The Parade that almost took my life

Life here is harder then I could have or did image. I have already had so many life altering experiences. I didn’t come anywhere close to being prepared for this. The moment I stepped on the ground in Africa, it hit me. The next couple of hours were mind-boggling and the next couple of days were the same. But nothing so far has compared to living with a family while I’m in training. Now don’t get me wrong I love my family here. They treat me better then they do their own kids, but the change is so big and the expectation to be something you are not in only two weeks to so great that it has already crushed a lot of people that are in my training group. So, I know you want some stories and guess what. I have a lot. I’ll tell one now and we will see where that takes us. So, yesterday was the Fete d’Independence for Benin. (oh by the way it is pronounced as Been-in) That’s how all the nationals say it so that’s what I’m going with. So the fete is put on in the Commune of Aplahoue (pronounced App-la-way). This is a town just 10 min bike ride from here, by car like 2 mins. The Business volunteers are in Azove, along with the Computer people. (that’s me) And in Aplahoue there is the Environment Volunteers. That makes up about half the people that are entering Peace Corps Benin this year. The rest of our Stage (which is what our “class” is called) is in other towns in the South. Actually we are not that far from them either, about 40 mins by car. Anyway. So the environmental and business volunteers got together in Aplahoue to celebrate the Independence Day for Benin. We get there and we are the only white people there. Which you think might be weird, but we have been the only white people for the past week and a half. So, the weird thing was to see another white person show up that none of us knew. They were hanging out with the mayor and held a prominent position in the parade / celebration. I figure that they were some French NGO representative or something, because they didn’t speak English. Really every-time I see a white person on the street I know them because they are in the Peace Corps. Talk about being a minority. I have experienced it and there are really ugly parts of being in the minority. Anyway, The festival started off with a guy that could balance anything on his bike in whatever position you thought possible. And, as a sign of a good trick, people walked up to him and stuck change to his forehead. Yeah, when he was trying to balance. Next in the parade were a ton of groups of dancers. Yes, people would walk up to them too and stick things to their skin while they were dancing. It was interesting to see the performer work around that. But anyway, also in the parade there were the most off the wall things. Like when I went to the parade I was thinking I was going to see like floats and circus performers. Well, who in Africa has that kind of time. So, they had the Hair Dresser organization come up and do a little thing. Then they had the Tailors come up and show their skill by making a couple of outfits on the spot. The outfits looked like they were going to rip at any moment but they were there. Anyway, if that wasn’t odd enough, the taxi drivers came through along with the taxi-motos. (these motorcycles are in greater number and fill the streets. We get to ride them if we want to go places; only we have to wear a helmet so we don’t die.) In this part of the parade there was one taxi driver that took it upon himself to make the parade interesting by putting the car into multiple doughnuts in the middle of the parade stage area. Which, you might think wouldn’t be a big deal only that this stage area was just the road and when he put it into doughnuts he came literally within two feet of hitting us and everyone else in the crowd. The road was the stage and that wasn’t bigger than a small two way two lane road back in the states. (which that’s the biggest road in the commune; a commune includes like 20 villages) So, we’re just on the side of the road. I’m telling you that if he came out of the turn to soon, we would have been dead. No questions asked. It was scary and what was more was the officials of the parade started yelling at him like this wasn’t planned at all. And the crowd went crazy, as everyone would run every time the car came close. People falling all over each other can create chaos in an instant. So, everyone after him had to do something else and it just got crazy. Anyway, the parade ended soon after that and we went to the mayor’s house to eat with him there. So the day ended well. And everyone survived another day in Africa.

(This was typed on Aug. 2 and I put this up when I got to an Internet connection on Aug. 25)