Storytime

These are not all stories with a happy fairytale ending because Africa is not Disney. Don’t let “The Lion King” fool you, Symba would have finished off Pumba in a second. These are more along the lines of Grimms fairy tales. All good until someone dies and there is always a lesson to be learned.

The Rabbit:

My host father has taken to showing me around Porto Novo, more specifically, its bouvettes (bars). On one such occasion we visited his personal mentor (who yes owns a bouvette) and as I’m walking in I notice 2 cages full of rabbits. They are so freaking cute that even my stone heart softens a little. Big puppy eyes, floppy ears, twitchy pink noses, and all the innocence that comes with it (other than the F*#@ing like rabbits part, that part is far from innocent, but I digress).

So I’m looking at these when my papa’s mentor comes over to feed them and asks me which one I like. My papa had told him that sometimes volunteers want a pet at post and while I didn’t want a rabbit, I know another volunteer who did. So I looked them through and found one that was small with huge floppy (yet perky) ears, black fir, and a white T shaped puff on its belly.

He then took it, smiled at me, said “this is a good one”, and broke its neck . . .

I should have seen this coming, I should have said ‘stop!’, I should have done a lot of things, but I didn’t. Instead, 1 hour later I was enjoying some succulent white meat with an ice cold Coke and listening to Bob Marley’s “don’t worry, be happy”.

So now you ask me, “But Josh, what could be the possible moral of this child scarring story?!?!” to which I reply, “Simple my dear friend, Don’t judge a book by its cover” and as you begin to open your mouth again in retort I continue with, “Don’t look at the cute outside, think of the delicious, tender, juicy inside; Because while rabbits are cute, they taste even better grilled with some garlic, lime, and pimant sauce on the side.”

My Nap:

I’m now at my site in Goumori, and about to enjoy one of the many perks of the Peace Corps. The medical staff recommends that we take naps. For those of you who know me, you know this is not something I need to be told twice, and I have no qualms whatsoever over utilizing this perk. If it involves sleep or food, I have very strong opinions on the matter.

Anyway, I was following my doctor’s advice early one afternoon and took a nap with the door open cause (go figure) it can be freaking hot in Africa. Fast forward 1 hour and I wake up to a blurry white object 2 inches from my face. This peaks my interest because there was no such blurry object here when I went to sleep. To investigate this newfound mystery, I reached for my glasses (cause even bats and naked mole rats see better than me). At exactly the same moment the U.B.O. (Unidentified Blurry Object) moved and makes a great deal of noise. About the same time I notice two other U.B.O.’s near my chest and feet on the bed freaking the hell out with U.B.O. #1.

Now I’m not a timid man, but having woken up 5 seconds previously, my 1^st reaction is a ‘manly’ yelp and getting the hell off the bed. This turned out to be a bad idea because mini U.B.O.’s #4 through #18ish were on the ground and I almost crushed a few.

About this time I realize that the noise coming from said U.B.O’s is clucking. Aha! A clue! By the time I have my glassed on, my face has been thrashed by a chicken wing, and my body has given me a healthy dose of adrenaline. I then realize that not only were there 2 chickens and a cock on my bed, but all of their chicks were on the floor cause they couldn’t make the jump up to the bed.

The moral(s)?

Screw closing the door, it’s too damn hot, but mosquito nets keep out big and small flying things alike.

Second, a chicken’s only redeeming fact is that they are delicious. They are the polar opposite of the cute rabbits in every other way; Small beady eyes, sharp beaks, no obvious ears, creepy feet, shrill cries, and they excrete the scent of pure evil. Thus my war with these avian terrors is still in full swing. After all, I eat them because “I just want to be sure it’s a real bird and not some kind of multidimensional cybernightmare” (Adams p. 780) I know that was a random side track quote, but I had to work it in for Mel who has sent me a package and deserved public recognition for it. Also she hates all birds in general so much that she will only work in an office with no windows so there isn’t even the possibility of seeing them during the work day. (Love ya Mel!)

Finally, I need to invest in a screen door.

Haircut:

So Goumori is a predominately Bariba speaking community, and for the past 7 months I have been studying French. This does not bode well. Anywho, on with the story

 As has been previously stated and can be generally assumed, it is hot here in Benin. My continually growing hair does not aid my comfort with this. The simple solution is to get a haircut, however this poses a problem; the barbers have no idea whatsoever how to cut my hair. This is not because they are incompetent, what I mean is that the only hairstyle here is bald or a slight variation thereof. When asked about my hair, they will laugh and walk away, or show me a razor and point to a picture of a bald man.

My solution to this issue is simply to cut my own hair. For this I would need scissors, a mirror, and a comb. I asked my Goumori host family to help me find these things at the market in horrible French and off I went with the guard. Here things got a little mixed up. Apparently they thought I was describing a barber shop to get a haircut, not to buy said items, and thus sent me to the closest chausurre (barber). I was blissfully ignorant of this fact and thought that the barber would sell me what I needed.

I sat down in one of the side chairs in the shack as my guard spoke rapidly in Bariba to the chausurre then left. A small warning sign went off in my head which I promptly ignored. Another man then walked behind me and in one swift, coordinated move, the man put a cloth around me while the barber turned on a shear (electric razor? shaver? I never know what they’re called) and took a swipe down the middle of my head. I now had a reverse Mohawk and was adamantly protesting in French, English, and probably some Pig Latin and expletives. The problem with this was that the warning light from earlier was trying to tell me that no one left in the shack spoke any of these languages.

With my only choices from here being, taking it all off, or receiving an undesirable nickname in a language I don’t even speak, I sided with going bald and going to the market alone next time.

The moral?

Even if you speak the language, you never speak the right one when it matters.

AAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!

This is what you say when a motorcycle with a full grown freaking bull strapped ON it, crashes, and flips through the air toward you.

Bread

So bread is a dry, sometimes sweet, sometimes hard food that . . . ok, bread is boring, I’ll go back to the flying bull and give you a little back and forward story.

So at the end of every day the men all sit in front of the gate, which faces perpendicular to the road, and watch traffic go by. Here I’ll make you a picture!

(figure A)

--------------------------------------------#-----------------------------------------<-- that’s the road

I  <--That’s the gate                                     ↑That’s a motorcycle with a bull on the back

It had just rained buckets that morning, so the dirt road had the same consistency, and appearance, of melting rocky road ice cream. That evening was also the end of the bi-weekly cattle market. A popular way to transport our bovine friends long distances in Benin is to pick them up, place them of the back of a motorcycle (think mini-harley), and strap them there with elastic cord and twine.

I don’t quite understand the physics behind this task but think it would be a great topic for a doctoral thesis in theoretical physics.

Moving on, I was sitting in front of the gate (see figure A) when the guy driving the moto lost control on the melted ice cream-like road. He fell in a way that the bike landed on his leg, flipped entirely over his body without touching him (imagine what the bull is thinking at this point) and continued to cascade towards me.

You know those movies where there’s a massive abject on a collision course with the main protagonist who just stands there like an idiot while his impending doom slides to a sudden stop inches from his feet? This was almost exactly like that except I almost lost the bet. Losing the bet is shitting your pants (sorry for the graphic detail grandma). I would have ran, but there was a closed, 10 foot tall steel gate behind me, a wall to my side, and a flying bull in the front. (Rock and a hard place has a new meaning for me now)

 Once my life stops flashing before my eyes I go see if the guy was alright, but felt weird case everyone else was only interested in getting the bike right side up again (a difficult task when you try it with the bull still attached). The driver is walking around a little and I don’t see a bone fragment which is a good sign, it means his leg isn’t shattered, he’s not dead, and he is conscious (I know, one implies the other), win! From there I check ***[TEXT MISSING]*** and with the fire out I move back to the moto. By this point the bull had been untied, and while it’s not nice to say, I’m glad it had snapped its neck in the crash. It normally would have been slaughtered with a slit neck, and if it had survived the crash, it would have been rampagingly pissed! I then help the men turn the bike right side up and like an idiot, I grab the muffler, which I immediately release (cause it happens to be hot. Palm meet face, slap!). We finally get everything situated with the bull going to the butcher, and the driver getting a ride to the local clinic.

I have absolutely no idea what the moral for this story is. Don’t drive on wet roads with a cow strapped to your moto? Make sure there are no ignition sources near leaking gasoline? Always have an escape route? Don’t grab burning metal? Whatever, take from it what you will, I just liked the story.

That about sums up how much I want to tell for now, cause even though you don’t know the other ones, I’m not sure you want to. So before I leave you again for an undetermined amount of time . . .

More random facts/things about me in Benin:

I have a dog now. I don’t know why, but when I came to post they told me it was mine and now it follows me everywhere.

I now hoard coins like a (very tall) leprechaun cause getting change here is like pulling impacted teeth.

The lake behind my house is filled with crocodiles

If the bar does not have chickens wondering through it, something is wrong

Peeing anywhere I want is not a crime here, in fact its encouraged (at least for men)

I have seen the following combination of things on essentially a dirt bike (not tied to, following, or around, ON):

• 3 men and 5 dogs
• 2 men and 4 full grown pigs
• 1 man and 7 goats
• 1 man and 1 full grown freaking bull
• I have also started carrying my camera everywhere to get photographic evidence of this
• I could do my own laundry . . . or, I can pay someone $1.50 to hand wash, dry, iron (heated with fire, not electricity), and deliver a full load of laundry