The Ups and Downs

Last Saturday night, we had the highest of ups and the highest of downs, all in one evening. It all started when another volunteer, Ivy, that lives about half and hour away called us because she was in town and wanted to hang out. After our internet café session, we went back home with her and ate dinner. After dinner, due to the stifling heat in our house, we went 100 yards down the road to the bar by our house that has a second story with a nice breeze. Over some cheap Beninoise (local beer) and conversation, we heard a faint meow coming from somewhere. It sounded like a kitten trapped somewhere. Since my American cat, Jewels, always got caught in some cupboard, my senses are especially tuned to listen for pleading meows. I began looking around for where this kitten was and when I looked down from the second story, I found it.
One the other side of the wall of the bar down below, there was a small wired cage the size of a normal bird cage at best, with 4 kittens and 3 puppies all crammed together. The animal rights activist in me immediately got the attention of the guy down there and told him that he should let them out. He just laughed at me, like they all do. So I went down there to persuade him. Big mistake…Once I got down there, I realized that not only were these 7 little animals cooped up together in this small cage, but there were 4 pairs of chickens laying about, tied together by their feet. A pair here, a pair there, all trying to free themselves and get away. I was heartbroken. After the guy went around the corner, I started to untie the cage when one of the puppies licked my finger. This may seem normal, but in Benin, dogs are treated so badly here that you’re much more likely to get bitten than licked. Stifling back tears, I went back upstairs to try to convince Craig that we should take one kitten and one puppy. We had already agreed long ago that we wouldn’t have any pets because it would be too hard to leave them in two years. I couldn’t help it though. He of course said no, but I knew if I could get him down there to see how cute they were that maybe he would change his mind. Eventually, my plan worked and he was soon inspecting the animals in the cage and he gave in. He asked me to call Katie, our postmate, to see if she’d watch them when we travel.
I called her, and after she said, “I thought you guys didn’t want to adopt any animals?” I lost it and broke down crying, describing these awful conditions that they were in and that I felt that I had to do something. Katie, a former PETA member before joining Peace Cops, reiterated that we couldn’t be a shelter for animals and that we’d have to face the same thing throughout our two years here and if we had already agreed that we shouldn’t adopt, then we should stick to that, or at least give it some time to rethink it. I knew she was right. At that time, I realized that the next day was marché day and all these animals would probably be sold in the marché. It was extremely hard, but I had to walk away from them and while walking out to leave, I hoped that they would have good homes by the same time the next day.
Moments later, Ivy’s boyfriend, Guyam, showed up, a Beninese national, and a very friendly and charismatic guy whom I had already met when I went on tech visit with Ivy. We were getting ready to leave and talking about where we were going to go next when I noticed that he was holding Craig’s hand. When men hold hands here, like in India, it’s a sign of friendship. You don’t see a man and woman holding hands ever, but occasionally you’ll see women holding hands, and often you see men holding hands. I began to giggle inside. This was Craig’s first experience with a HCN (host country national) holding his hand. And he seems incredibly uncomfortable and awkward. Seeing that cheered me up from my traumatic animal experience. I asked him later, when we were at a lounge/bar/club type place how he felt, and he said, “I was so freaked out! I didn’t know what to do and I broke out into a sweat!”
At the lounge bar, Ivy was teaching me how to “African dance” while Guyam was teaching Craig how to “African dance” (it’s different for the men and the women). It was pretty amusing. I kinda already knew how to do it, but Craig was doing all kinds of things I had never seen before, including shaking his foot out like he was trying to shake a spider from the top of his shoe. They also are huge on salsa here, so they played a lot of salsa music and I got to salsa dance a little. The music was even in Spanish! So far, I had only heard French versions of the salsa music here. I had to remind myself that I was in Benin and not back in San Diego when that happened. Not like it was very difficult to remember. It was a really fun night, despite the earlier breakdown, and the first night that we were able to go out and have fun in our new town. They say that you really shouldn’t stay out very late because all of the zem drivers that nicely taxi you around in the daytime may mug you once it’s late. Luckily, Guyam had a car, so he took us out and took us home later that night. It was super fun. Unfortunately, I didn’t have my camera, so none of the night was documented on film. Next time…

Thank you Mama Wirick for our package of my chacos and GRE Prep book (and taco seasoning mix and American flag bandanna that will come in handy for our Halloween costumes)! Thanks a bunch!