is schizophrenic. One day--heck, one minute, I'm in love with the country. Mangos grow on trees lining streets, the people have an exotic look, and I can see the milky way in the sky a few nights a month. The other morning I saw a shooting star. Lovely
But oh how Benin has another side, I side that--and I hope this doesn't express cultural intolerance on my part--drives me absolutely insane....literally.
Death in Benin is celebrated. If I were to beam you over here, and take you to a death fete (celebration), you'd think people were partying hard, getting drunk, and being plain ol' obnoxious and well, you'd be justified. When someone dies, the Beninese party hardy. When someone important dies, say a very old member of the community, the Beninese party hardy--FOR 30 DAYS!
Why is this relevant to me? Why should I care? Why am I so over the Beninese funeral tradition you ask?
Answer: Someone died in a concession (little community of people within a village) right across a small field from me.
Picture this: Beautiful full moon, half moon, lunar eclipse. A Milky Way so visible you're pretty sure that God took a huge paint brush dipped with Milky Way No. 32 and flicked it across the sky. Stars that actually twinkle. Cool breeze at night. Crickets chirping. And then, at 12 o'clock at night you hear the music. It's so god awful loud it sounds like your playing it in your bedroom. You try to ignore it which is impossible. Your ipod doesn't help because you'd have to turn the volume the whole way up just to sort-of block out the music.
You're probably laughing or smirking or something but I ask you to imagine this music from across a field, played so loud you can hear every word clearly, played from 12 a.m. to 7 a.m. EVERY NIGHT FOR 1 MONTH.
One night last week, the absurdity of it all got into my head. I got up at 1 o'clock, went to a bar and drank a beer hoping that it'd make me loopy enough to pass out. You can imagine my anger when I was slightly drunk, laying in bed, not falling asleep. I wanted to come home.
It may seem silly that something like that could push me to the point of wanting to come home but it was 30 days, 7 hours a night of Beninese music and people hooting and hollering. Wednesday of last night, I asked God if he hated me--and I wasn't kidding. I thought the universe must be putting me through some test of growth. You know, a "suffer this one last thing because you will have a revelation and be stronger because of it" sort of thing. I'm pretty sure I didn't do any growing but I did have a revelation; there are some things that will always annoy me no matter much traveling I do.
If you found me at the ends of the Earth, where people find themselves and save themselves and lose themselves, I'd be bitching about loud things that disturb me while I'm sleeping. :)
