Mornings are blissfully cool. A little cold even. I say this to my counterpart, and she replies in an ominous tone, “Harmattan is coming.” The torrential downpours of the rainy season have given way to the cold mornings and dusty, hot afternoons of Harmattan, the season that separates the rainy season from the dry season. The dusts from the Sahara desert blow down towards the Gulf of Guinea, covering the familiar collines in a haze. Early afternoon is perfect, and as I bike down the slope towards my home, I fly.
The early day gives way to dust. When I take zémidjans (motor taxis), I cover my eyes and my mouth. The sun sets with brushstrokes of soft purple and red, the watercolor of the sky set in the haze. It’s softer than the Oklahoma sunsets that colored my youth, but it fills me with comfort and wonder as the sky captures my attention.
As the heat picks up, so does school work. Two weeks ago, I spent every lunch break copy editing the English exams about to be assigned to my students. This week, the secretary did a final review and printed them. Tomorrow, my students will begin testing. As I’ve seen all of the tests, I am confident in my students. If they’ve followed their lessons well, they will succeed. I still am faced with worry. I know I will have students who will not pass this test. What can I do in the future to help them more? How do I grapple with the fact that not every student will pass? This isn’t teacher college anymore. I’m in the field and the English I teach my students is the English that they learn. No pressure.
Tomorrow I’ll report to campus at 7:30 am where I’ll be assigned to proctor a class while they test. I’ll watch students take a science test or a history test, not the English tests that I helped to write. I’ll watch classes that I don’t teach. The censeur (vice principal) has told me that I will proctor Terminale (12th grade) classes who are less likely to cheat due to their seriousness and age. As strictness in the class setting is still a skill I’m developing, this suits me well.
Last week was a blur with travel to Lokossa, the pool with friends, Flu and COVID vaccinations, trainings on the sustainable development practices, and more. It felt like a homecoming to visit with my host family, see the familiar places I walked when first finding my legs here. It was empowering to speak French so fluidly on the same paths I struggled only months before. It was beyond rewarding to shock the same people I had struggled through conversations with, this time adding words in Fon as a means to help relay my interest and investment in where I am.
Lokossa came with tremendous connection. My cohort and I fell into a familiar rhythm, sharing stories and lessons learned. Laughing, expressing sorrow, needling one another, connecting. Getting overly emphatically expressive in a game of mafia. Late night showings of Legally Blonde and Home and falling asleep in the company of some of my closest friends here. Pizza! The doughiest, cheesiest pizza I’ve had in all of Benin, and Henry, who ate five of the eight slices because I was eating too slowly.
Packages from my family! The long lost and now arrived Halloween package, and two Christmas and birthday combinations from my mother and Mormor. Opening the packages was like breathing in love. My mom has become a packaging expert, adding items I specically request, items I’ve mentioned off hand, letters from home, and some things she just knows that I would love. It lifts me tremendously.
Although I’m happy and grateful for my progress in French and Fon, as always, I discover the limits of my understanding and must set my nose to the grindstone once again. I crank through hundreds of flash cards. Once I’ve mastered a word, it feels like the universe highlights it just for me. I learn the word “tournevis” (screwdriver), and the next thing I know, someone can’t remember the English word. I know the French word now, so I retrieve the screwdriver.
I do as much listening practice as I can bare. I’m reading comics in French and returning to childhood favorites in my new language. When I greet people, I tend to cycle through all three of my languages because I want to honor my speaking partner and I want to honor myself. I think in French sometimes now. I’ve dreamed in French. In moments of confidence, I’m invincible. I’ll find a way to say what I mean. I can do it. As all humans, though, sometimes I get nervous, and it’s wild how quickly my communication falters. Like always, I’ll press on.
I made cinnamon rolls with Henry while Sami watched from the kitchen step. The kitchen has poor ventilation, and so we sweat so much you would have thought we had just swam. I set up my giant pot on the stove and turned on the heat. We made too much dough, so we left half of it to rise while we made the first roll. The first roll was more like a scone. Not enough butter or sugar. I drowned the second roll in cinammon and sweetness, and Henry made an amazing condensed milk, cream cheese, sugar, cinnamon icing that elevated the next attempt to coffee shop level fare, as Sami described it. There’s not much in the world that I love more than a boring night of baking, Pringles, and Uno with two of my closest friends.
I’m struggling to balance all I want to do. I want to integrate. I want to teach and tutor. I want to support gender equity. I have to report it all with logical frameworks. I want to rest and read. I want to cook dinner with my neighbor. I want to film. I want to live in the moment. I want to do all of this sustainably.
As always, I’m going to give myself grace. Small steps have gotten me a long way so far. All I need to do to be successful is to continue on this way. As with all challenges that have come and will come, I can handle this. I really love and appreciate it when you all send me slices of home in pictures or paragraphs. Please keep sharing. It means so much!
With Love,
Lena
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