In Due Time

The view from the van on the way back to Cotonou

Erika snapped a candid shot of me immediately after being attacked by a wave

Kimberly and Ryan (for Kimberly's mom, since I know she reads this- hi Kimberly's mom!)

Detailed view of the carvings on the monument

The Port of No Return monument on the beach at Ouidah

A large tree in the sacred forest

A statue of a voodoo god which also happened to be suffering from an awesome infestation of some kind of small fly...

Remains of a house in the sacred forest

The name of the new language I'm inventing (see below)

Trying not to be eaten by a cheetah at the gate to the sacred forest

I passed my test!!!!! In practical application, this means I can fool an interviewer into believing that I can use 5 different tenses and comprehend well; in reality, it means I practiced a lot and still don't function very well on the street. They don't really even speak French here; they speak Beninese. TOTALLY different.

The view from where I lay outside in between classes at school

We tried Sodabi for the first time right after our language exams... not as bad as I'd thought! Sadly, it didn't have the same effect on me that it had on Lou....

9-18-09

Big news: I passed my final French interview with flying colors!!! I had only to reach intermediate-mid to be sworn-in, but I reached intermediate-high!! My facilitator was so happy, he kissed my hand. Having a rather large brewski immediately preceeding the interview could only have helped matters. Passing the exam was a personal goal I had set for myself and I did devote a lot of energy (if not time) to improving my speaking; comprehension still leaves much to be desired. I can proudly report that I may, quite possibly, know more French than anyone in my village because the local language there is Goun, not French, and I needed a translator for all communication while I was there. The bright side is, possibly soon I will be able to understand my translator when he translates from the Goun into French. In due time.
This morning I will begin to learn Goun. Then, on September 26th, armed with a weeks worth of classes, I will descend upon my village with a pitiful pittance of vocabulary with which to buy groceries and supplies, not to mention greeting strangers and getting to know my neighbors. Or teaching lessons on health, having clothes made, or traveling. The grammar rules of Goun, I have heard, are completely nuts and it is much harder to learn than French. I can’t possibly imagine. We’ll see how much I’ve picked up after two years. In due time.
This morning, we are giving sensibilizations to grade school kids on various health topics. My group of five volunteers will present on diarrhea, specifically the causes, preventions and treatments thereof. We are focusing mainly on hand washing and using oral rehydration soluntion (ORS), and will be teaching them to make their own ORS in case their parents can’t afford it. I’m a little self-conscious today: still bloated from my second (or ninth? who’s counting) bout with giardia, my contact lenses which arrived -finally!- from the states didn’t fit so I’m back in my glasses and I’m pmsing which means it’s connects-the-dots-on-Kara’s-face time again. If I can’t pass off this googly-eyed zit I call my face as an authority on all matters health related, I’ll resort to plan B and just sing to them. They love that. Mission accomplished.
The contacts lenses: they are the wrong fit or something. I know this because mid-day yesterday I began to notice things were quite foggy in the eye with the new lens in it. By the time I took them out last night, I felt like I was in living in a cloud (which is not entirely untrue with the humidity here) but the problem wasn’t corrected upon removal of the lens. For the next hour, every time I looked directly at a light it appeared surrounded by circular rainbows and clouds. It sounds pretty, but I assure you, it wasn’t. So mom used her entire birthday literally saving my life making phone calls to the eye doctor and to my uncle whose friend is an optometrist and such things as that. Of course, it cleared up on its own, as these things often do, but it was a nice change to feel dependent upon someone whose help I actually want instead of strangers and host families. I’m so over that. Bring it on, Djigbe!

9/18/09

Went searching for a newer, stronger brand of vice today after my first Goun lesson, which was 360 minutes of information rolled into twenty. Okay, it wasn’t as bad as I want you to believe, but doesn’t my compulsion toward a victim complex indicate the severity of my situation? After the exhilaration of soaring past yesterday’s French exam, my newfound linguistic wings were brutally bludgeoned by an obscure West-African tonal tongue and I’m still smarting from it. The mournful reality of starting the entire process again has come as a shock to my system and has not fully sunk in. My discouragement at humankind’s crippling dependency on verbal communication grows evermore as I consider that there are over 170 trillion local dialects in Benin. Actually, there are about sixty; Djigbe is three miles from francophone Porto-Novo, a mere bike’s ride, but French is seldom spoken in village. I have decided to create a language of my own in which facial expression is the only component and conveying meaning is as simple as an eyebrow twitch or the voluntary dimpling of one’s cheek. We have, what? about a zillion facial muscles? Certainly there are enough of them that the near infinite combinations of their flexing would produce sufficient variation for vocabulary. Thus sequenced use of the vocabulary would form sentences and would spare homo sapeins the pain of using traditional universal sign language (for those of us who are too lazy to employ our hands for this purpose) or of --GOD FORBID-- trying to learn a West African tonal language. The forehead would be used for expressing tense, eyes for emotion, lips for wrapping up the nouns. Ears could handle pronouns, cheeks adjectives and eyebrows onomatopoeia. A surprising fringe benefit is that through all of the smiling, twitching, winking and furrowing, we would utilize our facial muscles to a degree in which we would all become tighter, firmer and smoother in those areas of the visage where beauty lies, thus eliminating the need for botox or other such measures taken against the inevitability of time. If you’re only as old as you feel, we’d all live forever. An aesthetically pleasing populace is essential to the success of any newly contrived language, to be sure, as beauty inspires jealousy or admiration and hence mimicry. Once my language has been sufficiently propagated that native speakers will want to recount the fabulousness of its inventor, those in the know will make the very face I did while conceptualizing it, and this expression will assume the portrayal of both my name and the official name of the language in reference. The names of the speakers will be inherent in the faces they are born with and will be more unique and descriptive than any spoken name ever could, as those of us who never forget a face already know, and reference to an individual will be made through wildly entertaining attempts to scrunch, twist, stretch and contort one’s face into that of the subject of conversation. Vocalization will be reserved for only those utterances which are instinctive and reflexive, such as laughter, yawning and sobbing; these will resound from preserved vocal chords with such purity and beauty that those with exhausted, worn-out larynxes may not possess the ability or integrity to attune to such frequencies. I am attaching a picture of the name by which said language shall henceforth be referred, and invite you to join me in my quest for a revolutionary new linguistic order. I now commence falling asleep to dream in pictures of things to come. Goodnight!

9/20/09

I traveled to Ouidah, a former slave port, yesterday with the other stagiaires. We broke into groups and toured a nearby sacred forest where voodoo ceremonies are held: the higher the status of the participant, the farther into the forest they may go. As a bunch of American kids, we of course were only allowed to see the museum part but it was nonetheless interesting. We then toured the fort area where slaves were held between capture and export. We saw actual pieces of chain used to bind them together. We learned how tightly they were packed onto the ships and how before being sent away, extreme measures were taken to psychologically damage and confuse them because an America-bound slave with a sense of African identity would be no good to anyone. At night, the women were made to sleep on their backs and men on their stomachs, to allow slave captains to rape them with greater ease. The logic of the captains escapes me; by engaging in sex with the captives weren’t they acknowledging them as human? HOW DID ANYBODY EVER JUSTIFY THIS? There was a large museum with much space devoted to visual depictions of the lives of slaves. I found it stirring and left feeling entirely depressed, guilty, and mad at Europe.
Afterward, we went to the beach. There is a large monument there called the Port of No Return, where slaves used to pass to board the ships. The side facing back toward land is called the Port of Return, where slaves were said to pass back into their homeland as spirits after dying in other countries. The monument seemed to be a huge tourist site, as there were busses and vendors everywhere.
We were able to walk down to the beach and dip our feet into the ocean but the current here precludes one from swimming. Apparently the riptide will have you 100 meters out before you can say “Hey, why aren’t there any lifeguards in Benin?” The whole beach slants at a dramatic angle toward the waves that batter it, sloping downward and pulling everything toward it. I felt a strange gravitational pull toward the waves that was entrancing and frightening, and wondered how many people have drowned here. The waves were of a different nature than those of tranquil, lazy beaches I have been to in the past. I stood where I thought only my feet would get wet but ended up being violently splashed all the way up my skirt. I rode the two hours home sopping wet and smiling.
The ride home was a sandy road that ran right along the beach all the way back to Cotonou. We saw palm plantations, a place for camping, tiny fishing boats out on the water and small villages build from thatch right on the beach eliciting cries of “I want to work in THAT village!!!” from all of us. I hadn’t ever seen an ocean culture that wasn’t based on tourism and found it fascinating. Upon returning home, I drank bad beer with good friends and marveled at my luck over having been handed an opportunity like this.
In one week I will be living in my village and everything will change.