Rainy season is coming back – slowly but decisively and with force

Life is fragile

Last weeks were the hottest of the year. In the morning the air feels a little fresh – relatively because when you look on the thermometer you never find it under 30 degrees. In the afternoon temperatures can reach more the 45 degrees.

But since some time you feel it: rainy season is coming back. Air is becoming heavier and more humid. It already rained two times. This evening there is a very heavy tempest on the other side of the mountain chain I live very close to. It is impressive to observe this strong weather from a distance. There are lighntnings every second and everything gets clear for a moment – I can´t hear the thunder because I am still too far away. As very often during bad weather conditions there is a power failure and everything is dark inside and outside the house. The most impressive meanwhile is the wind. Most of the time it blows just a bit but from time to time a very strong whiff literally smashes through the landscape. Trees are beaten suddenly, the air is full of dust, leaves and sparks are flying all around, the houses moan and some risk to get destructed by the wind.

When you are outside and the wind hits you it´s like feeling many things at one moment: the wind is fresh and therefore a kind of relieve after the sticky heat of the day. You feel like you may fly away with the wind wherever you want to – but someway you are still too heavy. It´s very exciting. Some dust may blur your vision and in the darkness I also feel a kind of fear. It´s similar to the fear I knew when I was a child. I think that I get used to tempests in Europe where houses surely will resist against rain and wind and lightning, were electricity almost never fails, where you still can go wherever you want by car. Here this is different: Water is often flooding your house when it rains strongly, you are never sure that your roof will stay over your head or that a neighbours roof may fly away. Windows may break. There usually is no more electricity. Most of the roads are not passable anymore and anyway, you don´t want to go anywhere by motorbike in this weather. People stay in their houses in a kind of retreat. Family becomes the intimate space where you find coverage and people who share this experience very closely.

I really enjoy to observe this kind of weather and to live the kind of retreat. I remember when I was a child, afraid of what may come because I wasn´t sure about it and at the same time fascinated by the raindrops that felt in puddles again and again performing a kind of liquid dance on the stirred surface. Very often I think that life here is more fragile and therefore more essential, more perceivable, more immediate… You are never sure that the car you are in will reach its destiny. You may be asked to transport a child to the next hospital and its breath sops several times during the trip and you realise that life may be short. It is the same way all over the world but here it seems more evident that life is fragile. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why life here sometimes seems to me more intensive then elsewhere. Life blows through me like strong wind and it appears in flashes like the lightning. It makes me afraid and I enjoy it… wind is blowing - let it in...

Ida y vuelta, hin und zurück, go and return, aller retour

After my stay in Europe since middle of January till middle of February, I am back in Benin for another 8 months.

The question of today is where did I go? Where did I go when I left for Europe and where when I came back?

Someway I went “home” when I came to Mainz and had time to see and talk with some of my friends. It was a pleasure to see you face-to-face and speak freely about everything that happened. To feel some of you understand what I am feeling and living actually. Some of you know quite a lot about me and “my history” and it is easy for you to understand. Mainz was, probably for the last time, the nest of my closest friends and me. Most of the Mainzer group are actually leaving to somewhere on the planet…

Then I went to Paris to my official address which will not last any longer since the contract will be finished in June. There I faced a very decisive period of my life. The places of Paris are somehow my geographic home. When I dream about meeting friends somewhere the dream takes usually place in my beloved city of Paris. Paris is as glamorous and proud as it is dirty and sticky, it is as authentic as it is faked, it is small in seize but big inside and I love the mixture of this and its inhabitants from all over the world.

And now I am back in Benin – someway back at home, where my life takes place. Here is my flat and my work, some friends and lots of experiences to learn… I will try to keep you informed on that…

Three homes for just one person… lucky me…

Best wishes to you all, some place(s) you may call home and last but not least friends…

Some anecdotes: from traditional car healers and me sleeping on graves

In the village of Batia where I do some of my research life always offer some surprises. One evening my research assistant Lucien and me found two Ghanaian guys with their car that didn´t start anymore. We found a technician in the far out village but after some hours, he just could inform us, that the starter has a problem – who guessed? The guys were very hungry and we found some grilled maize and fried yams. They had to stay the night in the village and the one with rasta-hair gave an excellent reggae concert with the car radio… The next day the other one went to the next town (42km) to find another technician. He even came back with two. They started to demount the whole car, the seats, some parts of the starter and they were checking all kind of cables so the car didn´t look like bringing home these guys soon. Nothing worked out the technicians didn´t find the damaged piece. Luckily there are other ways to heal a car. An older man found his way in zick-zack lines to the car, looked interested, sat down on the ground in front of the car and started to sing. It was a smooth and rhythmic song like some American Indians may sing and the car seems to like it. About one hour later, the man was still singing, the technicians still pulling out more and more cables out of the car. Then they tried to push the car to make it start and – it sounds incredible I know – in exactly the same moment, when the singing car healer stopped his meditative melody the car started. Reggae wasn´t able to help, technicians had their problems but the traditional car healer made it…

Unfortunately I couldn´t record the song – it would have been very useful to have this song always with me when driving around. This is the funny side of the story, but I have to mention the other side of it. Quite a lot of people drink regularly strong alcoholic drinks in the villages and some of them spent a lot of money in drinking, some may even be alcoholics. This has become a serious problem in the region.

But there is another singer in the village who doesn´t need alcohol to sing – the village chief himself. I usually sleep in his home and one afternoon he came to sing again. Who thinks that rap has been invented in American Slums has to hear his performance…

Life is different here and nothing is what it seems to be. That´s the way it is and sometimes even the very experts - for example BIOTA botanists - become the victim of this. He (if I discover his name he may loose his job) went out to find some tomatoes and brought home what you can see in the photo…

But these are no tomatoes at all, these are aubergines. To be honest, he is not the only one who confuses some of the things you meet here…

When it is very hot in the village Lucien and me go outside the concession to eat in the shadow under two big trees. The gulmancé people have the graves of their family members always close to theirs homes. Sometimes the graves are just some stones on the ground, sometimes – when the person was important – the grave is covered with a plate made of concrete. The proximity to the graves renders them an element of all-day life. People sit on them kids play on them and we eat on them. After lunch we often are tired, so we put a mat on the grave and we sleep right there. It took me some time to realise what we were doing on the grave, lying with the back on the cold stone, just some centimetres above a death body. When I get it I laughed because I imagined to do the same thing on some graveyard in Germany…Life is different – everywhere…

Biodiversity taken seriously

At the beginning of my stay in Tanguiéta:

We are not living alone. There are always some “friends” with two or more legs… When I arrived in my new flat I had to clean it up. Fortunately there was a group of some 10 children who came over to help – for them it was fun to put the whole flat under water and brush everything. They found a turtle - my first friend with more the two legs - in a corner of the house. During cleaning we met quite a lot of cockroaches and spiders. Some of them we killed, others committed suicide by throwing themselves from the walls – when they fall on their back they become pray of the ants who clean everything what might be eatable. The first night a cricket found it funny to sing his ear-splitting song right beside my bed – I put her out in the court… Then came the time of the mosquitoes who liked to pass for diner – white men’s blood must be for African mosquitoes something like French kitchen in Europe. Later on, I found praying mantis, flies, frogs that greeted me in the morning from inside my backpack, mice, cats, a very small, very sweet baby chameleon and other friends in my house.
I am happy that the lions, elephants and buffalos of the park stay way they are… till now I haven’t had the opportunity to watch them but this will come one day as well…

The anthropologist’s work around a national park

There are animals and plants in the park that some institutions want to protect and to conserve. There are people around the park who want to use the soil for agriculture and the plants and animals for food, constructions, medicine, ceremonies and so on. (the photo shows the bicycles of poachers that have been confiscated by the park administration)

This is the reason for quite a lot of conflicts between farmers and ranchers and the park administration, between the eco-guards and hunters who have no authorisation. There is a permanent need for communication and negotiation between these parties. The park administration tries to attract local development project, implies the local populations in the surveillance and the decision-making by institutions of co-management. These institutions of co-management shall help on the one hand to communicate the needs of the local population and on the other to sensibilize and responsibilize them. Therefore the park administration promoted the foundation of villagers associations called AVIGREF (Association Villageoise de Gestion des Réserves de Faune) in the villages close to the park.

The installation of these kinds of institutions has evidently an impact on the local political structure. The new positions which are linked to these new institution like the president, the treasurer and so on give to these persons access to financial and social resources they haven’t had before. This changes the local power relations. These changes are one point of interest in my investigations.

As there are quite a lot of sources of conflict I have to concentrate on one of them. That’s why I mainly focus on the phenomena of hunting without official permission and sport hunting. The implication of local villagers in the surveillance of the park may cause a splitting of the village in people who want to hunt even without permission and those who take part in the co-management conservation approach. By means of hunting or of positioning in socially and politically influential positions people struggle for resources to survive and or to increase their influence. (the photo shows the repartition of meat from the sport hunting which is usually sold to the people living around the park)

What to do with this situation? For me there is no question that people are more important then wildlife. But wildlife conservation may lead – in the long-term – to better living conditions than hunting and a not sustainable exploitation of natural resources. So how to find a way acceptable for all? I hope some of the decision makers and or of the locals can help to develop some ideas on this problem…

to arrive - ankommen - arriver

26 june 2008: I am sitting in a small room in a cheap hostel at Tanguiéta. It is raining cats and dogs (or better lions and hyenas) and I am thinking about arriving... Here my first hypothesis: To arrive in whatever place is much more a psychological question as it is physical.

To arrive physically seams to be easy in Benin: You sweat as if you were in a hot country. When it rains you get wet as if you were in the tropics and your digestion tells you - more or less gently - that you are not eating the same things than in Europe. When the electricity shuts down you have to look for your torch or wait for it to came back. The body doesn´t ask the question if you accept all this. he tells you very explicitly if he likes what you are experiencing or not.

To arrive psychologically seams much more complex: You do not understand why people answer "yes" when you ask if it is "A" or "B". You are curious about the way things work and you try to compare with what you know in order to understand. When you want to buy something you still expect a fix price indicated on the merchandise. At 3 pm you still say "bonjour" and people answer "bonsoir". When people shake hands they have a special manner to snap their fingers mutually when they leave the hand of the other. If you can´t do like they do you feel like a stranger (although everybody tries to let you feel very welcome).

Especially this last example shows that my hypothesis is somewhat mistaken. What you do with your body influences what you perceive with your mind. Every movement I do is a movement in a new and unknown environment. My steps are like walking on eggs because I do not (not yet) know how to move. Both parts, body and mind, are connected, are part of one unit. To arrive, both have to walk hand in hand: The mind has to accept and the body has to accustom, then you can feel having arrived and start to understand better how things work.

first impressions - premières impressions

I’m in Africa! This was clear from the very first moment when we went by bus from the airplane to the customs. This is what we do in many airports in Europe you will think – but not if the distance between the plane and the customs are about 20 meters and the bus ride takes 50 meters… Some things have different meanings in different worlds.

Today, I went out to get a mobile phone chip and some money. The idea to do this be feed gave me the possibility to learn about tropical rainfall (and it became a strong TROPICAL RAINFALL). Streets turned into streams and there were plenty of passages which became impossible to take. Sometimes I just lifted my trousers, sometimes I had to go back and try a different way. Cotonou looked a little like Venice – just without boats and a slightly different architecture. But it was nice to feel the warm rain, stop under a small roof to get some rice fish and a spicy sauce to eat.

To get the money and the chip took almost the whole day. Especially it wasn’t easy to find a way to get money with a Visa card that has no PIN. I went from one banc to the next and there was always at least one reason why they couldn’t give me money: no machine, machine out of order, the responsible absent, not responsible for these problems… But this way you get in contact with many people and most of them are really friendly. A street seller I talked to was asked by a mixed African-European couple if he knows Roger (a quite common name in Benin). The answer was that Roger is his brother and that he moved to France recently. So the conservation started… The ways people meet are so different.

As distances from one bank to the next became too large I took the famous Semi-Djan Motorcycle-Taxis. The streets are full of small motorcycles which fly around like bees - I am writing quantity-wise AND organisation-wise. They have to take care of puddles of holes and the other vehicles… always a little adventure – luckily they never get that fast…

The evening I eat in a restaurant a steak for the price of a Döner-Sandwich in Europe. Thinking about the day I realised: It was a really nice day, a welcoming à la Africa. I arrived…