"C'mon... Daddy needs a new solar-powered hammer" Erik English

This has been the fastest internet turn-around ever! Mostly due to the fact that Benjamin came to visit me in Manigri a few days ago and brought his computer- and the internet was working. How technology changes all... 

Here's another solemn blog-post for y'all. 

Three days ago, Mama fell while she was sweeping the dirt outside her house.  Sweeping is a daily ritual, between starting cooking fires and cleaning pots.  I doubt there was anything more than just a streak of light in the sky when she fell.  She landed on the hard, mud-topped well, striking her right arm on its thick edge. 

That morning my neighbor Okounde was sitting in my living room, asking me for my help in finding him an American wife.  He was in the process of explaining to me why he couldn't take an African wife, something to do with the fact that he is estranged from his family (and therefore perhaps he couldn't afford an African wife? I didn't have time to ask many questions), when Papa came in.  He asked me if I had anything to help with sprains.  After digging through my Peace Corps med-kit I found an ace bandage and a bunch of ibuprofen.  Once I saw her though, I was pretty sure that this ace bandage wasn't going to do the trick.

Her arm was very swollen, black and blue, and her fingers were fat.  I looked at her skeptically for a second, noticing how the arm ballooned about five inches from her wrist.  "Mama," I asked. "Can you move your fingers?" She couldn't.  I'm no doctor, I thought, but this arm is definitely broken.  (It should be mentioned I feel as though I am an expert on the subject. I've cracked all four limbs on two separate occasions. I know very well what that limited mobility means.)

They can't afford a doctor, so my Papa called a traditional healer who assured Mama, despite my protests, that it is only a sprain. He touched her bones through her tender skin and reassured her that they're in place.  I pouted.  Maybe they are in place, which no one can know without an x-ray, I argued with Okounde, but that arm is not sprained. Not in the middle of her forearm. I gave up after just a few hours- when I realized that the nearest place to procure an xray is in Djougou, two hours away, and that I don't think even I could afford the procedure.  

If that arm is in fact fractured (factured?), it's going to have to mend itself just like every other thing that breaks here: slowly and grotesquely.  I've been in the process of searching for a secondary project in Manigri. I've made contact with a group of women who want micro-credit so they can grow vegetables for the marche. I've had the idea tossed at me to begin a small emergency medical fund. There are scholarship girls.  There's the school science lab. There is so much need; so many things that are broken.  I don't want to be a splint on an arm that will never heal correctly. I want to practice good medicine.  

The main thing they impress upon you during training (Stage) is that nothing here is easy, and everything takes time. For example, I want to show the Planet Earth documentaries at the community center, using a borrowed projector from the Parakou workstation.  I spoke with my Director (and Chief de Village) about this a few weeks ago.  He needs to speak to a number of other people before I can be permitted to make this showing.  Ideally, this project, which in the States would be a matter of a couple of days, will take a month and a half to be realized.  Everyone that could have something to do with either the school, the community or the parents-teachers association, has to be notified of this. They have to discuss their concerns, if any. They have to make sure that there is a consensus among the many.  If you do not go through these channels, I've been assured time and time again, your project will never have the community support it needs to succeed.  Unfortunately, writing checks is the easy(ier) part.  

So while I'd love to set up some small medical or educational fund in my village to help people when things go awry, as they will, I have no idea how to see that idea through. Who would qualify? How would it work? How can anyone prove eligibility in a place without birth certificates, addresses or phone bills? How would I make sure that this fund would see people through more than the two years I am here? And even if this were to successfully created, who would be in charge of it once I left and my ties to the community diminished? 

It's obvious that development is complicated.  Charity is easy.  If I didn't care about the longevity of my projects I could go build some latrines no one is going to use because they'd be in a place where no one cleaned the land (true story).  Or I could build a well to help some lady farmers who will then fall apart as a coalition because the ownership of the well will become too large a burden (somewhat true story).  Or I could build one of those hundreds of beautiful, empty NGO facilities that run out of funding because someone in local government sucked them dry. 

It doesn't mean that I don't want to throw myself through a window every time one of my neighbors is sick or hurt.  It doesn't mean that I don't think about how I would love to pay for those little girls in the market to go to school.  It definitely doesn't mean that I don't feel a little twinge of guilt every time I see Mama's arm, wrapped in a scarf, bloated as Liza Minelli on a bender.  I think part of living First Class in the Third World is that your mantra is, "I can't help everyone".  Which is true. You can't help everyone. But there's nothing that says you don't have an obligation to try.  At least that way maybe you can help someone. The problem is if you try to do so messily, without proper planning and political support, you in fact help no one.    

"We have an obligation to fight for the world as it should be." Michelle Obama

turn up the boombox

La Bonheur: Good Morning Manigri!



Manigri-- Narcissis Last Name Unknown and Likely Unpronouncable has been promoted by the Ministry of Education to the position of Surveillant General at CEG Manigri. This administrative position combines the responsibilities of Secretary, Treasurer and Referee with the disciplinary duties of BDSM sadists. Narcissis, age 26, was overheard to have said, "I will beat them well," them referring to his students. A biology teacher at CEG Manigri, Narcissis knows enough about the human body to know where the pressure points are. "I hear he's a real bone crusher, " said American Peace Corps Volunteer and English Teacher Sarah Pederson. Ms. Pederson and Narcissis have been neighbors since they both moved to Manigri. The two reside in the Professional Building District of Oke, after the Grand Mosque and before the swamp. Ms. Pederson remembers the first time they met, when he asked her to marry him. "It was very sweet. He asked me if I wanted to go running with him a few days a week. When I accepted the offer he asked me if I'd like to take a nap with him afterward. I said no, but now that he's the Surveillant..." Ms. Pederson's eyes grew glassy and she quickly became unresponsive with the thought.

The general consensus is that Narcissis, while new to the job, will nevertheless stay on task. He has already arranged an open house and has beaten several children with a thick piece of rubber rope. "It doesn't hurt that bad," assures one 5eme student who requests to remain anonymous out of fear of retribution, or harsher ass-beating by the Surveillant. "My dad hits me harder."
"These are all children of farmers," explains veteran English teacher and scholar Hafissou. "The way that they are treated at home requires us to utilize corporal punishment while they are at school." When asked whether or not Narcissis was fulfilling his responsibility of Ass-Kicker in Chief, Hafissou replied, "I'm sure he will do very well. It is not an easy job, it is a lot of work. But you know," he giggled, "I can take care of discipline problems myself." He brandished a thick stick cut from the surrounding cashew trees.

With the Director also serving his political office as Chief of the Village, the fate of Manigri will rest on Monsieur Narcissis' lanky shoulders. Already underway are plans to arrange a Correspondence Club with Ms. Pederson, and seek funding sources to build a science lab. "He's really hit the ground running," said Ms. Pederson. "I just hope he doesn't need to take a nap," she laughed gaily, her eyes glazing over once again.

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Let it be known first and foremost that Narcissis, if he were to see this, would laugh. We are very good friends, and I am very happy he's been promoted. Despite the marriage proposals, which I only find as a minor annoyance, he does always do his best to look out for me. And I appreciate it. Even when his best constitutes beating my students in front of the rest of my class. I know he's doing it so I won't have any problems. It's his way of being nice. Strange, right?

I can't get myself worked up about corporal punishment in schools. I know there are vindictive Surveillants, those who really abuse their power and in turn their students. The same goes for teachers. It's by far not a perfect system, and while I wish there was another culturally-appropriate technique available, the fact of the matter is that the teachers are ill-equipped and untrained. They punish their students the same way they themselves were punished. Rarely is anyone seriously hurt, and as we all know: pain is a motivator. While I have never hit a child, I don't blame those who do. Even if it is technically illegal. This country's education system has a lot of problems, and I would place this policy near the bottom.

Narcissis is a great example of this. He isn't exactly graduated from the University yet. He has finished his core classes and has been asked to serve as a teacher in one of the rural schools of the North. He isn't from Manigri, he's actually Goun (an ethnic group from the South). He didn't know anyone here when he moved in, which is partially why we're such good friends. He teaches ALL of the biology classes in CEG Manigri, ALL of the biology classes for CEG Biguina, and two classes in Bassila. He does this so he can make some money, but he isn't- from our Western perspective- qualified to do so.

The pay rate for teachers in this country is politically tricky. While comparatively speaking, they are well paid in contrast to the rest of the country- they are far underpaid as government employees. Most teachers make approximately $25 dollars a month. This changes depending on your school district. Whereas teachers are not civil service employees, but recruited and contracted ones, their pay scale is marginalized. (Sound familiar?) This accounts for yearly strikes by teachers, where the government promises better pay in turn for teacher cooperation. A new contract was signed last year giving teachers a 100% pay raise, which would be a phenomenal accomplishment, but it has been working it's way through the bureaucratic channels for the better part of two years now. Because the pay is dismal, the government has a difficult time recruiting teachers, despite the high unemployment rate of college graduates in Benin. This forces them to contract university students and army officials into being teachers in their lesser paid school districts in exchange for some money and school credit.

The result being, that because most of these teachers have never taken an education course in their lives, they have no training. During Stage my fellow PCVTs and I received nine weeks of methodology and theory. (To be honest, i thought it was a complete waste of time seeing as teaching seems to be equal parts instinct and discipline, but what do i know?) This makes me nine times more qualified to teach in the Beninese school system than my counterparts who have been teaching for twenty of more years. To be clear, that estimation is not mine, but something that has been repeated to me by teachers time and time again. We have no formal training, they say. What can you teach us about teaching? My eyes grow wide with a deer in the headlight kind of look when they ask something like that. I grow tongue tied. I look up to Hafissou, my homologue, quite a bit. He is probably one of the most intelligent people I have ever met. What can I teach him? Should I really be concerning myself with the fact that he makes students get on their knees and them hits their hands with a thick stick? I don't think I can, or even necessarily want to, correct him. He knows what he's doing far better than I do. Even if he results to punishments that make me uncomfortable. I actually pretty sure that everyone knows corporal punishment is forbidden, but they do it anyway because it's effective. (Why mess with success?- tasteless joke)

Narcissis and I were talking about science classes in Manigri a few weeks ago. He was telling me that when he wants to explain what various reactions to chemicals are, he has to draw it on the chalk board or try to explain it via a text. They have no resources for a science lab. There are two broken microscopes in the Surveillants office, and one beaker. Nothing else. I find that really disconcerting considering so much of university level science has to do with experiments and lab reports. How can you ever hope to build a class of professionals in the science fields, including doctors, if you do not have the capability of teaching laboratory techniques? If anyone is at all interested in brain-storming with me how I can help get them a few microscopes and some basic laboratory equipment, I would find that extremely helpful. (Not electric microscopes, the old-fashioned mirrored ones- maybe someone knows of where they go when schools get new, fandangled microscopes)

I find that my french is getting better from day to day. I'm trying to focus better on using grammar and asking to be corrected if I think I am not saying something correctly. Luc, my best friend in village, helps me out a lot with that. I lent him my bike for the day so he could go visit some family 20km away. It's hot so I gave him a water bottle as well. I find I have to be careful when I give away my garbage, it causes jealousy among both children and adults. If I give Gi or Mouda a small possotome bottle, I have to make sure none of their friends are around. If I give Mama a wine bottle, I sometimes hide it behind my back as I walk out to her by the road so our neighbors don't see. It's kind of nice that this recycling takes place, but a little sad as well that I will never find so much treasure in my own trash.

A week ago I went to Cotonou to be checked out for any bugs I may have picked up in the past couple of months. I had a few ameobas and so I've been taking this anti-parastic medicine that really tires me out . It's been kind of nice resting in my house and reading the many magazines my lovely mother has sent me over the past month or two. It's worried my neighbors like you wouldn't believe though. I received so many visitors everyday, neighbors, friends and work colleagues, all making sure I am okay. The former President of the APE (the PTA) came by with a bunch of limes for me, limes and honey being a traditional remedy for stomach sickness. I thought it was sweet, but as David says, the last thing these people want is a dead white person on their hands. Also, maybe, just maybe, they care about me too.

I hope to be starting a Girls Club in the next couple of months. I need to talk to my director, Hafissou and Narcissis to get the green-light and then start selecting girls for it. I want to have some sort of mechanism to train girls to help other girls, in a way that maybe there will be a lasting impact for those who cannot be in the club as well. Girls Clubs here are really interesting because not only are women completely marginalized, but sex education is seriously lacking in this country. The average age of a sexually active individual in Benin, or rather, in my village, is twelve or thirteen years old. Sex education does not begin until most students are seventeen or eighteen years old, and frequently older. Even then, it's abstinence based. I'm sure that type of sex education is the result of some sort of loan conditionality, although I can't prove it (that's the sort of research that requires a good internet connection and a lot of time).

I suppose abstinence based sex education does make sense to a point here, in that condoms aren't free or really even available anywhere- and condoms are a hard-sell just about anywhere. The AIDS rate is lower here than in the United States, but the teen pregnancy rate is astronomical. Birth control may be considered by some to be a human right, but it's expensive. It is not unusual for a student to have a teacher as a sex partner, in exchange for food or good grades. I know a few teachers in my school who have young girlfriends in khaki. It's sickening, but I know that if I tell them I don't like it, it won't change a thing. It will just make them uncomfortable or resent me. There's a lot of tongue-biting on my part here. I am not going to try to impose my view on these people who have more problems than I can understand. That's not why I'm here. I can however, offer education to young girls so they are aware of the consequences of their decisions, and their options. Ideally before they become pregnant by their math teacher.

I just got scolded for leaving my house in just a pagne wrapped around my shoulders. Mama told me to go put a shirt on and come back if I wanted to saluter her. I thought that was pretty funny. "Go put some clothes on!" She basically said. The men sitting at the bar chimed in, "Yes, you shouldn't be out of your house like that." Which was even funnier because their wives were just wearing a few pagnes as well, and they were out of their concession. Maybe my white skin was blinding them.

I don't know if I'll ever really be Benin-Integre here, or even if that is something I'd necessarily want. It's tricky, because no matter what I will always consider myself an American. I've lived in the US for 23 years, and at the end of this I will have been in Africa for only 2.5. And no matter what they will always consider me a foreigner. I have white skin and a funny accent. Even if I learned to speak Nagot fluently and sat under mango trees all day, and wore nothing but tissue, I will always be a foreigner. It seems a little disingenuous and quite insulting to me when I hear about other PCVs (specifically white ones) trying to become fully 'integrated' into their community. It really shows to me a lack of understanding to the importance of history and ethnicity that built this culture. My African American friends have a much easier time being accepted by their villages, which I think makes sense. Many of their ancestors came from places like Trinidad or Haiti, (or East Africa) and culturally speaking they have the ethnic and historic implications of their existence running through their bloodstream. I don't mean this in an Alex Haley 'Roots' kind of way, but in that despite their upbringing in the United States, they're not seen as invaders, or as oppressors. No matter what I do here, the legacy of Western dominance will follow me wherever I go.

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"I have faith. Faith in penicillin, riflampin, isoniazid and the good absorption of fluroquinolones, in bench science, clinical trials, scientific progress, that HIV is the cause of every case of AIDS, that the rich oppress the poor, that the wealth is flowing in the wrong direction, that this will cause more epidemics and kill millions. I have faith that those things are true too. So, If I had to choose between lib, theo or any ology, I would go with science as long as a service to the poor went with it. But I don't have to make that choice, do I?" Paul Farmer, Founder of Partners in Health.

Merry Christmas

Celebrating Christmas with twenty of your closest Peace Corps volunteer friends has a lot of benefits, but one major drawback. That drawback is that at 930 am I woke up feeling like hell, on Christmas, on merely four hours of sleep. But last night was so much fun. We ate snickerdoodles and had a dance party. Later today we're having a legitimate feast, with cheeseburgers. What luxury.

Right now I'm drinking a cup of instant coffee and blearily squinting at the screen. Soon I'll go with my friend Emily to get bread and eggs for breakfast.

Merry Christmas to all.

Remember that I love you.

To my mother

Happy Birthday.

Love,
Sarah

More Self Righteous 1st World Guilt

I once read a blog by a Peace Corps Volunteer that described the most heart-breaking scenario I could never dream up. In her village in rural Niger almost everyone survives during the dry season on millet. Millet has thick, long stalks with little kernels at the top that get turned into powder, which can act as a type of flour. In West Africa, women are in charge of the tilling, the planting and the harvest. Farming is women's work. Harvest and planting seasons are exceptionally brutal as these women toil in the fields for hours on end. Their skinny frames are already wracked with malnutrition and fatigue from the innumerable chores she must do to keep her household somewhat clothed and possibly fed. The saddest part, the absolute worst part, is that nursing mothers who work in the fields, work so hard they stop producing milk for their babies. And it's not like they can just give the baby to someone else as at wet nurse, because all of the women work, and sometimes they all run dry.

The blog post was about this girl who was living in this tiny rural village in Niger, who had sat up all night with a family that was very dear to her. They were waiting for their baby to die. Their son, their baby, had been taken twice that week to a doctor in a village ten kilometers away, who told the Volunteer that there was nothing to be done but to try to give the baby some formula. Formula that the family could not afford. Even if they could, he was already too sick and weak. He was going to die.

When I read that, I had only just applied to the Peace Corps. Even as an infrequent crier, I couldn't hold it together and burst into tears hunched over my computer. Absolutely not, I thought. I cannot, absolutely cannot, do that. I will not do that.

I called my boyfriend, David, and allowed him to talk me down into rationally discussing the situation. I know that children die all over the world of diseases that never plague the 1st world. I know that children die of malnutrition and dehydration everyday. Some fifty thousand a day. I was only upset because it was something I was terrified would happen to me. It never occurred to me to be afraid of crime in West Africa, as I had seen crime in the United States quite vividly for many years. But I had never seen real, abject poverty. What was scary was, I wasn't going just to visit, snap a few pictures and press some coins into the palms of beggars- I would be going there to live. To be the person who might have to try to find a doctor for that baby. To be the last vestige of hope, because I would be the American with resources and money. I couldn't imagine that burden. I still can't.

When I peeled myself off of the mattress in Djougou this morning, my only concern was finding something to eat and procuring a water bottle for the 94 kilometers home. The remnants of a great night of drinking Sodabee- palm moonshine mixed with honey and citron- pressed into the backs of my eyes and felt sour in my stomach. I had a fairly enjoyable early taxi ride home, and was looking forward to cleaning and healing myself the rest of the day. But when I arrived at my concession, I knew that bucket shower would have to wait. In front of the yurt-like buvettes sat about twenty motorcycles. There was no one minding the stand by the road. After paying the zem, I walked up cautiously to see over fifty people standing and sitting, many of them with tears in their eyes. Very few of them talking. Oh no, I thought. Oh no no no no no. Not now. Not here. The faces of the children in my concession swarmed my head as my eyes searched frantically for them. Please don't let it be Mouda, I thought. He had been sick a few weeks ago and had lost so much weight.

I could feel myself making everyone uncomfortable, not speaking, standing there with my obvious white cluelessness, carrying unwieldy shopping bags full of bread and vegetables. I knelt down next to Roukaya, the second oldest of Mama's children, and asked her what happened. She told me a child had died this morning. I sank to my knees, involuntarily. "Who? Who was it?", I asked, trying to keep the panic in my voice hidden. She told me it was the boy, one of my students, who lived behind the concession. My stomach suddenly felt as thought it weighed fifty pounds, stuffed with pure guilt and a twinge of grief. Okay, so it wasn't Mouda. It wasn't the one of the children I play with. I was disgusted and dizzy with my own relief.

The rest of the morning we sat on door steps and ledges, barely speaking. Eventually I went in to scrub the dust and moonshine grime off of my skin. When I came back out there was a large taxi parked outside of Mama's house that would serve as a hearse. They would take him to Bohicon, about three hours south of here, for the burial. A wailing like I had never heard before, something I had only read about and seen in some movies, ruptured the solemn silence, ripping through me and my heavy gut. The parents walked with their child in their arms toward the taxi. The mother wept and shrieked, heaving her body from one step to the next. She barely made it past her front yard before she just gave up and needed someone to help carry her. The other women started wailing as well, aunts and cousins of the boy wrapped in a flowered bed-sheet. They put him in the back of the van. I watched from the edge of my stoop the procession to the family's house once it drove away. I had no desire to follow. I just needed a lot of time to think.

When an old person dies in West Africa, it is not a sad affair. Most people have parties with loud music, lots of food, a funeral procession with loud singing and tambourines, and of course- dancing. There is undoubtedly an initial period of grieving, but then the preparations for these fantastic parties must be made. Funerals are expensive here too, I read recently that they rival American weddings in proportion of income spent.

When it is a child, well, there's no celebration. There are no drums or tambourines. There is just a bed-sheet and parents with empty eyes.

Children are so fragile here. They come with these open mouths and tiny limbs and great big eyes, sucking in the sweet air past their gums. As they grow they are continually deprived of the protein a young, healthy brain needs to develop properly, and never get enough vitamins. They work in the fields or in the marche or in less desirable places to help pay for their own food costs. Little fingers picking tomatoes. Girls no more than six walking up and down busy roads selling oranges from a platter on top of her tiny head. They get sick; they get sick so easily. There is no such thing as health insurance here, if you cannot pay for a doctor he will not see you. There is too much need and medicine is expensive. When they get sick there isn't much that can be done for a poor family except maybe see a traditional healer, who can make tea out of sticks, herbs and prayer.

When a child dies in the United States, we see it as a huge injustice. Even if the problem is absolutely outside of the capacities of modern medical science, like an inoperable brain tumor. We shake our fists at God and the universe, demanding to know why this happened to us. It's not that way here. Not when child mortality is so high. Your child could die, your neighbor's child could die, and likely one of them will. There is no blame, just empty resignation. When the child's mother shuffled over to me this morning, I laid my head on her hand and professed my condolences. "We can't do anything, there is nothing we can do," she said, tears in her eyes, looking past me in her grief.

The worst part is she's right, there is nothing they can do. It's not their fault they're poor and their child got sick with dysentary. It's not her fault that there are people living with inoperable brain tumors, getting heart transplants and surviving lymphoma where I come from, and her child died of dehydration.

I recognize that this is part of living in the 3rd world. And if you can't understand that the world is a horrible place, and that people are terrible to one another, then get out of hell's kitchen. Children die. Bad things happen to good people. Life isn't fair. These aren't laws of science, they're the realities of humanity. The initial guilt over my relief that the child who died was not one I knew well is superficial because that's not a choice I can make. If I could no child would die in Manigri at all. Or in Niger. Or in the United States. And especially not due to malnutrition or diarrhea. But I didn't make the world, it made me. It will be here long after I die. I'm just a visitor, taking photographs.

"Rain Falls, Angry on the Tin Roof" -- Bradley Robert Mock singing Edwin McCain

(warning: overly poetic and overall boring subject matter) 

The rain here is of a completely different caliber than the rain at home.

In upstate New York, the light, peaceful autumn rain strokes the leaves and gently cloaks the ground in mist. The weather is gray and damp; the cold taste of decay sticks to the back of your throat.

Here, the rain slams into the ground like millions of angry fists, punishing roads and roofs, turning trenches into torrents; threatening hot, dry afternoons with distant rumblings of thunder.

In New York, the rain starts slowly, sometimes as what we love to call a 'drizzle'. It builds a crescendo the same way you start a fire, feeding the ground small bits of water at a time- giving what lives below the clouds time to breathe before breaking into a full, furious downpour.

Here, there are spastic starts, stops and spurts- as if someone is sprinkling the rain to test where it will fall. And one pregnant moment later, it all comes down. Not just buckets. Not just cats, or dogs. But unfathomable fathoms of water. The thunderous rain makes me picture my house trapped under an enormous waterfall.
Like a cruel child, the force of the water dunks it under, preventing its emergence. My house, it's drowning. The rain pounds violently for only eight or ten minutes before slinking off into the distance, followed by a few more smatterings of late-coming clouds.

It is exciting, in a way, to be so captivated by an act of nature as benign as rainfall. The sound is so loud it permeates every activity. If I am teaching and a storm begins to break, I must pause my lecture- allowing my students to glance nervously out the windows, wondering if they will have to walk the many miles home in the sky's sudden tantrum. At home, the noise prevents me from doing anything at all but listen and eventually move to a window to watch the trees in my concession whip around- as I've always enjoyed doing in the States. I only write this now that the rain has stopped, and the crickets have taken up singing again.

Adam Morey once told me he loves autumn, because everyone suffers through the heat and the humidity of summer while the flowers flourish. But at least, he says, there's fall- and that's when "the plants get theirs." Here, there is no fall. There is only rain, and no rain. Flood or famine. The plants 'get there's' the same as those who depend on them. It is why deforestation is such an issue here. Tropical rainfall is so heavy and brutal that you need those trees and plants to hold the soil together or it, and all of the vital minerals in it, will be washed away in seconds.

Also, there is no way Edwin McCain ever had a tin roof. If he did he wouldn't write pop panty-droppers. He'd write wooden drums and the sound of a reedy voice in the distance, thanking god for the rain.

Regarding Slavery, Oppression, feeling good on the beach, and a little bit of Otis Redding

Before training ended, our teachers took us to Ouidah, which was the slave port in Benin for centuries.  Most people were taken from the interior of the country by the King of Abomey. The King of Ouidah would then sell the slaves on behalf of the more powerful King of Abomey in exchange for firearms, alcohol and silk.  While most of those goods made their way back to Abomey, you can imagine that no King was going to just let these treasures slip by tax-free.  In this, the King of Ouidah went from being complicit in the slave trade to also profiting.  Ouidah is mostly Fon, and the Fon like many tribes in the South of Benin, have a long history of Voodoo practices and beliefs.  Benin is, for those of you who don't know, literally the birthplace of Voodoo. It resembles very little of the pentacost drawing, pin pushing, witchdoctoring voodoo that you see in movies, but it is the origin of that interpretation.  Anyway, selling people into chattel slavery for a bunch of savage white people is definitely some bad gris-gris. One King had an enormous tree enchanted to protect himself from the spirits of the people he was sending across the ocean.  Men would circle the "Tree of Forgetfulness" nine times and women would circle it seven times, to make sure that their spirits would not remember where they came from. (Just one of many steps taken to try to force the Africans into forgetting their past.) Then there was also, I believe planted by another king, the Tree of Remembrance which would trap the spirits if they did make it back to Ouidah.  They would remember to come to that tree and therefore vindictive spirits could not haunt the King.  The interesting thing about the Tree of Remembrance is that it was basically just in a neighborhood, a neighborhood where people had lived for a very long time.  There were barefoot, mostly naked, babies running around, women crouched over their cooking stoves. I wouldn't be surprised if the children in the village tried to climb the tree once in awhile. While the impact of the slave trade absolutely effected the lives of millions across the continent, it seems as though it is a less poignant atrocity when looking at it specifically from it's point of origin.  The timelessness of suffering in Benin is not just contained in this brutal shipping of 20 million human lives, but lives on in the empty bellies of children and behind the wary eyes of women who never stepped foot inside a classroom.  I realize I am being condescending, but I do not know how else to make this point. The same way that I have nothing to do with slavery, being born in this place and time, they have nothing to do with the slave trade.  Only in so far as I was born in and lived in a country with all of the worlds' opulence that thrives on the depletion of resources in poor countries such as this one, I have everything to do with slavery. 

The inescapable plague is greed at any expense and the only antidote for our consciences seems to be rationalization.  But hey, I should not be allowed to be self-righteous.  I live in a house at least one hundred times nice than anyone else's in my village.  I have a college education, a life-time of good health, and in village I am without a doubt the wealthiest person I know.  I have a refrigerator for godsakes.  

Ouidah was interesting for me because ever since I was a young teenager in Bourdeaux, I have wanted to visit a slave port. I really wanted to internalize the narrative I knew so well.  Packed like spoons in a drawer, iron chains cutting into festering wrists, the separation of linguistic groups to prevent mutiny, the desperation and countless deaths. I thought visiting a place that has held these poor souls before they were marched to the sea would make me feel closer, or moved, by the experience.  The truth was that the people here don't see the same blockbuster gore that I have had described.  Their history is one of magical kings, betrayal, oppression and corruption.  Their stories aren't about the Portuguese's slave ships or the Dutch trade or tight packing.  They're about communities, families and tribes.  

To be honest, I was a little disappointed with the entire trip.  The mass graves were in fact quite sad.  I left a rock at the memorial that I had found at the fort where the slaves were kept, and felt sacreligious standing there in my pale feet, thousands of long ago decomposed bodies beneath them.  But that was it.  At the beach where I watched my friends play in the surf and climb on top of each other and pose for pictures, I laid back in the sand and listened to Otis Redding. 

Three thousand miles I've roamed

Just to make this dock my home 

It was impossible to picture emaciated, brutalized people marching west toward an undeniably horrifying future.  The sun was shining beautifully, and I couldn't help it, as I was trying to conjure an image of a 17th century slave ship on the horizon, I just thought, "Now that's home. That is where home is." Picturing my friends and family living their lives on that side of the world, I just smiled and leaned back to enjoy the sun.

Sitting on the dock of the bay

Watching the tide roll away 

Sitting on the dock of the bay, wasting time.