Jessamyjoy's travel blogs:
- Senegal 2007
- Two months translating, interpreting and... 2005
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Trying to Digest
Entry 27 of 33 | show all | print this entry |
Life has been proceeding as normal for the past little while and I think of all of you at home, glued to your computer screens, on the edge of your rolling office chairs, waiting for the next installment of my so-called-adventure that I still am struggling to believe comes out at all interesting on the other side and, well, I don't know what to say. I struggle to wake up with the alarm clock, but the super sonic roosters start to crowing soon after and despite their several feet away I wouldn't be surprised to turn and get a beak in the eye because it sounds as if they are intentionally leaning right in my ear. (I will miss this immeasurably and we all know it.) So I get up, stumble to the shower, stumble to the same breakfast of buttered toast and inherited tea with one sugar cube. Mosquito-guard my flip-flopped feet, which, to my astonishment because I didn't believe someone else when the complained of the same thing, have actually molded to fit my shoes, instead of vice-versa, and my big toe and second toe now seem (after many minutes of contemplation any time I find myself bored and looking at my feet) to have a definitely wider space than any other toes and my previously crooked toe (too small tennis shoes) is straighter. Interesting. I actually wore tennis shoes for the first time in three months today and my feet were screaming for freedom the whole time. So I get to the office, the four of us, our number sadly dwindled, start the day with prayer and then the day goes on. I jump at any chance to interpret for Fiona who is bombarded with random medical questions...is peeing four times a night caused by my asthma medicine? Could this white stuff on my lip be cancerous? Can you help us set up an AIDS awareness program? I feel important and helpful and as if my expensive grad school could come to pay off in the distant, slightly-imaginable future. I speed through translations cause they're so fun. (Totally serious.) Then I shuffle impatiently through boxes of dusty, speedy-ugly-bug-covered files, some going back ten years, or scroll for hours on end of saved e-mails since the beginning of e-mail...who saves e-Christmas cards for 15 years sent to someone who left here 5 years ago? And I'm called in to re-file, re-save and re-instruct everyone how to avoid this mess in the future! It's as un-adventuresome as anything could possibly be.
And so as not to disappoint you, since the whole picture-sending thing didn't work due to extremely slow and unreliable internet connections (aren't you surprised though that we've had such success?), I mulled over some conclusions that I'm trying to come up with about the past two months.
There are a lot of things I really, really love about Benin. I love these things because they are different than home, admirable, challenging, interesting, funny. This is what I will miss and reminisce about, about which I'll say to you, "Now in Benin..." when something annoys or frustrates me about home. These are why I will come back if I ever do and why I'll never forget this place if I never do.
Hospitality. When I visited the pastors in Tchatchou weeks ago, I saw them the day after and in the customary way they told me, "Merci d'hier." (Thank you for yesterday.) Weeks, mind you, later, I saw one of them and he told me, "Merci de la visite de la fois passée." (Thanks for the visit last time.) He had been so honored and our bums had barely touched the chairs in his sparse living room long enough to discuss the lack of rain, mention the people we all had in common and excuse ourselves to continue greeting people. But it was important to him. Infinitely more important than I will ever grasp. Just as, when complete strangers (this has only happened twice in two months) show up at my door, I welcome them, "Bonne arrivée.", open the screen door, gesture them to sit down, run inside to get glasses of cold water, and little cookies if they seem like they actually intend to stay, which they usually do, and join them on my porch. We do the greeting routine. They marvel that an American speaks French (even young, small-town Africans know that we live in a language black hole). I would only think of asking them if they were looking for someone else (and settled for me, which they would do, just because they like to have as many contacts as possible), what they wanted, if they don't have somewhere else to be...I would never actually ask. I've heard women will literally get up from having just given birth to prepare a meal for the guests come to greet the baby.
Now, of course, there are economic and survival reasons for knowing so many people in a community where each one depends on the other, so it's not just pure, unabashed love we're talking here. But all the same, arms are open wide and it's unfathomable to think that any one person's wouldn't be.
People/event-centered culture verses time-centered. Africans often gesture to Westerners' watches and say, "You Westerners have the watches, but we Africans, we have the time." What a stinging simple honest truth. Yes, okay, it's frustrating when you have some clothes made and "next Tuesday morning" becomes Wednesday in two weeks. It's hard to plan when your mechanic/plumber/electrician/fill-in-the-blank gives no time-line but says, "I'll come get you when it's done." People don't bat an eye, shift in their seats or even start looking around when an hour after not just the stated time, but the printed, announced, same-time-every-week time, hardly anyone is there and nothing's getting started. Business doesn't run all that smoothly. Days get "eaten up". Planning is...not.
However, it's this same laxity that permits an employee to show up to work late on any given day because he bumped into his cousin whose wife just passed on or his neighbor who needed a ride to the next town for a wedding or someone he hasn't seen in years who just wanted to chat and share a meal. It allows people to cultivate patience and relationship-building conversation (natural in all that waiting around together). People walk slow and steady here. I still make a conscious effort to do so, but I love it. My heart beats regular. My brain deals with things as they come instead of all at once like a dizzying super-speed scrolling computer screen flashing images of all I have to do and will never get done. Things get done. It may take considerably longer. But they get done. Nobody dies because the meeting started at 9:53 instead of 9:00 sharp. In fact, once you realize that no one will be there for an hour, maybe an hour and a half, after the stated time, if you want to, you just wait and go that late, too! What's the big deal? It seems inefficient, but it's all in the perspective. If you are used to it and expect it, you can in fact plan for it as much as you can plan for things at home where an occasional glitch snags things up. I know Westerners who aren't convinced of this. Maybe I wouldn't be after being here a much longer time. But I appreciate the lack of demanding things "my way right away" and the availability of people to stop absolutely whatever they are doing to greet you. I even picked up the habit that if someone I know fairly well doesn't greet me (Africans who understand Westerners pick up our habit of just walking by if they are busy 'cause they know we won't notice or mind), I yell across the office or courtyard, "Oh! So we don't greet people anymore!" At which point they stop in their tracks, laugh, and rush back to heartily shake my hand and throw out the barrage of "Ça va?"s. I love it. We'll see how much I'll risk being late to class and work to stop and chat at home, but I hope that at least when it really is only inconvenience (and not rudeness to other people) that I will stop what I'm doing if they chance to bless someone with my attention and affection comes up.
Teasing. Most people haven't thought very deeply into the expression "Yo mama!", but nerdy linguist-anthropologist-types have (the nerdy part being assumed by me as I happily share this info) and African-Americans did in fact get that expression from the African half of their not-that-long-ago-hyphenated (I just like hyphens) title. Teasing is central to African culture. Everyone teases everyone about everything. A hearty laugh at someone else's expense is to be expected in almost every encounter of any kind. When I come home on Tuesday afternoons and Julienne has made me dinner, I've come to find Esther there who tells me, "Je suis venue la taquiner." I've come to tease her. Not to chat. Not to see what she's up to. Tease her. When Esther leaves, it's to "tease" some other women about the continuing joke that Esther is also married to each of their husbands. Now of course, many cultures and individual families (like mine!) have this down to their own particular art. But here it is a broad, general, found everywhere, noticeable characteristic. I will definitely miss the clusters of men at la pause slapping each other on the back, throwing their heads back in hearty laughter, shouting across la paillote in Bariba, Yoruba, Fon, Dendi, French if they really want to get a big laugh, insulting this one or that one. Who wouldn't love it?
This list could be really long and detailed because I've found so much I love here. The languages are beautiful and astoundingly unique, so many, completely different, crammed in one tiny space. Most people speaking a couple of them, fluent French and some a few words of English. Everyone I meet is wide-eyed to learn I'm an American when they hear me speak French, but you should see the looks when I walk under la paillote and greet someone over here in Bariba, someone over here in Dendi and then actually have a mini (though nonsensical) conversation with my friend Armand in Fon. I love it!
I wish I could buy myself a complete wardrobe of African clothes. The colors and patterns and clashing combinations and quantity of all three of those offend the Westerner's jeans and button shirt-accustomed eyes. Skirts and dresses can be shape-revealing but are never skin-revealing. They are often shapeless and hence roomy for moving, cool for heat, convenient for riding a zemijahn (moto taxi if you forgot) and satisfyingly liberating from any concern in my color-coordinating powerless state. Families show up in matching materials. Everyone important invited to an event will buy the same material and have it made in their own style and size. You bargain for the material in the market and take it to a tailor to have whatever you want. I love the woman who's made my stuff 'cause she's a GENIUS at hiding seams and getting it perfect on the first try! The material is washable, durable, and if you spill (you guys are smiling at this one, I know), the outrageous design makes it impossible to see! We'll see if I don't mind sticking in my African clothes out when I get home the same way I got used to sticking out in my white skin in Africa.
Of course there's the music. Drums of all shapes and sizes, accordion (who would guess), the call of one leader who sings out a solo and evokes the response of the crowd, the participation of the whole group, the complicated clapping and rhythmic dancing. The voices are nasal but they are clear and carry far, the singers' whole body participates in the song and the melodies stick in your head when the language means nothing at all.
Then there are the speedy lizards with their legs that jut out from their flat bellies and scamper them up trees. Or up your skirt if you aren't watching as I saw happen today to my infinite delight when I thought, "How strange, that lizard ran right towards Dodi when they usually run away." Until she burst into giggles and a little dance, managing to keep hold of the bowl in her hand and get the little guy shook out of her dress! Can't forget the mysterious and graceful brown fruit bats and their squeaky nightly symphony. The proudest roosters you've ever seen (or heard, very loudly, right outside your sleepy window). Goats. Pregnant goats, baby goats, scraggly spotted goats, goats with tea bag labels hanging out their mouths, goats gobbling black plastic bags, standing on the tops of rusted-out cars, herding down the street as if they're following you because they have nothing better to do. Goats, goats and more goats. Sheep that could be confused with goats. What's not to love?
I don't want you all to begin regretting staying home for the summer instead of "pitching up" (as my buddy Fiona would say) in Africa, so I'll tell you what I've realized that I do love about home. There are the obvious things. Which, I find unfortunate because not only do they mark the vast economic differences that exist in the world, but they generally mark my laziness. If I chose to live here or if I'd started here, these things wouldn't be an issue, because they'd be a normal part of life and/or my body would be adapted, even if never completely or if it just meant my body wouldn't last as long (which is in fact the case). But, having started where I did and come here as an outsider, these are things I notice. I will be happy not to worry about filtering water which I drink, serve to guests, cook and brush my teeth with, not to have to bleach every fruit and vegetable for 15-30 minutes, not to have to pass every bread over a flame or reheat everything to kill any lingering invisible enemies and not to have to cook the very shadow of a doubt out of every tough piece of meat. I will love not feeling a deep sense of concern when I'm invited to someone's house that either a) I will have to, with more regret than my host can imagine, refuse a food I know will make me sick or b) eat it to their joy and end up very sick and wishing I had chosen a) no matter how much I hadn't wanted to. And it will be nice not to take such elaborate (and often ineffective as I and everyone else have experienced) measures to avoid getting bitten my mosquitoes. I will appreciate traffic lights and laws and the general respect that people have for them. These things are all true.
But, what I miss the most about home merits a comment of some kind but I'm not sure what it is. I travel because I love variety and anything different, no matter if the new food tastes gross or the new insects give me diseases or the new weather wears me out. If it's new to me, I like it. In the end though, this is why I like home. And again, home is not just like this because we are a melting pot or, if you're honest and realistic, a chunky stew, it is like this in large part because of our wealth. What I miss about home is variety. I miss seeing different shades of skin and hairstyles and ways of dressing. I miss hearing Afghan Farsi and Spanish and Urdu and Missouri English. I miss eating burritos and kabobs and pizza and daal and hamburgers and fries and hummus and pitas. I miss having orange juice and cereal with real milk for breakfast every morning like I'd had for the previous two years! I miss hearing Jazz and Raggae and Bluegrass, how I miss Bluegrass. I miss the mountains and the ocean and the high boring as-far-as-the-eye-can-see plains and row after row of Iowa corn, the waft of Nebraska feed lots. It's not that I miss having things at my finger tips. It's not that I miss the ease of the vast, well-stocked, organized stores. (It's (surprisingly) not that my money actually always goes all that much further at home.) It's not actually that life is boringly monotonous here, because, like I said, there are many cultures living side-by-side.
Of course, it is partly that home is home. It doesn't matter where you come from, what you have, your family situation, where you've been...when all is said and done, what you know is what you know and you always love it and understand it in a way that is comforting and secure to you. But I don't feel uncomfortable or insecure here. I don't miss home per se. I could stay here. But...I don't want to. I don't know if there's a way to convey this that explains how I'm feeling. How I feel that despite all the vast differences and all the commentaries that are and can be made on cross-cultural experiences...I honestly wholeheartedly believe, no matter what people might say, that everywhere you go you find just as many pros as cons, just as many morons as beautiful geniuses, just as many positive aspects as negative, just as many successes as failures and, ultimately, just as much joy as sorrow. Poverty and disease ravage Africa like Westerners can't imagine. But selfishness, greed, isolation and a different kind of violence ravage the West like Africans shutter to imagine. We all have something to learn from each other. Whether we learn by avoiding a bad example or by borrowing a good idea, we should learn. The hippie in me wants to make a bleeding-heart appeal that we make the effort to listen across the boundaries that divide us and create the peace and harmony and equality that God designed us to have when he intentionally gave us the beautiful differences that make up the thousands of cultures on this planet. The realist in me knows this will never happen. The Christian in me knows that we have to decide everyday to at least be responsible for those immediately around us, meet physical needs as Christ did, and pray that the spiritual needs, which are immeasurably greater, be met through his grace and his death on the cross.
Well, as usual, I got all philosophical-like when all I really wanted to say is I'll miss Benin when I leave a week from today. I hope somehow, through this silly blog, that you'll miss it with me.
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