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My biggest worry is that all I will do in Athieme is talk, and not necessarily talk about relevant issues, but just drink beer and sodabi and just shoot the breeze. What if I am a person that likes to study, talk, and write, but not actually do any work?

Re-locating my Bossy Toes

Erika Kraus
2006-08-28 19:43:20

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My biggest worry is that all I will do in Athieme is talk, and not necessarily talk about relevant issues, but just drink beer and sodabi and just shoot the breeze. What if I am a person that likes to study, talk, and write, but not actually do any work?
I guess if that is the truth, I will satisfy two of the Peace Corps goals, those of culture-exchange. I will learn all about Beninese beer and the palm-wine distillation process, and the Beninese will learn that even Americans get a beer belly when they drink too much. I will learn how to play true football, and the students will learn how to play basketball better. I will teach them UNO and I will learn the West African version, called Eight Americans. Somewhere in there I will help transplant saplings or graft a few mango trees, or encourage my close friends to think a little differently.
But I also really want to be dynamic. I really want to do everything. I want to bring clean water, I want to build latrines, and I want to equalize the status of men and women in society. I want successful compost piles that significantly increase the quality and production of the fields. I want UNO to be sold in Cotonou, and be well supplied in every CLAC in the nation. And I want to be able to see all of that still in place in another twenty years, if nothing better has replaced it.
In short, I want to make everyone happy.
So, the problem the problem the problem.
I don’t want to be the person who says, “Do this, this, and this. It will work better that way.”
“Well, Ms. American,” the Beninese might say, “You’re awful bossy.”
I prefer to let people be people. If pate is eaten with your hands and shared between four people from one plate, by golly, that’s how I will eat it. If goats run free and we fence in the plants, by george, that’s how we’ll start the tree nursery. If it’s the women who do most of the street cleaning, then that’s how our streets will get clean. ...