Only Happy When It Rains

As fair warning, this is a long one. And, I was going to go back and look for spelling errors or semantical errors, but, quite frankly, I'm just too lazy. So enjoy as is.

Another milestone has been reached. This coming Sunday marks six months of being at post; half a year of living in Manigri. Crazy. Sometimes the days here feel like they just crawl by, but when you take a step back and realize that half a year has gone by, well, I guess things just don’t seem so slow then. As a consequence of time moving at light speed, the second and third devoirs have come and gone, officially making me ¾ of the way done with the school year. Crazy encore. And in the realm of crazy, on the way down to Cotonou this past weekend, I saw rain. While this is seemingly unimportant, this wonderful sight marked my first time seeing rain since October. Crazy Crazy.

Among these celebratory milestones, I wanted to write about one of the better days that I have had in country, which just so happened to be Valentine’s Day. I have to preface this day by saying that the weeks leading up to Valentine’s Day had been rather “painful” and highly unsuccessful in the teaching sense as all the other professors where on strike forcing me into “hop-along” teaching mode where I would have about 8-15 students for each class and thus forced to review or teach mini lessons in hopes that the other students would get the message that I wasn’t striking and start coming to school like their peers. Anyway, on this particular day, the number of the students was not any different, but the result of the lesson was fantastically different.

So. It was Valentine’s Day. A Thursday. The Thursday before a one week vacation, the Thursday I was traveling to see a friend living a good 8 hour trip away, the Thursday that I just wanted to get over and done with so I could get away for a bit--with this mindset, I went to school thinking, “Just do what you have to do, get it over with and get out of there.” Always a good way to approach volunteer work I find. Anyway, n with the story…skipping ahead a bit. In the middle of my first class (my 5eme) I was stuck on a teaching point; I couldn’t get the kids to understand “the best.” I didn’t want to use French so I was frantically searching my brain for a good example or a good way to explain it. Finally, I thought, “ah! I’ve got it.” I asked them if they knew Angelique Kidjo (a famous singer from Benin). A couple kids did and I went with it. I said, “Do you sing? Are you good at singing? Does Angelique Kidjo sing? Is she good? Okay! She is the best singer!” Nothing but blank stares right back at me…hmmm. Try again. So I started thinking, what is the one thing that every person in Benin knows, that every person in Benin likes and understands…football. Who is the best footballer? Ronaldino. Bingo. So again I went on my question extravaganza. “Do you play football? Are you good at football? Do you know Ronaldino? Is he good at football? That’s right! He is the best footballer!” A pause and then in unison the students nodded their heads and said, “Ohhh. I understand!” Though a small success to say the least it was a nice moment to know that I had thought on my feet and in doing so was able to get through to this group of students. Continuing on, after about an hour of that lesson, I decided to do a cultural exchange activity and have the students create Valentine’s Day cards with me. Step by step I led them through it, they loved it and I even got some Valentine’s Day cards addressed to me. It was such a good success with my students that decided to repeat the activity with my younger kids the next hour especially since I ended up only having nine of them show. So yada, yada, yada, I finish the Valentines with my 6eme kids. They also loved it and even got into the spirit of things by adding “baby” to the end of all their phrases: “I love you, baby” “Kiss me, baby” “You’re pretty, baby.” Naturally, this just made me laugh; I mean you can‘t get mad at a little kid when he says “Kiss me, baby“ even if it is inappropriate. Anyway, we finished in about 45 minutes, I had no students and thus didn’t want to teach, there was no one really at the school, and I wanted to get going on my voyage so I told the kids that they could go. However, as we were all walking off the school grounds, my director comes running up to me. He proceeds to tell me that there are some young, German filmmakers here (this is a whole other story) and they would like to film my classroom just for 5 minutes or so. I say that that’s fine and have them film me while I go over the date with my class. With the Germans speaking German and English with a little French and my students speaking French and Nagot with very very little English, their interaction was brief and simple. They filmed, they left. However, as they were walking out, three of my students ran up to me and asked me if they could give their Valentine’s Day cards to the Germans. I told them that they could of course do that and out they ran like bullets. Without so much as a word, my students handed over their homemade Valentine’s reading “I love you, baby” to these young Germans. It was such an unbelievable great moment for me. The Germans were so happy and my students were just beaming with delight. The Germans turned to me and said, “I didn’t think that anyone knew about this Holiday here; we thought that we would miss Valentine’s Day. Thank you so much. ” So, although it wasn’t an important grammar point or so new and exciting vocabulary lesson, I felt as though I had really accomplished one of the more important goals of Peace Corps which is to be an ambassador of good will and to facilitate various cultural exchanges. It was a good moment. Not to mention that after that I was able to smile knowing that I was off of teaching for a whole week! Yahtzee.

Story Time!

Lately there have been these trees that grow some strange fruit that can kill you if eaten with milk but with that not being of any real importance to me, the truly great thing is that they have, in my opinion, the distinct smell of strawberries. So, every time I come home from school a get to ride for about through a giant strawberry cloud. The only bad consequence of this is that while the smell is there, there are no actual strawberries to be eaten.

This story is entitled “when bad French makes things funny.” So at one of the end of semester meetings for all the professors, we have to get together and discuss conduct grades for all the students. Essentially we all get together and on a scale of 1-20 (20 being the best) we go around and state what we think the ceiling grade should be for the entire grade level. Because I only have 6eme and 5eme classes I zone out after we finish deciding the grades for these two levels; every now and then I pop my brain back into the conversation only long enough to realize that I don’t care what’s going on or I just don’t know what’s going on. Anyway, after about 4 hours, I can tell that the meeting is winding until someone brings up this story about a 3eme kid who was caught twice saying that he was going to hit the director (like the school principal--he’s sorta a big deal) for taking away his cell phone during class; obviously this is a big no-no but also kind of funny if you step back and think about it--at least to me it’s funny. Anyway, I hear them launch into this story and before you know it, I’ve zoned out again. Tuning back into the conversation a good half hour later, I hear them start shouting out numbers again. At this point I am genuinely confused because they have already gone through and discussed and voted on all of the conduct grades for all the grade levels. This is clearly for something else but I can’t figure out what, and the numbers are all over the place: 25, 10, 15, etc. Almost every professor votes and then they turn to me and ask me what I think. I tell them I honestly have no idea what’s happening, they all laugh, and we continue on with the meeting. In my head I was thinking that I should have just said 25 to bring up the average of what every they are voting on; I should have tried to help the students by giving a little cushion. So with all the teachers numbers they add together and find the average: 17.8; they decide to round up to 20. “Well that was nice, I think.” Meeting ends and I go on my merry way. Later that night, however, I was hanging out with another professor and I decide to ask him out of curiosity what everyone was voting on there at the end of the meeting. I told them that I understood what the kid at said and that there was some school ceremony starting tomorrow morning at 8 o’clock but that I didn’t understand what all the numbers were for. Turns out, as he explains to me, the numbers were to vote on how many “beatings” or wooden paddle smacks on the ass we were going to give this kid as punishment in front of the entire school tomorrow at 8 o’clock. I immediately flashback and think how grateful I am that I didn’t shout out 25 and how crazy it is (to me) that they rounded the number of beating up. Anyway, so the public beating did take place the next morning taking a whole hour to finish up properly. It was such a fiasco and so dramatized that I ended up thinking it was all quite amusing. They started off by telling all the classes their ceiling grade for discipline and then they said, “But there were two students in particular who got our eye during the meeting.” Then they had the two guilty students come out and kneel with their arms extended and then essentially plead their case to the faculty as to why they were innocent and didn’t deserve what they very well knew was coming to them. They, of course, didn’t when their case and were forced to lie down on their stomachs on top of a desk while one of the professors gave them 20 paddle smacks each. It was very fraternity-esqe. I guess because I felt so powerless to change what was happening or do anything at all that my body reacted in the only way I felt “safe” to express emotion and that was by laughing at it. Even now when I re-tell the story I can see how awful it must seem and how awful it really is, but without laughter, well, I don’t know what I would do. There’s some really good Kurt Vonnegut quote about laughter and tears and how both are a result of pain and frustration but that he prefers to laugh because there is less cleaning up to do afterwards. I don’t know exactly…someone look it up.

I got new cushions finally for my couch. I asked for two colors only black and green. I said that I wanted more of a solid print. What he brought can best be described as “Americans perception of what African tissue is like.” It does have green and black in there, but it also have white and orange and red and blue and it’s all really well mixed in a nice checker like plaid pattern. They are truly unique and I have lovely welcomed them into my oh-so-eclectic home.

The other week at marche I was wondering through seeing all the same old things that I didn’t want to buy when something very cute caught my eye. There scurrying along was the cutest little kitten. I immediately snatched him up and starting doing the whole “American” baby-talk thing. Some woman close to me said, “Oh. Did you want to buy him?” Without really a pause I responded with a yes. You see, this moment had just come on the heals of me “losing” my cell phone and thus not being able to communicate with people for a week and a half now and therefore leaving me feeling a little lonely and needy AND the other night I had just gone to battle with the most giant and ugly looking spider I have seen since being in county. To give you some idea of the size, when I first saw this thing run across the floor out of the good ol’ peripheral vision, I thought that it was either a lizard or a mouse…not a freaking mammoth spider. Anyway, the idea of a cuddly, mouse/lizard/spider attacking kitten didn’t seem like such a bad idea. So I said yes. She tells me that she isn’t the owner of the kitten but that we can take a short walk to where the owner lives. Sure I say and on we go. Meanwhile this once cute kitten as gotten all squirmy-wormy on me, but he still so cute, so I continue. When we arrive at the place the woman introduces me and then tells me that the kitten I’m holding is not for sale, that it belongs to the old woman, but that there are more kittens inside. As I walk into the house there are three little kittens all of whom are running around crazy and jumping around, I’m starting to rethink the whole “a kitten would be a great idea” thing when the mama cat gets up and there I see a cute little all-black kitten just sleeping there next to his mama. I scoop him up and hold him to my face. He’s purring and I’m falling in love, but I tell him “I don’t know if I want to buy you.” And that’s when it happens, the little guy winks at me. And for those of you who know me and know my thing with winking, this is a clear sign that I need to take this little bugger home with me. Thus, while skipping many of the unimportant details, I now have a permanent house guest living with me. He’s still quite tiny and I’m hoping he can hang in there with my through the kitten years as it is sad but true that a lot of cats die here, but if he can grow up to be my little protector, I will be quite pleased.

Thanks to mom I was able to have a cultural exchange bonfire night where my postmate and I made s’mores for all my neighbors. We had to have the mallows shipped in (that’s where mom came into play) and then we had to be creative with the chocolate and the graham crackers, but it was all good and the kids really liked them. One adult said that we should start selling them on the side of the street. I feel that would be a valid secondary project. Anyway, it was fun and made me miss all the bonfires back home. All in due time though.

All tired from typing. Sure you’re tired from reading. Happy trails to you, until we meet again.