Hi Everyone,
I hope you are all setting into 2013 very nicely. After so
much traveling in December, I have to say that settling in is taking a little
bit of time here. I keep reminding myself that it seems to take a week to
really get momentum back. Despite that, I do have two West Africa anecdotes to
share with you all.
The first is from my trip back to Founougo on New Years Day.
Apparently not unlike in the US, New Years Day is a pretty big day for travel
here. That meant that instead of taking an overcrowded station wagon-taxi, I
actually took an over crowded van-taxi. Not being quick enough on the draw, I was
crunched into the very back, where two rows of seats face each other. Joining
me in this most accommodating part of our luxury vehicle were many semi-nomadic
Peul, or Fulani. The Fulani are much more likely to dress in cool bright
colors, much less likely to speak French, and much more likely to stare at me
blatantly. A hush fell over the back of the van and I felt a lot of eyes on me
when I reached into my bag and pulled out my sunglasses.
It was at about that point that they started crowding people
into the ground area between our two seating units. One Fulani girl, maybe 16
years old had to sit on a tire, facing the trunk door, jammed between all of our
knees for the trip. I started to feel a little more privileged in my seat
pinned between the side of the car and a woman who was definitely not giving
any more space than she needed to.
Suffice it to say, I was having a moment of
acknowledging how tough life can be here. I was struck by the idea that we were
all actually paying to be in this van, and that really, we weren’t ‘paying for
our seats’ the way we think of in the US, we were all just paying to get from
point A to point B and that was significant enough. I couldn’t help staring at that Fulani
girl. I couldn’t help thinking how tough her life must be, where there is
always an authority figure making her take the worst seat. In my grumpiness, I
tried to remember what has consoled me in the past when I hit thoughts like
that. I noticed that she was wearing a bracelet with white, black, and yellow
beads. That struck me as something she would have picked out, something that
made her feel pretty, that showed joie de vivre. I think that’s something.
As it happened, that van broke down about an hour into our
trip and that girl and I, along with a few others, wound up jumping ship for a
different station wagon taxi that stopped when it saw that we broke down.
That’s life I guess!
On a less heavy note, I mentioned before that I have been
making friends in village a little bit, and I thought that I would expand on
that some. One woman that I hang out with often is Angeline. She is one of
those very rare women in Founougo who speaks very good French (and even a
little English!). Her sister lives in Cotonou so she has big city connections.
She owns a buvette in the market. A buvette is basically a bar in that they
sell drinks, however, that is pretty much where the similarities to American
bars end. Angeline’s buvette has several seating areas that are partitioned by
sheets of fabric, which makes the place feel cooler than the market. I go by
there sometimes just to say hi, or to order a soda. Sometimes if it’s not busy
Angeline will invite me to share a meal with her and her niece and nephew. On
Christmas morning she called me to wish me good health, and a Merry Christmas,
and to send “bises” or kisses, to all the Peace Corps volunteers. In fact the
time that I saw her after that we did the three kisses on the check a la France.
I am so happy to be making a local friend to do ‘bises’ with!
Those are the anecdotes for this week. With any luck next
week I will be teaching my first environmental classes at the Primary Schools.
I am nervous about that but I get the feeling I need to take the plunge. I
would really like to get to know the students better. More stories to follow
for sure!
Thank for reading!!
With love,
Lauren
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