Existential Questions

Here I am, in West Africa again, until April 3. My guidebook assures me that the southern part of this country "has two rainy seasons: the first is from April to mid-July. . . . Harmattan winds billow out of the Sahara between December and March, and the hottest time of the year is from February to April." Do we all remember how much I hate heat and humidity? Good. Now it's time to ask ourselves some existential questions (EQs).

I spent the last week in lovely North Africa (which I promise to tell you about another time), where it was in the 70s and 80s, mildly humid, and I sweat up a storm. Last night, I took an overnight flight from North Africa to West Africa, with one stop in Wester Africa. Many of the people on my flight were wearing sweaters and coats. A woman sitting next to me, who boarded the plane in Wester Africa, where the outside temperature was 28° C (82° F), was wearing a shearling jacket.
EQ: Was I flying with a plane full of crazy people?

When we landed in West Africa at 5:30 am (you know, the coolest, freshest time of day), it was also 28° C (82° F). According to weather.com, it is currently 91° F outside, with a dew point of 77°, and a heat index of 104°.
EQ: Why does God hate me so much?

The airport was like a sauna, and stepping outside the airport was like stepping into a better-heated sauna. Then I got onto the hotel shuttle, where we had to sit and wait for about 15 minutes, to see if any more hotel guests were on that flight. The outside air blowing in through the open door of the van felt like a fresh, cool breeze compared to the interior temperature of the van. Of the many places that sweat was streaming from my body, I noticed that there was actually sweat pouring inside my ears.
EQ: Where was this sweat coming from? Do I actually have sweat glands in my ears?

The air conditioner in my hotel room emits a high-pitched and very annoying squealing noise whenever it's turned on.
EQ: Is it really worth running the a/c--wait! Sorry. This isn't an existential question. It's a rhetorical one.

Making the World a Better Place

Readers who also frequent the blog Going 40 in a 20 Zone know that limericks are quite popular over there. But they make not know that back in the day, my college friends and I were fond of ending 'most any statement by saying "Questions, comments, limericks?" I'm not sure why we said it, but we did.

Today, I was e-mailing my boss about my upcoming trip to West Africa and the fact that breaking news on our project in North Africa means that I should probably go to both countries in one trip. The timing gets a bit tricky, because I need to make sure to have enough time in both countries to get some meaningful work done, but I start going a little stir-crazy if I'm out on the road too long. And I almost always get sick when I'm in West Africa (see prior posts on food poisoning/dysentery). At the end of this tediously detailed message, I wanted to ask for my boss's approval of my travel plans, and for whatever reason, I decided that the best way to word this request was by asking, "Questions, comments, limericks?"

He replied, "There was a young lady from . . . Sorry, but Minnesota doesn't rhyme with anything."

But I proved him wrong:

The coworker from Minnesota
With traveling plans over quota
Thinks too much time in Benin
Will make her quite grim
‘Cuz they don’t have enough diet soda*.

*(With thanks to my friend "I", who came up with "soda" for the final rhyme.)

My boss wrote back with the suggestion that "green" would be a better rhyme than "grim" for the correct English pronunciation of the country in questions ("buh-neen") and would also be appropriate, given my tendencies to illness there. I'm just so grateful to have a supervisor who helps me learn new things every day!

And to the American citizens whose tax dollars financed this important poetic contribution to ending poverty.

Family Matters

On Sunday, one of my colleagues at the Corporation's local affiliate in West Africa asked me to attend the presentation of his new baby at church. I asked him if it was his son's baptism, and he explained that he's an evangelical Christian, so they only do adult baptism, but this would be the formal presentation of his son to the congregation, and mark his entry into the church community. I felt very honored by this invitation: the opportunity to witness this important event in a friend's life, to meet his family, and to experience a church service in this country. Not even the realization that much of my day was bound to be spent without air-conditioning could dampen my soon-to-be-sweat-soaked spirits.

Another colleague was supposed to pick me up at the hotel between 9:30 and 9:45 on Sunday morning, so I assumed that meant that the service would begin at 10 am. Since my ride didn't show up until 10:30, and when we arrived at the church shortly before 11, the service was already well under way, I guess I'll never know exactly when it really started. But that didn't seem to matter much--the baby-presenting family was just driving up as we got to the church, and the service ended at about 1 pm.

The church is in a new building, made of concrete cinder blocks (you can see the walls in the photo below), with a corrugated metal roof. There were huge industrial-sized fans everywhere, so the temperature was bearable until about the last half hour or so. The congregation was seated in those plastic/resin lawn chairs, and I would estimate there were about 500 people there. They had a band (big drums, trumpets, electric guitars, etc.) and sound system with enormous speakers. The preachers (there were several, and the entire service was bilingual, with everything translated from French to English and vice versa--why, I'm not sure, since this country is almost entirely francophone, although it did have the benefit of making the service twice as long) were good, old-fashioned, fire-and-brimstoners, shouting for our salvation. Imagine all that amplified noise reverberating off bare concrete walls and a metal roof! I didn't even realize exactly how loud it was during the sermon until I saw a woman one row ahead of me taking her baby out of the church. As she was leaving, I vaguely wondered why, and then when she was just a few feet away from me, I saw from the baby's face that she was obviously crying very loudly. And I couldn't hear a peep from her, nothing but the sermon. Wow.

But I can tell you that for any of you who were worshipping God in a quiet, WASP-y way yesterday, that we made up for your lack of enthusiasm: Jesus was praised in West Africa! Shortly after I arrived, the preacher announced that now we would stand up and sing and dance and celebrate God. And so we did! The band played, the choir and the congregation sang, and everyone danced to the beat of the African gospel drums. Just in case the sound system didn't get the praise out into the whole neighborhood, many of the congregants had their own party-makers with them. A lot of people had white handkerchiefs that they waved in the air as they sang (or during important moments of the sermon); brightly colored plastic whistles were also a popular way to add to the jubilant noise; and I saw a couple of tambourines and paper trumpets out in the congregation as well.

My favorite part of the service was the celebration of the events of August. They asked people to come forward for marriage dedications, and at first I thought that it was some kind of blessing to follow up civil marriage ceremonies. It turned out that it was a blessing for all the couples who had a wedding anniversary in August. They were asked up on the stage/altar area and danced together to celebrate the gift of another year together. Then everyone clapped for them, and the couples cut a special cake and fed some to each other (after the service, the cake was broken into little crumbs, like communion bread, and distributed to the whole congregation). It was really quite lovely. After the marriage dedications, then people brought forth their babies for presentation. There were half a dozen or so being presented yesterday, and we crowded up to the front to stand in support of our colleague. Although the babies weren't baptized, the preachers anointed them with oil (literally, from a plastic bottle of vegetable oil).

The first photo shows me and several colleagues with the baby and his mother (to my right, in light blue) in the church after the service.

The second photo is of a few colleagues at the lunch reception--the man in dark blue is the baby's father, and the woman is his mother.

It's very interesting to me to talk to people here about their families. This is a country where polygamy was historically very common, although it's less so today. The father of one of my colleagues (the one in the black and white outfit, on the far left of both photos) had eight wives--my colleague's mother was the last one. When I asked him how it worked, if the wives fought or were jealous of each other, he just laughed and said that it all depended on how the husband handled everything. His father had a total of 48 children, and the family all lived together in a sort of complex with many houses. His father died several years ago, and all of the siblings gather once a year in memory of the father and to have a sort of family meeting, led by the eldest brother. They catch up on each others' news, support each others' business endeavors, and make sure that the youngest children have what they need to finish school (the youngest sister, who is my colleague's sister "same father-same mother" is still in college).

My colleague thinks that in the past, polygamy was a demographic necessity. There just weren't enough men, because of wars and the ravages of slavery. As the gender gap has narrowed, fewer men today are polygamous. My colleague who has 47 siblings has just one wife and one son and is very concerned because his new job at the Corporation here in the south of the country means that his wife is going to have to quit her job in the north to move here to be with him. He feels guilty that her career is taking second place to his and tells me proudly how good she is at her job. He also called her on his cell phone after the church service yesterday, so that she would be able to "meet" me over the phone, and yesterday evening, he stopped by the hotel with his little 7 year-old son, to introduce him to me as well.

It's really very touching to see how attached these men are to their families. When I was here in May, the father of the baby who was presented at church yesterday told me all about the maternity leave system and the problems he and his wife had to find good childcare for their two sons. In June, one of my colleagues in Washington was getting married, and the team in West Africa sent him a really beautiful e-mail, congratulating him on "this wonderful event in the life of a man." That phrase really struck me--maybe I'm wrong, but in the U.S., it seems to me that although we may congratulate a man on his engagement or his marriage, we really treat weddings as being more emotionally significant to the woman.

I come to this place full of judgement on the inherent sexism of polygamy and leave very moved by the grace and dedication the men I've met show to their families.

A Bit about Africa

OK, my highlights turned out reasonably well; I have gotten the appropriate amount of caffeine into my system; and life is looking much more bearable than it did this morning.


So let me tell you a little bit about my experiences in West Africa. I had visited this country once before, in 2002, when I was working for nGo. That was a very difficult trip for me, in part simply because I really, really, really do not cope well with heat and humidity, so I always have a hard time in Africa. (I suppose I should have foreseen this issue when I sought a job which would combine my interest in international development and French, but I blame my high school career counselor for not better thinking this through on my behalf.) Since nGo was a small, start-up, non-profit organization, I generously offered to save them money by sleeping at their office in West Africa, rather than spending money on a hotel. I had been assured that the office had everything I would need: a bedroom, a bathroom, etc. I forgot to mention to nGo that my needs also include air conditioning and dependable running water.

The first night, a steel band at the bar across the street from the office played "No Woman, No Cry," which I initially found charming because it made me think of the boy I was in love with at the time. But after a week of sleeping on a rock-hard mattress, sweating through the un-air-conditioned night, having only a bucket of water to bathe with, and with my head pounding as they screeched out "No Woman, No Cry" over and over and over again, not only did I get over the song, I also got over the boy.

I did, however, have the opportunity to make some really incredible field visits during that 2002 trip, and the photo above is from one of those visits.

For my trip this week, I stayed at a comfortable, air-conditioned hotel, with a lovely, working shower. It was an intense week of work: I arrived at about 8 pm last Sunday, worked hard all day long every day, and continued the work at my hotel in the evenings, before flying out on Friday evening. So except for lunches and one dinner at local restaurants, and being driven around to a few different organizations for meetings, I really spent the whole week going nowhere but my hotel and the office. But that was okay. I was working with the Corporation's local affiliate office, and I really enjoyed working with the West African team: they all seem smart and motivated and hard-working and kind, and we had a good, productive week together. It was fun to get back into the swing of my own profession, and to be working with people I respect. I'm getting more and more excited about my work for the Corporation. And we all believe in the importance of the work we're doing. The photo on the right is the view from the air-conditioned comfort of the Corporation's Local Affiliate office.

The week was not without its moments of heat- and humidity-induced crisis for me. I had an outside meeting on Tuesday in an office where the air-conditioning wasn't working properly, and by the end (after taking off my jacket and spending most of the meeting trying to mop sweat off my face with a soggy tissue), I had stopped listening and was focusing all of my mental energy in maintaining my body's cellular integrity, because I was fairly convinced I was simply going to melt. So when we drove to the next meeting, at the building of some Powers That Be, I noticed from the outside that most of the building's windows were open, concluded that there must be no air-conditioning, and left my suit jacket in the car. When we got inside, I discovered that the meeting (actually, a ceremony for the signing of an Important Document between the Powers That Be and the Corporation's Local Affiliate) was much more formal than I had imagined, being held in a refrigerated room filled with an enormous table of about 50 people, at which I was seated very near the head. Where all the TV cameras were located. Suddenly, my tank top seemed less than appropriate, so I ran out to try to find our car and driver and retrieve my jacket. No luck. When I went back in and mentioned to my colleague how embarrassed I was to be so under-dressed, he very nicely called the driver's cell phone and had him bring me my jacket. So I was saved from sartorial shame in front of the Powers That Be of West Africa and the U.S. of A. Since the signing ceremony started over an hour late, however, the TV cameras still had plenty of time to film me in my tank top and show it on the evening news. My mother would be so proud!