust's multivolume "In Search of Lost Time," we arrived, staying in a hotel to see what it would be like to experience Egypt from the perspective that the vast majority of visitors did. I like to sum up my experiences in the passage I read the morning after we arrived in Sharm el Shiekh:

Or suppose that he dozes off in some even more abnormal and divergent position, sitting in an armchair, for instance, after dinner: then the world will go hurtling out of orbit, the magic chair will carry him at full speed through time and space, and when he opens his eyes again he will imagine that he went to sleep months earlier in another place.

Sharm el Shiekh was like the void between falling asleep and waking. Suddenly I was out of Egypt, and I was in a strange, ritzy recreation. Visitors would walk around in bermuda shorts, white socks and sandals, and often preferred the flaky red sunburnt skin to a shirt. They spent their time swimming, dancing, drinking, and ordering around the Egyptian staff.

It had a constructed, idealized version of Egypt laid out for people who wanted to escape the trials of their own life, and misplace their own culture into the "forum" of another. Most of the visitors were Polish or Belgian, and every day Belgian and Polish food was served in the dining rooms. I'm not sure if it was the food, or the Belgians/Pollacks, but something made me incredibly sick in Sharm, and I was out of commission for a day and a half.

We did make a trip to the Red Sea our first day there.

We smoked shisha and snorkeled. Emily had an underwater camera, but I don't have the pictures yet.

My goal for visiting Sharm was Sinai. Emily is a scuba diver, and so obviously the Red Sea was what appealed most to her. But the prospect of climbing Mount Sinai was the ultimate drawing in factor for me.

The problem with the way that we wanted to experience Egypt was that everything had the sensation of being planned at the absolute last minute. Unfortunately, the security around Mount Sinai and Saint Catherine's Monastery at the base of the mountain is incredibly intense. Anyone visiting has to send a manifest to the police telling where all of the visitors are from, and they can check passports at will, possibly arresting people not listed. Our hotel had a group of Polish citizens heading to Mount Sinai the day that we wanted to go, and the manifest had already been sent. So obviously we were unable to visit Sinai that day. We did, however, go on a quad ride through the Sinai desert. Admittedly, we broke our own rules a lot in Sharm, and environmental degradation was not one of our goals, but desperate times...

ISLAMIC CAIRO

It was a relief to get back to Cairo, and even with that much pollution it was a breath of fresh air. For our last day, we walked to the Sultan Hassan Mosque, and then to a much smaller mosque, and walked up a minaret that looked over the city.

Afterwords, we walked to Islamic Cairo. Now, I swear, Islamic Cairo is a lot like walking back in time. We met two American travelers at Ahmed's later that night, who said when they walked through Islamic Cairo, they moved without thinking, and just let the streets take them where they would. That's what happens, so I'll just post my pictures here and you can see where they take you.

Those are pretty much all of my pictures, so I guess that's the end of my magic blog post of wonder and delight. Cheers (Oh, I forgot to mention, beer is socially taboo in most of Egypt and hard to find...don't go to Egypt to party).

Never again! Sharm el Shiekh nearly put a very dark taint on things. The seven hour bus ride was no problem, the money was unfortunate but not a problem, the hotel room and bed was different but not a problem. No. The problem was that a hotel provided a box within which a person could travel to a place with a completely different culture, and never actually experience that culture.

The irony of my plight lies rooted squarely in the pages of the book I began when I first arrived in Sharm. The book is about recovering the time lost when one falls asleep without being aware or involved in the act: while reading a book after a meal. The problem then becomes figuring out exactly how much time had been lost once that person awakes and struggles to place the time in which they now exist, unaware of their location Would they ever be regained? And what is the cost of losing them? Sharl el Shiekh became the void between time for us.

As I read the first pages of this book, ACDC, Led Zeppelin, and Ricky Martin were loaded into a CD player and blasted in megaphones out into the hotel courtyard. What followed was a series of drunk Belgian and Polish tourists frequenting the pool, adopting a furious red shade to their skin color, doing some kind of awkward aerobic dance and stretch, and ordering around the Egyptian staff for drinks, food, towels, and the occasional complaint.

Maybe it's just me, but didn't I go to Egypt to experience Egyptian culture, not make it my servant? It got weirder.

We tried to make a day trip to Mount Sinai, which was trampled by a group of rampaging Pollacks. The police in Sinai request to see a list of all visitors and their passports. Apparently, there was an all-Polish group allotted for the day, with whom we were not allowed to go. They booked up all the available slots. At least five hours of frustrated and frantic searching ensued, which was ultimately in vain. After that, I fell terribly ill, slept for thirteen hours that night, and at least seven the next day. Fuckin Belgians...Fuckin Pollacks.

We did manage to work out a trip into the Sinai desert via very un-environmentally friendly means, but drastic times call for... We visited Echo Temple, which is a spot where you yell something and the mountains around you echo them back. We then met some "authentic Bedouins" (though I'm skeptical) and drank tea with shisha.

Arrived in Cairo again this morning...and I paid a much better fare for my taxi. Always nice to see your own improvements. We went to the Mosque of Mohammad Ali (which apparently I mistook last time for Sultan Hassan) and realized we had already been there. Then wandered down to the real Sultan Hassan, but it was closed for lunchtime prayers. Fearing another failed expedition, we kept walking and met a guide who took us around Islamic Cairo and into one of the oldest mosques in the city. I've learned that a good way to get a tour, some free food and drinks, lots of cigarettes, and meet lots of people, is to let these guys do their work. They are scamming you the whole time, paying attention to what you say, how you act, and how you respond to them and the city. They are a lot better at it than you, so just let them do it. They will take you around town, giving you a fairly good tour, provide some pleasant conversation, and then sneakily guide you back to their shop. Once in there, they will tell you that it is Egyptian hospitality to give you a drink ("Please, you don't have to buy anything, but please don't refuse"). Get yourself a drink, mention how hungry you are, then get yourself some food. Its all free. Then you can watch them do your work, and it's all will power from here. Fight the urge to buy the huge tapestry/rug/handmade chess set in the corner they keep showing you. Just but a little something for the time they spent on you, and you'll end up walking away with tea, some lunch, a tour of the city, some new friends, and a nice souvenir for around 30 Egyptian pounds, which is roughly 5 or 6 dollars. Good times scamming scammers.

After that, came back to Ahmed's, went to eat some of the best food I have ever had...Babanook...Falafel...o man, this place was unreal. "Felfela", for those of you taking a trip to Cairo in the near or not-so-near future, do it.

That was about it for the last day. I'm here on the couch now, the other crashers are out at a club trying to win soccer tickets for a world cup qualifier (Egypt v. Zambia) at a club called Eggplant, painted the color of Eggplant...Emily's asleep, Ahemed's asleep. So I sit, listening to some sweet Egyptian Jazz on the 25th floor of Ahmed's studio in Ma'ady, Al Quirah, and staring out at the Nile.

I love Cairo. I'm reluctant to say "loveD" because, for one, I'm taking so many souvenirs back, ergo, a huge chunk of Cairo as I see it; and two, because I'm just too reluctant to leave. It's such a vibrant place, and its challenging to pin down its cultural attributes, but there are some things that are so constant about it (for good or bad...), and I find it rather comforting. Despite the creeping feeling of sometimes contributing to a "culture for sale," every once in a while you'll meet someone so interesting, and you'll spend so much time with them that you don't want to leave. You'll get lost in the madness of the streets, and instead of becoming mad yourself, you just become brain-dead, and walk through the streets totally unable to register everything around you.

Starting my blog posts about Egypt a little late (in the trip, and at night: 3:30 am), and I haven't been keeping a journal either...oops. In a way I'm glad, because I'd be reluctant to look back on my first thoughts after arriving. I'm glad I've had time to adapt. I didn't know that virtually every price given is open to interpretation, and that I was a sitting duck (really wish I had had more time to research these things first, but oh well). I don't know if I will ever tell any of you exactly how much I paid for my first cab ride of doom into the city. Gimme a couple years to remold my ego.

First day, went to the Pyramids of Giza. I made it known before I left that I had no real urge to ride a camel, and I stick by that...I had loads of fun on my horse, despite nearly falling off a few times when racing one of the guides through the Sahara, and the blisters. The horse skeletons left to rot in the desert...not so much fun...but that's another story. We were first told that it would be 85 dollars to pay for the horse and camel, the "tour", and the pyramid entrance fee. It's important to remember the importance of walking away from any deal, and we got the price down to 25 dollars. Then ensued the various whorings of cultural icons and items, as the walk to the sand from the suburban market is littered with people who will put hats and shawls on you, calling you Pharaoh and Cleopatra before asking for money. Just say "no." We took lots of pictures and wandered into a tomb in the dark (I always forget my flashlight...).

Afterwords we went to a fragrance shop. Seriously, this guy working us over was amazing, even when we knew that he was working us, it was hard to look away. I don't regret it though, these fragrances are intoxicating, and I just wish I had bought more.

The guy we're staying with is awesome, his name is Ahmed. He is a photographer, and a really talented one, too. So far he's taken us to a local tea and sheesha cafe, to a bridge/itty bitty bazaar on a bridge on the Nile, and onto a turnbull canyon/signal hill-esque mountain that looks over all of Cairo. Plus, he has awesome music here.

Today was our first visit to a mosque. We went to the Sultan Hassan mosque and madrassa. The architecture of these buildings is other-worldly, there were head-sized bulbs that hung down from the top of a 200-foot ceiling that was covered in Qu'ranic proverbs and art. There were rugs that covered the whole floor, and we had to take off our shoes before entering. Emily also had to wear a tarp over her because she was showing her shoulders and infidelling it up.

Since there's been some debate about it between me and my travel buddy, I figured I'd try to write down my thoughts about it, even though I'm still trying to figure them out: prayers on loudspeakers. Muslims pray five times a day (actually, one will be starting in a few minutes at 4). Their prayer times are signaled roughly by the prayers from the mosque, blasted over loudspeakers, and flooding the city with noise and rhythm. I find them comforting for reasons I never thought I would give. Egypt is such a vibrant, and also traditional place. Those abstract, morphing cultural traits that exist in the bazaars and on the streets are in conflict with the Egypt of veils, prayers, and loudspeakers. I've come to identify those constant aspects of Egypt as the face of a lasting, strong cultural identity (for better or worse), and I've come to find comfort in them. I have to relate this back to my own experiences in the U.S., where stimuli is constantly onslaughting your face and brain, whether it be music, TV, or school. The point being, I can't pin down anything truly American, other than the flag, that really gives me a sense of comfort and constancy in our culture, if American culture can be said to exist at all. But here prayers of the city (whether I agree with them or not is irrelevant) are booming through the city. Just like the clothes people where (again, demeaning or not is not the discussion) are physical manifestations of an aspect of Egypt that exists outside of the fast-paced, amorphous body of the city. Anyways, maybe I'll write more about that later.

Tomorrow we're rocking a ten-hour bus ride to Sharm al Sheikh to swim in the Red Sea and climb Mount Sinai. I keep telling people I'm bring back my own ten commandments. Does anyone have a request? (Erik makes no legal implication or agreement of considering or acknowledging said request(s), though they/it will be credited as his own should he choose to incorporate them/it into his "Ten Commandments: Morals Gone WILD!") I'd love to hear them!

That's about all I have time/brain power for right now, and I need to buy bus tickets. More soon.

p.s. "that's what she said" is now taking Egypt by storm.

"If you go to Antigua as a tourist, this is what you will see. If you come by aeroplane, you will land at the V. C. Bird International Airport. Vere Cornwall (V. C) Bird is the Prime Minister of Antigua. You may be the sort of tourist who would wonder why a Prime Minister would want an airport named after him--why not a school, why not a hospital, why not some great public monument? You are a tourist and you have not yet seen a school in Antigua, you have not yet seen the hospital in Antigua, you have not yet seen a public monument in Antigua. As your plane descends to land, you might say, What a beautiful island Antigua is--more beautiful than any of the other islands you have seen, and they are very beautiful, in their way, but they were much too green, much too lush with vegetation which indicated to you, the tourist, that they got quite a bit of rainfall, and rain is the very thing that you, just now, do not want, for you are thinking of the hard and cold and dark and long days you spent working in North America (or, worse, Europe), earning some money so that you could stay in this place (Antigua) where the sun always shines and where the climate is deliciously hot and dry for the four to ten days you are going to be staying there; and since you are on your holiday, since you are a tourist, the thought of what it might be like for someone who had to live day in, day out in a place that suffers constantly from drought, and so has to watch carefully every drop of fresh water used (while at the same time surrounded by a sea ad an ocean--the Caribbean Sea on one side, the Atlantic Ocean on the other), must never cross your mind."

-Jamaica Kincaid, A Small Place

currently listening to: wolves (phosphorescent)

I just got word the other day that my Peace Corps application is now beyond the dental examination phase. I'm pumped about this because I had to deal with way too much shit over the course of almost three months to get all my dental paperwork in order. That means that in the next few days I'll hear back about my physical exams, and (assuming there is no hold up) then I'll just be chilling and waiting for my assignment. Of course, I had a midterm this morning, a huge midterm tomorrow, and two papers due on Wednesday. This means that I have been drinking way too much coffee, getting way too little sleep, and am borderline delirious. So now I'm fidgety and shaky and can't stop checking my Peace Corps profile for updates. I've nicknamed myself Tweak for the moment, and not just because gnomes are stealing my underwear at night (although, I am in a prime position to catch them, since I can't get to sleep before 5 am). So now I just need to try to forget that I'm waiting to hear where I'll be living for the next two and a half years, try not to look at google maps to ponder where that might be, try to get some fucking sleep, try to put down the coffee, and focus all my energy on catching those fucking gnomes!

mailed in my completed peace corps med forms yesterday, and then proceeded to crash on my couch and sleep for a solid 6 hours. now i immerse myself in grading and homework and await my location assignment.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10cMumbai TragedyBarack Obama Interview

John McCain InterviewSarah Palin Video

Funny Election Video

The winds that blow -- ask them which leaf on the tree, will be next to go.

"...we live in a country where people believe implicitly in their right to bore the living shit out of absolutely everyone within haranguing distance with tales of their miserable, lonely, and inevitably self-deluding searches for personal fulfillment in the emotional desert that is our crass commercial culture."

- matt taibbi

no particular rhyme or reason to post this, but post it i shall

Man, I used to hate this guy. I mean, I still do. I can't help but despise a person who feels the urgent need to presciently counter the actions of a future president by lowering environmental and endangered species regulations and eliminating the ability of that president to veto these regulations. But seriously, this is just sad...

Sometimes I wonder, if he wasn't despised by the majority of Americans, and the rest of the world, and his cabinet, and his former cabinet, would he be more willing to be a better guy? Call me the overly sentimental optimist with a flare for embracing my naivete, but I think I actually would like to sit down and have a beer with that guy. At this point, I think he really needs one.

Earlier in the presidential election campaign, this article was released:Iran said on Monday that it does not back any of the US presidential candidates but does hope the election will bring a change in Washington's foreign policy. "Iran would not support any candidates in the US presidential campaign," Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Seyed Mohammad Ali Hosseini said during his weekly news briefing. "But the nations of the world are fed up with America's warmongering policies and we demand these change."

Call me crazy, but this kind of transparent hypocrisy is a front to human intelligence around the world. Iran is a nation which condones religiously founded violence against those who don't fit into a specific cultural parameter. Their leaders openly can speak for the validity of an American president who represents a break from "warmongering" policies when their own state is built upon a foundation of insecurity and fear which calls for the murder of outsiders on a regular basis. Good job, Iran. Take a look in the mirror sometime. The newest act of Iranian injustice is seen below:

Homosexuals deserve to be tortured and executed an Iranian leader told British MPs during a private meeting at a peace conference, it emerged today. Mohsen Yahyavi is the highest-ranked politician to admit that Iran believes in the death penalty for homosexuality following recent reports that gay youths were being hanged. President Ahmadinejad, questioned by students in New York two months ago about the executions, dodged the issue by suggesting that there were no gays in his country. Human rights campaigners say Iran falsely convicts gay men of other crimes to execute them The apparent executions, including those of two underage boys whose public hanging was posted on the internet, has alarmed human rights campaigners. Gay rights groups in Britain, such as Outrage!, accuse Iran of cloaking executions for homosexuality with bogus charges for more serious crimes. Under the Freedom of Information Act, the FCO released papers to The Times about the death penalty being used in Iran for homosexuality, adultery and sex outside marriage. Minutes taken by an official describe a meeting between British and Iranian MPs at the Inter-Parliamentary Union, a peace body, in May. When the Britons raised the hangings of Asqari and Marhouni, the leader of the Iranian delegation, Mr Yahyavi, a member of his parliament's energy committee, was unflinching. He ?explained that according to Islam gays and lesbianism were not permitted?, the record states. ?He said that if homosexual activity is in private there is no problem, but those in overt activity should be executed [he initially said tortured but changed it to executed]. "He argued that homosexuality is against human nature and that humans are here to reproduce. Homosexuals do not reproduce.? Nicole Pichet, a researcher who also took notes of the gathering, told The Times that the discussion began with British MPs discussing the underage gay hangings. Mr Yahyavi responded by saying homosexuality was to blame for a lot of diseases such as Aids. Ann Clwyd, the Labour MP and head of Britain's delegation, said yesterday: ?It is of great concern that these attitudes persist and we made it clear what we felt.? Iran, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates, Yemen and Nigeria apply the death penalty for homosexuality, according to the International Lesbian and Gay Association.

Letter to a Young Muslim by Tariq Ali Dear friend Remember when you approached me after the big antiwar meeting in November 2001 (I think it was Glasgow) and asked whether I was a believer? I have not forgotten the shock you registered when I replied "no", or the comment of your friend ("our parents warned us against you"), or the angry questions which the pair of you then began to hurl at me like darts. All of that made me think, and this is my reply for you and all the others like you who asked similar questions elsewhere in Europe and North America. When we spoke, I told you that my criticism of religion and those who use it for political ends was not a case of being diplomatic in public. Exploiters and manipulators have always used religion self-righteously to further their own selfish ends. It's true that this is not the whole story. There are, of course, deeply sincere people of religion in different parts of the world who genuinely fight on the side of the poor, but they are usually in conflict with organised religion themselves. The Catholic Church victimised worker or peasant priests who organised against oppression. The Iranian ayatollahs dealt severely with Muslims who preached in favour of a social radicalism. If I genuinely believed that this radical Islam was the way forward for humanity, I would not hesitate to say so in public, whatever the consequences. I know that many of your friends love chanting the name "Osama" and I know that they cheered on September 11, 2001. They were not alone. It happened all over the world, but had nothing to do with religion. I know of Argentine students who walked out when a teacher criticised Osama. I know a Russian teenager who emailed a one-word message - "Congratulations" - to his Russian friends whose parents had settled outside New York, and they replied: "Thanks. It was great." We talked, I remember, of the Greek crowds at football matches who refused to mourn for the two minutes the government had imposed and instead broke the silence with anti-American chants. But none of this justifies what took place. What lies behind the vicarious pleasure is not a feeling of strength, but a terrible weakness. The people of Indo-China suffered more than any Muslim country at the hands of the US government. They were bombed for 15 whole years and lost millions of their people. Did they even think of bombing America? Nor did the Cubans or the Chileans or the Brazilians. The last two fought against the US-imposed military regimes at home and finally triumphed. Today, people feel powerless. And so when America is hit they celebrate. They don't ask what such an act will achieve, what its consequences will be and who will benefit. Their response, like the event itself, is purely symbolic. I think that Osama and his group have reached a political dead-end. It was a grand spectacle, but nothing more. The US, in responding with a war, has enhanced the importance of the action, but I doubt if even that will rescue it from obscurity in the future. It will be a footnote in the history of this century. In political, economic or military terms it was barely a pinprick. What do the Islamists offer? A route to a past which, mercifully for the people of the seventh century, never existed. If the "Emirate of Afghanistan" is the model for what they want to impose on the world then the bulk of Muslims would rise up in arms against them. Don't imagine that either Osama or Mullah Omar represent the future of Islam. It would be a major disaster for the culture we both share if that turned out to be the case. Would you want to live under those conditions? Would you tolerate your sister, your mother or the woman you love being hidden from public view and only allowed out shrouded like a corpse? I want to be honest with you. I opposed this latest Afghan war. I do not accept the right of big powers to change governments as and when it affects their interests. But I did not shed any tears for the Taliban as they shaved their beards and ran back home. This does not mean that those who have been captured should be treated like animals or denied their elementary rights according to the Geneva convention, but as I've argued elsewhere, the fundamentalism of the American Empire has no equal today. They can disregard all conventions and laws at will. The reason they are openly mistreating prisoners they captured after waging an illegal war in Afghanistan is to assert their power before the world - hence they humiliate Cuba by doing their dirty work on its soil - and warn others who attempt to twist the lion's tail that the punishment will be severe. I remember how, during the cold war, the CIA and its indigenous recruits tortured political prisoners and raped them in many parts of Latin America. During the Vietnam war the US violated most of the Geneva conventions. They tortured and executed prisoners, raped women, threw prisoners out of helicopters to die on the ground or drown in the sea, and all this, of course, in the name of freedom. Because many people in the west believe the nonsense about "humanitarian interventions", they are shocked by these acts, but this is relatively mild compared with the crimes committed in the last century by the Empire. I've met many of our people in different parts of the world since September 11. One question is always repeated: "Do you think we Muslims are clever enough to have done this?" I always answer "Yes". Then I ask who they think is responsible, and the answer is invariably "Israel". Why? "To discredit us and make the Americans attack our countries." I gently expose their wishful illusions, but the conversation saddens me. Why are so many Muslims sunk in this torpor? Why do they wallow in so much self-pity? Why is their sky always overcast? Why is it always someone else who is to blame? Sometimes when we talk I get the impression that there is not a single Muslim country of which they can feel really proud. Those who have migrated from South Asia are much better treated in Britain than in Saudi Arabia or the Gulf States. It is here that something has to happen. The Arab world is desperate for a change. Over the years, in every discussion with Iraqis, Syrians, Saudis, Egyptians, Jordanians and Palestinians, the same questions are raised, the same problems recur. We are suffocating. Why can't we breathe? Everything seems static: our economy, our politics, our intellectuals and, most of all, our religion. Palestine suffers every day. The west does nothing. Our governments are dead. Our politicians are corrupt. Our people are ignored. Is it surprising that some are responsive to the Islamists? Who else offers anything these days? The US? It doesn't even want democracy, not even in little Qatar, and for a very simple reason. If we elected our own governments they might demand that the US close down its bases. Would it? They already resent al-Jazeera television because it has different priorities from them. It was fine when al-Jazeera attacked corruption within the Arab elite. Thomas Friedman even devoted a whole column to praise of al-Jazeera in the New York Times. He saw it as a sign of democracy coming to the Arab world. No longer. Because democracy means the right to think differently, and al-Jazeera showed pictures of the Afghan war that were not shown on the US networks, so Bush and Blair put pressure on Qatar to stop unfriendly broadcasts. For the west, democracy means believing in exactly the same things that they believe. Is that really democracy? If we elected our own government, in one or two countries people might elect Islamists. Would the west leave us alone? Did the French government leave the Algerian military alone? No. They insisted that the elections of 1990 and 1991 be declared null and void. French intellectuals described the Front Islamique du Salut (FIS) as "Islamo-fascists", ignoring the fact that they had won an election. Had they been allowed to become the government, divisions already present within them would have come to the surface. The army could have warned that any attempt to tamper with the rights guaranteed to citizens under the constitution would not be tolerated. It was only when the original leaders of the FIS had been eliminated that the more lumpen elements came to the fore and created mayhem. Should we blame them for the civil war, or those in Algiers and Paris who robbed them of their victory? The massacres in Algeria are horrendous. Is it only the Islamists who are responsible? What happened in Bentalha, 10 miles south of Algiers, on the night of September 22, 1997? Who slaughtered the 500 men, women and children of that township? Who? The Frenchman who knows everything, Bernard-Henri Levy, is sure it was the Islamists who perpetrated this dreadful deed. Then why did the army deny the local population arms to defend itself? Why did it tell the local militia to go away that night? Why did the security forces not intervene when they could see what was going on? Why does M Levy believe that the Maghreb has to be subordinated to the needs of the French republic, and why does nobody attack this sort of fundamentalism? We know what we have to do, say the Arabs, but every time the west intervenes it sets our cause back many years. So if they want to help, they should stay out. That's what my Arab friends say, and I agree with this approach. Look at Iran. The western gaze turned benevolent during the assault on Afghanistan. Iran was needed for the war, but let the west watch from afar. The imperial fundamentalists are talking about the "axis of evil", which includes Iran. An intervention there would be fatal. A new generation has experienced clerical oppression. It has known nothing else. Stories about the shah are part of its prehistory. These young men and women are sure about one thing if nothing else. They don't want the ayatollahs to rule them any more. Even though Iran, in recent years, has not been as bad as Saudi Arabia or the late "Emirate of Afghanistan", it has not been good for the people. Let me tell you a story. A couple of years ago I met a young Iranian film-maker in Los Angeles. His name was Moslem Mansouri. He had managed to escape with several hours of filmed interviews for a documentary he was making. He had won the confidence of three Tehran prostitutes and filmed them for more than two years. He showed me some of the footage. They talked to him quite openly. They described how the best pick-ups were at religious festivals. I got a flavour of the film from the transcripts he sent me. One of the women tells him: "Today everyone is forced to sell their bodies! Women like us have to tolerate a man for 10,000 toomans. Young people need to be in a bed together, even for 10 minutes . . . It is a primary need . . . it calms them down. "When the government does not allow it, then prostitution grows. We don't even need to talk about prostitution, the government has taken away the right to speak with the opposite sex freely in public . . . In the parks, in the cinemas, or in the streets, you can't talk to the person sitting next to you. On the streets, if you talk to a man, the 'Islamic guard' interrogates you endlessly. Today in our country, nobody is satisfied! Nobody has security. I went to a company to get a job. The manager of the company, a bearded guy, looked at my face and said, 'I will hire you and I'll give you 10,000 toomans more than the pay rate.' I said, 'You can at least test my computer skills to see if I'm proficient or not . . .' He said, 'I hire you for your looks!' I knew that if I had to work there, I had to have sex with him at least once a day. "Wherever you go it's like this! I went to a special family court - for divorce - and begged the judge, a clergyman, to give me my child's custody. I told him, 'Please . . . I beg you to give me the custody of my child. I'll be your Kaniz . . . ["Kaniz" means servant. This is a Persian expression which basically means 'I beg you, I am very desperate'.] What do you think the guy said? He said, 'I don't need a servant! I need a woman!' What do you expect of others when the clergyman, the head of the court, says this? I went to the officer to get my divorce signed, instead he said I should not get divorced and instead get married again without divorce, illegally. Because he said without a husband it will be hard to find a job. He was right, but I didn't have money to pay him . . . These things make you age faster . . . you get depressed . . . you have a lot of stress and it damages you. Perhaps there is a means to get out of this . . . " Moslem was distraught because none of the American networks wanted to buy the film. They didn't want to destabilise Khatami's regime! Moslem himself is a child of the Revolution. Without it he would never have become a film-maker. He comes from a very poor family. His father is a muezzin and his upbringing was ultra-religious. Now he hates religion. He refused to fight in the war against Iraq. He was arrested. This experience transformed him. "The prison was a hard but good experience for me. It was in the prison that I felt I am reaching a stage of intellectual maturity. I was resisting and I enjoyed my sense of strength. I felt that I saved my life from the corrupted world of clergies and this is a price I was paying for it. I was proud of it. After one year in prison, they told me that I would be released on the condition that I sign papers stating that I will participate in Friday sermons and religious activities. I refused to sign. They kept me in the prison for one more year." Afterwards he took a job on a film magazine as a reporter. "I thought my work in the media would serve as a cover for my own projects, which were to document the hideous crimes of the political regime itself. I knew that I would not be able to make the kind of films I really want to make due to the censorship regulations. Any scenario that I would write would have never got the permission of the Islamic censorship office. I knew that my time and energy would get wasted. So I decided to make eight documentaries secretly. I smuggled the footage out of Iran. Due to financial problems I've only been able to finish editing two of my films. One is Close Up, Long Shot and the other is Shamloo, The Poet Of Liberty. "The first film is about the life of Hossein Sabzian, who was the main character of Abbas Kiarostami's drama-documentary called Close Up. A few years after Kiarostami's film, I went to visit Sabzian. He loves cinema. His wife and children get frustrated with him and finally leave him. Today, he lives in a village on the outskirts of Tehran and has come to the conclusion that his love for cinema has resulted in nothing but misery. In my film he says, 'People like me get destroyed in societies like the one we live in. We can never present ourselves. There are two types of dead: flat and walking. We are the walking dead!'" We could find stories like this and worse in every Muslim country. There is a big difference between the Muslims of the diaspora - those whose parents migrated to the western lands - and those who still live in the House of Islam. The latter are far more critical because religion is not crucial to their identity. It's taken for granted that they are Muslims. In Europe and North America things are different. Here an official multiculturalism has stressed difference at the expense of all else. Its rise correlates with a decline in radical politics as such. "Culture" and "religion" are softer, euphemistic substitutes for socioeconomic inequality - as if diversity, rather than hierarchy, were the central issue in North American or European society today. I have spoken to Muslims from the Maghreb (France), from Anatolia (Germany); from Pakistan and Bangladesh (Britain), from everywhere (United States) and a South Asian sprinkling in Scandinavia. Why is it, I often ask myself, that so many are like you? They have become much more orthodox and rigid than the robust and vigorous peasants of Kashmir and the Punjab, whom I used to know so well. The British prime minister is a great believer in single-faith schools. The American president ends each speech with "God Save America". Osama starts and ends each TV interview by praising Allah. All three have the right to do so, just as I have the right to remain committed to most of the values of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment attacked religion - Christianity, mainly - for two reasons: that it was a set of ideological delusions, and that it was a system of institutional oppression, with immense powers of persecution and intolerance. Why should we abandon either of these legacies today? I don't want you to misunderstand me. My aversion to religion is by no means confined to Islam alone. And nor do I ignore the role which religious ideologies have played in the past in order to move the world forward. It was the ideological clashes between two rival interpretations of Christianity - the Protestant Reformation versus the Catholic Counter-Reformation - that led to volcanic explosions in Europe. Here was an example of razor-sharp intellectual debates fuelled by theological passions, leading to a civil war, followed by a revolution. The 16th-century Dutch revolt against Spanish occupation was triggered off by an assault on sacred images in the name of confessional correctness. The introduction of a new prayer book in Scotland was one of the causes of the 17th-century Puritan Revolution in England, the refusal to tolerate Catholicism sparked off its successor in 1688. The intellectual ferment did not cease and a century later the ideas of the Enlightenment stoked the furnaces of revolutionary France. The Church of England and the Vatican now combined to contest the new threat, but ideas of popular sovereignty and republics were too strong to be easily obliterated. I can almost hear your question. What has all this got to do with us? A great deal, my friend. Western Europe had been fired by theological passions, but these were now being transcended. Modernity was on the horizon. This was a dynamic that the culture and economy of the Ottoman Empire could never mimic. The Sunni-Shia divide had come too soon and congealed into rival dogmas. Dissent had, by this time, been virtually wiped out in Islam. The Sultan, flanked by his religious scholars, ruled a state-Empire that was going to wither away and die. If this was already the case in the 18th century, how much truer it is today. Perhaps the only way in which Muslims will discover this is through their own experiences, as in Iran. The rise of religion is partially explained by the lack of any other alternative to the universal regime of neoliberalism. Here you will discover that as long as Islamist governments open their countries to global penetration, they will be permitted to do what they want in the sociopolitical realm. The American Empire used Islam before and it can do so again. Here lies the challenge. We are in desperate need of an Islamic Reformation that sweeps away the crazed conservatism and backwardness of the fundamentalists but, more than that, opens up the world of Islam to new ideas which are seen to be more advanced than what is currently on offer from the west. This would necessitate a rigid separation of state and mosque; the dissolution of the clergy; the assertion by Muslim intellectuals of their right to interpret the texts that are the collective property of Islamic culture as a whole; the freedom to think freely and rationally and the freedom of imagination. Unless we move in this direction we will be doomed to reliving old battles and thinking not of a richer and humane future, but of how we can move from the present to the past. It is an unacceptable vision. I've let my pen run away with me and preached my heresies for too long. I doubt that I will change, but I hope you will.