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Published: August 29th 2005
Funny how food inspires me: today for lunch I was eating peanut butter (which is no surprise, thanks to mom and dad!) with bread and fried bananas. I would have taken the bananas fresh over fried, but Maman beat me to it. Maman brought the bananas to my door and almost caught me living my secret life; I was dancing to Dispatch in my second room. There is no real reason why I do not ask Maman if I can play my music on the family’s stereo, except that I would attract far more attention dancing in the family room than I do by myself. I attract enough attention by walking down the street. Actually, by existing.
There are little things that make me appreciate my life in America. Most prominently on my mind is the ability to wear jeans and tennis shoes without people wondering, “masculine woman? Or voluptuous man?” I can really confuse children when I go running in my slightly-above-the-knee shorts and my hair is up. What saves me from extremely embarrassing moments is that pagnes are very comfortable, so I wear them. I went to Grand Popo, a coastal village, with other volunteers on my return trip from Athieme last week, and for a couple beautiful hours I swam in a two-piece swimsuit. Running and swimming in two-piece swimsuits make me feel very exposed, mostly because so much leg is bare. Capris are okay.
What also makes me very American here is that I will live with four rooms entirely to myself. Mama found out last night that I would not have a maman to make food for me in Athieme, so she started to quiz me on what foods I knew how to prepare. Tonight I am going to make pate blanche, because I cannot live on rice, couscous, and beans alone, I must have variety! So many different flavors of carbohydrates! But luckily for me, making American meals, including all-ethnicities-American (Mexican-, Italian-, Chinese-American, etc.) is not difficult. Not only does the Peace Corps provide an extensive cookbook full of recipes successfully completed by volunteers, but I am eager to experiment and cook for myself. I’ll be near Lokossa when I live in Athieme, which will provide a marche with many different kinds of vegetables, spices, and other goodies I can use in my kitchen.
An important aspect I am beginning to catch on to about being a Peace Corps Volunteer is that my “job” is to live. To be a successful volunteer is to have integrated into the community. I will do nothing more here in Benin than I would do in any community throughout the world, which is to somehow provide a service that the community needs, that may or may not have existed before me. As Paul Theroux put it in a rather harsh realistic point of view, “People would say of me, in a praising way, as they always said of such do-gooders: ‘He devoted his life to Africa’, but that was not it at all…
secretly enjoying a life of beer drinking and scribbling and occasional mythomania in a nice climate, where there were no interruptions such as unwelcome letters or faxes or cell phones. It was an eccentric ideal, life lived off the map.” I read that in Dark Star Safari.
But that life really will be fulfilling two of the three goals of the Peace Corps, which are cultural exchange. This means that some day I will ask Maman if I can play my music for them! I have already tried a meal, which to my great amusement and cause for my family’s endless teasing, they did not enjoy. I did not laugh my laughing-bent-over, not breathing and crying laugh, but a good healthy laugh. Next time I will do something simple like spaghetti, not Wakiki Chicken, even though I was entirely pleased with the meal.
Other plans for cultural exchange include rigging a basketball hoop at my home in Athieme. This way I will not eat Uncle Jeff’s nor Lana’s dust when I return to the U.S., and I am sure not only a few kids will come to my door to play. And with the speakers I will inherit from another volunteer, I will be dancing and singing very often.
I wish I could better describe how my life is different here compared to my life in America, but one month (two months?) is long enough to make little differences seem trivial and not worth explaining, and too short to be able to accurately describe the big differences.
Oh yeah, the story behind the title of this entry- Maman and Darly were stumped by my baggie of matches from the U.S. I really did not understand why until they asked me how I lit the matches. I used a Beninese matchbox and told them U.S. matches and Beninese matches were the same, which I believed until they asked more specifically, how would I light the match without the box. I showed them how I could use the floor or table or whatever. I was so surprised to find, after trying it myself, that Beninese matches do not work the same way. No longer do I believe our matches are the same. Here I had thought all matches were “strike-anywhere”! I guess that’s a “little difference” easily explained.
I pray you all are well- ebk
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Lee Kraus
non-member comment
Not "Strike Anywhere"?
Wow, after all these years of lighting campfires and barbecue grills I figured you would have known to read the package to be sure you were purchasing "Strike Anywhere" matches. You can get both here in the U. S. also. Because I consider matches a thing for emergancy use while on an outing in the wilderness or without power here at home, they must be strike anywhere always, maybe you are only used to swiping my matches from the camp kit? I wondered why they disappeared so fast when we would only go camping a couple of times! When it comes to dancing, do you play your music in Africa loud enough so all the neighbors on the next mile can hear it also, or do you just use your head phones. In the case of the headphones, Maman would probably think you were possesed if she caught you dancing wildly to music she could not hear! Keep dancing anyway! Dad