My Kind Carpenter

After a long stay at the Parakou workstation I’ve finally made it to my village and started trying to integrate/work. Overall life has been pretty slow and uneventful since getting to post, but there have been some pretty interesting things.

First off, I’ve previously written about my great relationship with my tailor. Well, since getting to my village I’ve formed a relationship with a new artisan, my carpenter. There really isn’t any ready to buy and bring home furniture, so if you want something for your house, you have to go to the carpenter and get it custom made.

When I got to my house there was almost literally nothing in it, so my first stop after getting dropped off was the carpenter. While there are some carpenter’s in my village, the one I go to is in the larger town about 15 minutes away by bike.

Everything I’ve ordered has been completed on time (or reasonably on time), and been way less expensive than I thought it would be.

So last weekend I went to pick up some of my furniture, my carpenter said it would be done Saturday night, but unfortunately by the time I got there he had already gone home for the day. So I came back on Sunday and while I was waiting for my carpenter I had one of my more favorite conversations in Benin.

When I got to the carpenter, there was only one guy there (it was Sunday after all), and he was sanding down a lounger chair. We started chatting and long story short he had recently dropped out of school and was working here 7 days a week until he saved up enough money to open up his own shop. While obviously I don’t want to encourage people dropping out of school, his work ethic and great attitude/outlook on things was refreshing.

The Food

The Peace Corps dropped me off at post on a Friday; the bad news is that market day is Thursday. For my first week at post I had a stove, but no plates or silverware or food since I missed market day.

I think this actually turned out to be a positive thing though since it forced me to explore different restaurants/cafeterias, and therefore made me get out in the community more. Now I got some restaurants I regularly go to. My favorite is the pork and akassa place I found (so good).

The downside to having to go biking to restaurants twice a day or so is that it gives kids more chances to yell at me. Usually they’re just yovo-ing me, although the other day one kid kept on calling me Chinese (side note, I sometimes get Le Blanc from the kids, and as much as I enjoy Friends I cannot take credit for Matthew LeBlanc). I mention this because whenever I go by one of the restaurants I sometimes eat lunch at they yell out “American.” They are the only people in my village who call me American.

School

Technically speaking Thursday was the first day of classes, but at least at my school there were no classes. To be fair, I really wasn’t expecting to be teaching since they didn’t give me my teaching schedule until Thursday either and none of the classrooms have desks, except one classroom, which has all the desks stacked high.

For the last week or so the kids have been at the school starting to get it ready. Since there are no janitors, and certainly no landscaping crew, the students are expected to do all of the work at the school. Since Beninese schools like to not have any plant life on their grounds, there is a fair amount of clearing to do.

Also, since we don’t have enough classrooms this year the kids will be building three temporary classrooms out of bits of wood and branches, those have also not been completed, or started for that matter, although I’ve been told those were started today.

Bandits/Corruption

Banditry and corrupt officials are unfortunately a norm here, and something that interests me so you’ll be reading more about it to come. Typically what happens is that governments will extract bribes at checkpoints or for doing basic services, and bandits will stop you during travel and take your stuff.

Interestingly enough, when you travel by zemijahn (motorcycle) you the passenger are expected to pay any bribes along the way, while if you travel by car the price of bribes is built into your ticket.

Anyways, there is one thing that I’ve noticed in my village that can not be considered banditry or bribes, and that is the youth road construction groups. Kids looking to make some money will repair the dirt roads, and what they do is stop all traffic and ask them to pay them money while they are doing the work. But they actually do the work, since they’re maybe teenagers and can’t just take a bunch of money from people in their village and move on. They can’t be the music man roaming from town to town. And they actually do repair the roads (otherwise no one would pay them money the next time they try this), so provide a need where the government really can’t due to lack of resources.

Soccer Match

My favorite moment from the last two weeks though was on Wednesday when I went to a youth soccer game. It was the finals for the arrondissement (an arrondissement is kind of like a county but smaller, my arrondissement has 5 villages I think), so quite a crowd came out.

This was my first experience going to a youth soccer game here, I’ve seen streetball games, and I’ve seen a semi-pro game, but never kids playing like an actual, organized, refereed game. To put it mildly it was a fairly unique experience.

The game pitted the underdog Zougba squad (I consider them the underdog since they had a smaller number of players with shoes) against the powerhouse Dokoudoho team.

The first half was all Dokoudoho, with a number of brilliant saves by Zougba’s flip-flop wearing goalie. At one point there was some point of disagreement that led a number of spectators to charge the field and plead their case with the referee, stopping play for somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes. It was unclear to me what the controversy was over, but the fans were very passionate.

In the waning minutes of the first half Zougba was able to clear the ball and thanks to a couple of lucky bounces, create a fast break down the field. The Dokoudoho keeper was able to stop the first shot, but not the rebound.

After the goal they had to stop play for another 5 minutes or so since all of the Zougba fans had stormed the field to celebrate the goal. Celebrations mostly included throwing random players up in the air and generally yelling. After a few more minutes, it was half time.

That goal seemed to be everything Zougba needed to change the tide in the second half. They seemed to really dominate and create a lot of chances during most of the second half. Dokoudoho may have been more skilled, but those Zougba boys were more conditioned.

Unfortunately, during a rare Dokoudoho offensive opportunity an inopportune handball gave the Dokoudoho side just the chance they needed to even the score. During the ensuing penalty kick the goalie guesses left, but the ball went right. Score tied 1 to 1, and again the celebrations involved storming the field.

As time wound down the score remained tied, and the day grew darker. There was not going to be enough sunlight to play overtime, with the score tied 1 to 1 they went straight to penalty kicks to determine the champion.

Again the two sides seemed evenly matched, but after five kicks per side Dokoudoho emerged the champion by one goal. Fittingly fans from the winning side celebrated by taking their motorcycles onto the field, whipping donuts and generally burning out.

Those have been the highlights from my first two weeks at post. This will in all likelihood be my only post for about a month or so, as there is no internet in village (but there is popcorn, so that’s a plus). So stories from the classroom will have to wait.