Limbo

I was supposed to wake up in India this morning.  Probably in a strange hotel; in the middle of a hot, noisy city; feeling jet lagged and lonely after nearly 24 hours of solo travel.  Instead, I woke up in my own bed, in our air-conditioned, quiet apartment, talking with my husband about puppies (verdict: cute) and whether or not we’ll go to a pool party this afternoon (verdict: yes).  Is it weird that I have mixed feelings about this change in plans?

Due to delays in processing my visa (see the part about “Indian Bureaucracy” below), my trip to India has been delayed indefinitely.  On one hand, I feel like I’ve been given an incredible gift– more time to spend with James and our friends, time that always seems to be in short supply.  On the other, I was really excited about the possibility of waking up in India this morning, and beginning another summer of adventure (and blogging!).  Luckily, it’s not up to me to choose between these two amazing scenarios.  And this visa experience has made me realize that the cultural immersion I’ve been looking forward to has actually already begun.

It seems fitting that my first experience with India involves learning to be patient with bureaucracy.  As my daily requests for the status of my visa are met with, “It’s not ready yet. Check back tomorrow.”, I’ve found this assessment of Indian bureaucracy quite interesting:

“India has the most complex and bogged-down bureaucracy in the world. One thing that keeps it going is the fact that planned inefficiency allows more people to have jobs…Efficiency is actually regarded as being antisocial in many contexts, especially in the government.”

Whether I make it to India or not, this may be a recurring theme for me this summer.

In the meantime, I’ll be hanging out in Atlanta and in limbo.  While I’m here, I thought I’d reflect on some of the amazing things that have happened recently.  Here are my top five, in chronological order:

1. We got a KitchenAid with a pasta making attachment!

2. We got married!

3. We had an amazing honeymoon in Asheville, NC!

4. I finished grad school (except for that whole India internship thing)!

5. James is headed back to our old neighborhood in Seattle this summer for the Clarion West 2012 Writers Workshop (“for people who are serious about writing”).  I’m sure some great new fiction will come out of his time there, so stay tuned!

So, in retrospect, maybe a little India visa disappointment isn’t the worst thing in the world.

Fall Recap!

Temperatures in Atlanta are gradually dropping below 65 degrees, which means that winter is here, and we’re thinking back on the wonderful fall that we’ve had.  We got our first glimpse of the North Georgia mountains:

complete with bear sighting! (for real…I spotted a bear cub in a tree, but this was the only documentation we got):

went to our first Braves game:

and introduced our parents for the first time, with a wonderful visit to Red Top Mountain:

Miranda wins a photo contest!

Miranda’s graduate program recently held a photo contest for students.  The theme of the contest was “My Vantage Point,” and the guidelines were straightforward: submit a picture from your summer internship abroad in which you don’t appear.  Miranda submitted a picture she took in Collines, Benin, while doing field work on behalf of CARE.

The photo submissions were evaluated by a team of three impartial judges: two Emory professors and a professional photographer.  Last night, at a reception for new students, the results were announced: Miranda took first prize!  She won a round-trip plane ticket to anywhere in North America, two hundred dollars cash, and an extra dollop of pride from her already-proud fiance.

The blue-ribbon photo:

Pre-niversary

My homecoming from Benin has been nothing short of, well, awesome.  Twenty-four hours of travel between Cotonou and Atlanta added to the weariness of the 10 week journey, but we have been having lots of rejuvenating adventures over the past few weeks.

We headed straight to Colorado, for a week full of good food and drink with family…

We also had so much fun playing with Cody and Imana in Fort Collins…

And in the midst of returning to school, work, and reuniting with friends in Atlanta, we celebrated our pre-niversary with a camping and canoeing trip to beautiful Fort Yargo State Park.  Yep–we’re getting married in exactly 6 months, and looking to celebrate as much as possible along the way!

Benin, the Musical

I spent the past week back “in the field,” in the same region of central Benin that I visited a month ago.  One of the interesting things about field work in a country like Benin is that you generally have no idea what is going on around you at all times.  Everything happens in either Fon or Idatcha, two of the many languages spoken in Benin, neither of which I speak or understand.  So, over the course of numerous meetings, trainings, and focus groups, I found myself grasping for anything that contained even the smallest morsel of familiarity and trying to relate it to something from my own life.  This is, of course, how cross-cultural misunderstandings are born.

Because I was traveling with my supervisor and my supervisor’s supervisor, we got a lot of special attention in the villages.  In a previous post, I mentioned the “welcome songs” that people sing when visitors arrive in their village.  In honor of my supervisors, the amount of singing and cheering increased exponentially, to the point that this visit to the field felt more like spending four days inside a musical than like spending four days conducting research.  I loved it.

While it would be a serious cross-cultural misunderstanding to assume that the people we met had written and produced a musical in honor of our visit, my nonexistent Fon and Idatcha comprehension skills prevent me from telling you what actually did happen during my trip.  So, here are a few excerpts from “Benin, the Musical”, with sincerest respect and thanks to our hosts for sharing their culture.

“Bonjour, Bonne Arrivée!” means hello and welcome.  It was raining, so we had to move inside, but felt welcomed none the less.

No matter how many times my supervisors asked them to stop, these two women’s groups kept breaking into song in the middle of our meeting.

When asked for his feedback about the project, this man jumped up and started singing.  Everyone else chimed in during the chorus (?).  I’m pretty sure he was singing the Fon version of “Trouble” from The Music Man.

I’m headed home this week, and I hope James & my family have taken note of the fact that I’m rather accustomed to being greeted in song.

 

And I got a pretty good deal on some music, too…

I’m no world traveler, but it seems that the one thing that you can expect without fail when traveling in a place like Benin is that nothing will ever go as you expect it to go.  Like today, when we showed up at work to discover that the President of Benin extended yesterday’s Beninese Independence Day celebration for a second day, which meant that no one was at the office to let us in!

Or like yesterday, when we sat down at a restaurant but were never asked what we wanted to order–they just brought us what they wanted us to eat for lunch an hour later (which was well was worth the wait and the uncertainty!).

But if you expect the unexpected, things here will go exactly as you expect them to go.  We recently visited Dantokpa, Benin’s largest market and, I believe, the largest market in West Africa.  It covers 20 hectares and accounts for about $2.25 million dollars in (primarily small transactions) a day.  Knowing this, we were expecting to spend a hot, confusing afternoon in a chaotic, crowded market, which is exactly what happened.

It’s impossible to accurately convey the Dantokpa experience in words or pictures.  The rows of stalls go on forever, separated by winding alleyways and streets crowded with thousands and thousands of people.  I could barely capture a small sliver of of the market in this picture.

You can buy anything and everything there, as long as you’re as sweetly aggressive as the vendors.  In the streets of Cotonou, we are addressed as “yovo, yovo” (white person), but in Dantokpa it is, “cherie, cherie” (darling) as they attempt to entice you to “just look” at whatever they are selling–secondhand clothing, shoes, fabric, jewelry, toothpaste, school supplies, household goods, etc.  This place is a seriously surreal version of Walmart on steroids, and you have to be prepared for some serious bargaining if you’re going to walk out of there with anything at a decent price.

We wandered through the market for hours, dodging aggressive vendors. fast moving vehicles, and hard-to-tolerate smells of exhaust fumes and fresh meat.  Since it’s impossible to walk in a straight line there, we quickly found ourselves quite turned around.  People in Benin are notorious for giving non-committal directions like, “yeah, it’s just over that way….”, and there are (apparently) nightly “Nigerian pirate attacks” at the market.  These two semi-facts were all I had in mind as I pushed my way back and forth down the same crowded alleyway, quickly becoming concerned at my potential inability to make my way back out of Dantokpa’s depths.

But, expecting the unexpected, I could hardly be surprised when I heard a quiet voice saying my name over my shoulder.   I turned to see a coworker behind me, one of the 7(?) people I know in Benin, who stumbled upon us just in time to help get us back on track before the pirates arrived.

Ouidah

While you might not be considering a trip to Benin for your next vacation, the country does have a few things to offer tourists.  I’ve been slow to explore the tourist attractions here, as I find it takes some extra energy to gear up for a day of high prices, bargaining (often more on principle than out of necessity), and lengthy museum tours given in French.

Benin’s most noteworthy tourism site, as far as I can tell, is Ouidah, a small waterfront town about an hour from Cotonou.  Ouidah is known for being the point from which slaves were extracted from the Kingdom of Dahomey (which encompassed Benin, the center of the Kingdom, as well as Nigeria, Niger, Burkina Faso, and Togo).  Ouidah is also known for being the center of Vodun culture, traditional religion that, according to the Beninese I’ve spoken with, has evolved into voodoo.  I’ve hardly learned enough about Beninese history and culture to delve into a deep account of Ouidah, the Kingdom of Dahomey, slavery or Vodun, but here is a bit about what tourists can do and see in Ouidah.

We started our day at the Temple of Pythons.  Apparently pythons are sacred in voodoo culture, to the point that people scar their faces to match the markings on a python’s face.  Or maybe just to the point that it costs a tourist like me $4 to visit the Temple AND get a picture taken with a python wrapped around her neck.

We then walked the 2+ mile “Route d’Esclaves” (Slave Route), which begins in the center of Ouidah (where slaves were collected and auctioned off) and ends on the beach at the elaborately reconstructed “Point of No Return” where purchased slaves were packed onto ships and sent to places like our current home, Georgia.

I feel fortunate to be able to say that this was my second visit to a slave history site in Africa (the first was Gorée Island in Senegal), and I am amazed at the difference between the two sites.  Gorée was really somber and heart wrenching–the actual site was small, dark, confined, with sad messages written all over the walls–truly evoking what I feel when I think of slavery and the slave trade.

The historical tourism in Ouidah, though, felt surprisingly like a nice peaceful walk through a quiet waterfront town.

From both sites, though, I came away with a feeling of gratitude for the opportunity to learn about this important era in history.  While it’s a rare opportunity to learn about the histories of countries like Benin and Senegal, it’s an even rarer opportunity to learn about the history of my own country, and the ways in which our pasts (and presents) are deeply intertwined.

La, Indeed

It’s amazing how quickly life in Cotonou has become routine and, at times, mundane.  After just 6 weeks, I’m no longer taken aback by the kinds of things that struck me as bizarre or intriguing when I first arrived, such as the contrast between our house, and those of our neighbors.

Instead, I’m much more focused on work-related things, like this spreadsheet I use to analyze the data I collected during my trip to the field.

I often find myself only semi-alert during the few minutes a day that don’t involve looking at a spreadsheet.  While the details to observe during a simple taxi ride to and from the office used to be engrossing, I have noticed that, some days, I barely even register my surroundings as I make my way through the city.

Luckily, the style of communication in Benin has a funny way of reminding me that this once-strange environment is nowhere near as mundane as my brain might want to pretend.  Throughout the day, the Beninese have a habit of asking (while looking directly at you) “Miranda, tu es la?” Are you here? While it’s really just a way of saying “hey”, I find it oddly endearing that, by a more literal interpretation of the colloquialism, the Beninese choose to demonstrate an ongoing interest in one another’s level of present-ness.

This expression has begun to make its way into my subconscious.  I wake up asking myself, “Miranda, tu es la?” as a reminder to take note of my surroundings–the loud dance music that our neighbors play outside my window each morning, the fresh mango I eat for breakfast, the string of melodious greetings and well wishes that are exchanged with each encounter throughout the day.  As I take note of these things, I am reminded that I am still indeed “here”, and that my surroundings and experiences still indeed strange and striking, no matter how routine the days or weeks may feel on the surface.

It's hard not to notice Barack Obama's presence *everywhere* in Cotonou!

Get your Master’s Degree, Become a Wizard

My final residency at the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers is done and dusted.  I taught a class, attended classes, sat on thesis committees, and gave a reading.  It was a busy ten days, as they always are.  This time around, I graduated, and left with one of these:

Warren Wilson College doesn’t do cap-and-gown graduations.  You wear what you have on, and they give you a spiffy walking stick.  A local artist polishes the sticks and ties feathers and flowers to them, and these enhanced sticks are given to graduates, symbolizing our community leader status.

“Community leadership” is a central tenant of Warren Wilson College.  Their undergraduate curriculum has a strong emphasis on service, and students work on campus all four years.  As an outsider, there have been times when I was frustrated to be sorting out an error in my loan disbursement with a polite but under-trained freshman staffing the financial aid office by himself, but there seem to be a lot of cool aspects to WWC’s service-based curriculum.  Most of the food in the cafeteria is grown and harvested on campus, and so a great deal of the work students perform is on the campus farm.  I wouldn’t call the cafeteria food outstanding, but it’s a five-star restaurant compared to the NC State cafeteria, and it’s fun to see 18-year-olds get excited about serving the food they grew themselves.

It was even more fun to give a dramatic reading of my fiction and be handed a Gandalf staff in reward.

Rocky Hills and Mango Trees

As you can probably imagine, it’s rather difficult to learn about the realities of “international development work” while sitting in front of your computer in a crowded office for 10+ hours a day.  After 4 weeks of office work, I finally got the opportunity to visit the beautiful Collines region of central Benin.  My departure from Cotonou was accompanied by a wave of nausea, induced by the fact that everyone in the city apparently decided to burn their trash outside on the same day.  The nausea only grew during the seven hour car ride spent weaving back and forth between overturned trucks on the main route through Benin, which is more “pothole” than “highway”, and was augmented further while the staff riding with me in the car enjoyed a snack of snails which they purchased in bags on the side of the road.

Waste Disposal in Cotonou

Beautiful Collines

When we arrived in our first village, called Tchogodo, any remaining nausea melted away completely, replaced by the warm welcome that we received as we pulled up to the entrance of the village.  For those of you who haven’t visited rural Africa, it’s important to know that countryside here is populated with some of the most generous people you could ever meet.  People who would give up a whole day working in their fields just to sit and talk with you, even though every minute in the fields is extraordinarily precious because they barely produce enough food to live off of throughout the year. People who would wait at the entrance of their village to greet a complete stranger by singing a welcome song, even though that stranger can’t speak or understand a single word in their language.

Welcome Song in Baagan-Doxo

I spent the week interviewing women in 8 villages about food and nutrition, in the hopes that the organization I’m working with can some day establish a program in the region that ensures that women and children have access to quality, nutritious food.  Because of the complexity of international development work, it will undoubtedly be quite a while before such a program is realized.  Thus, with each interview, I became increasingly cognizant of the fact that the women I was speaking to were helping me much more than I was helping them.  This unfortunate reality of development work sharply materialized each time a woman sat down in front of me and said, “No, I don’t have enough food to eat, and neither do my children, and no one in my community has enough to be able to help me.  What can you do to help?”  or “My baby has a fever all the time, and I can’t afford any medicine.  What should I do?”

In those moments, which occurred frequently and uncomfortably, I found myself at a complete loss for what to say or even how to feel.  It’s never, ever okay to hear someone tell you that they don’t have enough food to eat and to know that there is absolutely nothing you can do in that moment to provide them with the kind of long term solution that they are looking for.  But their questions were definitely an appropriate response to my presence there.  I came to the villages to take–to take information, to take pictures, to take time away from the things they need to do the get by on a daily basis, and I came with absolutely nothing tangible to offer them in return.

So, with just one whirlwind tour of central Benin under my belt, I am even more certain that I am the one benefiting the most from the work that I’m doing here.  While it’s nice to be back in our comfortable, air conditioned house in Cotonou,  I continue to dream of afternoons spent sitting under mango trees, talking with women about their lives and their families, negotiating translations through 2, 3, or 4 different languages, all the while taking furious notes in the hopes that something I write down might turn out to be useful to someone else down the road.