Cotonou, Benin: Its life and mine
So, as you all know, I’m in Cotonou right now. Cotonou’s an interesting city. First of all, it’s a real city. In fact, you could imagine it as a kind of Los Angeles: It’s big, with many suburbs stretching for miles, everything for the country comes in through Cotonou, there is a grand mélange of ex-patriots from all over the world here, there are good restaurants, good supermarkets, and even a mall-type supermarket exists here now.
The aesthetics only differ in a few major ways; Cotonou is like any big city, but take away all the nice cars, or better yet take almost all the cars and age them by 50 to 20 years, and add about 200 motorcycles to every 1 vehicle and you might get an idea of the road conditions. Also, the roads are lined with trash. Public waste systems are a 1st world novelty, so trash here is either thrown where it was last used, or it is burned in personal piles at peoples’ houses. Lucky for Africa, there isn’t AS MUCH over-wrapping and plastic linings on products as there are in the States, but there is a lot of trash none-the-less.
As for the buildings: Nothing towers much higher than 4 stories, and it seems like a quarter of the buildings in Cotonou are under construction. This is because people build till the money runs out, and then they wait for more money to come in again. It is not unusual or embarrassing to live or work in a building that looks like a haven for the American-style homeless person. Buildings that are finished are usually storefronts on bottom and residents or offices on top, as you would expect. In walking back through alleyways and residence areas, you might find huge gated mansions surrounded by mud huts and the like. Thieves are not a problem for those people, because if they can afford the house then they can probably afford the guards.
There is a nice neighborhood in Cotonou though, called Hivive. I’m probably spelling ‘Hivive’ wrong, but I like my spelling because 1) That’s exactly how you pronounce it, and 2) for me Hivive is franglais (English-french mixture) for ‘High Life’, because ‘vivre’ is ‘to live’ in French. It’s the neighborhood that surrounds all the governmental buildings, and the presidential palace. It’s so modern and ritzy that you almost feel like your in another world. There are all the big buildings of the government, the airport, incredible restaurants ranging from Thai to Indian to ice cream parlors. And then, of course there is the residential area of it all, which not only sports nothing but small and large mansions, it also has such things as landscaping and grass. The rich all have cars as well, so the streets are usually strangely deserted of people, minus the one or two odd pedestrians.
Also, every mansion, no matter the size, has a wall around it. Every single one of them. They all are also fully staffed as well. Since this is a collectivist society, the rich here are expected to give the poor jobs and/or handouts. They usually give them jobs, so most houses include a cook, a house cleaner, a 24 hour guard (who is guaranteed to sleep on the job, even though they have shifts), sometimes a nanny and sometimes a driver. You have to understand though; if these rich people decided to do something on their own instead of hiring someone, even if you just really enjoy washing clothes or whatever, then their community and work partners would see them as being greedy and selfish.
Quite a few of these people are Beninese, but I would guess that a majority of the foreign population of Benin lives in this little area. Honestly, it’s not a bad life. You get all the credit for living in Africa, but you never really have to leave the States. As long as you don’t leave Hivive you will see many white people who share your culture, have plenty of restaurants to choose from, and air conditioning and satellite tv are practically mandatory (along with sinks and toilets and all that good stuff).
Personally, I don’t think I could be an ex-pat (ex-patriot) like that. There are many of them who never leave Cotonou, and I can’t say I blame them, because the life without toilets, running water, air-conditioning and maybe even without beds is not an easy one. But I like to think that there are many things that outweigh those sacrifices. There are amazing people all around you, doing amazing things. There are women who the world would truly miss if they didn’t exist… they are the many tiny pieces that make up the foundation, and it just makes you wonder how many of those pieces carry the majority of the structural weight.
Honestly, I can’t even say that I enjoy visiting Cotonou, ex-pat lifestyle or not. I want to say that it’s because it’s too stressful, but then I find myself trying to pinpoint the source of my stresses.
The more I think of it, I think it’s about money. Cotonou is stressful if you don’t have money. Back in village I could go a week spending no more than $2-3USD. In Cotonou though you have options. You could easily drop $3 on a can of Pringles. You could go eat a good meal, get ice cream afterwards, go see a production or a speaker at one of the embassies, buy the latest movies bootleg, buy good things that you never see anywhere else, like apples and grapes… And what’s worse is that you start to revert to thinking in dollars. That’s the biggest mistake. You start thinking, “OH MY GOODNESS that’s 1.500f CFA, but hey, it’s only really $3…” And then you end up spending a weeks salary on a couple cans of pringles, a box of cerial, a couple of candy bars and a can of Dr. Pepper.
And then it occurs to me that I am poor. I never have liked saying that I’m rich, but I’ve definitely never been poor before. But now I realize that this is what it is like. It is the possibility of things, the possibility of feeling comfortable as if you were home, and the lack of those possibilities once your money is counted. Even the poor in the States have credit cards though. Granted, they probably don’t use them properly, but that at least gives you cushioning for the occasional luxury. No such thing exists for the poor here… and there are A LOT of poor people.
The most interesting thing about my life as ‘a poor person’, is that I’m not poor. Actually, I might be in the top 15 list of the salaries in Boukoumbe. I’m definitely in the top 20… and in 1 day I get paid what someone could make in 1 hour back in the States.
The aesthetics only differ in a few major ways; Cotonou is like any big city, but take away all the nice cars, or better yet take almost all the cars and age them by 50 to 20 years, and add about 200 motorcycles to every 1 vehicle and you might get an idea of the road conditions. Also, the roads are lined with trash. Public waste systems are a 1st world novelty, so trash here is either thrown where it was last used, or it is burned in personal piles at peoples’ houses. Lucky for Africa, there isn’t AS MUCH over-wrapping and plastic linings on products as there are in the States, but there is a lot of trash none-the-less.
As for the buildings: Nothing towers much higher than 4 stories, and it seems like a quarter of the buildings in Cotonou are under construction. This is because people build till the money runs out, and then they wait for more money to come in again. It is not unusual or embarrassing to live or work in a building that looks like a haven for the American-style homeless person. Buildings that are finished are usually storefronts on bottom and residents or offices on top, as you would expect. In walking back through alleyways and residence areas, you might find huge gated mansions surrounded by mud huts and the like. Thieves are not a problem for those people, because if they can afford the house then they can probably afford the guards.
There is a nice neighborhood in Cotonou though, called Hivive. I’m probably spelling ‘Hivive’ wrong, but I like my spelling because 1) That’s exactly how you pronounce it, and 2) for me Hivive is franglais (English-french mixture) for ‘High Life’, because ‘vivre’ is ‘to live’ in French. It’s the neighborhood that surrounds all the governmental buildings, and the presidential palace. It’s so modern and ritzy that you almost feel like your in another world. There are all the big buildings of the government, the airport, incredible restaurants ranging from Thai to Indian to ice cream parlors. And then, of course there is the residential area of it all, which not only sports nothing but small and large mansions, it also has such things as landscaping and grass. The rich all have cars as well, so the streets are usually strangely deserted of people, minus the one or two odd pedestrians.
Also, every mansion, no matter the size, has a wall around it. Every single one of them. They all are also fully staffed as well. Since this is a collectivist society, the rich here are expected to give the poor jobs and/or handouts. They usually give them jobs, so most houses include a cook, a house cleaner, a 24 hour guard (who is guaranteed to sleep on the job, even though they have shifts), sometimes a nanny and sometimes a driver. You have to understand though; if these rich people decided to do something on their own instead of hiring someone, even if you just really enjoy washing clothes or whatever, then their community and work partners would see them as being greedy and selfish.
Quite a few of these people are Beninese, but I would guess that a majority of the foreign population of Benin lives in this little area. Honestly, it’s not a bad life. You get all the credit for living in Africa, but you never really have to leave the States. As long as you don’t leave Hivive you will see many white people who share your culture, have plenty of restaurants to choose from, and air conditioning and satellite tv are practically mandatory (along with sinks and toilets and all that good stuff).
Personally, I don’t think I could be an ex-pat (ex-patriot) like that. There are many of them who never leave Cotonou, and I can’t say I blame them, because the life without toilets, running water, air-conditioning and maybe even without beds is not an easy one. But I like to think that there are many things that outweigh those sacrifices. There are amazing people all around you, doing amazing things. There are women who the world would truly miss if they didn’t exist… they are the many tiny pieces that make up the foundation, and it just makes you wonder how many of those pieces carry the majority of the structural weight.
Honestly, I can’t even say that I enjoy visiting Cotonou, ex-pat lifestyle or not. I want to say that it’s because it’s too stressful, but then I find myself trying to pinpoint the source of my stresses.
The more I think of it, I think it’s about money. Cotonou is stressful if you don’t have money. Back in village I could go a week spending no more than $2-3USD. In Cotonou though you have options. You could easily drop $3 on a can of Pringles. You could go eat a good meal, get ice cream afterwards, go see a production or a speaker at one of the embassies, buy the latest movies bootleg, buy good things that you never see anywhere else, like apples and grapes… And what’s worse is that you start to revert to thinking in dollars. That’s the biggest mistake. You start thinking, “OH MY GOODNESS that’s 1.500f CFA, but hey, it’s only really $3…” And then you end up spending a weeks salary on a couple cans of pringles, a box of cerial, a couple of candy bars and a can of Dr. Pepper.
And then it occurs to me that I am poor. I never have liked saying that I’m rich, but I’ve definitely never been poor before. But now I realize that this is what it is like. It is the possibility of things, the possibility of feeling comfortable as if you were home, and the lack of those possibilities once your money is counted. Even the poor in the States have credit cards though. Granted, they probably don’t use them properly, but that at least gives you cushioning for the occasional luxury. No such thing exists for the poor here… and there are A LOT of poor people.
The most interesting thing about my life as ‘a poor person’, is that I’m not poor. Actually, I might be in the top 15 list of the salaries in Boukoumbe. I’m definitely in the top 20… and in 1 day I get paid what someone could make in 1 hour back in the States.
posted by sarah at 3:09 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home