you're right, he's a sensitive and caring person who views these "Africans" as "people"

who have "humor" and "culture" and "do things" on the "road" with explorations like "cars"

and "drinking"

such amazing stories, never thought I would hear anything so exotic and culturally sensitive.

This is like an anthropological discovery.

4/1/2015 12:06:05 PM

Quote :

" But it's interesting the stuff they look up. I was sitting on a bus one time next to a kid who searched, "Who is Yayi Boni?" (he's the president of Benin) and "What is love?" "

And then the lil bugger had the audacity to look up "WHAT IS LOVE?"

It's AMAZING what THESE PEOPLE look up! He had the GALL to use the google?

Can you BELIEVE these people?

4/1/2015 12:21:35 PM

Meanwhile in a Benin shack later that day...

Mami tha white man who come to tha village to look at yung girls was starin at me today on da bus!

4/1/2015 12:23:39 PM

Can someone who knows this guy a little better explain to me what the hell is going on here?

4/1/2015 12:45:27 PM

Looks like a manic episode + panic attack + seizure?

4/1/2015 12:46:48 PM

A Benin man stole my goat. It's rather personal.

4/1/2015 12:51:35 PM

Hey shitgradnumbers, just GTFO.

4/1/2015 12:57:39 PM

APRIL FOOLS


When did the humor disappear on Tdub?

ChitChat is not a blog.

4/1/2015 12:59:05 PM

Just have a witch put a spell on his penis. What is this, your first goat theft?

4/1/2015 12:59:37 PM

Do you often go around Africa staring at children and talking about penises?

I wonder why you are having a hard time getting a job with USAID.

4/1/2015 1:01:35 PM

Where is the stuff about me staring at kids coming from? The talking about penises though, yeah.

4/1/2015 1:18:54 PM

At least I am in the single digit percentile that actually reads your posts.

4/1/2015 1:25:08 PM

have you been back to your village since moving?

4/1/2015 1:49:39 PM

Not yet. It isn't that far, but now that I've got regular american work weeks, I'm loathe to spend my time off getting into multiple bush taxis just to have awkward conversations and sleep on a straw mat on my old boss' floor. I will before I leave though.

One reason it would be awkward is that my replacement lasted about a week before she quit and went home. My boss wants to know why, when he'll get another volunteer, etc.

4/1/2015 2:31:57 PM

Quote :

"When did the humor disappear on Tdub?"

It appears that it disappeared from this thread this morning around 9:29:28.

4/1/2015 2:58:25 PM

well, I did enjoy reading this thread at one point

4/1/2015 4:14:17 PM

I also enjoy reading this thread. But I found today's posts more enjoyable. Maybe I just like conflict.

4/1/2015 4:25:31 PM

Quote :

"Can someone who knows this guy a little better explain to me what the hell is going on here?"

I believe he's an extreme right-winger, and a troll. He tries to be funny and satirical, but usually fails at both. He's big into pee-pee and dookie jokes. I'm quite sure he's an alias, I wish he'd be called-out by the mods.

4/1/2015 4:48:35 PM

Beethoven likes conflict so much that she also got an A in torts.

4/1/2015 5:42:56 PM

I actually think it was an A-

4/1/2015 5:46:18 PM

Pacifist.

Should have joined the Peace Corps.

4/1/2015 5:46:58 PM

snooty rich countries have 'value-added' campaigns going on for locally made products. Do people know when they're eating American vs Beninese rice over there?

4/1/2015 5:56:59 PM

More like Uncle Benin's rice, am I rite?

4/1/2015 5:58:56 PM

Quote :

"I'm quite sure he's an alias, I wish he'd be called-out by the mods."

Definitely an alias, and a shared one at that. He's always been a dumbass, but a long time ago he was more silly/stupid with his posts like dnl/bubblebobble, etc. But lately he's more wannabe-pseudo-intellectual, political, shit-stirrer, not-sure-if-troll-or-genuine-retard poster. Like someone wants to troll but doesn't have the balls to do it under their "real" screen name here.

Either way, he's mostly harmless and safe to ignore. Him shitting on this otherwise great thread was a bit of a bummer though.

4/1/2015 10:23:25 PM

Oh. Well, fair enough. I guess once a year a troll has to come shit up a couple of pages.

The Nigerian elections last weekend threw Benin for a loop. Not because of who won -- I don't think anybody cares -- but Nigeria sealed the border during the election period. This caused the price of gasoline to increase about 60% in Benin, which in turn allowed every moto taxi driver to charge 150% more for rides. Meanwhile the power was out for most of that time (virtually all of it comes from Nigerian plants)

Our own parliamentary election is at the end of the month, during which period we have to be on "standfast," staying in our post and avoiding travel in case there is unrest. This threw a wrench into my Ghana trip, and Peace Corps was not swayed by my logic of, "Look, you idiots, my house is in Cotonou, which is where the unrest would be, and my office is right next to the presidential mansion, which is even more where the unrest would be. I'm way safer traveling." So, anyway, the trip got bumped up a bit, I'll be in Ghana 15-23 April.

Getting the Ghana visa is a fabled bureaucratic nightmare; they have very strict requirements down to the most minute detail, and they love to reject an application on some minor pretense. I'd been hearing about this since I arrived, so I went to the embassy loaded for bear. You need four copies of the application form; I had ten. A mix of photocopies -- which they sometimes insist on, so they'll be identical -- and handwritten copies -- because sometimes they reject photocopies for being unclear or "not the originals." I had every other form, photo, and piece of ID in quadruplicate.

Didn't matter. The guy glanced at my the top form in the stack and said, "No good, this is the old form." He then produced the new form, which is identical in every respect right down to the font. The only difference is an extra box you can check if you want a year-long visa.

"Does it matter that I don't want a year long visa?"

"No. You must use new form."

So I sat in the sun and filled out four of the motherfuckers. But I finally got my god damn visa.

4/2/2015 6:52:18 AM

What do you plan to do while you're in Ghana?

4/2/2015 9:42:15 AM

Mostly this trip is about my dad -- he was a volunteer in Ghana 1972-1974, and I want to go to his village, see what it's like so I can report back to him, see if I can find anybody in his village who remembers him (he was a math and science teacher at the high school).

Then, as per his recommendation for the best body surfing in the world, I'm going to go to his favorite beach. It remains a favorite with the volunteers who are serving in Ghana now; hopefully I'll get to hang out with some of them.

Then it's back to Accra to bask in the Western-ness of the capital. Accra has KFCs. It has modern movie theaters. These are things I want to do.

4/2/2015 10:30:33 AM

I have some friends living in Accra. They were in Nigeria before that, and prefer Accra much more.

4/2/2015 10:53:53 AM

So one thing that all PCVs claim to hate but can't seem to resist participating in is the Peace Corps pissing contest of who has the most difficult post, region, or country. In Benin there's a north/south divide. The northerners complain about long travel times to get anywhere, a lack of fresh fruits and vegetables, more isolated posts, and of course the heat. Southerners can't respond with much besides our far greater humidity and closer scrutiny from admin.

As far as individual posts go I almost always concede defeat -- my house and village were pretty cushy. There were a couple of people who lived in nicer places, but not many.

But everyone in Benin bands together when it comes to countries, and generally aligns with Togo in mocking Ghana. We see Ghana as a vacation spot, the cushy land of English-speaking Africans and Western luxuries. Ghana is also one of those flagship Peace Corps programs in Africa which, along with Senegal, seems much better-run and better-funded. In Benin we're always hearing about these elaborate, high-tech projects in Ghana that are orders of magnitude larger (and more successful) than anything we've got.

Come to find out, Ghana thinks we're a bunch of overpaid fat cats. Our monthly stipend was, up until recently, higher than Ghana's by about $50 -- nothing to get worked up over, you'll say, but remember we only make about $250 a month here in Benin, so that's a big chunk. Specifically, it's the "beer chunk." The Ghana volunteer I talked to swore up and down that PCVs there can rarely afford alcohol, so they also think we're a bunch of drunks. The second half of that is true enough, but I have my doubts about the first.

4/3/2015 3:59:52 AM

So I'm playing hooky from work for a couple of days this week to be in a Franco-Beninese movie. I was contacted about it a couple of weeks ago; they wanted a large, French-speaking American, and people pointed to me. I play the American representative to an international league of corporate evil, trying to overthrow the president of a fictional African country who has angered us by nationalizing industries.

4/7/2015 3:50:13 AM

^^
solid read there, sir.

4/7/2015 4:26:08 AM

I hope you become some sort of cult hero in Africa for your acting skills.

4/7/2015 6:29:45 AM

I can't quite get a read on this movie. On the one hand, it's a big enough deal that they've flown in a lot of people, including French yovos and Senegalese sound guys. They assured me that the film would not be finished for release for another year, or maybe two -- good news for me, because if the movie came out while I was here, I'd be fired. This whole thing is against the rules a couple of different ways, but the experience is too interesting and unique to pass up.

But anyway, the development time and foreign crew make me think "big time movie." On the other hand, there's negligible pay -- about $20 for two days of shooting. Which is fine. I wouldn't except any pay at all, except I need to buy my own wardrobe (I don't own four different Western shirts, and that's how many costume changes are involved). Plus the script is preposterously bad and over the top. Maybe that's part of the humor -- the director is a comedian -- but it doesn't scream "legitimate movie" to me.

All I really want is to be on the cover art. Virtually all African movie posters and DVD covers follow the same layout -- main character in the foreground, then pictures of other characters in an arc over their head. I want a copy of the movie, and I want my picture on the art, so I can break it out and show it to people.

4/7/2015 6:58:32 AM

Ha, that sounds pretty unreal.

4/7/2015 11:32:47 AM

That's great. What were some of your lines? I'd be a little nervous someone would find out about the movie. But, like you, the opportunity seems once-in-a-lifetime- so way to go for it. Not to mention, at a future job interview you could be like "yeah, I got fired from the peace corps for being in a movie. nbd."

You've probably been asked this before, but aren't you slightly concerned about posting all this on the oh-so-high-profile teedub? Anyone can access this, obviously, but what kind of monitoring of internet do they have going on over there?

4/7/2015 5:13:30 PM

Being in movies sucks. Turns out this one is intended for European film festivals with a view to distribution there, rather than Africa. The other white actors are professionals, including one who starred in the French CSI.

I'll talk more when I'm on my computer and not my phone, but for now, yes I do worry about getting caught, but not through tww. I don't think I have enemies here who would go so far as to report me. PC monitors my blog and Facebook, supposedly, but they have neither the resources nor inclination to scour the whole internet.

4/9/2015 5:38:52 AM

wear a disguise

4/9/2015 8:36:25 AM

OH MY I AM GOING TO MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000 THAT PIECE!

4/9/2015 9:29:05 AM

I'd like to see that movie

4/9/2015 9:15:43 PM

Quote :

"That's great. What were some of your lines?"

OK, so, let me lead off by saying that this is a comedy, written by a Beninese who lives in France. Because I would not have agreed to say this line in a serious movie, nor if it had been written by a white guy, because...well, the line translates to: "Before we arrived in Africa, they didn't even know that there was treasure beneath their feet...they were content to eat bananas and kill each other with spears."

Like I say, real over the top, comedic villain stuff. I have a few other lines as well in which I suggest various strategies to neutralize the African president who has angered what I call "The Council of Corporate Evil," to which I play the American representative.

---

I was told -- repeatedly -- to show up at this gated community at 2:00 PM sharp. I showed up, nobody from the movie was there, and the guy at the front gate said, "Movie? What movie? Go away." There's no shade to be had in this area, and it was 95 degrees -- I had to just sit there and take it until the crew showed up 45 minutes later. This did not predispose me to enjoying the experience.

Then I found out that, rather than starting with the easy one-liner scene I was told to expect, we were leading off with the most complicated of my four scenes. I had three fairly lengthy things to say during this part, which involved four other actors. And let me emphasize that: the others were actors. From France. Professionals. I was the only amateur around, and I have no idea why.

But before the scene can be shot, there's makeup and wardrobe. The makeup lady kept complaining that I was sweating too much. No shit. I mentioned the 95 degrees -- plus we're in a room where the AC is off to avoid making noise during the shoot, there's bright lights and tons of people and equipment generating even more heat, and the doors and windows are shut, again, to cut off noise. Then the wardrobe lady complained about clothes I brought, clothes I had purchased just that morning. She was mad that she had to iron them.

Let's think about this: you're the wardrobe department, but you're not providing any wardrobe. At that point, isn't your job pretty much limited to ironing?

So now I'm made up, dressed up, mic-ed up, and shuffled into the small, packed room in which the evil council meets. I have a mortal dread of formal public speaking and, accordingly, of acting. I'm sweating even more. Now people are upset you can see it through my clothes.

We go through a couple of rehearsals. I do pretty bad. They finally turn on the camera. I do abysmally -- caused the first "Cut!" My hands are shaking. I am encouraged to calm down.

After that, things got better really quickly. Once I figured out the flow of what was happening it was possible to start calming down, and the sheer number of repetitions made the lines come easier and easier. Every scene I was in was shot from at least three different angles, at least two takes per angle, plus some "pick up" takes which, from what I could tell, were to replace parts that had been badly delivered.

One poor woman -- the lead villain, who had the most lines by far -- was having a lot of trouble remembering her lines and at one point broke down in tears.

After several hours of this, the group scene was done. Then we had to move out to the pool, where I would be lounging and talking into a dead i-pad for a video conference. This was a lot less stressful.

Yesterday I showed up, got yelled at for not having enough different shirts, but otherwise had a pretty easy start. This scene involved all of us again, but no lines -- we're just quietly celebrating a victory while a news broadcast covers the sound. It still involved an obscene number of takes. A lot of different angles, and also awkwardness as we all tried to toast each other without crossing arms or spilling fake champagne.

Lastly there was an outdoor scene -- bad idea, because we were all sweating like hogs under the sun, so that between each take the makeup lady had to come mop me down. Overall the scene was similar to the first in complexity, but for me it was easier -- two brief lines. By then I was getting into the swing of it.

---

Some observations:

-The "crafts services" was strange. The first day, the only food provided was a bucket of beignets. I don't know what these are like in France; in Benin, they're just unsweetened, unsalted, fried dough. Not exactly what I needed after a sweltering 7 hours of work. To their credit we did get an actual lunch on day 2, though it wasn't anything special by Benin group lunch standards.

-The most professional actor was Phillipe Caroit, who has a long list of credits and was a regular on what you might call the French CSI. He was cool. I was predisposed to like him because he spoke fluent English and was willing to explain to me what the hell was going on. He was fairly well informed about Benin and asked me with the appearance of real interest about my work here, the state of Benin's agriculture, etc.

Also, he had all of the charm and magnetism that people seem to attribute to Frenchmen but which I never really see. I encounter a fairly large number of French in Benin, and in my experience the male accent is a sort of muddled haughtiness that lacks any romantic punch. Their looks are nothing special, unless you count the sort of undefinable angularity that instantly marks them as French, or at least European. In short, they didn't impress me. This Caroit guy, though, looked like Alec Baldwin in much better shape, strikingly handsome features, and an accent that almost made me want to have sex with him.

-Two of the other actors were older people who clearly aspired to acting but had never really broken into it. I overheard them talking about different training films they'd been in. I definitely did not want to have sex with them. (And to end any references to sex I'll point out that the lady camera operator was smoking hot, and the head villain who cried was a cougar, and all of these people kept changing clothes in front of me.)

-Overall, I'm glad I had the experience. It was interesting. But unless I'm getting bumped straight up to Tom Hanks money (or at least Justin Long money), I never want to have the experience again. It was stressful, confusing, and bruising to the ego. Now I get that acting really is hard work. I know how ridiculous that sounds, but there it is.

4/10/2015 6:11:40 AM

That's awesome and so random. Took a lot of guts to get it there and do it. Props to you, because this gave me anxiety just reading about it. Obviously should add that to the resume.

4/11/2015 6:32:09 PM

Election season is upon us. Huge billboards for the main parties are up. One is represented by a cowry shell, another by a tree, and one -- my favorite -- by a bald eagle. Bald eagles are not really a thing in Africa but by God I love to see other countries adopting American iconography.

To make up for the lack of opportunity to have annoying radio and TV ads, candidates have cars bedecked with their logo drive around while people inside honk the horn and blow into vuvuzelas in a futile attempt to be even noisier than the usual Benin traffic.

There are a LOT of posters up telling people to vote "No" on changing the constitution. Thing is, I've yet to find anybody who can tell me what the proposed change is, or even if it actually exists. The prevailing theory (including among not-too-sure Beninese) is that it would remove term limits on Yayi Boni.

4/13/2015 3:52:32 AM

That method of campaigning worked for the mayor in Back to the Future, it's vetted.

4/13/2015 8:31:46 AM

There are no Goldie Wilsons in Benin.

[Edited on April 13, 2015 at 9:00 AM. Reason : *]

4/13/2015 9:00:06 AM

Tomorrow I'm leaving for Ghana. Probably be a grueling day -- most people stop and spend the night in Lome, Togo, but I'm trying to get all the way to Accra in one go. Not that far by American standards, but the roads...they ain't up to those standards.

The good news is that once I cross the border into Togo, the taxis get a lot more comfortable. Togo and Ghana have a limit on the number of passengers, and they take it seriously (I believe Benin also has a limit, but they ignore it except for the occasional bribe shakedown at a checkpoint).

Thursday I'll head up north a little to be stay with a current PCV who lives near to my dad's old village. Randomly enough, this PCV also went to NC State.

Talking to this lady, she said, "Do you mind kids? I was thinking of having my best students over for dinner the night you'll be there."
"Will the kids be speaking French?"
"Uh...no."
"Then I don't mind them at all."

English, for the love of God, English, and Ghana is supposed to speak it far better than Nigeria, which is to say "at all."

4/14/2015 9:27:37 AM

Back in Benin. I'm in the process of putting up some lengthy blog posts about the trip and some pictures on facebook and the instagram, as well as some videos. Short version: Ghana is waaaaay into Jesus and land travel in Africa is a pain in the dick, but Ghana had great food an excellent beaches.

4/24/2015 5:12:36 AM

The election was yesterday, and it seemed to be uneventful. In fact it was less eventful even than most Sundays -- almost all the businesses were closed and there weren't many people out and about. I can't tell if the absence of people was because of the lack of economic activity, or because they feared election trouble.

Eventually the campaign caravans went from "one car with posters and vuvuzelas" to "multiple cars with posters and children wearing campaign hats...with vuvuzelas." That's about as advanced as it got.

Political parties here pop up and die out every election cycle, so I've never bothered to keep track. This time, though, it was easy to figure out which party backed the president -- all of their posters were for candidates with the last name "Yayi" or "de Souza." (The last names of the president and his wife) I guess politics is a family affair here. All of the other parties seem indistinguishable to me because the only platform I heard out of anybody was always the same: "No third term for the president."

What's funny is that as boring as these elections were -- as boring as everybody who has lived her could have told you they would be -- the US Embassy was in full-blown panic mode. I normally get beers with the American security chief for Benin every Friday, but he cancelled -- he was working 15 hour days all through the election period and was too exhausted. He was having to manage several teams of politicos who were flying in to...observe, I assume. Probably not "rig." There would be absolutely no reason to rig a Beninese election. I'd even say that for a Beninese candidate. Even if you win, you just inherit the slimy shit heap of this country's problems.

It'll probably be a few days before the results are counted up, and I guess there might be some unrest then, at least if the President's party seems to have done well. I still doubt it.

4/27/2015 4:21:40 AM

If Benin is religious then Ghana is fucking overzealous. Everywhere I went, the main topic of conversation was "God."

Got into a taxi -- the first shock of arriving in Ghana from Benin being that you have to take actual car taxis -- and the driver asked my destination, whether I was Christian, whether I spoke in tongues, and, hearing that I did not, whether I realized how my spiritual life could be improved by glossolalia.

Political posters -- which were still all over the place, even though they were for an election a couple of years ago -- frequently invoked God. The hostel I stayed in had about a dozen other guests, half of whom were reading. Books. Just because. This is unheard of in Benin. But all of the books had titles like "Spiritual Warfare" and "How to Defeat Satan."

I waited for an inter-city shuttle van to fill up, a process that took about an hour. This shuttle station had a resident preacher whose job it was to board your shuttle and shout at the top of his lungs about Jesus until it's time for you to go. This guy was shaking the entire van and making a noise that qualified as loud even by Africa's standards, and I made some snide comments, but everybody else in the thing seemed to hang on every word.

I bought a newspaper my last day. Probably not one of the more reputable ones, since the headline was "Mermaid Baby born in Kumasi -- has female genital part with hair" and the story below that was about mystical sea-prostitutes infecting the men of Accra with new diseases, but a newspaper nonetheless. Every article quoted a local "man of God" as an authority on the subject. (The Kumasi "man of God" said that more and more mermaid children would be born if people didn't stop paying lip service to Christianity only to use occult powers to gain wealth)

As though being hyperreligious weren't enough, Ghana is also the West African equivalent of a police state. Signs everywhere exhorted people to turn in criminals and had slogans like "Ignorance of the law is no excuse." Meanwhile, Ghana not only has laws, they sometimes enforce them. Trash collection was operating and litter was rare, at least relative to Benin. They did not try to overload vehicles. There were signs of people obeying other traffic laws as well.

4/30/2015 10:00:19 AM

you can never be too careful where mermaids are involved

4/30/2015 12:18:52 PM

4/30/2015 12:50:21 PM