Happy Holidays! Where’s the candy?

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, everyone!  I’ve decided to spend this holiday season at post and celebrate Beninese-style with my neighbors.  In Benin, Christmas is a children’s holiday.  On Thursday, all the local children will dress their best and go from house to house around town, asking for food, candy, cookies, and small coins.  (Sound a bit like an American October holiday?)  I’ve just made a quick run to Porto Novo to buy cookies and candy in bulk to give to those who come to my house.  I’ve invited my students, so I’m a little worried I’ll run out.  At this time of year, children also roam around town in groups, singing, beating on improvised drums, and dancing in costume for more small coins.  I created a minor sensation in my concession this last weekend when I put up a Santa Claus windsock on my front porch and taped paper snowflakes around my front door.  The paper snowflakes finally did what a year and a half of candy bribes and games didn’t: the local kids have decided that I’m a very cool person to have around….as long as I make paper snowflakes for them, too, that is.

New Year’s is the big holiday here.  Extended family from all over Benin and even farther afield gathers together for several days’ reunion.  The final celebration is New Year’s Eve, when everyone who’s anyone cooks an enormous feast and parties with firecrackers and food until midnight.

For my closest neighbors, unfortunately, normal holiday preparations have been put to one side.  One of the grown-up daughters in the family is in the hospital, very ill with malaria.  Malaria is very, very common in Benin and one of the biggest causes of death, especially for young children.  People around here are used to dealing with it and often don’t even bother to go to the hospital.  When they do, you know it’s very serious, so please keep this woman and her two young kids in your prayers.

Changing the subject, this school year has been interesting.  Most teachers didn’t start holding classes until mid-November because the state put a whole slew of new restrictions on whom the schools could hire to teach and how many hours they could work.  Then, after most Beninese secondary schools had more or less figured out how they’d manage, the Ministry for Secondary Education announced that they had no money this year and would give nothing to any Beninese secondary school.   Translation: no teacher salaries, no maintenance, no supplies.  If the schools wanted to hold class, they’d have to raise the money locally.  (A joke – most communities in Benin are way to poor to fund their schools.)  As you can imagine, that didn’t go over very well with anyone in Benin.  Now, a few months later, the Beninese government has been negotiated into saying that they’ll pay something to the secondary school teachers, sometime…in December…or January…probably.  My school has given loans to its teachers out of the school’s general resources to try and hold off a strike.  If the government does come through on paying its teachers, the teachers will repay the school out of their salaries.  If the salaries never arrive, there’ll be a massive strike starting in January or February, and my school will be almost broke from the unrepaid loans.

I’d write more, but I need to grab lunch and get back to post.  I have a stack of 200 midterms that need to be graded and a whole list of chores to do over the break.

Joyeux Noël et Heureuse Année!  À 2009!