our life in the foreign service
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Dear parents (because let’s be honest — who else is going to watch these?):
Here are some YouTube videos we found recently from Benin. Enjoy!
-Alex
First, here’s a nicely-produced introduction to Cotonou. It’s in French, but you can get a good visual sense of the city.
Now, here’s a less flattering depiction. Cotonou. Rush hour. Enough said.
Think driving couldn’t get any worse? Two words: rainy season.
Now you see why high clearance was of utmost importance in our car search.
Tags: Benin, cotonou, motos, rainy season, traffic, videos, youtube
A peak into what’s going on these days in Benin…
CNN: “Accusations of child witchcraft on the rise in Africa”
BBC: “Benin – democracy, the Chinese way – or voodoo?”
Bloomberg: “Benin’s government seizes cars, buildings and money from executives of ICC”
Afrique en Lingue: “Benin lifts dissolution of national football team”
Tags: Benin, democracy, news, witchcraft
A while back I set up Google alerts to send me daily summaries of all new web content that match the search terms “Benin” or “Cotonou” — sort of cool, although honestly less useful than I hoped.
I’d say something like 49% of what comes through is actually about a place called Benin City in Nigeria. It’s a rubber industry hub. Lots of fascinating news about that. (Riiiight.)
Another, say, 49% of what pops up are blog entries by Peace Corp volunteers throughout Benin. These can indeed be interesting, but they don’t of course give me much historical or political content, which is what I really want.
It’s only every few days or so that a real news article comes through.
Here are some of the most recent:
NYT: “From West Africa, a Recipe for Spicy Trans-Atlantic Funk”
Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou, from Benin, belongs on the very short list of the world’s greatest funk bands. More than four decades into its career, most of them spent touring Benin and nearby West African countries, the 10-man orchestra made its blistering North American debut on Sunday night at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College as part of the Lincoln Center Festival… (Click here to read more.)
Bloomberg: “Benin Dismisses and Arrests Minister of Security for Fraud”
Benin dismissed and arrested Security Minister Armand Zinzindohoue for his involvement in a finance company that took deposits from people and hasn’t returned the funds, Work Minister Gerard Kuassi said. President Thomas Boni Yayi on July 8 fired Zinzindohoue, who was arrested yesterday after a commission of inquiry found he was involved in the company, known as ICC Services, Kuassi told reporters in Cotonou, the country’s commercial hub, today… (Click here to read more.)
Al Jazeera English: “Anger at France Bastille Day parade”
France has staged its traditional Bastille Day parade amid criticism from human rights groups at the invitation of some African leaders. Soldiers from 13 African nations marched through Paris on Wednesday to mark 50 years of independence from French colonial rule. … The parade saw fighter jets fly over the city, followed by African troops marching down the Champs Elysees avenue, headed by an all-female unit from Benin. (Click here to read more.)
Tags: bastille day, Benin, corruption, france, funk, google, music, news, nigeria
A. Collection of antique voodoo dolls
B. Population of Peace Corps volunteers
C. Shrimp
D. Pristine stretch of beach
E. None of the above
While any of those things may very well be true, the answer I’m looking for is actually E, none of the above.
In fact, as of about a year ago, Benin is home to the region’s largest hypermarket (the European term for supermarket). Yes, little old Benin has a larger grocery store than even places like Ghana and Nigeria. Who would have guessed? Not me. But I’m certainly not complaining!
Not too shabby.
I have that much fun at the grocery store too! No, really, I actually do.
It looks bigger (and frankly, nicer) than the supermarkets we've gotten used to in NYC and DC.
So yes, the food will be fine. That’s one less excuse you can use to avoid visiting us.
Tags: Benin, food, grocery store
Today we had a nice picnic lunch with several other people who will be in Benin while we are there. One will be arriving there next month while another won’t be there until after us, if you can believe it. We all talked about a lot of questions and issues such as what kind of car to get, the best way to ship boxes of wine and how to con Peace Corps volunteers into pet-sitting for you. It is good to know that when we finally, finally get to Cotonou, there will be some familiar faces.
When I got home I was cleaning and found a notebook that had some of my initial notes from the days after we got our bid list. With the benefit of hindsight, it was interesting to see what I was thinking about when we began the process that will eventually lead us to a city on the mouth of the river of death.
For example, some of the things that seemed important to us when creating our bid list were the speed of internet, number of R&Rs and housing. How did we end up doing? Well, the internet is slow, we only get one R&R and, unlike most Africa posts, we don’t get a pool.
But Cotonou stacks up well in the categories we decided really matter (and even in those we didn’t think about that probably matter a lot – like high morale) so we can’t complain. Although when it comes time to bid on a second tour, we might research the swimming pool situation a little more carefully.
So, we went car shopping. (Thanks Kitty Non Grata for the inspiration!) We don’t really need a car until we leave in March 2011, but I’d like to get it sooner rather than later for Target runs, vet trips and weekend excursions to who knows where.
Andy’s opinion is pretty much, “Why pay car insurance before we really need to, and also, why not wait until a month before we leave so we don’t have to pay state sales tax?” Fair arguments, but still, I want a car.
Yes, you can survive in Arlington without one, but Arlington’s no New York City. The Metro doesn’t get you everywhere, and buses come much less frequently. Not having a car is annoying. And we’re going to buy it eventually, so why not now?
Andy’s not totally sold, but he agreed to look nevertheless.
Our criteria:
Our first stop was at the Toyota dealership to check out the Rav4, commonly referred to as “the car of the Foreign Service.” If it’s good enough for everyone else, it’s good enough for us, right?
Toyota Rav4
While it’s a solid car, there’s nothing about it that would make me go, “Wow. I’m proud to own this.” I’m especially not in love with the new design; I prefer the boxier frame of the old Rav4s.
While we were at the Toyota dealership, we also checked out this guy:
Toyota Cruiser
We also ventured across the street to the Honda dealership to test drive the Rav4’s biggest competitor:
Honda CRV
(In unrelated news: We mentioned to the dealer that it’s too bad both the CRV and the Rav4 have gotten bigger in recent years, because the newer versions are both really just more car than we need or want. He looked at us with shock and confusion; apparently no one else has ever complained about a car being too big. Oh, America.)
The big draw of Honda and Toyota are that they’re known quantities in a lot of different parts of the world. In fact, both seem to even have dealerships in Cotonou. However, upon learning that neither company honors warranties overseas, we began to question whether we really needed to restrict ourselves to these two companies.
We scoured a used car dealership nearby for other options, and turned up two, both Jeeps. We’ll probably head to a Jeep dealership tomorrow to test drive them.
Jeep Liberty
Jeep Patriot
Before today we were fairly sure we would buy new, but this no-warranty thing is making us second-guess that also. (If we go used, we would definitely want something only a few years old and with 20,000 miles or fewer so we can be reasonably certain it will hold up alright for 2-3 years.)
Any thoughts about the new/used debate, or about any of these makes?
I actually had the opportunity to attend a voodoo ceremony once: in high school, when I spent a few weeks volunteering in Haiti. However, my stomach hadn’t quite adjusted to the local water, and getting to the ceremony would have required riding for a few hours each way in the back of a pick-up truck, bumping up and down with each of the many potholes in the road.
So… that didn’t seem like such a good idea.
Although I didn’t ever see an actual voodoo ceremony in Haiti, meeting so many people who practiced the religion — good people — made me question the assumptions I’d had about it.
This Samuel Freedman op-ed touches on the roots of voodoo’s misrepresentation in American media and culture. Like many people, I’d thought of it as sort of a sinister sorcery, but it’s really not.
Voodoo isn’t really all that different from other religions; followers appeal to divine powers to assure their success in life. They just do this is ways we don’t understand.
A simple but good explanation of what voodoo’s really about can be found in this National Geographic piece, if you’re interested. Or check out this NPR series.
Now, on to our regularly scheduled programming:
From the accompanying article:
“…Our first stop was Ouidah, a town with links back to the slave trade where voodoo is widely practised.
We were invited to attend a voodoo ceremony with the high priest Dagbou Hounon.
Despite the fact that voodoo is the most widely practised religion here, we still passed a mosque and a church on the way to the ceremony.
Under the gaze of Dagbou Hounon, six dancers performed to the raucous beat of a six-piece drumming outfit.
The beats were vigorous and relentless, the six dancers pumping their bodies energetically with jerky steps, jumps and thrusts of the chest and arms.
Speaking to Dagbou Hounon later, we learned that this dance is just one part of a number of elaborate rituals that anyone consulting a voodoo priest might be asked to commission in order to get things to go the way that they want.”
This video and article are part of a larger BBC project called Africa Kicks. Timed to coincide with the World Cup, it explores West Africa’s “football factory,” the region that produces the best soccer players. Check it out!
So, we’ll be moving to a part of the world where most meals feature ocean-dwelling creatures. (See here and here, for instance.) I’m excited about fresh and plentiful seafood, but Andy? Not so much. But he’s being a good sport and even trying to prepare his palate. In Annapolis over the weekend he shocked me by ordering this crab cake sandwich:
Mmm.
He even finished the whole thing! The verdict: “Tastes like a ham sandwich dropped on the bottom of a boat.” Well, it’s a start.
More pictures from Annapolis…
Before the crabs became cakes...
Downtown.
More downtown.
Quaint.
Historic.
Even the alleys are cute.
Downtown Annapolis was fun to see, although honestly it’s a bit too Disney-fied for my tastes. It’s one of those places that clearly used to be totally cool, and might still be pretty cool if you’re somehow able to overlook the fact that no one hangs out here anymore besides tourists. The architecture is lovely, yes, but when I travel I prefer to see how locals actually live. I’d imagine other FSO-types share this desire — am I right? Isn’t that interest at least in part what draws us to this bizarre lifestyle?
Anyhow, Andy and I had a better time when we ventured away from the commercial strip downtown. We strolled down residential streets and crossed a bridge to a crab shack whose parking lot only had MD license plates.
And now we’re thinking ahead to future weekend trips. Any suggestions?
Tags: annapolis, architecture, seafood, travel, trip, weekend
You probably read today about the Afriqiyah flight crashing in Libya.
Over 100 casualties. One known surviver. (Photo lifted from the Christian Science Monitor.)
Really sad stuff.
Afriqiyah also happens to operate about 25% of the flights coming in and out of Cotonou.
Airlines at COO, according to theAirDB.
It seems like these smaller, regional airlines suffer a disproportionate number of crashes. Particularly in Africa.
There was this crash in the Congo.
And this Ethiopian Airlines plane that crashed off of Lebanon.
And this plane that came down in Nigeria.
You get the idea. And in case somehow you didn’t get the idea, let me be more specific. According to the International Air Transport Association, Africa’s air accident rate is six times worse than the rest of the world.
Hmm. So what does this mean for me and Andy?
At a dinner last night with some future colleagues, we were pleasantly surprised to learn that there are quite a few direct flights from Cotonou, and to cool places too, like:
However, while Delta and Air France fly to major destinations like Paris, smaller airlines like Aero Benin, Air Ivoire and ASKY Airlines provide most regional coverage. (I’m not sure why these aren’t represented in that graph, but apparently they’re there, along with a handful of others…)
Those of you who’ve traveled around Africa: are some small airlines safer than others, or should we just avoid them all?
On Monday I started a four-week tradecraft course focused on the information and media aspect of my job. One thing we’ve discussed so far is the importance of understanding the unique histories, personalities and agendas of the various foreign media outlets with which we’ll be interacting. This knowledge will allow us to adapt our message appropriately.
As a tounge-in-cheek exercise to introduce us to this topic, we matched a number of U.S. newspapers with their reputations:
These are just generalizations, of course, but there’s some truth in there, right? 
We also had some time to research the media climate of our country of assignment. I was surprised to learn that Benin’s newspapers only have circulations of several thousand, while radio programs are heard by millions of people. So, radio will probably be a major vehicle for my public diplomacy efforts. Text messages too. Did you know that more people in the world have access to a cell phone than a clean toilet?
Tags: Benin, cell phone, information officer, media, newspapers, pdo, radio
