That's a concern. Well, less so the participants (I have some faith in them) but their families.

I'm going to be monitoring each participant pretty closely. If anybody fucks up egregiously like that, we come and take everything left that we've given them (remaining rabbits, food, the cage) back to the office until we can find someone who is willing to play ball. And on the preventative front, we've made each person do some serious work preparing a place for the cage to go so they'll have some skin in the game. It's not a perfect system, but it's what we've got. The problem with targeting a project to the poorest people in your community is that they don't have money for, say, a deposit.

These worries are also why we split it up into five individuals instead of one collective or group. It isn't all or nothing. We can have 80% failure rate and that still means we gave some poor fuck the means to support himself and his family.

4/27/2014 4:59:04 PM

What if a rabbit dies and it isn't their fault?

4/27/2014 6:01:05 PM

If they bring the body, it's proof that they didn't sell or eat it, and that's OK. The problem would be if the rabbit that died was the male...we don't have replacements. Presumably they could share with another participant.

4/28/2014 3:39:21 AM

A friend posted today on facebook about how his friend had to get a rabies shot, and it cost $15,000 ($6,000 after insurance). This made me want to post about some things.

In this country I know of human beings who have died of rabies. A disease that, in America, we mostly associate with pets.

Also snake bites and lightning strikes. Two or three a year in my village.

What's strange is that everybody knows to be afraid of dogs, snakes, and lightning, but they still die of it. A lot. Because sometimes they have no choice but to be out and about, or they don't have proper shelter (if you're in a wet room with a sheet metal roof, lightning will get you).

This also explains why Beninese people are terrified of my dog, even though she's small, friendly, and tied to me at all times.

4/30/2014 4:58:18 PM

^ that happens everywhere. There are many maladies associated uniquely with poorer people because they don't otherwise have the means to avoid them or to learn to avoid them.

Interesting that in Benin, those things are dogs, lightning, and snakes.

4/30/2014 5:29:29 PM

yeah, happens everywhere. You know what, though? I'll take diabetes and hypertension over rabies any day of the week.

Lightning I'll admit is a tossup. Snakes, depends on the snake. I hear boomslangs are real nasty.

4/30/2014 5:49:03 PM

Someone I know who works for the state department is moving to Accra, Ghana. To prepare for his African journey he bought a brand new 2014 white Ford truck. Seems a little excessive and unnecessary to me. He also looks albino, so I would love to see the reactions he gets from the local communities. What do think would be the most crucial thing for someone to bring to Africa, besides sandals?

5/2/2014 9:15:47 AM

Quote :

"Someone I know who works for the state department is moving to Accra, Ghana... What do think would be the most crucial thing for someone to bring to Africa, besides sandals?"

Even in Benin, State Department folks live like Americans -- really well-off Americans. He doesn't need sandals. He will need the truck. Otherwise, how would he get to the expat bars and parties? Staties mostly aren't even allowed to use local transport.

5/2/2014 3:17:50 PM

are there any distinctly Beninese professions? like the jug o' gas sellers?

5/2/2014 3:18:58 PM

Not using local transportation seems reasonable considering the stories you've told.

5/2/2014 3:42:54 PM

I haven't posted much in this thread but I read it every time it's updated. Mad respect for people with the balls to put themselves on the line for people who need the help. GrumpyGOP... when you make it back to NC I owe you several beers *in exchange for more stories of course.

5/2/2014 11:47:34 PM

What's been the best part of your experience thus far?

5/3/2014 1:01:32 AM

Quote :

"are there any distinctly Beninese professions? like the jug o' gas sellers?"

Some of the voodoo stuff, like the zangbetos, are unique to Benin. And other countries have moto-taxis, but they are a MUCH bigger deal in Benin -- they're called zemijans here, which, depending on your language tutor's sense of humor, either means "take me quickly" or "take me in one piece" in Fon.

Otherwise, most stuff can be found all over West Africa. I just got done reading a Ghanaian murder mystery and I was surprised by the number of things (food, mostly) that are not only the same over there, they have the same name.

Quote :

" Mad respect for people with the balls to put themselves on the line for people who need the help"

That's sweet. I wish I could claim it were my biggest motivation. It's big, certainly, and its extremely rewarding, but at the end of the day it was a job, and as it happens a job I'm pretty well suited for.

Quote :

"What's been the best part of your experience thus far?"

Man, hard to say. In broad terms, it's just the completely random shit that can come out of nowhere and make your day interesting. Yeah, a lot of days I just kind of sit at home and dick around, kinda like I did in NC. And I love NC like a fish loves water, but you know what never interrupted the routine there? A dancing haystack turning a rock into a baby crocodile in my front yard, or a friend casually introducing me to his pet monkey.

The Peace Corps social life is also way up there. My best friends in life are still the ones from back home, but I don't think I've ever been in as tightly knit a group, especially one this big.

Another thing that nears the top of the list is vague like the first: how much enjoyment I now get out of little things. I mean, if the street meat guy has chicken, it makes my night. To say nothing of the wonders of a care package. Outside of maybe some military guys on here I doubt anybody on TWW has ever been as over-the-moon as I am to open a box and see Cheetos in there.

And restaurants? Back home, I could get Chinese, Mexican, or even Thai food in podunk Randleman. I'd enjoy it, and when I was poor it might even be a bit of a trip, but here a Thai meal is something planned for and fantasized about for weeks in advance.

Since I've already violated the letter of the question by listing four things I might as well add number five, which is the much more concrete idea of work success. Most of my shit jobs back home did not have an end goal. You can stock Target like Michelangelo painted, and it's still going to need to be stocked the next day. It's never-ending. Here? Those motherfucking latrines are built. They are finished. People shit in them. People thank me for them. The tomato training from last year may be one of the things I'm proudest of in my life. It was small, but it stayed with the spirit of sustainable development and it got shit done.

5/3/2014 4:56:42 PM

I'll tell you what has NOT been the best part of my experience, is the last twelve hours.

I was at the rabbit farm for a training with the dwarf, cripple, and a few orphans. Things started off very productively. The people were interested, they were taking notes and asking good questions. We were served a thing kind of like hot chocolate with condensed milk. (Why they love hot chocolate in this weather is a great mystery of Benin). I don't think that's what caused what happened, but almost immediately after my stomach registered displeasure. Nasty pain pangs in my stomach and rumblings closer to the exit. Started sweating pretty bad. Felt nauseous.

The inevitable followed as we were finishing up our talk about how to tell if the rabbit you are getting is healthy ("You must look at the anus!" was a memorable and appropriate line). I grabbed my TP and asked where the latrine was. The guy looked sheepish and pointed me to a bare cement platform with a poop hole but no, you know, walls.

Everyone got quite the show, and with sound effects.

Things got worse really fast. Unfortunately, we had come together in a truck that couldn't leave until everybody was ready. I, foolishly, had forgotten my helmet, so I shouldn't have ridden a motorcycle back. In the end, I was forced to. The guy was told to be careful and naturally he drove like a bat out of hell on blind goat paths and washboard roads that shook my guts like a jackhammer.

At one point we were stopped by these guys who had a "roadblock" -- just a piece of bamboo on a two forked sticks blocking the way. They don't lift it unless you pay them for the road repairs they are doing. I made like I was gonna hurl (not a ploy, seriously thought I was) and they got out of the way most ricky tick.

Spent the rest of today at around 101.4 F with constant runs and pretty serious stomach pain, but it has gone down in the last few hours. Probably food poisoning.

5/3/2014 5:06:46 PM

Public diarrhea doesn't sound fun for anyone involved. Hope it's over soon.

5/3/2014 5:24:16 PM

on the plus side, they looked at the anus

5/3/2014 5:38:14 PM

^^^ other than all the 3rd world accoutrements , I had the exact same ailment starting 48 hours ago (fever included)... I'm fine now. I blame expired mayonnaise I willingly ate.

[Edited on May 3, 2014 at 5:51 PM. Reason : ]

5/3/2014 5:50:45 PM

on the plus side, they looked at the anus

5/3/2014 6:05:02 PM

actually, i think the lesson to be learned is had someone looked at grumpy's anus a few hours before this fiasco, they could have notice his impending unhealthiness.

5/3/2014 8:54:26 PM

It's true, the whole point of looking at a rabbit's anus is to assess whether it has the runs or another digestive problem. After sleeping through the night I feel a lot better, just super fucking weak.

Part of the treatment for diarrhea is "oral rehydration therapy," which are these foil packets full of powder you mix with a liter of water and then drink. It has salt, sugar, and a couple of other things, designed to restore your electrolyte balance. In principle it's not that different from gatorade.

In practice, it tastes like a bag of anuses. No one will verify it, but I'm pretty sure this is intentional, because Peace Corps knows with whom they are dealing. A lot of PCVs use the packets for one purpose and one purpose only: curing hangovers. So they tried to make the thing taste so awful that nobody would drink it unless there was a medical emergency.

5/4/2014 2:55:15 AM

There comes a time in a man's life when he's drunk on African moonshine celebrating his return to health / appreciation for irony, while sitting in a shanty listening to "A Day In the Life" by the Beatles at top volume and singing the same to his dog.

On second thought, that may be really specific to me.

Bonne fete de cinq de mai, chers amis.

[Edited on May 5, 2014 at 7:18 PM. Reason : you wouldn't know how to write french either ina country with this literacy level]

5/5/2014 7:17:11 PM

i take so much powdered gatorade with me out of the country.

lemon lime works best somehow.

5/5/2014 7:40:08 PM

Tomorrow I leave for COS (close-of-service) conference, the first time since training that all of the volunteers from my class will be together. I imagine a fairly large quantity of bullshit, under the guises of "teaching us how to readjust" and telling us how to fill out the reams of paperwork that come with the transition. On the plus side, it takes place at two of the nicest hotels in the country (one in Cotonou and one in Grand Popo, the beach resort). After it's done, several of us are staying at the Rastafarian bar we love so much there at the beach - and since apparently it's Bob Marley Day during that period, should be good times.

I mean it literally when I say that I cannot believe that two years is almost up. Mathematically it's true, yeah, but it does not feel like that at all. I'm glad I'm staying for a third year just so that I can feel like I was here for two, if that makes sense.

We had fabric made with our boss' faces on them, to wear in celebration at this event. The fabric looks profoundly racist -- the only discernible facial features on the design are big lips and wide noses, if you ask me, but the people depicted are apparently tickled to death over it, so whatever. Notice to black people in NC: if you see me wearing this shirt, please don't murder me.

5/6/2014 4:22:38 PM

Ha do you still have your ash scar things?

5/6/2014 4:27:19 PM

I have 4 out of the original 48. I need to get them redone.

5/6/2014 4:32:29 PM

When do you move to coutounu?

5/18/2014 10:36:35 PM

When do you move to Cotonou?

5/19/2014 4:24:36 AM

Probably the first week of August. Everything is good to go except for my medical clearance (which I'm not worried about) and the final choice of housing. That's a little trickier, because PC has some arcane rules about where and in which domiciles PCVs can live in Cotonou. Much more particular than in village. But, based on the fairly absurd amounts of money that my host org is talking about spending, I doubt this will be a big issue.

Very tentatively, my plan is to come home around November 20 - January 2, though that could shift a couple of days either way based on flight availability. PC is paying for the flight, and federal law says that PC can only send me on American carriers or their affiliates, which apparently means Air France. Air France only flies to COO a couple of times a week.

Then I would be done with PC for good sometime in or slightly before October 2015.

I am dying to get to Cotonou. Village life has been fun and transformative, but now I just want to eat some goddamn cheese and play poker with white American people after work.

5/19/2014 6:42:21 AM

Today I helped run a regional spelling bee at one of the two high schools in town. The head of the English department, a Nigerian guy working in benin on contract, has been nagging me for months to help. A few years ago he worked with another PCV and took kids to the PC national spelling bee and was apparently really pleased with the experience.

By the time he found me it was too late to sign up for nationals, but he wanted to do a regional one and I agreed to help out with that and the English club meetings. Eventually we had a falling out -- he kept calling and telling me emphatically to come to meetings, which I would, only to find out that neither he, nor the students, nor any of the other teachers were there. That is to say, I'd be alone. This happened a few times and I told him to fuck off, but this spelling bee business looks pretty sweet on my reports so I thought, "how bad could it be?"

Pretty fucking bad. The guy had clearly forgotten how spelling bees worked, and even though he had a copy of the rules from the PC event, his English is so bad that he couldn't understand them right. To repeat, the head of the English department could not understand the simple rules written down. For example, he thought that the spellers were required to use the words in sentences and describe the part of speech (both of which judges are supposed to do, as anybody in America could tell you). So the first hour and a half were spent in a meeting with the very few teachers who attended, hammering out the rules, which were then promptly ignored.

Not one single student spelled the first word correctly. In America, this would mean the event was done and I could go home, but here they just kept pressing on. The word was "clean," which everybody wanted to spell with a "K" and an "I."

Kids weren't eliminated for getting words wrong, and individuals were not the competing unit -- the six participating schools each had a "team" that was given multiple opportunities and hints as to how to spell words. Correct answers got points. This was all absolutely the opposite of what was written on the simple page of rules we were supposedly following.

One of the words on the list was "caffeine." The judge used it in the following sentence to clarify: "Yesterday I smoked some caffeine." They also mispronounced about 40% of the words, even taking into account accent issues.

To my eternal shame, a local radio station owner/operator/host was there to record the event. I was pulled out of the room to do an interview, which he recorded on his cell phone. Some time tomorrow I will be made famous in the communes of Pobe and Adja Ouere. (Adja Ouere is my commune, incidentally, and the name means "Rabid Dog.")

There was also a paid photographer there who made sure that every single frame included their pet white person.

There were only 26 kids in the contest, and it took 4.5 hours.

5/24/2014 4:38:26 PM

How many words were spelled correctly in the 4.5 hours?

5/24/2014 5:04:02 PM

Once we got into the higher level classes, they actually got quite a few. But that first round was abysmal. That would be the equivalent to seventh grade, although some of the people in it were probably fifteen or sixteen.

I did notice that on the list of words for the juniors, it had quite a range. From "wet" to "arteriosclerosis."

It's kind of sad, what I've seen of the health curriculum. For example the English unit on health has words like arteriosclerosis and hypertension, in a country with a life expectancy of 54 where neither of those is a threat. Malaria, malnutrition, malnourishment, AIDS, yes. High blood pressure, no.

5/24/2014 6:46:19 PM

Ha

Did you say anything in the interview that wasn't perhaps flattering of the event?

5/24/2014 10:42:18 PM

Oh no. It's already borderline against the rules for me to do an interview, I didn't want to exacerbate the problem by causing drama.

5/25/2014 4:24:43 AM

Good news: all the rabbits are thriving.

Bad news: one of our best friends is being medically evacuated because our idiot doctors haven't figured out her cough after two months. To put it in perspective, one of our doctors is a 70 year old Ghanaian woman who, by the laws of Ghana and Benin, should be forced to retire, but the Peace Corps keeps her. The other is a Senegalese man whose idea of a joke is to tell people who have taken HIV tests, "Congratulations! The results are positive." (Skip a beat) "You do not have HIV."

This same idiot was technically our boss for three days because of an administrative mixup. The three Americans who normally make up our ruling triumvirate were all out of the country. The Director was at home visiting his sick wife. The evil bitch who just arrived and is bent on making PC suck was on vacation. And the genius / James Potter look-alike who actually keeps PC Benin going left to be the director of the program in Burkina Faso. I predict anarchy and civil war (at least within Peace Corps, but possibly the country at large) within days. But at least now the evil bitch is back and the Senegalese lunatic is out of power.

Sigh.

5/27/2014 3:04:23 PM

What does being "medically evaluated" entail? Will she get to see a better doctor or sent home? Has she had a chest x-ray done or anything besides someone listening to her lungs?

5/27/2014 4:42:32 PM

It's medically evacuated. With a C, not an L. As in, they're sending her home. Normally this would mean she was sent to the nearest competent medical base (can be Senegal, South Africa, the US, or Morocco, depending on the issue), but because most people in my group are almost done with their service anyway, they're lumping "medical evacuation" in with "early close of service."

She will get sent to DC, where she will (almost by definition) see a better doctor. They've done x-rays, but that's where Beninese technology ends.

[Edited on May 27, 2014 at 4:53 PM. Reason : ]

5/27/2014 4:52:20 PM

Ohhhhh, that makes more sense. Sorry for my inability to read. At least she made it close to the end. Hopefully America can figure out what's wrong with her.

5/27/2014 7:50:18 PM

Quote :

"The other is a Senegalese man whose idea of a joke is to tell people who have taken HIV tests, "Congratulations! The results are positive." (Skip a beat) "You do not have HIV.""

hahaha this is my kind of doctor.

5/28/2014 9:10:54 AM

that's like the doctor on Family Guy

5/28/2014 9:11:26 AM

The problem with both doctors is that they have a very African view of things like morality. A little less than a year ago I was starting to date my girlfriend. And I knew I was clean, but Thee're both very careful people and wanted to make sure -- for both of us, even though she'd never actually had sex -- so we scheduled a test.

The doctors immediately accused us, separately, of having unprotected sex with someone. That's the only reason they could think of to want an STI test. Then, they spent more than an hour trying to talk me out of taking the test, because they thought it would encourage me to have unprotected sex.

Guys, let me tell you, the Republican party has NOTHING on Africans when it comes to reactionary conservatism. They are the most socially conservative people on Earth, possibly excluding the Taliban.

I eventually got short with the doctor and said, "Look, I'm not having you shove a q-tip up my dickhole for fun. Can we get this over with?" And they did, and boy, if you haven't had that done...don't. You're better off with chlamydia.

Somewhere many pages back on the blog I have a collection of the doctors' greatest quotes. I'll try to dig it up to share later.

5/28/2014 3:42:34 PM

So some things are starting to collapse here at the end of my routine service. Nothing major, thankfully.

The bed net distribution? The guy put in charge of that has decided it was too much work. Cancelled. The 2,000+ surveys I did? Wasted. But at least I don't have to do the follow up surveys.

Also, I've long wanted to bring my landlord's daughter -- who has done a lot to help me out these past two years -- to girls camp this year. It's a nationwide camp, and she's an ideal candidate. I went to propose it to her dad, thinking it would be a slam dunk. Free! She gets fed a bunch! His neighbors will envy him!

But no. He says, "She pisses! She pisses too much!" Meaning that she wets the bed. He screams this at me in front of her and everybody else in our neighborhood. People laugh. I could have pulled his fucking balls off. This girl is a sweetheart who has helped me find food, water, and medical help for nearly 24 months. That's on top of working like a slave for her parents AND doing well in school.

He said he would think about it, which in Benin is a hard "No." I'm trying to bring outside pressure to bear, but it isn't looking good.

Basically, I am almost out of give-a-shit about village.

6/6/2014 6:18:13 PM

how did the surveys get messed up? that seems like a lot of work down the drain... sucks.

You should kidnap the girl and blame it on that nigerian group.

6/6/2014 6:20:08 PM

The surveys existed SOLELY to decide which families got mosquito nets (and how many). since we are no longer distributing nets...yeah.

Brother, believe me, Boko Haram is not a joke around here, and neither is kidnapping.

The other day, Nigerian police crossed the border to grab a guy who supposedly "bought a stolen cell phone." The economy around here is built on cell phones of varying degrees of stolen-ness, so this is hard for me to believe, but to hear people around here talk, dude is still in custody and there are pictures of him being beat.

I'll remind you that crossing borders to grab a guy is kind of a big deal. Israel got in trouble for it when they went to grab Eichmann, and the guy they were grabbing was FUCKING EICHMANN. As in, the guy who authored the final solution. Meanwhile, some dude in Benin buys a cellphone and gets kidnapped over it, nobody is shouting about international law. It may as well not exist here.

6/6/2014 6:34:48 PM

^^ Wouldn't work. They'd follow the trail of piss back to wherever Grumpy is. Then he'd get droned. :-(

6/6/2014 6:36:02 PM

Sucks that the kid can't go to camp.

Have you been back to the prison at all?

6/6/2014 6:50:09 PM

Been a couple of months, but there will be some quick back-to-back visits here soon before my translator goes back to the US.

6/6/2014 6:57:38 PM

One thing I've been noticing more lately is the weird African racism. It's not always negative but it is oddly intense and completely incomprehensible to a yovo like me who can't tell the athnicities apart. It does a lot to determine your work, for example. If you are Fulani, you are going to work with cows -- herding them, milking them, making cheese. But you will not sell the meat. Hausa people are responsible for all meat sales and no other groups are allowed into the market. Ibos have a total monopoly on selling shitty electronics.

The Fulani are much maligned, probably because they're a nomadic herding culture. These never get along with sedentary farming cultures. They are considered shiftless, rude, prone to theft and violence. For some reason, people in Benin think that Gabon is like the West Virginia of Africa. I have no idea how that came about. Gabon isn't particularly close by. There aren't a lot of Gabonese people here. But somehow they have gotten the reputation as being dumb and backwards.

When asked about white people, particularly Americans, a Beninese person with any education at all will chuckle and say, in English, "Time is money." How this became our central feature is anybody's guess. When presented with a white person, they have an infuriating tendency to speak in a high falsetto with rising intonation, like they were asking a question. This is, apparently, how we are perceived to talk.

It is the only thing I still get angry at people for doing. Calling me yovo all the time I can live with, but high-voicing...a teenage boy high-voiced me the other day. His friends laughed. I said, "Why do you talk like you don't have testicles? Are you a girl? Did something happen to your balls?" Then they laughed much harder, at him. It was satisfying.

6/10/2014 5:02:54 AM

Hey, I have been wanting to ask you some questions!

First, I was wondering if you could elaborate on the status of women there. You have hinted that it is not very good, but just curious how women are treated and what is their place in society. And have some PCV women had trouble with people not listening to them or not respecting them?

Second, I want to hear more about these Beninese temper tantrums! You said people tend to smile even when they are upset or uncomfortable. Sounds like the angry outburst is more for theatrics or to get your point across. And you said you did it yourself too! Did it feel good??

6/10/2014 5:38:51 AM

Quote :

"just curious how women are treated and what is their place in society"

A lot of people view women as less intelligent. Female students past the age of 14 or 15 are assumed to be too "boy crazy" to focus on studies, and it is VERY common for male teachers to sleep with them. Boys tend to be spoiled and girls are made to do the bulk of the housework whether they are students or not, which has a more real impact on their schoolwork. It's also why many families don't send their girls to school even though it is free (whereas there is a fee for boys).

Women are expected to get married quickly and stay that way, no matter how shitty their husbands turn out to be. I haven't witnessed much physical abuse, but it happens. Men run shit and when they are home they will bawl out orders to their wives without a second thought. Guys who are normally sweet and nice sound real mean when they feel like their wife hasn't shown up with water for guests fast enough, as I've seen many times.

A woman is probably the first person in the house to wake up, followed by her female children, to start work for the day. Sweeping, laundry, and food preparation take up a lot of their time. Once that's done, they will usually do one of the following:

1) Work in the fields, if the families are farmers. Usually women tend to "condiment" plants like tomatoes and peppers, men handle the big starches like yams or sweet potatoes, but that's not a hard and fast rule.
2) Work in a store as either a dressmaker or hairstylist.
3) Buying and selling at the market

The market is dominated by women. They're the ones sent to do the purchases, and they're the ones that do most of the selling. Men only run the stalls selling hardware, electronics, and gris gris, the animal parts used to make magic charms. Everything else -- food, housewares, liquor, cigarettes, clothes, jewelry, posters -- is women. It's only about 30% an economic activity. Mostly the market is social.

And there are exceptions to the bleak picture I've painted for women's lives. In the vodun religion hierarchy, women actually have an edge. There's another cult here that's prominent in the region north of me, that worships a woman who says she is the second coming of Christ. And the Muslims here are laid-back. No burqas or anything required. So in the religion department, women get a reprieve.

And occasionally there are women who by sheer force of will just manage to run shit. The most common type is the "marche mama," a woman whose business acumen (and most likely a dead, absent, or progressive husband) has allowed her to build up some serious wealth and respect. You can usually recognize this woman by her girth. Marche mamas are BIG. I'm glad they exist, but I hate it when they're trying to get into my taxi.

There's decent (for Africa) representation of women in government positions. It's probably tokenism to look good to Western aid donors, but it's a start. I get the impression that most women do not vote, leaving that task to their husbands.

Quote :

"And have some PCV women had trouble with people not listening to them or not respecting them?"

I think they all have, at some time or another. And the sexual harassment is just unrelenting. It's bad enough when it stays harassment, but we've had guys break into women's houses, stalk them, rape them, all of that. It doesn't help that culturally, Benin doesn't really provide a way to say "no." It is taken as a given that all women will say "no" for a while, then eventually relent. The local women also believe this, and saying "no" for a while is typically just part of the dance for them. So what is a PCV to do? Yes means yes and no means yes.

I get that gender relations are a big topic back home after that guy went nuts with the gun, and in a lot of ways I sympathize a lot more now with American women. In other ways, though, it's hard for me not to think, "Ladies, you have no idea how good you have it."

Quote :

"You said people tend to smile even when they are upset or uncomfortable. Sounds like the angry outburst is more for theatrics or to get your point across."

This is why parts of Benin are inscrutable to me, even after two years. The default response to everything is to smile and laugh. I can sort of tell the difference between "sincerely amused" and "masking discomfort" laughter now, most of the time...but one exception is when somebody actually does have an outburst.

Say there's some argument over payment at the market. The principals may eventually start hollering at each other, making a lot of gesticulations. A crowd will quickly form. Many of them will participate, because price negotiations are a group sport here. The others will all smile and laugh. I've never been able to tell if that's because the argument is ridiculous or because everyone feels awkward about the whole thing.

I'm also pretty sure that the original point of the outburst is to get bystanders involved in the hope that they will take your side. So yeah, definitely theatrics. I've never seen a Beninese adult actually hit another one in an argument

6/10/2014 9:26:32 AM

I really can't overstate how interesting I find this thread. You've gotten an RSS subscribe to your blog out of me as a result.

6/11/2014 12:11:25 PM