I have been playing doctor around the neighborhood, which is pretty fun but also really disturbing. Even well off families like that of my host, Kantos, seem to lack basic knowledge about first aid. It amazes me that anyone makes it past age 5 around here, because no one cleans open wounds, let alone covering them! Last week, Cynthia, Kantos's 8 year old daughter, got a massive cut on her ankle (evil cat!) and was limping around the compound and missed school as a result of the cut, and still no one cleaned it! When I got home from the orphanage for lunch and saw that she was missing school because of a cut (can you imagine what your parents would say if you wanted to miss a day of third grade because of a boo boo? yeah right), i got my med kit out and went to work on her. When I finished gauzing her up, her older brother showed me a gash on his foot, so I cleaned and band-aided that. Then I jokingly pronounced, 'Who else has a malady to show the doctor?' and the kids all pushed forward this little girl named Alvalo, who had fallen two weeks before and still had 2 huge open wounds on her legs, clearly infected!! Finally, after that, my work was done, though I have been constantly rebandaging since then and explaining what I'm doing to the mothers (as everyone comes to watch and laugh at me whenever I do anything, especially laundry, which is for some reason particularly amusing) so they can use it in the future (lord only knows if any of them will).
It's all a matter of this massive cultural gap on the issue of hygiene and cleanliness, one that I find very hard to think through without a western superiority complex. Animals are everywhere, especially goats and chickens; and their shit is everywhere; and little barefoot kids are everywhere too. You do the math. It totally freaks me out. People sweep their homes and yards daily, but I don't understand why no one puts the goats in a fence or the chickens in a coop. I suppose I should just ask someone. Similarly, you eat with your hands (though when I'm at the orphelinat, I'm always given a fork), so people just pour some water over their right hand and then dig in. I just turn a blind eye most of the time, even to my own hygiene, and try to roll with all the punches. Still, it hasn't escaped my notice that people seem to be sick a lot! All of Kantos's kids have been sick with a bad cough and fever since I've been here, and they continue to carry the baby twins around even as they wheeze! And poor baby Radovan, one of the twins-- he had an awful cough and fever, and his mom kept on carrying him on her back into the kitchen, a little wooden hut with an open cookfire inside; so there he was, cough cough coughing (at only 8 months old), and breathing in a shit ton of smoke!! Alas, I'm not afraid to tell the kids what's up when it comes to health stuff, but I still feel inappropriate, condescending, telling someone 15 years my senior, who has already raised 3 kids, what to do with her infants.
With all of this, I try to remind myself that there are millions of things that we do that are entirely non-sensical, or at least ridiculous. The time I told the kids at the orphelinat about dish washers and they laughed hysterically comes to mind. 'Not only have we invented a machine to do our laundry for us but a machine to wash our plates too!!? What do Americans actually DO? No wonder Americans are all fat!'
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Even the Goats Call Me Yovo
It's a bizarre thing, being a celebrity. Seeing as I'm the most fascinating thing to hit Lokossa since Michael Jackson, I'm getting to know all about it. So far as I have seen, there's only one other white person in the city, and she's off in Porto Novo right now doing a Peace Corps summer camp for girls right now. Which makes me the only one. Which at least helps to understand why literally everyone I see in the street, toddlers, kids, teenagers, women, men, and old people scream, YOVO YOVO YOVO when I walk by. I am incredibly exciting like that. (Yovo is the Fon word for white.) There is a sing-song chant that the kids shout when they see me, that goes 'Yovo, Yovo, Bon soir! Ca va bien; merci!' to which I sometimes reply, 'Beninois, Beninois, Bon soir! yada yada' or, better yet, 'Mewi, mewi; Bon soir!' as mewi is the Fon word for black; and this absolutely cracks people up.
Most of the time, the yovo-ing doesn't bother me, as it doesn't carry any of the sexual undertones of 'chela', which is the Nicaraguan word for white girl. It is really just a result of the novelty. Today, I was walking home from the orphanage and saw a bunch of white people on motos going through town and I was so excited that they might be American or speak English that I almost screamed Yovo to get their attention!! Sometimes, however, I get fed up with the staring and the constant yovo calls. It's not culturally inappropriate to stare here, like it is in the States, so people just keep on looking at you long after you want them to go the hell away. A little girl who lives next to the NGO office where I work in the afternoons comes in almost every day just to stare at me while I work! She just comes in and watches me for 20 minutes at a time, goes back to her house, and then comes back to the office to stare some more! She doesn't bother me, but I've been to two church services so far during which the majority of the people in looking-distance decided to eschew prayer in order to better observe my skin.
I am not only a fascination, though; I am also terrifying. Last week, I was sitting out in front of the office when I noticed that a whole family of kids (5 or 6 of them, ranging from babies to age 9 or 10) were hiding behind the fence and watching me!! I eventually convinced the bigger ones to come over and 'me saluer'-- greet me-- at which point i explained that i was actually human, and it was only my skin that was different. Then, I think having seen these other kids cross the street (dirt path) to talk to me, a whole posse of other kids ran down the street screaming to introduce themselves! I spend the vast majority of my time talking to people under age 15, that is for sure.
Most of the time, the yovo-ing doesn't bother me, as it doesn't carry any of the sexual undertones of 'chela', which is the Nicaraguan word for white girl. It is really just a result of the novelty. Today, I was walking home from the orphanage and saw a bunch of white people on motos going through town and I was so excited that they might be American or speak English that I almost screamed Yovo to get their attention!! Sometimes, however, I get fed up with the staring and the constant yovo calls. It's not culturally inappropriate to stare here, like it is in the States, so people just keep on looking at you long after you want them to go the hell away. A little girl who lives next to the NGO office where I work in the afternoons comes in almost every day just to stare at me while I work! She just comes in and watches me for 20 minutes at a time, goes back to her house, and then comes back to the office to stare some more! She doesn't bother me, but I've been to two church services so far during which the majority of the people in looking-distance decided to eschew prayer in order to better observe my skin.
I am not only a fascination, though; I am also terrifying. Last week, I was sitting out in front of the office when I noticed that a whole family of kids (5 or 6 of them, ranging from babies to age 9 or 10) were hiding behind the fence and watching me!! I eventually convinced the bigger ones to come over and 'me saluer'-- greet me-- at which point i explained that i was actually human, and it was only my skin that was different. Then, I think having seen these other kids cross the street (dirt path) to talk to me, a whole posse of other kids ran down the street screaming to introduce themselves! I spend the vast majority of my time talking to people under age 15, that is for sure.
Friday, June 12, 2009
if i was looking for adventure...
...that's what i got. i am safe and sound in benin. will hopefully have some photos soon.
for now, the past two days play-by-play: my guidebook said "you have to be suicidal to ride the Cotonou motorcycle taxis, whose drivers are like kamikaze pilots on crack"... which was too bad for me because the second i found kantos, my host, in front of the airport, we hopped onto some moto taxis and rode into the Cotonou night, through strangely quiet streets to a hotel. my room was nice but pretty lonesome for my first night in a foreign land, as kantos dropped me there and said he'd get me in the morning. in situations like these, i've always found it best to be colmpletely surrounded by people, as much as possible. well, pas de probleme because in the morning, we climbed into a regular old sedan taxi (after riding zemis (motos) thru a total downpour) with 6 passengers on top of the driver! the totally smashed windshield was a reassuring bonus.... so i was reeeally glad when we got to lokossa.
lokossa is not exactly a city, or even a town by our definition... there is one paved road running through the center (or rather, it seems that lokossa just bubbled up outward from the road- it sprawls in all directions, so it's not quite accurate to call it the "center")- anyway, if you make a bunch of turns on dirt paths off the main road, you get to the path that runs up to kantos's family's compound. there is electricity, incl. a tv and light in my room, but no shower (a bucket behind the house)... and no toilet, just a latrine (aka deep pit in a cement room behind the house that reeks more than anything i have (or will) ever experienced in my life- the only way not to gag is to hold your skirt bunched up over your nose and breathe through it. it almost makes me look forward to my 2 weeks au village, where the great outdoors will be my bathroom.)
kantos is really nice, as is his wife, kristianne. they have 5 kids-- the oldest, olivier (whose name i can only remember as lawrence olivier) is 14, then another son whose name i keep forgetting who is 12, a daughter-- cynthia carolyn(!) who is 8, and baby twins adovan and naima, born last october. it is really nice living with kids-- they are so easy to talk to, and i'm really excited to teach the older ones ULTIMATE (the boys are already on summer vacation so we're starting today!). their compound is connected to that of a few other families, and they all seem to live like one big extended famille- tons of little kids running around and hanging around all the different houses. most people here speak either fon or aja (in fact, most speak both), but apparently one of the neighbor families speaks yoruba!!! so i'm gonna pay them a visit later today and see.
anyway, when we pulled up to the house, the women's cooperative was meeting under a tree right out front (about 20 or 25 women ranging from teenagers to old women, plus a bunch of kids, all gathered on stools around this old tree), and by the time i put my stuff down, they were singing and dancing, so kantos brought me over to introduce me. i introduced myself and they were singing all these songs and a few women were dancing and then they asked me to dance for them (a la africaine!) so alors-- i had no choice but to dance!!! fortunately one of the women took pity and got up to dance with me, but suffice it to say, it was quite an introduction!
after that, kantos took me for a little stroll around the "neighborhood" and reintroduced me to some of the women, in particular, a 22 yr old named emiliane, who is preparing for college entrance exams. i was instructed to help her pick these plants and learn how to prepare dinner. the traditional food is called igname pile- it consists of pate, a mush a bit like really smooth mashed potatoes (made from cornmeal) and la sauce, which is a mush of leaves/veggies and sometimes meat or fish. probably the messiest food you could conceive of to eat with your hands, but that's what they do. no stoves here- you cook in a pot over an open fire in a hut outside your house. it's the real deal, that is fo sho.
anyway, a bit of homesickness comes and goes, but i mostly have my eyes and ears wide open, trying to absorb this incredibly different, vibrant world i fell into.
for now, the past two days play-by-play: my guidebook said "you have to be suicidal to ride the Cotonou motorcycle taxis, whose drivers are like kamikaze pilots on crack"... which was too bad for me because the second i found kantos, my host, in front of the airport, we hopped onto some moto taxis and rode into the Cotonou night, through strangely quiet streets to a hotel. my room was nice but pretty lonesome for my first night in a foreign land, as kantos dropped me there and said he'd get me in the morning. in situations like these, i've always found it best to be colmpletely surrounded by people, as much as possible. well, pas de probleme because in the morning, we climbed into a regular old sedan taxi (after riding zemis (motos) thru a total downpour) with 6 passengers on top of the driver! the totally smashed windshield was a reassuring bonus.... so i was reeeally glad when we got to lokossa.
lokossa is not exactly a city, or even a town by our definition... there is one paved road running through the center (or rather, it seems that lokossa just bubbled up outward from the road- it sprawls in all directions, so it's not quite accurate to call it the "center")- anyway, if you make a bunch of turns on dirt paths off the main road, you get to the path that runs up to kantos's family's compound. there is electricity, incl. a tv and light in my room, but no shower (a bucket behind the house)... and no toilet, just a latrine (aka deep pit in a cement room behind the house that reeks more than anything i have (or will) ever experienced in my life- the only way not to gag is to hold your skirt bunched up over your nose and breathe through it. it almost makes me look forward to my 2 weeks au village, where the great outdoors will be my bathroom.)
kantos is really nice, as is his wife, kristianne. they have 5 kids-- the oldest, olivier (whose name i can only remember as lawrence olivier) is 14, then another son whose name i keep forgetting who is 12, a daughter-- cynthia carolyn(!) who is 8, and baby twins adovan and naima, born last october. it is really nice living with kids-- they are so easy to talk to, and i'm really excited to teach the older ones ULTIMATE (the boys are already on summer vacation so we're starting today!). their compound is connected to that of a few other families, and they all seem to live like one big extended famille- tons of little kids running around and hanging around all the different houses. most people here speak either fon or aja (in fact, most speak both), but apparently one of the neighbor families speaks yoruba!!! so i'm gonna pay them a visit later today and see.
anyway, when we pulled up to the house, the women's cooperative was meeting under a tree right out front (about 20 or 25 women ranging from teenagers to old women, plus a bunch of kids, all gathered on stools around this old tree), and by the time i put my stuff down, they were singing and dancing, so kantos brought me over to introduce me. i introduced myself and they were singing all these songs and a few women were dancing and then they asked me to dance for them (a la africaine!) so alors-- i had no choice but to dance!!! fortunately one of the women took pity and got up to dance with me, but suffice it to say, it was quite an introduction!
after that, kantos took me for a little stroll around the "neighborhood" and reintroduced me to some of the women, in particular, a 22 yr old named emiliane, who is preparing for college entrance exams. i was instructed to help her pick these plants and learn how to prepare dinner. the traditional food is called igname pile- it consists of pate, a mush a bit like really smooth mashed potatoes (made from cornmeal) and la sauce, which is a mush of leaves/veggies and sometimes meat or fish. probably the messiest food you could conceive of to eat with your hands, but that's what they do. no stoves here- you cook in a pot over an open fire in a hut outside your house. it's the real deal, that is fo sho.
anyway, a bit of homesickness comes and goes, but i mostly have my eyes and ears wide open, trying to absorb this incredibly different, vibrant world i fell into.
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