Cross My Heart

It appears that as with any journal that I keep, I tend to start off writing like a storm; writing everyday to capture my thoughts and capture my exact emotions of every moment and then, for no apparent reason, my writing stops; it tapers off, gradually but steadily. Thus, after nearly a month and a half of not writing anything, it appears that I am now significantly behind in my obligations of maintaining this blog so that you, the people, might have some idea of what I am (or perhaps your family members) are up to over here on this side of the pond. Regardless, here I go again, ready to type and retell some of my more memorable moments of these wintery months.

First, for us teachers, the big first devoir as come and gone. For us newbies, it was our first real chance to judge whether or not we are making a difference or doing a good job. Though, I found that when my students do well, I am the first to congratulate myself and pat myself on the back and when my students do poorly I just shake my head and say that it must be the educational system--couldn’t possibly be my teaching! Haha. I found that the hardest part of grading the exams was keeping myself from not giving out points for funny answers. More specifically, not giving out points to students who wrote sentences sounding like the great and wise Yoda. “Go to Paris Rachidath did” or “Eighteen desks there are” and so on and so forth. Very tempting to not only give full credit but to give extra points for being so clever. Sadly, I refrained. Now, just on the heals of “Winter break” it seems that schools around Benin are prepping to hold the second devoir. Ironic simply because most of the schools around Benin have also not held class since “Winter break” due to an ongoing strike and a teaching formation. Whether I be grateful or frustrated, I’m not sure, but my school has not mentioned anything about the second devoirs yet. It is the censeur’s job to prepare the testing schedule and I’m not exactly sure what my censeur does except for sit around and make me laugh with his ridiculous rants. Anyway, I will be ready for the next devoirs whenever they do happen to roll around, and maybe this time I will give points to humorous or ironic answers.

Second, the LEGEND is back! Haha. Not really. The truth of it is that I finally got myself back out on the basketball court, not to play a game or anything, but just to shoot around a little bit. There is a dirt court in Manigri, that is way on the other side of town, but the hoops are that bad, and it’s a fairly easy bike ride. Anyway, I’ve gone twice now and think that I’m going to continue to try to go shoot every Wednesday night. The first time that I went was the best. I rode up on my bike wearing a dress and pull out my basketball and pump. First thing that goes wrong is that my pump is broken, so I have to hold the pump to block up the hole while another guy does the work and twenty children are staring at the white girl who wants to play basketball alone (people think it‘s strange to just “shoot around”). The basketball finally gets inflated and I step out onto the court I start shooting. About thirty seconds in, the children’s giggles about a white girl in a dress playing basketball alone turn to silence as I started making basket after basket. It was pretty funny. Then there was some older guy who decided that he wanted to shoot around with me, so he goes and gets a basketball. He gets onto the court and launches up some two-handed rocket that bricks off the backboard, and now the children are laughing at him, but he continues to fire off one shot after another--being an African male it appeared that he had no sense of embarrassment or shame. Anyway, one of the kids get the idea in his head that he is going to count off our made baskets. Shortly, all the other kids have joined in “5-0, 6-0, 7-0.” Every time the guy misses one they giggle and say, “ohh.” Finally he makes one and all the kids cheer, “10-1.” We continue. “16-1, 17-1.” He makes another basket and the kids cheer again, “22-2.” When it got to be “28-2” the kids stopped counting, but it was definitely pretty humorous. He just kept shooting the whole time, too. Not a care in the world, and I guess that’s what basketball should be, a simple distraction from any other real world problems. The first time I was there I actually had to stop shooting after the kids who were rebounding for me started beating each other up (knees to the goods down below, slapping each other, tripping) to get the ball to me. All in the spirit of competition though I suppose. Pretty fun though, and I good way to get my face out into the community a little more often and in a way that I am comfortable with. I might even try to get the director of my school to come and shoot with as he has told me that he would like to learn how to play.

Not too much more big and exciting stuff has been happening. I’m afraid that these wintery months have slowed down the adventures for me. On the little news bulletin, I got the walls in my house painted. They were once a dismal and depressing gray cement and now the are a bright and brilliant white. I also got the tapestries in and the map of Benin in my house framed and hung so that my living room looks like a proper place and not some college dorm room that I lived in before. Makes it seems more homey (and the white walls will inspire me to keep things clean. Also, had another VAC (Volunteer Action Committee) meeting up in Natitingou for all the volunteers in the Attacora-Donga region. This gathering also happened to overlap with the six month anniversary of us newbies being in country. Pretty crazy. Pretty cool. I think that the six month anniversary of being at post will be equally if not more exciting. Six months though. That’s half a year! Crazy. Anyway, at the VAC meeting all of us volunteers went out together for a nice dinner, and we decided to go to an old friend’s restaurant (an old friend who always gives us free liquor ever if we refuse--even though we can’t really refuse anyway as it is very rude to do so). It was a good night. A late night, but a good night. Between being out late and then not being comfortable while sleeping and then having to get up at 6:00 to catch the bus down to Bassila, I think I got in a good hour of sleep or so. Needless to say that after the night of partying and not sleeping at all, and then traveling to Bassila in the early morning to work on my secondary project I was relieved and very happy to finally be back in my house relaxing and listening to music. I was actually dozing off when I heard a knock at my door. “Surely just someone coming to saluer me,” I thought, “I’ll make this quick.” Turns out that it was the friend of one of my teacher friends who was coming to get me to inform me that there was a traditional fete (voodoo fete) going on in front of the mayor’s office and he was coming to get me so that I could go and take photos (in addition to just watching the celebration). So after scrambling around the house, I grab my things and head out the door. I get to the place and all I see are eyes, eyes, eyes, eyes all turning at me. Great. Just great. But I decide to play it cool and act normal and wait until my teacher friend could come and rescue me from my own awkwardness. He comes shortly, and he guides me into a better photo taking position. As we wait there nothing really seems to be happening, until I hear some singing start and I look to see two men on these giant bamboo crutches come slinking out of the trees wearing masks and bobbing to the music. It was quite spectacular looking. Needless to say, I whip out the camera at this point. Snap. One photo. Snap. Two photos. Snap. Three photos. “Oh Cool! He’s really close now!” Click. Nothing. Click. Nothing. “What the?” Click, click, click. Lo and behold, I had run out of batteries. Just as I’m finally getting to see a fete and a pretty cool fete at that, my camera has to run out of batteries. Something. There’s always got to be something. At least I had the experience of watching the dancing go down, and I should really count my blessings that I wasn’t forced to give money and that I wasn’t forced to join into the dancing. Although, at one point, I did take a really cute baby and start doing a little dancing with her. That was fun; dancing with babies is better than dancing alone.

Speaking of dancing with babies. I’ve been going at it solo for the past four weeks as my postmate has been MIA. She was riding her bike on the main road of Bassila and some out-of-control sixteen year old on a moto comes up behind her and rams into the back of her bike (I wasn’t there when it happened, but this is the story that I have pieced together from multiple sources). She, of course, took a tumble and had to be taken down to the Cotonou office to be taken care of--sprained ankle, stitches on the other foot, and multiple road rashes. She will be back in a couple days, and I am excited for her return if not for the soul purpose of speaking English to someone once a week. When I went up to VAC, one of the quotes was, “You haven’t been around other Americans in awhile, have you?” Haha. Nope. No I haven’t.

Anyway, that might bring us to the end of my tales for the moment. Cross my heart I’ll do better next time.