Turn and Face the Strange

Yesterday was a day I’ll not soon forget, partially because I’m committing this tale to my blog and partially because it still hasn’t ended (more on that later).

It all started when I arrived at the high school where I teach for our morning class. It’s called a CEG in Benin and the rooms are concrete with open windows. We were visited by a Muslim and a Celestial Christian to teach us a bit about the major religions in Benin. It was interesting to hear from them, but the real fun started when we visited the Voodoo temple I pass everyday on the way to school. There we heard stories of deities who can teleport from Togo, of a spirit that lives in an old tree, and of the sacrificial history of a large wax pile we observed. It was an especially interesting experience for me, because I knew many of the children who lived in the temple; I stop and play soccer with them from time to time on my way home from school. All in all, we only began to scratch the surface of this fascinating facet of Benin’s history. Voodoo practice is limited in Kemon, but I have plenty of friends who live in the places where the large Voodoo fetes take place. You can bet I’ll attend.

We then departed for the stilt village of Ganvie, in which 30,000 people supposedly live. It was the first place I’ve encountered artisanal goods in Benin, so I suppose it’s one of the few tourist draws this country presently has. It was not unlike the movie Waterworld; the children are impeccable swimmers and they can aptly wade beside a boat to ask Yovos for money. The only major drawback is that the people also relieve themselves (in all meanings of the word) in this same water. You can’t walk between buildings, so our itinerary was entirely in the hands of two boat drivers. Thus, we were dropped off at three places which all had (gasp!) local artisanal goods to purchase. Can’t be upset, though, because it really was a cute place. It’s worth a trip if you’re ever in this neck of the woods. If the picture was able to upload, you can see a picture below.

I then headed to the highlight of my day, which was my homestay mother’s fashion competition in Cotonou. It was held at the Palais de Congres, which you also may be able to view below depending on the internet speed. This building is gigantic and totally out of place in Benin. In fact, it was the first building I’d encountered that had more than 3 stories. I was very impressed that my humble homestay mom had been issued an invitation to participate in this event. She told me to get there before 7, so I rode a zemidjan there by 6:30PM. Here’s the rest of the schedule.

8:00 - Scheduled start of the night’s festivities.

9:00 – They commence preparations to get powerpoint working

9:15 – The emcees start to introduce themselves. They stop and continue again 10 minutes later.

10:15 – The rest of my homestay family arrives to support their mother. They have not missed a thing. The participants have yet to be introduced.

10:30 – Participants introduced. There are some designers dressed in extremely bizarre outfits. I wonder if the Beninese really don’t believe that homosexuality exists, which is what we’ve been told.

Throughout the evening, various “singers” and dancers came forward to perform entire Beninese songs, which means that they lip-synced and did the typical Beninese dance – this consists of mild hip-thrusting and arm movements that resemble the chicken dance. Every single time someone busted a move Beninese style, the crowd stood up and cheered. One performer, a heavyset woman with limited mobility, lip-synced to three songs throughout the evening. They were still cheering the third time, which happened to be at 4:00 in the morning. I can think of no logical reason for this to happen, but nobody in the crowd had left by this time, and nobody seemed frustrated.

One of the emcees was a storyteller who told many longwinded jokes. On three (count them: one, two, three) separate occasions, he told a joke about yovos (white people) not understanding the local language. Every time he embarked on a joke like this, everyone laughed and the woman next to me would say, “He’s talking about you yovos not knowing Fon.” It was an awkward but amusing experience for all involved.

There were 32 separate designers participating and 16 models to wear their clothes. I got the impression that the speed of clothes-changing behind the curtains was a bit slower than American fashion shows, because every model had at least an hour to change their clothes before they needed to reappear. The same song is restarted every time that a new model walks out in a new designer’s clothes. They are encouraged to move at a turtle’s pace, so I witnessed several instances when a model spent over 4 minutes walking on the catwalk. What determines whether an outfit is award-worthy? As far as I can tell, you don’t stand a fighting chance of winning the popular vote unless you can tear off at least 4 parts of your outfit and, essentially, render it entirely impossible to wear in public in this conservative nation. The closest the auditorium came to a riot last night was when a man tore off the front of his boomba and had the Beninese flag drawn on the back.

I slept through much of this, as did a quarter of the crowd. If the person you knew was not being showcased in any given moment, it was completely acceptable for you to put your head back and start snoring. My homestay sister, in fact, probably watched 5 minutes of the ceremony because our domestique poked her to wake her up for her mother. Anyway, each designer only showed two outfits apiece, and it was 4:00AM before they were finally ready to announce the winners. The results? My mama won 3^rd! She got a slammin’ African medal and a television. The first prize winner actually won a motorcycle, so this was no Podunk affair. This made the entire night worth it, because she’d been telling me all week that she wasn’t excited because she wasn’t going to win. I’ll be honest – public opinion was not working in her favor, but the judges liked what they saw. Congratulations, homestay mama!

We finally walked out the doors at about 5:00AM. My homestay sis informed me that we needed to walk awhile to try to find a taxi. What this meant was we needed to find zemidjans to take us to the local market, where we needed to wait until 6:30AM before we could depart. Needless to say, I was not informed of this timeline. I figured that I was in for a long night when (at 7:30PM) I told my homestay mom that I didn’t need to eat then because I could eat when we got home. She laughed at me and said we would not be eating tonight. She was correct. We arrived at our house at 7:30AM, an hour and a half after I usually wake up. Nobody seems tired today. Thus, the title of this blog: turn and face the strange. David Bowie is a visionary.