What You Look For

It is nearing six in the evening, or dix-huit heures. The time of day casts a dark shadow on the classroom of students, all boys to be precise, working at a methodical pace to complete their English exams. I pull myself away from “The Poisonwood Bible,” which I hurry to finish, partially because it is good, and partially because I have a new stack of books piling up at home from family and friends in the States and other PCV in villages far from here. Leaning against the classroom door way only as a silhouette is another English professor. I think to myself, this would make an excellent photo, although I am not sure it could capture everything it actually represents.

I won’t give anyone or anything away, but I think perhaps some people, myself perhaps included, could be left with a false sense of tranquility and love that exists in Benin, and from my point of reference, Matéri. I don’t think the pain and tragedy here is any more or any less important or severe than say the demented current events revealed in the U.S. media. I do think however, evil exists everywhere, but in most cases you have to go looking for it to truly understand how deep it is. I don’t plan on going on a witch.

I don’t think I even like to admit myself how some things do get to me. I only recently notice it comes out in my mood or tone of voice when I can’t get the simplest thing done, like cleaning a dish. Of course I know as soon as I set that dish down, a wind will blow African dust on it—nothing can ever be pure here.

The other night I woke up at 4:30 a.m. Inevitably every night I wake up around this time for one reason or another, stomach problems, nausea, heat, sudden feeling of bug bites, even though I have my mosquito net over me, or like last night the crying of the puppy locked up. But on Saturday night it was the screaming of a child, a girl to be exact. It grew louder, piercing the night air, and in my in and out state of sleeping I thought I heard the sound of something, most likely a broom hitting skin. It alarmed me, but I knew there was nothing I could do, and forced myself to go to sleep. How heartless do I feel? It isn’t the first time I have heard these sounds, sometimes it has been at closer range, which is why I know it is a broom being used. Brooms are made of sticks here. Sometimes it isn’t even a person, but an animal. Honestly, I don’t know which I feel is worse.

Yesterday I was running late to school, and heard the loud piercing cries coming from another direction. There is a pattern that it is girls crying. It is day time, and emerging from a side road is a girl. I stare; she looks as if she is holding her private parts, like a five year old needing to pee. I look away. I want to pretend I did not see the pain in her face as she cried and held onto herself. It is the first time that it has dawned on me what these girls could really be crying about. I am ignorant. I look back at her again, out of pity. This time she looks like she is holding her arm now. Perhaps, I imagined what I saw the first time, but perhaps imagine or not that sort of thing is happening—I know for certain, more and more everyday that I have lived content on not looking for evil.

I want to believe the world is a beautiful place. I want to see it as a nostalgic image, like that of the professor looking out into a courtyard of students bustling by, holding hands, living out their childhoods.