New Years in Europe...?

Happy New Year! In the past 2 days I have received some messages concerning my blog, so I guess that means there are still people paying attention to it. I've written 2 entries back to back so as not to scare too many of you away with an enormous NEW YEARS CHRISTMAS entry.

Well I’ll just start off with some awesome news: I moved! I’m still in my village, but in a more central location, in a much bigger apartment with electricity and….RUNNING WATER. I know this is hardly the Peace Corps experience that all of you may have imagined, I’m with you on that too. But seriously, this place is awesome. Not only did the owner, pretty much completely remodel the place for me (and I’m talking about knocking out walls, installing sinks, shower, and toilet), but he’s also well connected with a lot of community members I know and is incredibly nice. He’s a far leap from my last landlady, who spent most of my time there trying to trick me into paying her more money for the electricity and rent. Just to sweeten the deal, he threw in 4 pLEATHER CHAIRS. I was thinking of buying a furniture set, but instead the guy saved me probably the equivalent of 200 bucks. I have asked him why he did all this several times (because I’m half expecting to get a bill for all the construction after my last owner), but the only reason that he told me was “Well, because you are American, I know how you live there, and I want you to be comfortable when you come to my place”. In effect I think that he’s just a bored, relatively wealthy old man and it was the last apartment without a bathroom. I also think that he takes pride in the fact that I’m here, which will further motivate me to do well in my work. This is a far leap from my last house that felt more like a sweltering prison (my true feelings come out now that I’m not there anymore). For instance, this afternoon was the first time that I’ve cooked lunch and was not only dry when it was done, but also ate in my dining room. Not to mention that I have a real kitchen now…with a sink! Put simply, I feel like I’m back in Europe (maybe with more bugs). Needless to say, this guy is going to be getting a really sweet present from me…I have yet to decide what that is going to be. (ideas?)

New Years in Benin makes what we do in the states look trivial, as we only party for the eve before. In Benin, they party for New Year’s eve and all of New Years Day, and even the night after. I think it has to do with how mixed the religions of the population are; they can all land on New Year’s being good. I was told that “Christmas is for kids”. New Years was spent at village for me. A few weeks earlier when I was in Cotonou, I had promised Charles, my tailor friend, that I would but us tissue if he made us the clothes. The term for this is “meme tissue” or “same tissue”. Typically when there are festivals, families and friends will get their festival uniforms, so that’s what we decided to do.

I showed up at Charles’ house around 6 PM as instructed, thinking we would immediately go to dinner or a buvette to get the night started. Instead, Charles had work to do, so I just kind of hung out for 3 hours watching dubbed-to-French Spanish soap operas. I was actually happy to find that I understood most of what they were saying.

Eventually a friend of mine, Abdel, who works at a lending institution in town, gave me a call and picked me up to go to have a drink. We got to the bar that my friend Mr. Urbaine owns. Sitting there for a while, having a coke to hopefully wake me up a bit, I saw a small band of men come around the corner following a guy in a mickey mouse mask and one of those horned ski hats that we used to wear as kids. What they do is go around to each table at the buvettes and hit the drums as the guy in the goofy costume dances. Really, you don’t pay them to dance, you pay them to leave. The more you wait to pay them, the longer they stay banging these loud drums in your ears, not letting you talk to your friends. After a friend of mind slipped them a 100 cent piece, they took off. After stopping at one more buvette, I headed off to church at 11pm to find a mass that was already in progress. I didn’t feel that bad though because it was in Nagot, so I wouldn’t have understood anything anyways. As it was completely jammed, I just sat on my moto helmet outside, trying to stay awake. I failed misrebly and actually slept through the countdown to midnight (which would have consisted of me watching my watch turn from 11:59 to 12:00). Waking up at 12:03, I grumbled a bit and stumbled to a latrine to get out what I had put in an hour before.

When mass ended, the real party began and went on until about 6am. There were performances in the form of dance, song, and acting, but all of them had a bit of a hard time starting. It was strange though as seemingly every Catholic in town was at church that night, with the crowds literally pouring onto the street from the courtyard of the church. I managed to get some pictures of this. I ended up making it until 430 am but decided that I needed to turn in as I had already at this point fallen asleep at the party numerous times. The next morning, my bread lady woke me up at 8am, per usual. She’s like an alarm clock that gives you bread, and she even followed me to my other house. It is a sweet setup. New years day, I chose to get my house in order a bit. It still needs work, but until I get more paint on the walls and maybe some sort of tile on the floor, I don’t think it will ever look “proper”. Either way I’m still pleased as punch with it. Anyways, that’s all that’s going on.

Work starts again tomorrow; I’ve got to start looking a little harder to organize some formal formations as what I’ve done so far has been much more informal that I’d like. If MTN ever decides they want to work with an American, maybe I’ll be helping them a bit with the launch of their Mobile Money application in Benin, but that seems to be up to fate right now. I’ll let you know what happens.

Prayer requests:

Organization and focus on my work as I try to get my house up to par

Diligence in all that I do

Patience…with everything