family

Time for some family news, I think!

Last week the weather shifted quite abruptly into harmattan. We had had a “short dry season” at the end of rainy season, and all of a sudden the harmattan wind began to blow and evenings, nights and mornings became much cooler. We still have temperatures in the low 30s during the heat of the day. The dust is already making itself at home in our house, so I can't imagine what things will be like in a couple of months' time!

The change of seasons has brought a cold, and we are all a bit snuffly at the moment.

Simon is paradoxically seeming more and more sure of himself but also revealing a sensitive side to his character. He is very friendly, and loves to go visiting other people on the compound, yet the slightest upset will have him wailing. He is also finding it hard to adjust to having a mobile brother, as he realises that his toys are no longer safe!

Benjy mastered crawling a few weeks ago and has also cut 5 teeth in the last three weeks. Sleep has never come to him easily, and teething has just made things worse! We have only had about five unbroken nights sleep in the last ten months! We are thankful that God has given us strength for daily life and work despite this.

I am very happy to be here living in Benin after years of waiting to get here. I can see that God had the right timing, although at times I got frustrated. We can see the way that the time was used to put so many things into place that helped us to feel more at home when we eventually got here.

I'm enjoying the language learning and getting to know our Beninese colleagues. The climate agrees with me too. So far it has never been very very hot, and I am happy to be missing out on the cold of a European winter (with just a few nostalgic pangs for autumn leaves and clear frosty days). I was re-reading “A Year in Provence” (by Peter Mayle) recently, and smiled in recognition when I read: “Socks were a distant memory.” I love being able to go barefoot in the house. And despite what those who remember me living in jeans might think, I love wearing long swishy skirts all the time!

Fortunately I have always preferred to cook from scratch, as there isn't any other way to cook out here. Occasionally in a lazy moment I do wish I had a few pots of pasta sauce in the cupboard! I have got into canning – squash, beans, pineapple and papaya so far – and yesterday we made marmelade from the grapefruits growing on our compound. The missionary who gave me the canning jars also gave me a fruit drier, and I have dried papaya and apple slices and look forward to trying other fruits!

I do enjoy having help around the house – and it would be difficult to manage without it here since all our clothes and nappies are hand-washed. We have been blessed with an extremely conscientious and cheerful house-help, who also loves the boys and is very good with them. We are going to miss her when we move!

I have always said I'd like to live more simply, and being here has forced me to do that. It is refreshing to strip away non-essentials and realise how much more you appreciate treats when they are fewer and harder to find!

Over the years I've belonged to some quite different kinds of churches, and here is different again. I love the lively music, but struggle a bit to concentrate on the sermon when the French microphone always seems to be turned down lower than the Bariba microphone – plus I'm sitting at the back with mums and kids wandering in and out, with at least one of my boys sitting on me getting bored. There is no crèche here – if your baby makes a fuss then you just take yourselves outside and sit on the steps of the church in the sun, or stand under a tree. Since Benjy's morning nap is now bang in the middle of the morning I have now missed a few Sundays. Not something I necessarily recommend – and sometimes Marc stays at home and I go to church – but I'd rather have some (oh-so-rare!) peace and quiet at home while Benjy naps than stand outside church trying to manage an overtired, hyperactive baby!

I don't want to complain, but also don't want to give too rosy a picture of life here. We do, of course, miss friends and family. New friendships are always harder work, and particularly when they are cross-cultural – which is true here of both our relationships with other missionaries and with the Beninese. Internet access – or lack of such – is also an ongoing frustration. I miss having a choice of foodstuffs in big European supermarkets. Power cuts sometimes come at the most inconvenient moments. Our boys are wonderful, but they do try our patience at times, and with broken nights we have been suffering from tired-all-the-time syndrome. Life has its downs as well as its ups, but I prefer to focus on the ups – and I think there are more of them, overall!

PS And if you are wondering why I haven't said much about how Marc is finding life here, you'll just have to go and visit his blog to find out (he writes some of it in English).

well-established

Yesterday I thought to ask Abraham where the word “Monkolé” – describing his people and their language – came from. I wondered if it was linked to the fact that “moko” in Monkolé means “man” (the “o” after the “m” is automatically nasalised) as I had read that many tribes, worldwide, have a word for themselves which just means “the men” or “the people”. But in fact, according to Abraham, in this case it has nothing to do with that.

The Monkolé language is closely related to the Yoruba language, and their common ancestors came from Nigeria. Abraham told us that the people migrated west to the North of Benin (not that it was called Benin at the time!) and then some of them suggested going back again. The others answered them in Yoruba, “Mon ko lé” which apparently means “we've already built houses”, ie. we don't want to go back as we are well established here.

Amazing what you discover through one simple question!

PS And on the subject of being well-established, today we are celebrating six months in Benin!

call a spade a spade and a "maman" a "maman"!

Marc wrote a blog post about his many names, and I thought that it was such a good idea that I would write my own about mine!

Back in 2005, when I was finishing my PhD, a friend from Cameroon told me that when I got to Africa I would find that if I had a doctorate, people would always call me “Docteur”. At the time, this didn't sound too bad to me – I felt like it would be nice to have my perseverance and hard work acknowledged! As my doctorate faded into the past though, I realised that “Docteur” had a rather formal sound to it, and I was quite relieved when I arrived here and discovered that what most of the Beninese call me is “Maman” (French for “mum”) or “Maman Simon/Benjamin”. I'd rather be “Maman” than “Madame”, and it just isn't the done thing here for someone younger than me to call me by my first name, so “Maman” suits me fine!

Of course, Benjy isn't talking yet, and Simon actually calls me “Mummy”, unless he's talking about me to someone in French, in which case he says “Maman” with a Beninese accent, making it sound more like “Mamain”.

Being “Maman” also gives me the status of being a respectable, married woman with children … and so I'm not plagued with marriage proposals as I was when I was here short-term as a single girl!

In Monkolé “Maman Simon” is “Iyayie Simon” (if I write it as it sounds) so I'm getting used to that being me too!

Marc and I rarely call each other by our first names, we usually use “chéri(e)” and were very amused when Simon started to call Marc “chéri”. I told him he could say “Papa chéri” (kind of equivalent to “Dearest Daddy”), and it has stuck, which is sweet.

The other thing we are called quite a lot is “baturé”, which means “white person”, and it is usually shouted at us by kids on the street. It doesn't bother me really, and almost as often we will be greeted by polite children who say “bonne arrivée” (“welcome”) which always earns them a big smile from me!

In Beninese families the children have their own first names but there are also names which mean “first son”, “second son”, “first daughter” and so on. So Simon can also be called “Woru” and Benjy is “Shabbi” (or in Monkolé “Sabi” as they don't have the sound “sh”). As a first daughter, I am “Nyo”. Simon knows who “Woru” and “Shabbi” are, and Benjy responds when addressed as “Shabbi” (Esther often calls him that).

How many different names do you have?

change of plans

We had a small problem at the annual conference. His name was Benjy. That is a bit unfair, but it does seem as if when we said we were going to our Spiritual Life Conference, Benjy misheard, and thought it was Sleepless Nights Conference! A change of environment or bed always upsets his night-time sleeping – which has never been the best – and this was the worst we'd had so far. The first night at the conference I only got four and a half hours sleep, in several bits. The day which followed saw an overtired Simon refusing to do anything his parents asked him to, and Benjy spending an hour in the afternoon screaming because he was so short on sleep but still couldn't drop off! The second night, Benjy didn't once sleep an entire hour without waking up and crying – and we were worried he'd wake up our neighbours so kept taking him out to the car, the only place where his screams were muffled!

All this meant that by the second morning I was at the end of my tether. I knew I couldn't possibly go on with so little sleep. The days were hard enough, but at night I was feeling really desperate. So Marc went to see our Director, who talked with her Deputy and his wife, and they agreed that although Conference is supposed to be obligatory, for our own sakes it was better that we go home. I was very relieved to know that the nightmare was going to be over, but very sad to be leaving Conference early. Despite everything, we had appreciated being with the other SIM missionaries, plus others from our partner missions, and felt like part of one big family. This was reinforced by the reaction to the announcement that we would be leaving – many people came and told us that they understood but were sad to see us go, and assured us of their prayers. Several also made a point of saying when they would next see us.

Fortunately we will be able to listen to the teaching and the individual missionaries' reports, as they are all being recorded.

We travelled home to Parakou after lunch on Wednesday with a colleague who had to leave to go to meetings in South Africa. He was glad of the lift, and we were glad of his company and a fresher driver to share the strain of driving on pot-holed roads! It took four and a half hours, and we arrived in Parakou in a thunderstorm, which was slightly weird as we thought the rainy season was over! That night we got over nine hours sleep, with only two short feeds, nicely spaced four hours apart. Such a blessing! And quite a confirmation that we'd made the right decision to leave.

We'd dropped Esther, our home help, off in Djougou (a city two and a half hours away) on our way to Togo on Monday. Funnily enough, the taxi she took to come back to Parakou overtook us while we were having a break at the side of the road, and she yelled greetings out of the open window as they zoomed past. She then turned up for work at 8.45 the next morning, which was very helpful as we had a lot of dirty washing!! She's always fun to have around, too, and the boys like to watch her work – or even help out.

international travel

Tomorrow we will get to visit our second West African country (if you don't count Libya, where we changed planes on our way here!). We are driving over to Togo, for the week-long annual conference of SIM Benin-Togo. It's being held at the SIL Centre in Kara and about 70 of us are going - SIM missionaries, TWR missionaries and a few missionaries from other missions also serving in Benin or Togo. Benjy will be the youngest there, but there are quite a lot of kids, which should make it fun for both our boys. Sleep tends to get messed up (even more than usual) when we travel, so that should make it "fun" for both us parents! Ah well, it should still do us good to get a break from the usual routine of language lessons and spend some time being taught and getting to know the others better.

Back soon!

please, thank-you and blue skies

We discover interesting things every day about the culture here through discussions with our language helper, Abraham. For example, politeness works differently. “Please” and “thank you” are used, but not in the same way as we would use them or at the same time. If you give someone something, they may thank you at the time, but they will make absolutely sure the following day to say, “Thank you for yesterday!” (When we forget to do so, they must think us very ungrateful.)

There was another example that came up in a sentence Marc had written in his “homework”. He wrote that he had asked the tailor to make him some clothes. Abraham said, “No, that's the verb 'to ask', you want to say 'I told the tailor to make me some clothes'”, with the implication that since the tailor's job is to make clothes and he obviously wants custom, you don't need to ask him to do it, you can just tell him to!

On a completely different subject, Marc commented the other day that the weather means we now feel further from Europe than we did a few months ago. In the European summer, when temperatures were in the 30s there, it didn't seem that strange to be living in the heat here. But now that Europe is heading into winter, our cloudless skies and hot sunshine do make it hard for us to believe that it is November!