Peanut butter and the pursuit of perfection

In a homily during Fourth of July Mass, a priest said: “Don’t let the pursuit of the perfect become the enemy of the good.” I found myself thinking, “I do that all the time.” I think Father Brennan was talking about, you know, community service and mending relationships and being an all-around good person, but it’s a pretty widely applicable principle. A friend recently talked about how it’s difficult to motivate her colleagues, who are waiting for a perfect occasion to make changes, rather than seizing a good one. You know, “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush” and all that jazz? Easier said than done.

I am often paralyzed because I’m afraid to make the wrong move. Nowhere is this more evident than with my writing; I’ll just write nothing and think, “If I did write, it would be perfect.” As long as I haven’t started, I haven’t disappointed. Ira Glass pegs me on this. He says that since there’s a disconnect between an aspiring writer’s taste and her craft, she’ll always be dissatisfied with her work. Unless she writes, and writes, and writes.

Anyway.

I’m trying to get over that hump and share some good stories with you.

In the meantime, let’s talk peanut butter. A Washington University researcher named Dr. Micah Manary runs a successful nutrition program called Project Peanut Butter in Africa and elsewhere. I may or may not be biased, having a couple friends who have worked under his direction, but it’s this week’s Riverfront Times cover story. Here’s a six-month-old The World Today interview with Zach Linneman, one of those friends I mentioned, that goes over the basics, and a link to a blog by Gregg Kennedy, who is working with Project Peanut Butter in Malawi.

These guys are not letting the pursuit of perfection get in the way of doing good. And they’re getting closer to perfection than those who pursuit it.

(And before you point out that Haiti is not in Africa, the ancestors of most black Haitians were brought as slaves to the island from West Africa. The Beninese claim that Emperor Jacques I of Haiti is from the Beninese coast, where a statue of him still stands. And Haitian-American Wyclef Jean traces his roots to Benin!)

Blog format is changing

You thought it was all over. But like bad blockbuster franchises, it’s time for a sequel. Though I’m back on American soil, I’m keeping the blog alive. But I’ll put up much shorter posts, much more frequently, now that my Internet access is consistent. Look for daily updates that contextualize Africa from now on.

Today, I encourage you to check out the blog African Heroes: stories of brave badasses by freelance media consultant Emily Meehan, who is currently living in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Here’s an excerpt:

Africa comes in because the continent does not rely on teachers, professors, or politicians for its moral and psychic development. This is not a choice of Africans but more a condition of they suffer with when they aren’t relying on God to guide them, which is perhaps half the time. Therefore they are ghettoized in a global context, and must achieve only by doing, doing, doing (or stealing, stealing, stealing). On the other hand, Africans certainly take solace in God, and although the West sees fatalism as a ghetto sensibility, it gives them the strength to carry on doing, doing, doing. Even if the mentality of fatalism may debilitate African endeavors at various junctures, we can’t know how unsuccessful they might be without faith in a higher power — nihilism certainly doesn’t bode well and scientific pragmatism is not yet feasible for the masses in a context where education is impoverished.

Meehan’s currently also doing a series for Slate.com called the Humanitarian’s dilemma. It examines how (and whether) Westerners should help Africans.

(And root for Ghana tomorrow!)

Three Stories

Readers, as a token of appreciation for your continued support, I wanted to give a blog entry that might come in handy. I imagine you, dear reader, at a cocktail party (law firm meet-and-greet, work lunch, interview, family birthday party) searching for something to say. Here’s a few options with plenty of details you can discard if your audience has an American sense of the passage of time.

“Hey, do you know…”

1. why people and lions aren’t friends?

Once upon a time, a man and a lion became friends. Each was a hunter of remarkable skill, and they shared their meals in a spirit of mutual respect. At one such meal, the man sighed, and his friend the lion asked what was wrong.

“Deception is the lot of man,” replied the hunter. “Our joys never last. From birth until death, we live in anxiety, while you animals, you don’t know how to laugh or to cry. You don’t know suffering.”

The lion was mystified, and he wondered what this “suffering” was. He insisted on knowing. The man refused several times, for he didn’t want to hurt his friend, but he finally gave in. He brought a bell and tied it around the lion’s thick furry neck. The lion was confused.

“Is this what you call suffering?” he asked. “The sound is beautiful; it’ll be fun. Besides, you don’t wear one of these.”

“Be patient! In life, many are the causes of suffering and often, they seem insignificant compared to their disastrous effects.”

Then the hunter and his friend the lion parted ways. The hunter promised to check on him in a week.

After just a few hours, the sonorous tinkling began to annoy the lion and, tired of the game, he tried to remove the bell. But his great paws, so deft at tearing chunks of steaming flesh from gazelles, weren’t well-adapted to remove a knot of string, and he only succeeded in pulling out tufts of matted fur. He shook his head violently, and was met only with the insolent clinking of the bell. He hit his head against a tree, but the rough bark scratched him. Angry, after falling into a troubled sleep, he awoke with a gnawing hunger. But his would-be prey, alerted by the din-din-din of the bell, vanished before he could get close. They seemed to be laughing at him from afar. As he got more and more desperate, even other predators refused to come near, alarmed by his wild-eyed grumbling, cuts and missing fur.

When the hunter returned, he found his friend the lion lying in a stupor, starved and miserable. The lion told the hunter that the bell had been cursed.

“In itself, it has no power,” the man explained. “But it causes emotions in you that you can’t master. At first, it was fun, and you, the king of the forest, you frolicked like a kitten playing with a ball of yarn. Then, annoyed, you tried to get rid of the tiresome toy, and you made the mistake of getting angry with the insignificant bell, in truth, with yourself, because you realized that this little nothing could bring you to your knees, you invincible lion with the red mane. Incapable of providing for your own needs, you were ashamed to see even the smallest animals taunting you.”

“Is that how you humans complicate life?”

“Yes, my friend the lion.”

The lion was not prepared to accept his own helplessness, and he felt betrayed and he couldn’t forgive the hunter. He roared and roared, and the hunter fled, and from then on, humans and lions have been enemies.

(Courtesy of Jean Pliya. Citations translated directly from the French, the rest adapted from his story “La Peine.”)

2. that there’s a debate over the hippopotamus?

The hippo has an unusual (kind of gross) habit. As a hippo defecates, she spins her tail around and around to spread her feces over a large territory, like a fertilizing machine. Western scientists contend that the hippo wants to show her potency to other hippos and protect her food source. But there might be another explanation. The habit might have originated from a conversation between the hippo and God.

God made the hippopotamus a land animal, designed to chomp down on bits of grass and underbrush, a sort of living lawnmower. But the African sun burns, and the hippo, lugging around up to 7,000 pounds of wobbly, wrinkly gray flesh, was hot. The hippo went to his Creator.

“God,” he said. “I know you made me a land animal. I want to fulfill Your purpose for me. But God, it’s hot out there in the steaming savannah, among those dry crackling grasses, and I’d love to go for a dip in the lake from time to time.”

God refused at first. But God is merciful, and after several supplications, God allowed the hippo to bathe. God reminded the hippo not to neglect his job: to keep the savannah well-trimmed.

At first, the hippo obeyed. But little by little, he got attached to the deep, cool water, and began spending every day submerged, surfacing only to breathe. The hippopotamus saw that the lake was full of life, and, reluctant to lug himself ashore and leave the smooth muck of the lake, he tentatively tasted a freshwater fish. It was delicious. He began eating only fish, leaving the grasses to grow unchecked and upsetting the delicate balance of the ecosystem.

God hoped the hippo would realize the error of his ways, but a hippo is not a human, and the hippo kept it up, blissfully draining the lake of its fish, while the grass towered higher and higher.

Finally God thundered down at the hippo.

“Hippo! I told you not to neglect your purpose, but you have allowed the grasses to grow to unforeseen heights. From now on, you may only eat grass. Most animals prefer to bury their feces. But you, hippo, when you relieve yourself, you will have to show me that there are no fish bones and that you have only eaten grass. You will be shamed every time you defecate, and all the other animals will know that you have disobeyed me.”

From then on, the hippo has contented himself to munch on grasses, though you will still see him submerged in the water after he defecates, hiding from the other, more obedient creatures of God.

(Adapted loosely from Adamou Akpana, whose maternal grandfather passed him the story in Djougou, Benin)

3. that the best job interview may be a dance competition?

Once upon the time, the king of Abomey needed a treasurer. He was a wise and benevolent ruler, and the kingdom had grown wealthy under his direction; he could no longer manage the coffers on his own. His advisers gave him a list of names of financially successful merchants, students who excelled in mathematics, well-connected nobles who could facilitate relations with nearby kingdoms. But the king was not satisfied. He thought long into the night, and the next morning, he gave an adviser a decree to be read throughout the land.

“Citizens of Abomey, the kingdom is in need of a treasurer to care for all the riches in the land. Payments and profits will be the responsibility of you alone. Citizens of Abomey, one and all, come to the castle in a fortnight to cast your lot for this position. No experience needed. All the king asks is that you dance for him. The best dancer will receive the position of the king’s accountant.”

The adviser was astonished. Why would the king, who could choose anyone he wanted, wish for a dancing accountant? But the people were used to the whims and caprices of their rulers, and the decree was met with great enthusiasm. Men, women and children set about practicing. They danced throughout the night, dreaming up new and ever more complicated steps to demonstrate their flexibility, agility and skill.

When the day came, every citizen of Abomey lined up outside the castle. The stooped old men, week-old babies and pregnant mothers who could not participate stood to the side to cheer on their families and hear the results of the contest.

One by one, an adviser called each participant forward. The citizen, garbed in his or her most beautiful pagne, trailed the adviser through the castle gate, some anxiously, others serenely, for many, the first time they had entered the castle. The adviser took the participant as far as the outer chamber, but the king had been very explicit: show each citizen to the outer chamber, point them in the direction of the great hall, but allow them to find their way alone.

So each citizen found herself at the head of a long and dazzling corridor. Buckets of gold jewelry, rubies as big as key limes, swords and shields lined the walls. Strewn carelessly on the floor were coins of bronze, tiny diamonds, silver scrapings. Most people couldn’t help themselves. They picked up a diamond and tucked it in the hem of their pagnes, or inserted a few small pieces of silver in the lining of their sandals. The king would never miss it! No wonder he needs an accountant! Look at these treasures just tossed on the ground! Then they hurried forward to dance for their sovereign.

But a strange thing happened. The kingdom of Abomey had a wide reputation for dancing, a long tradition that had produced the quickest, strongest most graceful dancers in all the world. But before the king, the dancers were distracted, anxious, conservative, and they didn’t show their best work. The king dismissed each citizen before he was even finished. Finally, one young woman came forward. She was as skillful as the rest, but she danced with a wild abandon unknown to the others. The king stopped her, too, before she had finished her performance. She turned, dejected.

“No,” the king of Abomey said. “More than mathematical ability or political connections, a treasurer must be honest and single-minded. You showed me that you were loyal to the kingdom of Abomey by your forthrightness. You did not succumb to the Corridor of Temptation. And you showed that you were single-minded in your commitment to your dance. You will be the new treasurer of the kingdom, should you accept.”

She did, of course.

(Traditional Yoruba tale, recounted by Bachard Liamidi. Some details added.)

In Honor of International Women’s Day

In 2004, Benin officially outlawed polygamy.

This doesn’t mean it doesn’t still go on, of course. Existing polygamous marriages are grandfathered in under Law No. 2002-07, and obviously, six years isn’t long enough to change a millennia-old practice.

I have at least two good friends who are the products of polygamous marriages (I may know more; it’s not something a cosmopolitan 20something Beninese will easily admit to a Westerner these days). They’ve shown me pictures of their proud papas surrounded by their nombreuse progeny: 28 children in one case, 22 in the other, kids ranging from two to thirty-two. Mothers nowhere to be seen. Sometimes these families are like an alternative-universe Brady Bunch. Though drama between co-épouses sometimes, understandably, could best Jerry Springer, it’s true that co-spouses are sometimes best friends, even sisters, who just happen to share one man’s bed.

The 2004 law that supposedly will put an end to such relationships is called the Code des personnes et de la famille (Code of Persons and the Family). This code, the CPF, also acknowledges formally for the first time that all people are equal before the law. (A Beninese friend pointed out, though, that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. The CPF, while explicitly declaring equality, codified certain inequalities. For example, children must take their father’s name by law; a man can get divorced and remarried in a single day while a woman must wait 300 days before taking a second husband; the dot, which I will explain later, is both legally binding and obligatory.) However, the fact that the CPF was passed at all is a step, and a remarkable one at that. My hope is that the CPF will prove to be one of those forward-looking laws that, in a generation or two, succeeds in changing cultural norms (like the repeal of Jim Crow laws). But for the moment, it hasn’t changed the daily reality for most women.

I see some positive signs: female military officers, female Rotary Club presidents, I’ve been told that nine of Benin’s 77 mayors are women. The country had a serious female presidential candidate before the United States; there is a female member of the Constitutional Court; twelve of the 28 students in my master’s program were women. The government has started a reasonably successful campaign to underwrite girls’ school fees.

But instead of being an equitable amelioration of the human condition, I see a line drawn in the sand, a demarcation between paysanne (peasant woman) and femme instruite (educated woman). Men discuss the marriage options available to them: is the wider skill set and higher earning power of a femme emancipée (emancipated woman) worth the trouble she’ll cause? (The two men with whom I’ve had this conversation decided yes, that they’d seek out educated women, so the times, they are a-changin’.) We have to ask ourselves frankly: what is the alternative to a “free woman”? Isn’t it a slave? Maybe not a slave in the physical sense (though such cases are not unheard of), but a slave to her husband’s life choices and her own ignorance.

A few weeks ago, I spoke about some of these issues with an American prosecutor and some Beninese classmates. The American told us that, at last year’s International Women’s Day, the president of the Republic of Benin opened his remarks by saying, by way of appreciation and admiration: “Wow, I’ve never seen so many beautiful women in the same room!” I cringed. “Ew! I can’t believe he said that, and on such an occasion, no less!” My Beninese friends looked at us expectedly. “Wait, what? What did he say?” They didn’t understand that to draw attention only to a woman’s physical appearance demeans her strength, her intelligence, her skills.

The objectification of women is so deeply embedded in Beninese society that its members don’t recognize its existence, much less its consequences. It’s true that to call a woman beautiful is complimentary, a pleasant thing to say and to hear. But it’s an objectification nonetheless, an implicit degradation, if not equally applied to all people. My Beninese classmates staunchly refused this characterization of what, to them, was a simply a kind word.

So in honor of International Women’s Day, I wanted to share with you a few of the disheartening things I’ve seen, heard and experienced about women in Benin. Be forewarned that I provide only anecdotal evidence. I’ll try not to editorialize too much and let the experiences speak for themselves.

1. I don’t know a single Beninese woman who wears her own hair. Nearly everyone I see wears a wig or plaited weave, giving them the choice to drastically change their hairstyle every week. I wanted to experience this for myself. So in January, I got my hair braided. Though it was nice afterwards, not to wash my hair for two weeks and to feel the wind on my scalp, the braiding process itself turned out to be a five-hour, $20, almost unbearably painful experience that I likely won’t repeat (the old adage “suffering for beauty” took on new meaning). But while I was in the salon, a man entered, presumably a friend of the stylist. He exclaimed over my hair. Then he said, “You have such long hair. It’s good for a woman to have long hair, so that a man can l’arracher (literally, tear her away) as she’s walking down the street and take her home with him to have his way with her.” The hairstylist giggled, so I did too.

2. I attended a Mass for the tenth anniversary of a devoutly Catholic couple I know. The Mass was in Fon, but upon realizing that some Bangladeshis were in attendance, the Beninese priest recapped his sermon in English. (Linguistically, this was fascinating. The French missionary spoke Fon, the Beninese pastor spoke English, and no one spoke French, the official language of the country.) In his sermon, the pastor congratulated the couple on ten years of marriage and admonished other couples to emulate this relationship based on mutual respect. Then he gave some practical advice: it’s not good for a man to beat his wife for no reason. A woman should dress up in the home and always “stay beautiful” or she shouldn’t be surprised that her husband seeks out other women.

3. A few weeks ago, a Beninese professor emphasized to us the importance of stage presence when defending our theses. Yes, the quality of the work is important, but it must also be presented clearly and convincingly (advice my fellow law students have heard thousands of times). As he wrapped up his lecture, he said: “By the end of your presentation, the members of the jury should be ready to give you their daughters in marriage.” Later, I tried to explain to some classmates why I found this shocking (of course, the practice of arranged marriage is shocking to a European-American these days, but it also presumes that the presenter is male, something almost equally disturbing when you’re talking to a class of 12 women and 16 men). They tried to reassure me: it’s just an expression. The professor’s daughters are already happily married anyway.

4. I’m taking Fon classes. My teacher is a wonderful guy from Zoungoudo, in the region of Pahou, just northwest of Cotonou. During one of my first lessons, he explained basic introductory questions: Nε a nò nyi? What’s your name? Fitε a no nō? Where do you live? Azotε a nò wa? What kind of work do you do? A δo asu/asī à? Are you married (Lit., do you have a wife or husband)? He cautioned us that a woman, married or not, will say yes. A man, married or not, will say no to signal that he is open to a new relationship. Since I’ve witnessed a good friend nonchalantly pick up a woman in a nightclub and bring her home to the house he shares with his wife (and heard of dozens of cases secondhand), I can only imagine this is true.

5. One of the most infuriating conversations I’ve had here started at a birthday party. I can’t even remember what the initial topic was, but a friend of mine off-handedly threw in: “But of course that’s how it is, because women only seek out things that are easy.” A murmur of general accord went around the table. I smacked the table with my palm, and six shocked heads turned toward me. Haltingly, since this was within a month of my arrival, I said, “Do you mean that all women look for easy things, while all men seek challenges?” My friend, a law student, nodded like this was old news. “For example,” he said. “Tell me why women don’t study science.”
“But women do study science,” I said.
“Sure, but not as many as men.”
“Don’t you think it might be because people like you tell them they shouldn’t?”
“No,” he said. “Women just look for things that are easy.”
“Are you saying science is hard?”
“Yeah,” he said. “And that men seek out things that are hard?”
“Yeah.”
“Then why don’t you study science?”
“Oh, it doesn’t interest me.”
I stopped arguing. I tried a new tactic, which was met with the same response I get every time I use myself as an example.
“But I am here. I am in Benin. It would have been much easier for me to stay in the United States, but I sought out a challenge.”
“Yes, but you are a yovo, a white woman, an American. You are different from Beninese women. They look for things that are easy.”
“But look at ‘Mary,’ your Beninese classmate. She is getting her master’s degree, same as you, which is hard.”
“Yes, but it’s only because she’s trying to be Western.”

6. There is a Beninese family with whom I visit frequently. The two children are 13 and 15 years old, a girl and boy, respectively. I’ve remarked that the boy is articulate, confident, active, but the girl seems to languish. She is a nice girl but tongue-tied, immature, reluctant to express opinions. This could be the product of their ages, or their individual personalities, but I don’t think so. I’ve noticed that when relatives come over, the girl is relegated to the kitchen. The relatives address the boy like most relatives do: “How is school? What do you think you might want to be when you grow up? What’s your favorite subject?” On the contrary, no one asks the girl to express her hopes and dreams. When the family eats together, the girl doesn’t speak and isn’t spoken to. Perhaps it’s a question of chicken-and-egg.

7. I have a good Beninese friend who is remarkably intelligent and who earns some of the highest grades in her class. Unfortunately, she is also strikingly beautiful and conducts herself with elegance. This has led to some uncomfortable situations for her. She accompanied a (married clergy) professor to a foreign city for research, and he entered her hotel room uninvited. Fortunately, when she refused his advances, he relented. But she introduced another professor at a public lecture a few months ago – where I was in attendance. She and this professor, a fifty-something married man, were seated behind a table onstage and my friend had some papers on her lap. The professor, in retrieving one of these papers, took the opportunity to feel up her skirt. He then sent her a wildly inappropriate text message. (A caveat: of course, of course, there are individuals who behave this way everywhere in the world, but here, they happen without even the potential protection of sexual harassment laws.) My friend believes she cannot do anything about these experiences, because any action she took would only serve to close the already limited job market to her.

8. Hodgepodge: a large minority of Beninese magistrates believe that spousal rape is not possible because a woman gives blanket sexual consent upon marriage. I have heard of a mother who brought her eight-year-old daughter to the hospital in Calavi to get a rape test solely to see if she could still market her as a virgin. A person I know who conducted field research told me a woman in a polygamous relationship was sad when her husband beat his other wife more because it showed his love for the co-spouse was stronger. A classmate from Ménontin told me that he knew a woman who paid the dowry for her husband’s second wife herself, just so that she would have someone to help her with the household chores. In northern Benin, the practice of levirat is widespread: a widow is made to marry her husband’s brother upon his death to keep the property in the man’s family. In a book I read about voudon, or voodoo, the predominant indigenous religion, a woman who cooks a meal for a man other than her husband will have her head shaved to show her shame.

9. Here, a marriage cannot be legally sanctioned without the payment of the dot, the dowry. (Customarily, there must be parental permission; in my experience, it’s extremely rare that a couple will marry against the wishes of their relatives). The legal dot is 10,000 FCFA or about $22, but families with means pay much more. A woman receives jewelry, pagnes (cloth) and shoes, her family receives money, and most importantly, her paternal uncles receive bottles of alcohol. In wedding albums I’ve seen, the woman is wrapped in cloth and guided to her husband’s family’s home, where she is unwrapped. A few months ago, a Beninese professor asked the women in my class if they really wanted equality. He said, “And how many of you would marry without the dot?” They all shrieked with laughter; the idea was simply absurd. At first, I was judgmental. But the value of the dot here is about the value of an engagement ring, which most American women wouldn’t give up; the portion that goes to the woman’s family may equal the cost of the rehearsal dinner (customarily paid by the groom’s family chez nous). Perhaps it would make more sense to give women sensible things like clothing, and their family a useful thing like money, rather than diamonds and a fancy meal.

Though I didn’t know exactly what I would find here, I expected to be shocked by anti-feminist practices. I didn’t expect learn to understand polygamy or the dot, why Christian women aren’t free to date Muslim men and vice versa, why infidelity is encouraged, or why a family’s word can annul a marriage. I expected to teach but not to learn, and I was wrong. American women may be the freest in the world, but we ought to know how we got to be that way and what other choices are out there.

In the United States, we live with veritable gender equality. Has something been lost in the process? Should women choose to do the things men do? Do they lose something of their femininity in doing so? In ignoring the differences between men and women – because we do this in the U.S. – do we devalue both sexes? Shouldn’t a politician be able to acknowledge female beauty? Does equality mean sameness? Some of the things I’ve witnessed here make the current fights we have in the U.S. (though not necessarily those of our suffragette ancestors) seem ridiculous. We owe it to other women to stop quibbling about misunderstandings with well-intentioned men and use our equal footing to help our tatas (sisters) catch up.

These are hard, perhaps politically inappropriate ideas for a feminist like me. But I just finished a collection of letters penned by the German writer Rainer Maria Rilke (a book given to me by the feminist English department at Nerinx Hall). Rilke says many remarkable things, but one of the most remarkable is the following passage:

The girl and the woman, in their new, individual unfolding, will only in passing be imitators of male behavior and misbehavior and repeaters of male professions. After the uncertainty of such transitions, it will become obvious that women were going through the abundance and variation of those (often ridiculous) disguises just so that they could purify their own essential nature and wash out the deforming influences of the other sex. Women, in whom life lingers and dwells more immediately, more fruitfully, and more confidently, must surely have become riper and more human in their depths than light, easygoing man, who is not pulled down beneath the surface of life by the weight of any bodily fruit and who, arrogant and hasty, undervalues what he thinks he loves. This humanity of woman, carried in her womb through all her suffering and humiliation, will come to light when she has stripped off the conventions of mere femaleness in the transformations of her outward status, and those men who do not yet feel it approaching will be astonished by it. Someday … someday there will be girls and women whose name will no longer mean the mere opposite of the male, but something in itself something that makes one think not of any complement and limit, but only of life and reality: the female human being.

Agree? Don’t agree?

Benin is stumbling along on the path to women’s empowerment just like we are, and we don’t know yet who will finish first.

Happy International Women’s Day.

Collective Thoughts

A few months ago, someone told me a story about his neighbor. This neighbor had installed solar panels on his home. My acquaintance told me he had long recognized the potential of solar energy capture in Benin, where sunshine is free and plentiful more than half of the year. But he hadn’t known, until he saw his neighbor’s house, that the technology had progressed to the point where it was now affordable to attach solar panels to single-family homes.

He approached his neighbor. They had a lively conversation about the changing world, the preservation of the environment, the price of the solar panels, the investment in efficient energy. My acquaintance asked his neighbor for the name and contact information of the company that had installed the solar panels. His neighbor apologized; he had left the business card at the office. They set another date to talk in greater detail and parted ways. When my acquaintance arrived at his neighbor’s house at the appointed time, the neighbor wasn’t there. Since that time, the neighbor has refused calls and visits from his friend. My acquaintance sighed; he said he knew that would happen.

“But why?” I interjected. He shrugged. The solar panels were his neighbor’s idea, not his own. His neighbor wants to be the only one with solar panels, for others to commend his for his good idea, to be revered for his idea. He wants to ensure he gets the respect he’s owed, my acquaintance said. Sharing the idea would dilute – if not the sunshine – the real reason he installed the panels: to be envied by his neighbors.

At the time, I took the story with a grain of salt. I figured this neighbor had some issues, and I left it at that.

Fast forward.

This week, my classmates and I turned in our 30-page partner papers on democratic transitions. My partner and I met, discussed our theme, did considerable research, agreed on an outline and split the work. He took the first half; I wrote the second. The day before the paper was due, we met to put the parts together. I scanned his half, he scanned mine, and we printed the paper. Later that evening, I read over his section again, in order to prepare myself for our eventual presentation. I realized, after this more careful reading, that it was plagiarized. Not one sentence, or one paragraph, but all fifteen pages, from the first word to the last. Not from the same source, mind you, but a copy-and-paste here and there to glue together the thoughts of various authors. Furthermore, if he had taken a paragraph from Author A, who cited Author B, he inserted a footnote for B (as A had done), but included no reference for A himself. I was chagrined – my name was on the paper! It was, at this point, due in eight hours. I have a lot of confidence in my ability to meet deadlines, but even I can’t rewrite fifteen pages in a foreign language without sources or a computer in a single night. I went to sleep in trepidation.

The next morning, fortunately, after providing some guidance on the subject, the professor gave us another month to correct our work and turn in a final version. I gently approached my partner. I pointed out various passages (tactfully avoiding saying “you plagiarized everything you wrote”). I told him that for me, in my culture, plagiarism is very, very serious, especially for a journalist or a lawyer, and I couldn’t turn in this work. I told him firmly that we would have to redo his section. He listened respectfully, and at the end, he told me that he didn’t quite understand what I meant, but he agreed that work could always be better and he was ready to help me make the work meet my standards.

Then I popped my head in the office of the administrator. “What are the rules about citations here?” I asked casually. “I don’t think I’m quite familiar with them.”

She looked at me, annoyed. “Didn’t you have a class on research methodology?” she asked.

I nodded.

“Well, if you use someone’s words, you use a footnote. Didn’t your professor tell you that?”

“Yes, but it happens so often with my classmates that I didn’t know if I’d understood correctly.”

“Well,” she said. “Work can always be improved.”

So I’ve realized, finally, that “forgetting” a reference, or fifteen pages of references, is viewed like poor writing, misspellings, or incomplete research. It’s just a typo.

My program is counted among the most prestigious in West Africa. It’s where the current Beninese minister of justice earned his master’s degree. The current president of the Constitutional Court is one of our avid supporters. Its establishment was underwritten by UNESCO, and NGOs from Germany and Italy, and a Danish governmental commission, provide its operational budget and small living stipends for the students. More than 250 students apply every year; around thirty are accepted.

I’m not saying that every student plagiarizes. But I’ve been confronted with this problem in four of my five group projects; this 15 pages just happened to be the most flagrant violation of copyright.

So why does it happen?

When you combine a culture of collectivity, a culture that insists that young people their ideas are worthless, a culture colonized (which tells everyone that their ideas are worthless), with a lack of research training, an inability to use the Internet, a library that doesn’t loan books or permit photocopies; when you take my partner, who had two exams the Sunday before our paper was due for classes rescheduled from the year before, this is the recipe for plagiarism.

Back to the solar panels.

Now I can understand the neighbor. I sympathize with him. If everything you say or do or wear or eat or build becomes communal property, for others to criticize or praise or claim as their own, it’s no wonder he wanted to keep the solar panels to himself. It might be the only idea he’s ever gotten credit for.

If a culture agrees that ideas are collective and references superfluous, that’s fine. A lack of credit, though alien to our conception of research, is not a problem in itself. Rather, if you don’t cite, it becomes easy to hid the fact the you are contributing nothing, that you are moving sideways at best in a given field, that you are at best compiling (and badly) the ideas of others. It’s difficult to move forward. But when that’s all that’s expected, or even desired, of you, by professors who did the same thing throughout their education (and look how they turned out; they’re doing well enough for themselves), it’s hard for student or professor to even recognize the problem, much less recognize or welcome a new idea. That is, students are not taught to think. I always dismissed as empty that “critical thinking” prong in the high school and college graduation requirements. But now I know it’s possible to have classes, even at a high level, that pretend to impart real knowledge, without incorporating critical thinking skills. It’s like how I used to play school in the basement with a hand-me-down chalkboard.

Add families that get impatient when their 20-something-year-old isn’t supporting himself, a closed university faculty, a closed Bar, a closed diplomatic corps. The incredible amount of will, confidence, ambition, intelligence, diplomacy, faith, juggling it takes for a Beninese man to even graduate, much less find a job (less than 10 percent of Abomey-Calavi graduates work in a career related to their field of study) is incredible, even incomprehensible for Americans. And to become a leader in the community? To change the system that you just fought tooth and nail to beat? The chances are one in a million, and half that for women.

The saddest thing is that these students are very smart. I’ve had conversations with my plagiarizing friends about philosophy, the rule of law, international relations, sociology… These are the students who have pressured their families to let them stay in school, who scraped together their nickels to make photocopies of textbooks, who read Rousseau and Montesquieu in their spare time, who earned scholarships from foreign NGOs, who each landed one of the 30 coveted spots in this program, and who are studying not accounting or business, but human rights. They want things to change. If they were just given a slip of a chance, they could turn their communities right side up.

On Race and Identity

Yovò, yovò, BONSOIR! / Ça va bien, MERCI!  

I hear this song at least once a day. It sounds innocent, even charming, when a five-year-old in a pink gingham uniform skips by, singing and waving excitedly. 

Yovò means — as you might have guessed — “white person” or “European” in Fon. When someone says yovò to me, they usually just want my attention. (However, as everyone talks to the one white girl in a five-mile radius, the form of interlocution varies pleasantly between yovò and blanche, madame, mademoiselle and coucou cherie.)

But taken more broadly, the word yovò comports an incredibly complex set of ideas depending on who uses it and in what context: it can be deferential or defiant, courteous or aggressive, or simply a means of identification (as in, “bring that soda to the yovò over there”).

Here are a few examples. I bought 100-franc tissues a few days ago with a 500-franc coin (roughly a dollar). As the vendor was digging through her pockets, she sighed, “Yovòs never have exact change.” Last week, as I was negotiating with a motorcycle taxi driver, he grinned and told me that I seemed nice and he wouldn’t add the yovò surcharge. A Beninese man who works at the swimming pool told me he didn’t like to sit in the sun with all the yovòs because his skin was already dark enough. A fisherman at the beach last weekend informed me that he was going to marry a yovò and move to Europe with her. And when a friend of mine introduced me to her grandmother, she explained in Fon that I was a yovò from the United States.

None of these encounters were offensive. But still the word rubs me the wrong way: it makes me sad. In a way, the children’s song forces kids to cling to the country’s colonial past. I was shocked to learn that it is taught in preschool, that children are officially encouraged to sing a subservient little ditty to white people. I asked a friend about it. He explained its utility: the song helps kids (who speak Fon or Gun or Yoruba) remember simple French phrases. Great. But why not replace yovò with monsieur, madame? I asked. He seemed startled by the suggestion. But that’s the way the song goes, he told me.* (And how can I do anything but grin and wave back when a darling little girl sings this song to me? I’m helping her do her homework!)

Maybe getting called a yovò feels uncomfortable because I’m aware of its implications. But maybe it’s just that the speakers frankly acknowledge my race. Like most white Americans, I don’t think much about my race. I definitely don’t think about my skin color (except after I’ve fallen asleep at midday on a Florida beach).

And, like most white Americans, I don’t talk much about my race or anyone else’s. I go out of my way to avoid it. It seems vaguely politically incorrect. If I notice a woman with a pretty blouse, I’m likely to say, “Look at that woman’s blouse, the one with the black hair, rather than “Look at that woman’s blouse, the black woman.” Like I can become literally colorblind by sheer force of will (which begs the question: what is the point of diversifying workplaces and schools if no one actually talks about diversity?).

Here, on the other hand, I have to think about race, and for the first time, I define myself as the other. Maybe this is the experience of American minorities, as least those who struggle with their identities. I’m surrounded by people of a different race, many of whom stare at me curiously and call out to me with a word that recalls my skin tone. It’s not like western Europe, where if I just avoid tennis shoes and T-shirts and keep my mouth shut, other people on the street might think I’m German or French or Italian. The white woman with whom I’m staying is French by birth but Beninese by marriage. After sixteen years and citizenship, she’s still considered a tourist outside her own neighborhood. 

If it were only a difference in “tan” (oh, Silvio Berlusconi), reconciling my conceptions of myself would be easy. Instead, skin color is bound up with culture, nationality, and language, and most of all, the ugly stories of slavery and colonization. To many Beninese, white skin equals wealth and power. That’s why street vendors flock to me and why drugstores sell lightening creams, both relatively futile ideas. It’s why a boat captain told my Beninese friend that the price for a lake tour was 8,000 francs, but if my friend wanted to tell me a higher price and skim off the top, the boat captain would pocket the money and give it back later. It’s why there’s a popular (and really catchy) Ivoirian song called Couper décaler, whose connotation is steal a little from rich Europeans and shift that wealth back to your African brothers.

The more self-righteously indignant I feel (“I’m just a student! I’m not made of money! My life’s not perfect either!”), the less I can justify those feelings. Because, in a way, they’re wrong. At home, when I complain about being broke, I’m not really broke: I could put a purchase on my credit card, or take out an emergency loan, or borrow money from someone else, or take up another job, or sell my old clothes on eBay. None of those options is available here. Personal poverty is never the problem in a stagnant economy; it’s societal poverty. No one has money to help you fix your computer, start a business or take night classes. Furthermore, when someone actually finds a well-paying, stable job, they sometimes get poorer because their unemployed brothers, cousins, aunts and neighbors (who fed them or let them sleep in a backroom or did their hair for free or sold them beer on loan) now expect to be supported too.

In a global economy of which Africa counts for only 2.6 percent — the entire continent! — is it any wonder that the concepts of race and wealth get tangled? People here wonder: they ask me (in admittedly more polite ways) why Americans are unhappy, consumption-crazed, self-interested, soulless creatures who live in isolation from their families**. Some Africans claim that they’re chronically unhappy and in the same breath that their way of life has the monopoly on happiness. For me, this is the saddest byproduct of the intersection between colonization and globalization: whole generations of African apologists simultaneously trying to reclaim, justify and improve their traditional ways of life.

I ask myself questions a billion times a day, give or take. Sometimes my questions have simple, albeit unknown, answers (Why are all the waitresses in Godomey from Togo? Why is spaghetti served with eggs? Why are the world’s DVDs divided into five incompatible regions that make it impossible for me to play movies on my computer?) but sometimes a complete response would require a superhuman understanding of history and identity (Why is Benin a bona fide multiparty democracy when its neighbors — Gabon, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea — make a sham of elective government? Why do I feel guilty watching a documentary about apartheid with a couple dozen black Africans? How can something as universal as time be perceived differently here?). And the biggest question of all never goes away: How would the story of Africa have been different if we’d left it alone?

* And that’s the problem. Here, things go the way they go because that’s the way they go. There is literally no reason. That’s why my classes start thirty minutes late, that’s why the roadwork in Calavi won’t be done for two more years, and that’s why I spent seven hours today listening to a tenured professor dictate class notes from printed pages. It’s why we spend more time in class talking about what we’re going to talk about than actually talking about it (much less analyzing or discussing or building on it) and why my group members sometimes don’t show up to our scheduled meeting times. It’s why not a single person, besides the other Rotary scholar, has finished his or her thesis from last year’s class (and why the administration simultaneously chastises them and asks them why they’re in such a hurry). It’s why the professors charged with overseeing these theses take three months to give back a copy on which they’ve written, “Rethink” and nothing else. It’s why zem drivers leave their motors running while they try to convince their customer to pay more to offset the rising cost of gasoline. It’s why there are thousands of half-finished houses on half-finished streets that have become done just because it’s been a decade since anyone worked on them and now everyone’s used to the perpetual puddle, the chicken wire or the heap of scrap metal and now they just go around. It’s not that time is priceless here; it’s valueless. 

** Patiently, I explain that this is not true, that just like the media portrayals of Africans are not always accurate, neither are those of Americans. But when I hear, as I actually did today, an American say to a German, “Oh yeah, I forgot, I did get a new iPod for my birthday. … No, I forgot because I haven’t opened it. … Yeah, I already have two. … Yeah, I’m going to return it. … No, because this one’s not big enough,” it’s hard to stick up for my compatriots. Or myself.

Qui sait l’avenir

Who knows the future? A clunky yellow taxi bumped past today with that piece of wisdom painted on the driver’s door.

Now, I wouldn’t generally take a taxi whose driver espoused that particular view.

Maybe I’ll get you to your destination. Or maybe we’ll crash. Maybe I’ll double the rate upon arrival. Qui sait l’avenir.

But it was a timely reminder of why I came to Calavi: to learn, to explore, to live, to assimilate, to discuss, to absorb, to share, to be — because qui sait l’avenir? Who knows when or if another chance like this will come along?

That’s not all, though. More importantly, qui sait l’avenir embodies a subtle kind of patience, a contentment, a sangfroid, that, in general, Americans are not known for, and that I in particular have eschewed.

Patience

Late last Thursday afternoon, I finally scrambled out of the Cotonou airport, full of ungrammatical apologies for the Rotarians because my flight was more than (two days and) three hours late. But I never got the chance to wow everyone with my repertoire of regrets. There wasn’t even the barest hint that anyone had been bothered. Qui sait l’avenir.

A few days later, Rotaract member Angelo kindly loaded me onto the back of his motorcycle, took me to downtown Cotonou, and helped me buy a cell phone. On the way back, I inquired about buying minutes for the phone. He was obliging, but seemed surprised that I would want to do it the same day. My days of multipage to-do list seem both geographically and stylistically very far away.

I could regale you, chers lecteurs, with more examples of Beninese serenity, but I’m not sure that would reinforce the point. It’s more the attitude that allows one to stand on a porch for hours and watch curtains of rain turn to rivulets in the dirt roads; to sit on a curb at noon with the woman selling limes and wait for the sun to sink a little in the sky; to be truly hospitable without keeping score; to listen conscientiously while every person has a chance to speak at a meeting (which makes for four-hour meetings) but also to quibble about the cost of a taxi ride ad nauseum while one’s motorcycle eats up liters of gas.

Connections

I brought just one English-language book with me. As I knew I would have limited space in my carryon luggage, I wanted to choose a book to last me a while. I picked Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter. I hesitate to characterize it; in the prologue to the new edition, Hofstadter chastises his reviewers for consistently misstating the book’s theme. But it’s a Pulitzer-Prize-winning nonfiction book that, like me, strives to show that there are overarching themes that connect academic disciplines we generally think of as distinct.

It’s sort of like this: Say I want to explain what qom is. I have two choices: I can explain it independently by listing some of its features (cream-colored, sticky, edible, bland, made of corn) or interdependently by analogizing it to something you’re familiar with (like an uncooked hush puppy or a ball of cornbread dough). (Qom is really good dipped in a spicy, tomato-based fish sauce.)

Generally, experts are preoccupied with the tiniest details of their field, which they must describe with scrupulous precision; therefore they choose to describe things independently. That’s why each academic discipline has jargon the rest of us don’t recognize (voir dire, ETOH, isomorphism, etc.). But Hofstadter took the other route, describing logic in terms of music, art in terms of geometry, linguistics in terms of computer programming. There are other authors who have done this, of course, but Hofstadter stands apart because he delves into details, and still shows that the processes of understanding and appreciating language, music, art, literature and mathematics are largely the same. It seems that his ultimate goal is to get to what intelligence means. (I’ve still read less than half.)

Hofstadter concludes — as have many others — that intelligence is, in part, the process of changing how one learns. That’s why no computer has yet to pass the Türing test: computers are programmable. They can complete unthinkably complex tasks, but their abilities end there. They can learn only insofar as we program them to do so.

Now, what does this have to do with Benin?

Intelligence in Calavi

I don’t want to be an automaton here.

In order to be an intelligent being in Calavi, I have to reprogram myself to learn things I thought I already knew. For example, I have to recognize that I no longer know how to cross the street. Crossing the street is sort of like the video game Frogger, if it had bumpy clay roads, no lanes, and you threw in — for good measure — a few dump trucks, a veritable fleet of motorcycle taxis, some goats, and throngs of unflappable women with towering pyramids of pineapples on their heads (or carrots, limes, coconuts, sunglasses, pens, blankets, bottles of water, radios, suitcases, bundles of sticks, loaves of bread, oranges, pots of stew, jars of gasoline, or clothing racks). I have learned to hold someone’s hand when I cross the street, especially at night, when the electricity s’est coupée and some vehicles have no headlights.

I also have to make my own connections, ferreting out the bits and pieces I have in common with people here: Jehovah’s Witnesses, gesticulating men on Bluetooths driving black-and-silver H2s, Guinness billboards, Obama campaign posters, and the muffin joke. (Ahh, the stuff of true universality.)

Hofstadter compares locating the gene(s) that shaped his nose to pinpointing the note(s) that contain the emotion of a piece of music. I imagine finding a way to adopt Beninese patience is a similar pursuit. Right now, not only do I not know how to live like this, I don’t even know how one might try. As I am not a deterministic computer, I still might learn wrong, or not at all. But that’s the whole point, I think: Qui sait l’avenir?

P.S. There is one thing, chers lecteurs, that I do know about the future: I will get more bug bites. I count 49 on my legs and feet alone. I sleep under a mosquito net; I practically bathe in bug spray; I keep the fans on, to no avail. Bugs love me.