Harmattan and Friends

Surely, you have already noticed the sight of your breath on your way out the door in the morning. You have pulled out that old comforter to cover the thin August sheets. Reports of snow in far north foretell of the coming season. I am happy to report from Dassari that a fine season has descended upon us as well. The closest thing to winter in Africa, around the months of November, December, and a little of January is the climatilogical blessing known as the Harmattan. It is contained in the larger dry season spanning from October to April. I am unsure of the precise cause of the phenomenon—some people in town have mentioned something to do with wind from the north from the Sahara—but I do not need to know why  to enjoy its offerings. The days are still the same, dry, cloudless, climbing up to 90 in the sunlight, but slowly as the horizon swallows the sun, and the sweet, sweet night covers the Atacora, the air turns brisk, plummeting to the 70s—if the gods are pleased, maybe the 60s. This is more or less a state of emergency for the Beninese. If one is unfortunately obliged to drive a motorcycle after dark, the parka, gloves, scarf, woolen hat are all assembled. Moi-même, I lay in the cool dark of my room at ease. Though, last night, I was compelled to put on a t-shirt. (Not only is it cold, but a fine dust rests in the air, like a dense fog. Reports claim this micro-dust fog can be thick enough to actually block out the sun. For me, it gives me a runny nose and coats me in a thin layer of dirt. One gets dirty just by sitting outside.)

Is that all he has to talk about? The weather? Gentle reader, please forgive me, amongst the proper foreign correspondence, it is necessary to make at least passing reference to the mundane. (Although I find it rather comforting, when talking to a neighbor, to hear just how awful the chaleur is today. Human beings may be one of the more adaptable creatures living on this rock. Though, whether calling the frigid Siberia home or laying a mat down in Equatorial Guinea, man will complain about the weather. “Can you believe this heat?”)

So, let’s catch up. For TEFL, part of our work is to help improve the competency of our students, but additionally, the competency of the teachers. Things like encouraging new teaching methods, English immersion, professional practices, etc. In order to achieve this, we are required to have counter-parts at our schools. Our counterparts are allies in community and in the profession. Let me tell you about my buddies.

My first homologue is KOUAGO N’Koulou. I call him Kouago (his last/family name).  He arrived in village about a month after me. His is originally from Djougou, the capital city of the Department of Donga, so naturally, he is city-folk. I can speak more Biali then him to the great amusement of Dassari. The fella has been teaching English for 8 years all over Benin. He told me he chose to study and teach English because of Michael Jackson. When he was a kid, he heard some music from Thriller and was really confused. He did not know at the time that there were languages outside of Bariba and French. So naturally, he wanted to become a professional singer. Life continued, and teaching became a more viable choice. The way the Beninese school system is set up, if you are a full-time teacher, or permenant, the Ministry of Education sends you where they are inclined. Virtually all schools in the north are in need of teachers, so where you end up is due to the secrets of the bureaucracy. Thus, my colleague life has been transplanted into the middle of the bush. He doesn’t speak the language, the village doesn’t live up to his standard of living, and he doesn’t have any friends there. It is wonderful to go to lunch with him and here in complain about the awkward position of a bench or the cher prix of some chicken. My instincts at this point are to accept these small matters of life as usual. But Kouago indulges this unspoken part of my mind, that bitches and moans about the villageois choses.

My second homologue, GNAMMI Laurent is a first year teacher, fresh from 3 years at a Porto-Novo teacher’s college. He was raised in Porga, right on the border with Burkina Faso. After studying in the south, he came back to teach. It is nice to work with someone just as young and inexperienced. We can shake our heads after class and share the thought, “This can be so frustrating.” He has moved so quickly through school that is older brother is a student at our school.

Other notes:

•       Plenty of time to read. This season it has been: Mating by Norman Rush, Malaria Dreams by Stuart Stevens, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families by Philip Gourevitch, Moby-Dick, History in Africa in History by Basil Davidson and Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino (I read these last two at the same time. The two complemented each other wonderfully. Reading about these majestic ancient African cities that have disappeared over time and with a mystical recreation of those same cities by Calvino.) Raise High the Roofbeam Carpenter, Love in the Time of Cholera (while I felt like I had something close to cholera), Forest of a Thousand Daemons, to name a few
•         Check out http://www.awesometapes.com/ for excellent African music
•         Food, I have been making a rosemary potato lentil stew every week or so when potatoes pass through town, ginger sardine pasta, bean flour beignets, I made tuna casserole last night.
• NEW ADDRESS:
• Chazaq Llinas
  Corps de la Paix
  BP 168
  Natitingou, Benin
  Afrique L'ouest
  To prevent theft, write some bible verses on the letter/package to remind the world there are being watched by the Lord.

Happy Thanksgiving (by the way)!

The School Yard

Simple Past Tense

At the end of my cinqiéme class yesterday, I asked the students to pose questions. We had reviewed the simple past that class: "I played football yesterday", "Last night, we ate rice." Now it was their turn to ask questions about the past. The first few were either simple repetitions of question I had asked earlier or rephrasing of questions on the board. But then a girl in the front row caught me off guard, "Did you eat pastèque this morning?"

"Class, is this English? No! What is pastèque?" The children looked frustrated and repeated pastèque. "C'est un fruit." Were they talking about the watermelon I ate earlier today? It was the first time I had seen watermelon in the market. A rural Beninese village tends to have, to say the least, poor access to fresh fruits. In general, with certain produce, there is no assurance as whether it will return. So, excited, I ate my watermelon in the market. And my students knew. I replied, "Yes, I ate watermelon today." (Remember, "to eat" is irregular in the simple past.)

"Another question." A boy who sits on the left, with a low brow, thick hair, and wide spread eyes asked, "Did you eat tchouk today?" First, the correction at hand—"Class, do we eat water? Do we eat café? No, we drink water. We drink café. We drink tchouk."(The English language has yet to coin a name for the stuff.)—second, how did you know I drank tchouk this morning?

The girl who sold me the watermelon told me someone was asking for me "la bas". Following the girl, I saw M. Kassa seated under the wooden hangar, around the tchouk Mama (who was revealed to be the sister of my landlord, a wonderful lunch lady Mama Oben, who is a good friend of mine. A pillar of our friendship is that she does the same, noble work as my own mother, filling the bellies of hungry students "One cannot learn on an empty stomach."), with other old men. Sit down, he demanded, "On va boire." We are going to drink. We spoke of Russia, his son is studying medicine there, of Burkina Faso, the men argued about the rank in the military of the former president Blase, of hunting, he had guided many French, Americans, and other white men who came to Africa to shoot something. And now, my student asks, did I eat tchouk today? No, I did not eat tchouk today. Did I drink tchouk today? I replied "No, I did not drink tchouk today." It was more important at the moment to emphasize the negative form of the simple past then provide an accurate grocery survey. (Remember, irregular verbs are not changed in simple past negative.) Other volunteers had warned me of this, and it snuck up on me in, thankfully, a harmless way. These kids are watching me. They know what I ate for breakfast.

In spite of past promises of what these future entries will contain, this subject appears before me and seems worth presenting: the separation of private and public life. And this is not a solely a foreign question. Perhaps you remember, as a child, in the grocery store, passing a teacher in the aisle, and the mortal embarrassment that accompanied the revelation that, can it be, that the teacher has to go shopping? The teacher is relegated to a specific space and time and having that broken is shocking. ("I always thought the teachers sleep at school.") There was a student who asked me in the first week of model school, "Do you eat?" No, I survive on chalk dust and repetition. Maybe this is the question of a minor celebrity. There are headlines (right?) "So and So Buys Cup of Coffee". They are just like us!

But this question of public and private has a bit of a different context here because I am the only American living in town. I was going to say foreigner, but there are handle of Nigerians in town (who are treated with a friendly suspicious distance). To say it simply, I receive a lot of attention. Though, in the south, it has made evident by hordes of children in various levels of dress, screaming and chasing me. Here in Dassari, the surveillance is a little more low-key. My life is a source of constant amusement for my community members, who are delighted by the successes, failures, and simple activities, like eating a piece of watermelon. The children are not screaming, but they are watching.

The point of all this is that over time, I have been trying to adjust to life and let some things become normal. It is impossible to maintain the hyper-awareness of the fragments of day-to-day life. Yes, Maurice, the infant of my favorite breakfast spot, likes to poop out front of the café in the open. And the toddlers like to sit and play next to the basins full of freshly slaughtered goat. And for a while, I forgot how closely I am watched. My whole life has become absorbed by this professional obligation to Dassari. The teacher appears as less of a profession and more as a station. It is not a matter of taking up the hammer and making the work, and when the hammer is dropped, the work is over. I am still the "teacha" when I leave school.

Two Weeks

Bonjour tout le monde,

Where to begin? I write to you from Natitingou. A city built in a
valley between the Atacora Mountain Range. Life is slower in the
north, people speak softer, and there are less mosquitos, drier,
sleepier. This Sunday morning, all of the volunteers posted in the
department (Beninese equivalent of a state) of Atacora and Donga have
voyaged to the north. Our baggage is on its way, and as you can
imagine, it is difficult to move thirteen people across the country.
As I mentioned, I am overdue in communication. Let's go back a month a
half.

Two Weeks in Dassari

On the back of Chabbi's motorcycle, with the morning sun low on the
horizon, the bush speeds by. Farmers tended their plots of cotton,
manioc, maize, gumbo, riz, and igname . Baobabs erupted from the land
and mountains littered the plains, rising like whales emerging for
air. A cool, morning air rushed into my helmet, and it smelled rich
and green. We were headed towards Dassari on the gadron to Burkina
Faso.
Dassari is a small village 30 km from Tangueieta, a small city at the
corner of the Parc Penjari and the Atacora Mountain Range and 30 km
from Porga, the border village between Benin and Burkina Faso. The
population is undefined, as a proper census is difficult to conduct,
but I have heard from 12,000 to 24,000 in the village limits. If those
numbers are accurate, surely, half of the population is under 18. (The
country is full of children. It is normal for a family to have 5, 7,
15 children. This is for a variety of reasons—as a friend's host papa
described it, Africans are very "social".) There is one paved road
connecting Burkina Faso and Benin, the gadron (paved road), and it
splits the village in half.
For my two-week stay, I rested with the brother of Dassibou Kassa, my
official host family, Justin Kassa. Justin is a part-time professeur
de sport, veterinarian, and agricultural educator. When I first met
him, on the morning of August 2nd, he was drinking Sodjebai, palm wine
liquor—Beninese moonshine. By a wonderful coincidence, the same day I
arrived was the Fête de Dassari, held on the Saturday after the Nation
Fête de Independence. I was escorted all over town, meeting a chef or
patron here and a CA there, meeting all of the important men of power,
and it was one big party all over town. People were dancing and
drumming and eating seasoned pork. I met my director of the CEG
(principal of the school) in which I will be working. He is a former
radio broadcaster and has a voice of honey and is a true orator. He
loves formal presentations, so the day was full of "je voudrais
presenter mon cher collegue…" I tried to keep up with my director for
the night, but he more or less drank me under the table, and I fell
asleep not long after sunset.
For the next two weeks, I spent time traveling around the commune
(Beninese equivalent of county) meeting important members of the
community (in a more professional setting), introducing myself,
explaining why I am here, goals of my work in Dassari. I am the first
volunteer at Dassari, so I will spend much time explaining what the
Peace Corps is all about, what is my role for Dassari, etc. Luckily,
the TEFL program has a very clear objective: a volunteer has a primary
job teaching English at the local CEG (college d'enseignment generale,
or, public school). Other than that, a volunteer is expected to both
work improving the quality of pedagogical techniques employed by the
Beninese teachers and improve the academic community en generale, by
working with APE (association des parents et enseigneurs, PTA).
Chabbi is my homologue and we will be team-teaching.
The Peace Corps focuses a lot of training upon what it calls,
cultural integration. This manifests itself in a variety of ways, e.g.
language, dress, habits. PC is interested in seeing volunteers making
efforts of assimilate into the culture, adopt the mode de vivre, and
begin to build relationships. I have never has a job that has so
actively encouraged me to make friends. I may have had this
conversation with you, reader, before I came to Benin about the
"labor" of community building and development work. The cultivation of
relationships, understanding of lives, priorities and needs, appears
to be a necessary foundation for enriching the life of a community. I
find my work here to be so exciting and natural to my general
interaction with people, sometimes it doesn't feel like "work". (That
is a whole other topic of discussion, general cultural understanding
of labor and work.)

Some disorganized notes:
There is an excellent millet beer called Tchouk (pronounced chu-ku-tu
or chuke for short)), sort of like a cider. Everyday at the marche,
you can sit down for a moment and drink a calabash of Tchouk for
50CFA. It taste a little like a rich, acidic, thick cider. It served
as a crucial element of my community integration (i.e. sitting around
with my Byali tutor, drinking Tchouk, and practing Byali).

I am learning Byali, the local language of the Berba people in the
region. It is a really fun language, people are always surprised to
see a white person speak it. (I also have to get a French tutor as I
did not successfully reach the minimum French level for post-training
[though I am suspect as to the accuracy of my final test, it is not a
battle worth fighting])

There are so many children and they are all so funny.

Everyone thinks I am Muslim because: (1) Razak or Razaki is a very
popular Muslim name and (2) my beard is very big.

Used a Lil' Wayne song that one of my students really liked as an
opportunity to practice English. (Mirrors feat. Bruno Mars)

Tchao Tchao

Quickly

I write to you quickly awaiting a ride. Here are a few things I will write in the future, things overdue:

• A 2 week trip to Dassari at the beginning of August
• The past three weeks of Cours de Vacances (Summer School)
• The local language at Dassari, Byali 
• Riding bikes on African roads
• Clothing! Tissue!
• Francais
• Beninese Politics

 For now, my plans for this afternoon are to visit a swimming pool her in Porto-Novo. Yesterday was the last day of school, and both the teachers and the students felt the restlessness and excitement. We recognized that with the students current attention span, the possibility of a three hour english class was thrown out, so for the last hour we sang English songs. I brought my guitar (by the way, I bought a guitar from a leaving volunteer--I am the third volunteer to have it. It was originally bought in Cape Verde, so it is much better quality than the regular Beninese guitars. It is a spanish guitar with a beautiful sound!) and we all learned "I've Been Working on the Railroad". 

Bye bye!

Food

Food Last Thursday, at the dinner table, my host Mama was in a playful mood and told me that I was a Beninois. I asked her why and she said it was because I always finished my food, with frenzy. Food is a important aspect of my integration in Benin at this moment in particular because it is nonverbal. In a visceral way, it is my most direct engagement with the way of life. But Dinner is also an opportunity to engage with the verbal world. The table is a good place for conversation. I want to take some space and describe some of the food here in Benin.
 Breakfast At 4hrs, the venduse begin selling their bread, door to door. The Beninese like their bread fresh. Colonization has left its mark in the taste of the Beninese. The bread of choice is the baguette. And because there is limited resources for food preservation and subsequently transportation every neighborhood has their own bakery. And all the bread is still warm and soft when the venduse walks into your concession for your breakfast. Breakfast is much the same. I eat bread with eggs and coffee. Sometimes the eggs have vegetables, pimentos and tomatoes and onions. Sometimes the eggs are scrambled and others boiled. The coffee is instant but good. A small cultural difference: in our house we drink coffee and tea out of bowls, wine out of glasses Last week, I had to go to my language class early. My host mama had not yet got up because she was sick.( another cultural note: in Benin it is okay to wake someone up whenever. There is some deep cultural programing within me that has yet allowed me to do this.) Instead, on my way to class, I bought six baignets from a bonne mama. Mamas are informal entrepreneurs who sell goods on the side of the road and corners. Mama Baignet fries small balls of sweet dough in a giant iron skillet full of oil over fire. They are delightful.
 Lunch If I am at Songhai, I go to the same bonne mama every time. I like to get beans and rice or attasi with a hard boiled egg or a piece of fish. She also has the classic Beninese sauce rouge which is made with tomatoes, piments, garlic, onions, palm oil and fish. My plate is always sprinkled with gari. Gari is made from the akasa root. It is a savory, crunchy, versatile flour. Imagine parmesan cheese except made from potato chips. I go there every time for a couple reasons. I know what I am getting, and a little bit of predictability is nice. Also, the mama smiles and knows what I like. I want to support her and it is an opportunity to build a relationship. Commerce in Benin is still a mixture of different modes of life. Benin has not divided the day into "work first, socialization later''. Unlike the west, the agora has not been reduced to mere consumption. But rather there is a robust social exchange. I have learned a lot of French and met a lot of my neighbours just by buying a pineapple and chatting with mama florent.
 Dinner My first dinner with my host family was with my brother. We had fried chicken in plain pasta with soda. This is the same thing any 20 something would make. I was worried at first that this would be the standard fare. Thankfully, I have had many more meals. The most distinctly Beninese meal that comes to mind is pâte with sauce rouge and fish. Pâte is a congealed starch made with various flours, mill, maize, riz, soja. It is boiled and then whipped vigorously with a wooden spatula. The sauce rouge is the same as the mama. One eats with their hands. My host mama told me that it is the only way to ingest the essence of the food, by bringing your fingers to your lips. One grabs a little piece of pate, dip it in the sauce, and enjoy. Other meals of note: beans with fried plantains, fried fish + pineapples and red wine for dessert ,A lot of rice ,Pasta with tomatoes and hardboiled egg, goat stew with potatoes and carrots, Boiled yams with bean sauce
 Bonne cuisine from Benin!

Animals

This morning, a rooster was in our concession. While I drank my coffee, he crowed from beneath an old car. The roosters begin crowing at 5, an hour after the first call to prayer. From my other window, I like to watch the goats in the smaller courtyard. The kids move so abruptly, the way they hop into the air barely moving their legs. The cock of the head gestures towards a day when he will have horns. From my bedroom door, one can see a small herd of goat on a neighboring roof. Goats like to eat the table scraps which we leave in the front. On a small walk, a small cow and I noticed each other before the rain. Her skin was taunt around her ribs. On the same walk, a pig rooted through the neighbourhood dump. Madam Rose, my neighbour, has a small white and brown cat. The cat has a sharp triangle head and may weigh one kilogram. Animals wander all through the streets. Sometimes they are privileged enough for a ride on the back of a zem. They all share they same ambivalent, otherworldly stare. Someone has a claim to this rooster, but its movement speaks otherwise. Possession is not the right word.

One does not touch the animals in the street because they roll in filth. The Beninese care deeply about cleanliness and animals are not for touching. But once they are cooked, we use our hands. Animals are also used for the voodoo fetishes. The Voodoo faith recognizes the elusive power of these cohabitants.

Some mornings, a tourterelle sits on my window sill. The tourterelle sings for a moment and leaves. One lives closer to animals here in Benin.

Training

Bonsoir,

             Happy 4th of July! I write to you from an overcast Porto Novo. Class was let out early today, so I now have a chance to check in.

             I am living in Porto Novo, the capital of Benin. I live in the Tchanvie district, near the Church of St. Paul and Peter. We are in the deuxieme d’arrondissment (second district). My host mama is actually the chef (mayor) of the second district. I live in with the Houenou family. There is Mama Gisele, Papa Mike, Aunt Victoire, and my brother Romeo. Mama Gisele is the chief; Papa is a civil engineer; Aunt a retired French teacher, and Romeo is studying to become a certified electrician. (If my English sounds a bit primitive, it is because I have been working mainly in beginners’ French.)
            My house is about 3 km away from Songhai, where myself and the other Peace Corps Trainees are studying French, Beninese culture, and English education. (Side note: Songhaï is a really interesting structured community. It is founded on a integrative model of an urban village, incorporating renewable energy, raising animals and agriculture, communication, education, and entrepreneurship. Us at Peace Corps are simply visitors, utilizing the space. I will devote a later post to talking more about Songhaï.

            I will try to sketch out one of my baseline days to give you a sense of the kind of life I live during training. At a later date, I will describe the certain cultural events, objects, and customs that may appear in this introduction. I am in many ways overwhelmed by the Beninese life and need some time to observe it if I want to describe it to you with any verity.

            I wake up at about 600 hrs. (Actually, I wake up at about 400 because of the call to prayer during Ramadan.) I meditate for about 15 minutes. I take my bucket shower and brush my teeth. I like to use the brossé-vegetable in the mornings (made from quinine wood) and American style in the evening. My house does not have running water (even a district mayor needs a well in this town!) so I carry all of the water I use up to my room on the second floor. The bucket bath is what you expect if I gave you a barrel of water, a bowl, and a bar of soap. I gasp every time I pour the first bucket over my head. I dress and gather my things for the day. My mama normally prepares some scrambled eggs with tomatoes, onions, and pimentos with a baguette.

            For the first week, I took a zemidjan (or kekemoto) to Songhaï. Motorcycles are the transportation of choice of the Beninoise, roughly outnumbering cars 50 to 1. A regular ride costs 200 cfa.  (Under 50 cents) (Though, one of the interesting things about Benin is one has to barter often. The zem will usually introduce a the price at 350-400 because I am a Yovo (white person), and I will respond that is to high and suggest 150 or 200. We meet in the middle. Never more that 300.)

            At Songhai, we have 8 hours of class throughout the week. Most of the 2 hour blocks are French. But often it is mixed with cultural work, safety, and TEFL. (Why are you speaking French in an African country? Good question. Quick history: the French colonized West Africa in the 1800’s {correct me if I am wrong}. The French took control of the government. Now, after decolonization, it is still the official language of Benin and others West African nations.

            For lunch, I like to go to a bonne mama. They are women who sell prepared food on the side of the road. I like to get beans and rice with red sauce and a piece of fish or a hardboiled egg, 300-400 cfa. On my way back, I can get a whole pineapple for 100 cfa, sliced and ready to eat in a moment. The pineapples here are incredible.

            After another 4 hours of class, I head home. We received bikes on Monday, and that has been my transportation of choice. I arrive home around 1800 heurs (Benin likes the 24-hr clock) and I have a couple hours before dinner at my disposable. I draw water from the well, I boil water to drink, write, talk with the children in the street, watch mama make dinner (I am not allowed to help quite yet). Diner is usually a meat with a starch and a vegetable sauce: akasa with fish, pâte with chicken, beans and rice topped with gari, fried bananas.

            I tell my family goodnight and head to my room to bathe again, meditate, finish any homework. I crawl underneath my mosquito net and fall asleep to the sound of the buchette playing fête music, or the church broadcasting its sermon over the loudspeakers, with the goats in the neighbors’ courtyard crying, the mills motor which hopefully turns of at 2000 hr, and the crickets. I do not need earplugs or a sheet because I am always so exhausted and excited.

            As I was sitting earlier this week, I felt like I fully arrived and a wave of giddiness swept over me. I noticed an emerging love for this country and people and food and smell and life. My French needs some work, but I feel so incredibly lucky to live in Benin for the next 26 months.

A bientôt,

Chazaq

Packed Bags

That's it!

A Look at "Divine Carcasse"

This film was shared with Future PCVs in Benin. It is called Divine Carcasse (1998). 

Click here to view the film on Youtube.

      The film, as a whole, is framed by two scenes of vessels.  These scenes are not simply motion of ships, but a bearing of a sacred cargo. With the knowledge of the objects upon these ships,  these ships are transformed into arks. Though, the divinities that these arks carry are of a different kind.

      The first in its opening shot, is of an ominous freighter approaching the camera. To an eye unfamiliar with this technology, it does not even appear to move, but simply lurk upon the horizon with dreadful authority .  We come to see in the following scene that this ship bears precious cargo, a 1950's Peugeot. 

      The second scene, a quiet, crawling ride down a river, reveals a punt bearing the same Peugeot. But the Peugeot, over the course of the film, has undergone a metamorphosis. After passing through many hands, the Peugeot has been left as junk. A metal-worker has been called to construct a fetish of the spirit Agbo. The punt  has become a vessel of divinity.

      The film allows the viewer to compare two kinds of mythology. The mythology of the France, held by the expatriate philosophy teacher, in which the Peugeot lives as a symbol of nostalgia and youth. This is an disenchanted nostalgia though, because the Peugeot survives simply as a commodity. Compare this with the mythology of the Benin, in which the Peugeot is quite literally, re-enchanted with the spirit of Agbo. 

This comparison is made most evident in a scene at 17.25:

Joseph: Do you know what they call a car like this in France?
Joseph: An ancestor. 
Villager: An ancestor?
Villager: Can you call a car an ancestor?
Joseph: That's what the French call it.
Villager: We can't call it that. Here we have our own ancestors, who protect and guide us. It can't be our protection god. It's nothing but an old car.
Joseph: Yes. Still, it's in good shape. See how it bore me from afar.
Villager: You can't call a living object an ancestor.
Villager: Still, it is nice.

     In an disenchanted France, the Peugeot is given a ironic pejorative with the phrase ancestor. The objects of antiquity to the western world are junk. The village's rejection of the name "ancestor" is two-fold: an "ancestor" is far more powerful than a mere machine, and an ancestor, by necessity, must not be alive. The village attributes the Peugeot spirit, but denies it the status of ancestor. (I am unfamiliar with what language is being used in this scene, but the corresponding words appears to be "tabo" or "tapo". I will do some investigating later to find out what that word means.)

     These are simply cursory sketches of the relations of mythological modes of the west and Benin. This film serves as equal parts documentary-ethnography and a fictionalized metamorphosis myth. I see an fascinating intersection of Western Capitalism, Beninese Vodun, language, and man's relationship with objects in this film. I look forward to exploring more of this in my service in Benin.

      I can not help but be reminded of Baudelaire's own divine carcass in "Une Charogne", another divine metamorphosis, or re-enchantment. Read it here: http://fleursdumal.org/poem/126

Benin Bound

Hello friends, family, future/current/past PCVs, the curious,

      Next Monday, June 23rd,  I fly from JFK airport to Cotonou, Benin, to begin an adventure of service and education. I have been invited by the Peace Corps to serve as a TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) Teacher in the Education Sector. 

      This departure becomes more real in writing. The past few months have been full of anticipation, emails, packing lists, blogs, anxiety, doctors' visits, excitement, french, goodbyes, all in attempt to ground this future in reality. Within the necessary preparations of moving to a new hemisphere, there is a presence of the enchanted in this new work. 

      But this opportunity comes with serious responsibilities. This blog will serve as one those responsibilities.  I intend for this space to serve a two-fold purpose: 1) I want to tell you, my reader, about a people you may be unfamiliar with, and 2) I want this to be a place where we can meet.

      This may be your first encounter with Benin. Perhaps the first time you had ever heard of Benin was through me. When John F. Kennedy created the Peace Corps in 1961, the institution was founded upon promoting world peace and friendship to all people. To achieve this end, three goals were established:

• To help the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women
• To help promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served
• To help promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans

For my American readers, this blog will serve as an attempt to provide that understanding of the Beninese people. For my future Beninese reader, I hope this can provide an understanding of the American people as well.

     If all goes well, I will be in Benin for 27 months, until September 2016. I want to thank my mother, father, brother, cousins, grandfather, grandmother, grams, uncles, aunts, teachers, my friends in Baltimore, Annapolis, Ocean Pines, and those scattered on the earth. You, my reader, you hold a high place in my heart. I could not have made it here without you!

      I am still young and for me, 2 years is a long time (I have been told it is not). In my absence, imagine this blog as a front porch on a summer evening. Let us speak long and leisurely.