THANKSGIVING

I apologize in advance for this e-mail. I don't know when I am going to get to the internet next so I wanted to get this out before it became irrelevant. P.S. It's extremely sappy and was written while still intoxicated by too much weird food and and intense missing of family and friends. If you want to skip the corn (as in, corny) I suggest not reading the last paragraph which is mainly addressed for those aforementioned friends and family. Other bits are kind of funny, full of poignant self-discovery and just fact-filled story telling for those with enough curiosity to want to read it. Let me tell you about my Thanksgiving. In the morning I prepared a sweet potato casserole; two actually, because I didn't know how much one and half kilos of sweet potatoes really was. I pressed some coffee (the addiction that no ocean nor disparity of national incomes could kill) and spent two hours going through the motions of figuring how just how to mash a kilo and a half of sweet potatoes with just one dinky African-made fork and how to do all the measurements with no actual measuring cups or spoons. Then came the elusive oven temperature game. I have a big pot with some old tuna cans and a bunch of sand at the bottom that has been used for so long the lid is warped and it about as effective as an oven that constantly has its door ajar, no rack and no temperature gauge would be – which is to say, not very. Despite all that messing around I had time to spare (I woke up around 7am to get started and boiled the potatoes the night before to save time) and so I took a zem to Aplahoué to pick up some packages that awaited me. I figured that since the post office opened at 8:00am I would have a chance it was open by the time I got there at 9:30am. I was wrong. The doors were shut and locked and there was no note on the door. As I was fuming, baffled at how a servant of the public could so consistently cease to be present during the known hours of the bureau's operation, a man walked around the corner, saw the door shut, gave a barely perceivable shrug of the shoulders and turned to walk away. I could not stand the apathy; the acceptance(?) that this was just the way things worked and that businesses and consumers could not rely upon their government offices to be open during consistently scheduled hours. I was furious. I know what the Peace Corps preaches: if it ain't broke, don't fix it, but this was too much. In retrospect, I shouldn't have accosted him and yelled at the ladies across the street with questions about why the Beninese were so accepting of these unreliabilities? In retrospect, I should have taken note of how calm and composed and unaffected he was. The building was closed. There was nothing he could change about that, so why pitch a fit – my method of dealing with it. In retrospect, perhaps my way of dealing with the world is not the best; why did I think it was better to encourage the passerby to become angry at the situation instead of turning it around and taking a lesson from him that I can't change what was taking place and allowing myself to become upset because of it, as powerful as I imagine I can be, wasn't going to magically open the bureau. So it was a visionary moment for me; which are fortunately becoming increasingly more frequent. I was still angry, however, that I had paid 300 francs to basically go on a little morning joyride; but, it was a nice ride although perhaps not worth the 300f. Maybe worth 150f, but certainly not 300f. I will never be complacent about wasting money. I returned to my house and then packed for my trip to Lobogo. Aaron and Tom showed up and we sat around for a period of time after which we finally set off for our Thanksgiving in Bennyland. The taxi ride was insignificant though I did get in a great shouting match with the chauffeur concerning the suffocation of his passengers in back. (a little aside: contrary to what this e-mail might imply, I don't spend my days screaming and becoming angry with people, but I do quite frequently have heated discussions with certain classes of people such as marché mamas, chauffeurs and zemidjans: a practice which is not only an acceptable form of discussion in Adja-land, but is encouraged by many and even applauded when performed by a white female – very entertaining to boot). Upon arrival in Zoungbonou (remember this from the last time?) we sought out some decent motorbikes for the long journey through red dirt. It took some persuading but finally my zem driver agreed that 700f was an acceptable price to pay; which then took another 20 minutes of convincing for the other two zem driver and the four others who weren't driving but came over to argue anyway. At one point a zem driver told me that because I was white I should be paying the higher price to which I wagged a very serious "no, no, no" finger and chased him back to his perch where the rest of the zemi drivers were laughing hysterically. That was the end of that discussion and we all took off in a cloud of red dust. Not quite the "Mod Squad" but enough so that I felt cool when I put my Ray Bans back on. We arrived at Ryan's house just in time for the final moments of our dinners' lives. In a strange flourish of protest my zem driver refused to give me back the correct change and instead only gave me 200f for my 1000f bill – evidently he was not okay with our price. I extracted the remaining 100f without violence, I'm not saying I didn't threaten, and went to the side of the house where the first chicken had already met its demise. Ryan had purchased two chickens and two pintards for the princely sum of 16mille francs. I have to admit, I always sort of knew what it meant to run around like a chicken with its head cut off, but I had never really before witnessed this expression in action. Thanks to Africa, I am no longer a stranger to chicken death but normally it is done with a firm grip on the chicken and a slow, methodic cutting and draining. Ryan, however, preferred the more dramatic exit and used a machete and not so much gripping as grasping (I'll leave you to decipher what I mean by differentiating the two). Tom held the chicken down, but that was pointless. No sooner had the machete blade made contact with the earth on the other side of the chicken's neck than Tom's hand came up to protect his face from the flailing, flying, cartwheeling headless chicken. I mean, this thing took off into the sky – without a head!! It was awesome. Truly something to experience. I sincerely suggest every one of you either kill a chicken in this manner yourself, but if not at least watch another brave soul perform the act (you all have the Discovery Channel right?). If I ever ran around like that I would be extremely fit and will forever more consider it the highest compliment should someone tell me that I resemble this fantastic display of agility, athletic talent and determination to persist after death. So we killed all the chickens and the pintards (well, I watched with Liz and Aaron and Jesse) and all stood around in a huddle while Ryan and Tom disemboweled the meal. It was fascinating and there were lots of oohs and aahs and ugghs coming from the white people in the huddle while the other 85% of the huddle were strangely calm and unresponsive; they'd seen this all before, in fact, just the night before. We all came inside and watched the football games I had been sent (THANK YOU!) and it was almost like real Thanksgiving. After we watched the Bears come back in a slightly shocking victory over the Packers (yea, I'm pretty far behind) we all went out to the local bar: The Bel Air. On the way we stopped to visit Ryan's garden which was completley destroyed during his visit up north for four weeks. They tore down his palm branch wall; tore up his lettuce plants; ripped through his bean teepee and even dug up from the ground the basine he was using for a water hold. It was like visiting a vegetable cemetery that was victim to a very serious grave robbing. Very depressing and disheartening. I hope the same fate does not befall my garden; but his is hidden back into a forest-type area and mine is right on the road so should any little pagailleurs pagaille my garden they wil be witnessed and either stopped or turned in for punishment when I return. At the bar we finally got down to some Thanksgiving business with some beers and football. Half the town showed up to play catch with us as we sat around and soaked up the fading sunlight. It was picturesque and magical; I got to speak to some family and it was a bittersweet moment. Here I was, sitting in rickety plastic chairs at a rusted off-centered table basking in the oncoming twilight with some of friends, drinking some mediocre $1 beer and watching as thirty Africans ranging in age from 2 to 45 cried out "Ici! Ici!" (Here! Here!) for the ball and laughed as they missed and threw back awkwardly. Some of them were really good and I wondered if they had practiced before with some former volunteers' ball or if there really existed a genetic predisposition to incredible football skills. The world may never know; or at least I'll leave it to some curious health volunteer with an obsession with gene traits. After all the excitement finally came the eating. I'm used to the early Thanksgiving dinner where the food starts around 12 and you proceed to simultaneously digest while ingesting more and more throughout the day and probably finish up around 9:30pm; about the time we here sat down to a dinner of banana bread, popcorn, potato wedges, market bread, casserole and fried chicken/pintard with spicy barbejus (pronounced "Barbie Jew"). SHOCKINGLY the casseroles came out fairly well; especially considering I was missing one ingredient and added another. I can't say it was the best Thanksgiving I've ever had, but I can say with certainty it wasn't as bad as I had expected and could have been a lot worse considering the circumstances. I am thankful to have the courage and support of friends and family to come to Africa and have it all the same. Thank you all for reading these. It gives me a bit of purpose in writing them to know I have a bit of an audience. I hope the holiday season finds you all well and in good spirits. It really can be much worse so please look around at your wealth of family, friends and comforts and know that you are truly blessed just to be born an American.I'm done preaching. I just wanted to write that I am thankful for knowing every one of you.