Already November!

And the elections are... today! (Well, we won't know any results until tomorrow anyway). Despite all the election coverage that has managed to come our way it doesn't feel real that tomorrow we will have a new president. Eric has a colleague who has MSNBC so I think we'll go to Azove to watch election coverage all night. Unless I get stuck in Cotonou in which I will hang out with a lot of other volunteers who are watching. Either way I think Eric and I will both be up all night!
Anyway. I am in Cotonou to participate in a review of this year's training for the new volunteers that I did. Hopefully it will only be a half day. Otherwise I've been to the bank where I had to wait two hours for my friend to get her money because her signature was "not in the computer." There is technology here but it is slow and people don't know how to use it! This is almost more annoying than just having no computer at all and doing everything by hand because otherwise there is the expectation that technology should actually work!
Things in Klouekanme are decent. Eric has begun school finally and only has to teach two days a week, which is nice for him. He's planning on continuing with English club and also maybe doing an Aja club, as well as teaching computer classes at the mayor's office. My work has consisted lately of getting ready for the launching of my HIV/AIDS project in Houedogli (nearby village), which took place last Friday. It went really well, and now that the project is "launched" we can actually start doing lessons in the community. This will keep me busy at least one day a week. And I hope to do some work map paintings at school and nutrition murals, so I think I will not be too bored in the upcoming months.
Last weekend I got to go to a very cool cultural event at a friends post up North. It's an initiation event for boys and young men in the community, in which they have battles where they whip each other and fight for glory. The already-initiated men dress up in drag in order to make the initiates feel more manly, and everyone is in crazy costumes and there is a lot of testosterone going around. There are hundreds of men participating so there was a sort of organized chaos in which everyone ran around frenzied and then some would suddenly find a partner to do battle with, so they would whip each other until someone won. There was a lot of blood but nobody showed pain so as not to look weak. It's hard to do the festival justice in writing but I will post some pictures. There were two things I noticed about my friend's village up north that were remarkably different from our area- there were a lot more trees and vegetation throughout the village, whereas our town is more or less barren but for a few trees and corn fields. And also, the people seem not to be afraid of snakes! In the south all the tall grass is cut down and nobody will venture near vegetation for fear of snakes, but in this northern village not only was there a lot of tall grass, but the men participating in the initiation rite actually ran into the tall grass to trample it and fight on it! That was incredible.
Nothing much else has happened of note. Actually I had an uncomfortable encounter with the Chef d'Arrondissement (county chief?) of Houedogli where I'm doing the HIV project. Here was our conversation, after the greetings:
Chef: You know, people here want money
me: yes, I know well
c: so you must bring it
m: no, that's not my job here
c: (laughing) you must do all you can
m: sorry that's just not my job
c: but you are rich! I know this
m: how do you know- because I am white?
c: (looking uncomfortable) uh... well you must bring money
m: it's impossible
c: don't you want to develop us?
m: no

Yeah, I was blunt. What can I do? This guy is a total jerk who said that there was no way the project would continue without me, thereby implying that his own citizens just can't do anything on their own without the help of a foreigner. I anticipate many such interactions with him in the future.
On Sunday night Eric's colleague from school came over to eat American food and talk with us. We made him fried okra, mac and cheese, and barbecue tofu. He liked the food and we had an interesting conversation with him about the west, since he recently came back from Germany. He disliekd the "western life" a lot because it was very lonely to him. He remarked on certain things we would never care about, like an old man buying food for himself in the grocery (an old person, let alone a man, would never have to do that here). The things I miss so much about the west- being able to be alone, the anonymity- were exactly the things he disliked. He also remarked how strange it was that we don't have a TV in Benin and that if we weren't foreigners we would have absolutely no respect. Same goes for us riding bikes- no Beninese teacher would be caught dead riding a bike! So we have a strange status here because people think we're rich simply because we're foreign yet we don't do rich-people things... people really don't know what to think about us. We also discussed women's issues with the colleague, which I've been feeling really sensitive about lately. He definitely believes the woman's place is to serve the man, as does almost everyone else here. The sexism is so painful sometimes because even the educated people don't treat women equally.
Well I think I'll stop there. I'm posting some pictures, so keep up with that!