Gifts

Look! Kittens! Oose had 5 more!

Now onto the rest of the post...

I was at a road block about 45 minutes south of my house. The reason was because an entire village was on strike. They were promised electricity from the government and they didn't receive it. This village is situated on the only paved road along the western side of Benin. It had blocked all traffic going north and south. There was really no way to avoid this without traveling hours out of the way on dirt roads that were probably impassable anyway. Everything that had left the two largest cities in the Atacora and Donga regions, Natitingou, and Djougou, that morning had been stopped at this little village waiting for the government to decide it was actually going give them electricity. It was now mid afternoon. All the trucks, buses, taxis, cars, motorcycles, kids with bikes, were all stopped. Nobody could get through. Of course I was also in this mob of confusion. Myself and my other friends decided that we weren't going to wait around until the next morning to actually go anywhere. A friend of mine went off with our current taxi driver, and secured another taxi leaving this small village to bring us the last 45 minutes of our six hour drive.
There was a catch, we had to walk through the village to the other side where our new taxi was waiting. This normally wouldn't have been such a problem but we all had big backpacks and I had an extra suitcase because I had taken a vacation We were told to look casual. This is impossible of course because we are five white people, walking through a village in Benin, on top of that we are all carrying lots of luggage. Needless to say we did not nonchalantly make our way to the taxi station as planned.
I was fumbling with my rolling luggage. Rolling suitcases are great in airports, on pavement, going down stairs, and any other flat surface that exists, possibly with the exception of ice. They aren't any good to take along when you are traveling through a third worth country. Then a girl offered to take my bag for me, I told her that while I appreciated her helping me I really could take my luggage myself but she insisted. This is fairly standard in Benin to have a child so willing to help you. Rarely do I have to carry things, children will come up and take it for me and carry it whatever distance I would have had to. The best part is they are happy about it! It's fun for them to help out another person, especially if that person is white.
It was a long way and she gracefully put the suitcase on her head and walked with me and my friends to our new taxi. When we arrived at the other end of town she put it into the taxi with about as much care as someone would treat a child. I thanked the girl. Then as a gift I gave her a quarter, assuming that she hadn't seen US currency before, this would be something cool she could show off later. I remember as a child helping out a Russian and receiving a similar gift. In fact I still have it 15 years later. I didn't expect this girl to keep this gift for years and years but it was a small token of thanks.
She took one look at the coin and her face began to skew from a happy smiling face, it changed to a disgusted and offended frown. She then told me that she couldn't use that coin here, and that it was worthless. I explained that the reason I gave it to her was because it was pretty, it was a gift not meant to buy anything but rather just to be. I got into the taxi and the girl got angry, saying that why can't I understand that she doesn't need pretty things she needs money, why can't I give her money if I had US currency I must have the West African CFA? I then reminded this girl that when she took my bag she never asked for money, I never told her I would give her anything, and I also told her that I could do it myself but that she insisted on helping me. I didn't need to pay her anything. If she thought my gift was trash I could take it back and she wouldn't receive anything. Other people at the taxi station began to side with the girl who I had given the quarter to. I explained to them that it was a gift, meant to be pretty, as if I had given her a bracelet. They all became extremely offended. Our taxi drove off before the situation could escalate any further. I looked back and I saw the girl almost crying looking at the coin. How had I offended her so deeply by only trying to give her a gift?
I've found here that people are very willing to help, if you told a person in Benin that you had a problem they would go completely out of their way to fix your problem. For example, I had broken the seat off my bike and a friend of mine told me to bring it to his shop and he fixed it free of charge. There have also been many times that I have had to leave and a friend has fed my cats. But then sometimes there is a problem on the receiving end when I try to help others. I don't fully understand it, and my aim is never to hurt or offend anyone. Sometimes I just want to tell them to accept it and be happy and content with what I have decided to give. But after I attempted to give the girl the coin I've been thinking more heavily how this might be viewed from a Beninese perspective.
In Benin, and frankly all over Africa, there is a huge amount of foreign aid coming in. Africa has been told that they are the problem child of the world, unable to feed, house, and heal themselves, they need the help of other successful countries. The message has been clear, that everything that Africans are doing isn't good enough. Their languages aren't good enough to be spoken in school, their methods of agriculture, child care and disease control are outdated, but the development organizations can help them with this. The developed countries receive piece of mind when they help out a third world place, people living in developed countries feel better about themselves when they can go to a website and type in their information and money goes to feed a child in a country that the credit card holder might not be able to find on a map. Money has been pumped and pumped into some of these unsustainable practices for decades now. There is a long history of white people coming, giving things away, and then leaving.
I cannot begin to imagine being a child growing up in that kind of atmosphere. Always being told that 'we are poor, almost every other place on earth has more than we do' seeing pictures of Times Square and the Eiffel Tower, fashion shows, celebrities, Hollywood, and then living in a mud hut with a thatched roof. Not going to school after elementary because your family simply can't afford it, but then seeing MTV's program Sweet Sixteen where parents spend hundreds and thousands of dollars on a party. All of these images about the developed world are generally filled with white people. Then you see a white a person, help them with something because you want to, and then as a gift receive money that cannot be used. When that person has so much represented in the amount of stuff they were trying to carry with them, their shoes, their clothes, their sunglasses, and you have so little. The girl who helped me was wearing a piece of cloth wrapped around her body, no shoes, and her head was shaved. She also had tell tale signs of malnutrition, red hair, and large belly but skinny legs. I had given her a pretty coin, when what she really needed was a well balanced meal.
Looking back I understand why she was offended. When I received my gift from the Russian, I had everything I needed, a roof over my head, shoes, a full belly. But when I had given this girl the coin she needed things greater than a pretty object she could show off to her friends. Maybe this is the problem with giving things away to people here, maybe because people have been continuously receiving gifts they can't use. It would be about as frustrating if all your life you had to eat soup without a spoon, but everyone wants to give you a fork. I'm sure I would reach my breaking point and get angry and yell that I didn't need another fork. But then again the giver might say something along the lines of 'just accept it, and be happy with what I have decided to give to you.'