AMERICAN AMBASSADOR IN HOUEDOGLI

December 20, 2007

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season! I tried to send out text messages so hopefully at least of a few of you got them! All I have to say is that I hope 2008 is as interesting, if not more than 2007 was (and that it passes quickly? Can I say that?).

This e-mail is from a few days before Christmas, hence the dating, and tells just à little funny story about something I wish I could say didn’t happen to often, but then I would be lying. I hope you enjoy reading this as much I enjoy knowing my “meetings” are at least 50times more exciting than your real-life job ones are!

AMERICAN AMBASSADOR IN HOUEDOGLI

Last Friday a few of my peace corps buddies and I all met up in a town called Houedogli (pronounced whuh-doh-glee) to celebrate the opening of a few new buildings that house the tools and equipment the town’s women’s group uses in their composting business. A former volunteer in a nearby village had written the grant to the US Embassy for the funding. Astonishingly, however, Peace Corps wasn’t officially invited by the Ambassador’s office, hmm… we found out and showed up anyway (we always find the free sodas and snacks), and I must say I am glad we did.

Undecided on when the actual ceremony was Liz and I finally were able to agree on 10:30 when Aaron came by the house on his bike. He continued on his bike while Liz and I went to argue with zems for prices to get a ride. We arrived at around 10:45 and the women were already singing and banging their metal plates together. At least one hundred kids were surrounding the awkward seating arrangement that had been placed, not very strategically for viewing purposes, underneath a huge, hollow tree in the center of town. We joined Aaron and Sheena (an Environment volunteer posted in Klouekanmey) and took our places off to the side, but still under the shade, on a nice bench in full frontal view of everyone.

We sat and waited. We waited and sat. Sat we did while Kantos, the organizer and former political prisoner, arranged and rearranged the hundred or so school children and elderly along the road to our sitting station. First all in a circle, then two rows alongside the road, then move back into a semicircle with all the goods on display and finally, with the American flag hung haphazardly and almost forbiddingly upside down in the big tree, back into two flanking lines. We sat and enjoyed, then slowly fumed inside. She was the AMERICAN Ambassador – there is no excuse for being more than two hours late, even if she is “bien integre”. Finally came our turn to be rearranged because we just weren’t quite enough in view. Benches are terribly uncomfortable, but they are a lot more comfortable when you can slouch out of sight in stead of the rigid-backed chairs to which we were then forcefully relocated. Finally, with the women singing, the children staring at us in two lines, the men confused and unanimated, the cameras in full view-blocking position, the paper table cloth taped down and the flags all hung – full pomp set – and the motorcade began. Three Landcruisers glided through the display of pride and attention to detail as through a rural backroad in Africa, which it was, but they could have tried to be enthusiastic in their entrance.

After all the minions and go-fers were seated the boring speeches commenced. For every Beninese event there is a required MC (sometimes more than one, which just infuriates the average electronically-aware all the more) who cracks terrible jokes in all sorts of different languages for the crowd’s multiplicity. I’ll spare you the actual dialogue I memorized but just imagine each and every speaker (and everyone sitting at the table is considered a speaker whether they’re the chauffeur or the Captain of the Gendarme) beginning with an introduction of his person and then a thank you of every single other person at the table and a generalized thank you to all of us in the audience. This means you hear “Madame Representant des Etats-Unis de l’Amerique” at least five times and tack on the long-winded titles of all the others at the table and you have a very long commencement to sit through. By the time it was the Ambassador’s turn to speak I was doubled over in my torture chair ready to fall face-first into the red dirt below. I had forgotten, luckily, the ceremonial drive-by shooting the Beninese love so much. I hear it every weekend for the funeral processions, but I had never imagined they would do one here, right next to all of us under that great big tree. And such randomness! Instead of waiting for the ending with a flourish, they would shoot of these loud bombs right in the middle of someone’s speech and no matter how many times you tell yourself ‘it’s coming, don’t jump’ the uncertainty of when and the sheer power of the blast caused me to jump every single time. I don’t know how the speakers last through it all.

Finally, FINALLY! The Ambassador was done speaking (her speech required a separate translator after every single line so I’m pretty sure no one got the message) and the microphone was passed on to some dude on her left. At approximately three lines into his introduction a gift from God fell from the skies. Well, rather, it was a rotten apple that came crashing down from that glorious tree and right onto the table directly in front of the Ambassador. Now, it was just an ordinary rotten apple right? Given up on life in the tree and ready to rest down below, but from the reaction of the crowd and Kantos you would have imagined it was both the most humiliating and terrifying event to ever take place in this town – as if someone had attempted to assassinate the Ambassador with an apple! Inspired! No one saw it coming! But alas, the mark was missed. Kantos seized the microphone and poured his apologizes and explanations through it and out to the Ambassador and her cronies. We Peace Corps, the uninvited, were laughing riotously. How silly – it was an apple, Kantos! It’s cool!! But he was mortified. Such is the lot of life I imagine when a very important person comes to your town and almost gets slimed by rotting produce under your prized town tree.

The excitement finally died down, sadly, and the “entertainment” commenced. Entertainment here is iffy – sometimes highly exciting, sometimes you would have rather stayed home and finished watching that spider eat that fly. In this case it was the latter. The groups of women starting banging on their metal plates and while we at least found one song entertaining they just had to start the dancing ritual instead. It goes something like this: a few women start dancing, their arms pumping back and forth as if trying to touch elbows behind their back, while they crouch lower and lower and stick their head and butt out as far as possible. After a few of them are going on like this, they seek out the whiteys to humiliate as well. They love to watch us try to dance and hold no scruples when it comes to pointing and laughing at our attempts. So Aaron and Sheena, good sports, “volunteer” (that is, it only took a few minutes of one woman goading to get them going) and start the ridicule. Liz took a bit more persuasion but the she-man singing group ringleader (I think she must have played for the Monarchs in another life) got the better of her and Liz, too, abandoned ship into the sea of self-deprecating laughter. I proved a much harder nut to crack. I was tired, sweaty, and angry at the waste of my life this morning had become and was in no mood for my ridiculous dancing to be televised and replayed for all of Adjaland’s participation in the laughter. No sir, it would take nothing short of a purple miracle bunny, giant Cyclops or a midget dressed in tribal wear with troll-hair to get me out there dancing with the rest. Oh but wait, they had one! Who told them?! No sooner had I resigned myself to maintaining my dignity just this once when a little person presented herself to my left, begging and pleading that I join, promising that if I joined so too would she. Whereas normally (as most of you know) that would have sent me running back to America immediately, here I was intrigued and feeling somewhat more consensual to her demands. What?! So there I went, dancing with a midget under a rotten-apple killer tree with the Ambassador of the United States giving me a limp-wristed congratulations handshake on my wicked elbow touching dance moves. Yes, I could safely say there is never a dull moment here, except when you count the ones where I’m awake.


The List:

Beef Jerky
Dried Fruits (Cranberries, Apricots?, and Blueberries are my favorites here)
Jell-o Pudding mixes
Brownie Mixes
Cliff Bars
Earl Grey/Lady Grey Teas
Apple Cider
Good Hot Chocolate!!!