Face to face with reality
Last week I went up north.
We left with 4 long hours of delay. Just to stick to the African tempo.
Benin has surprisingly average-to-good roads and arriving to Djogou was not as painful as I'd expected.
Once 700km away from Cotonou the adventure started.
The purpose of the mission was for me to understand UNICEFs educational interventions in Benin. I am not sure if I understand the program yet...but I am positive I now understand the constraints much better.
I was totally unprepared for this mission. Mentally and in terms of equipment (chocolate bars I missed you!?! I missed sugar in general). This is the kind of menu that filled my stomach during five days...
Igname (kind of enormous potato) puree and meat in a spicy peanut sauce. You normally eat this in little restaurants called 'maquis'. It feels tremendously selfish to say that I did not like that food...most of the people in the regions I visited cannot afford eating that. It was the first time I noticed people were hungry, kids cried at school because their mothers could not afford breakfast, professors looked unhealthy and too thin.
But the purpose of this mission was not discovering Beninese Northern gastronomy...it was more of an investigation, a qualitative assessment of a program. I talked to many, many 'actors' (appologize the formal lingo): students, teachers, directors, women groups. I discovered the linguistic richness of this country, in almost each village we needed a translator for a different language. Beninese dialects are an explosion of sounds, eeeeeee (means 'yes' in fon), eooooooo (means 'no'). In the discussions with the business women (see picture below) I was afraid they were mad at our visit most of the time, they screamed so much and made not-that-nice gestures and angry faces...but after three or four villages I found out that most of the time they were thanking UNICEF for their support.
I talked to many kids. Or tried to. There were a couple of barriers between us. First, I am a yovo (white) and many kids from kindergarden had never seen one of us. Some kind of liked to discover the existence of white human beings...other kids cried so loud I had to leave the ecole Bonbon (this is how kindergardens are sweetly called here) afraid that they would stop breathing between scream and scream. "It is not often that a Yovo comes around here", told the director of one school. At that moment I felt so special...and so useless at the same time. Another barrier between the kids and myself had to do with what they learnt at school. They were unable to tell me their ages. To tell you the truth, observing the nazi style of some (many) instructors...I guess 1-they do not learn much and 2-they are afraid to talk. Absolute lack of pedagogy.
We left with 4 long hours of delay. Just to stick to the African tempo.
Benin has surprisingly average-to-good roads and arriving to Djogou was not as painful as I'd expected.
Once 700km away from Cotonou the adventure started.
The purpose of the mission was for me to understand UNICEFs educational interventions in Benin. I am not sure if I understand the program yet...but I am positive I now understand the constraints much better.
I was totally unprepared for this mission. Mentally and in terms of equipment (chocolate bars I missed you!?! I missed sugar in general). This is the kind of menu that filled my stomach during five days...
Igname (kind of enormous potato) puree and meat in a spicy peanut sauce. You normally eat this in little restaurants called 'maquis'. It feels tremendously selfish to say that I did not like that food...most of the people in the regions I visited cannot afford eating that. It was the first time I noticed people were hungry, kids cried at school because their mothers could not afford breakfast, professors looked unhealthy and too thin.
But the purpose of this mission was not discovering Beninese Northern gastronomy...it was more of an investigation, a qualitative assessment of a program. I talked to many, many 'actors' (appologize the formal lingo): students, teachers, directors, women groups. I discovered the linguistic richness of this country, in almost each village we needed a translator for a different language. Beninese dialects are an explosion of sounds, eeeeeee (means 'yes' in fon), eooooooo (means 'no'). In the discussions with the business women (see picture below) I was afraid they were mad at our visit most of the time, they screamed so much and made not-that-nice gestures and angry faces...but after three or four villages I found out that most of the time they were thanking UNICEF for their support.
I talked to many kids. Or tried to. There were a couple of barriers between us. First, I am a yovo (white) and many kids from kindergarden had never seen one of us. Some kind of liked to discover the existence of white human beings...other kids cried so loud I had to leave the ecole Bonbon (this is how kindergardens are sweetly called here) afraid that they would stop breathing between scream and scream. "It is not often that a Yovo comes around here", told the director of one school. At that moment I felt so special...and so useless at the same time. Another barrier between the kids and myself had to do with what they learnt at school. They were unable to tell me their ages. To tell you the truth, observing the nazi style of some (many) instructors...I guess 1-they do not learn much and 2-they are afraid to talk. Absolute lack of pedagogy.
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