Kudo gbada

After three weeks at post, I decided I wanted to see some white people, speak some English, and eat some potatoes, so I’ve come into Cotonou for a day and a half’s vacation.  I went to an ice cream parlor after dinner, so I’ve already accomplished my main goal for the weekend. 

Traveling last weekend wasn’t an option thanks to the municipal elections, held every five years in Benin, which choose the mayor and other local big-shots.  We’re still waiting to hear about the results in my area, so I don’t know yet whether the mayor I already know (and have a friendly relationship with) has been re-elected, or whether I’ll have to start all over again with a new guy.  I heard about a little bit of violence in Abhomey, but there wasn’t any trouble connected to the election in my area.  It was odd for me to hear my co-workers at the school talking seriously about the dangers of switching political parties.  If a Beninese person hears about a new political party and decides to join it, they run the risk of being left high and dry if the new party doesn’t endure.  It would be risky to be without a party, and very difficult to get accepted again into their former party.  One of the other teachers at my school told mentioned how he’d felt pressured into switching political parties a few years ago because his ballot choices were leaked at the polling station and members of the main opposing party came and threatened him for voting for his party’s candidate.

Now that I’ve gotten used to teaching, I’ve stepped my efforts to learn Gun, the local language of my post.  (Since my efforts since October have been near zero, that wasn’t too hard to do.)  One of the Beninese English teachers at my school who’s a friend of mine is tutoring me, and Peace Corps reimburses me for the lessons.  Since this teacher speaks Gun, French, and English, we can go between French and Gun for grammar and vocabulary questions and between English and Gun for questions about the cultural context.

I have several women friends at my post who speak little or no French and who think my attempts to speak Gun are about the funniest thing they’ve ever heard.  They’re very encouraging, but since Gun’s the first tonal language I’ve ever studied, I wonder a lot about how often I say what I think I’m saying.  One of my older women friends sells Sodabi, a strong local liquor, in the market, and I always stop by her stall to say hello.  Last weekend, she had me stand up and recite my few phrases in Gun to a bench-row of her clients.  (“Look what the white woman can do!”) 

My Gun lessons’ll probably have to go on hold for a little while, though, since my teacher/friend has come down with hepatitis B.  He thought it was malaria when he first started feeling ill; luckily, he went to the doctor and had a blood sample analyzed, so he was able to get a correct diagnosis after a week or so.

I’m up to thirty-four books in Benin in the past nine months.  Right now, I’m finishing up Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible.  Most of the book takes place in the Congo, but around page 480, she has her main characters vacation in Benin, so I got a nice surprise when I reached that part. 

More about school in Benin

By the way, the American filmmakers have left Benin to return to the U.S. and finish up their films on child trafficking.  “Films” is plural because they’ll be producing an English-language educational film to help Americans learn more about child trafficking, plus at least one local language film to bring back and show in Benin to discourage families from trafficking their children. 

Now that the strike is over, it’s back to business as usual at my school.  Thanks to the strike, though, the students have lost almost two months off an already-short school year.  The repeated strikes, plus teacher absenteeism, plus the teachers’ frequent lack of mastery in the subject that they’re teaching means that relations between students and teachers in Benin are often very strained.  From what I’ve seen, I think this is a big contributor to the poor performance PCVs often see from their students.  Why bother working hard in school when your chances to graduate are slim no matter what you do? 

With girl students, the school situation is even worse because sexual harassment is endemic in Beninese schools.  On top of the problems that every Beninese student has to worry about, girl students are sometimes asked for “dates” by their male teachers.  If they refuse, they know there’s a good chance their grades will suffer.  This problem extends even to the primary schools.  In the north of Benin last year, a primary school principal was caught paying primary school girls to have sex with him.  This came to light when one of the girls became pregnant, tried to get an abortion, and died.  Sexual harassment is officially against the law in Benin, but in reality, there are rarely consequences for teachers who abuse their positions.  This particular primary school principal wasn’t prosecuted, simply demoted to the post of regular teacher and sent to a different primary school 5 km away.

Sexual harassment is only one special problem that girl students face.  They’re also often expected to do housework when they get home from school while their brothers are given time to study.  They may marry when they’re still in junior high.  To give you an idea of how very few Beninese girls actually graduate from high school, here are some figures I got at my Porto Novo training event a few weeks ago.  

Imagine you started with 100 randomly-chosen Beninese boys and 100 Beninese girls just beginning secondary school.  How many will eventually finish?  Note how many girls disappear after 3ème, the testing year between junior high and high school that requires a lot of time outside class to prepare for the difficult BEPC exam.

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Year in school                                         Girls                                    Boys

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6ème (7th grade)                                   100                                     100

5ème (8th grade)                                   86                                        95

4ème (9th grade)                                   71                                         89

3ème (10th grade)                                 54                                        82

2nde (11th grade)                                  33                                         71 

1ère (12th grade)                                   21                                         63

T (Baccalaureate prep year)                11                                          57

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Actually, fewer than 11 of these imaginary girls would receive their high school degrees because the Bac exam is notoriously difficult to pass, for boys as well as girls.