Strangers in a Not-So-Strange Land

You know how sometimes you end up somewhere completely unexpected and don't really know how it happened? Last Friday my friend Maman Jumeaux invited me to come visit her boss's house in Porto-Novo, where she works as a cook. I knew they were Pakistani and Muslim missionaries, but somehow it didn't occur to me that that meant it was a completely different culture. I showed up to about 20 women (the men were staying elsewhere) and a bunch of kids, all wearing long sari-like outfits and gold jewelry, all speaking in a language I couldn't even begin to decipher. Some spoke a little English or French, but mostly our conversations were stunted. I did better with the kids, who went to a bilingual English-French school and were funny, at one point even chastising me for dancing. Apparently in their branch of Islam, dancing is inappropriate.*


It was a fascinating day. The women arrived in long hijabs and veils, spoke in Urdu and laughed about things I didn't understand. I watched them make a delicious spicy chicken sauce and chickpeas with rice...must learn to cook South Asian food. Also learned that after two years, I'm way more Beninese than I thought I was. I found myself teaching the kids words in Gun and telling people "bon assise" way too often, and I was infinitely more comfortable hanging out with the Beninese kitchen staff than sitting in the air conditioning with the other yovos. Turns out that sharing a skin color does not make you the same, and that I'd much rather joke with the locals than pretend to blend in with people who are strangers here like me.


*The ban on dancing makes me seriously wonder about their success rate in converting the masses: I know my Beninese friends, Muslim, Christian and otherwise, and I can't imagine a single one of them subscribing to a religion that forbids them to dance. Here is a place where it is appropriate and acceptable to dance and sing pretty much anywhere just because you feel like it -- church, at the market, as you walk down the street -- and it feels impossible to reconcile that rhythm and joie de vivre with any religion that deems dancing improper. It seems unAfrican, somehow.