I left Niamey, the capital of Niger, last Sunday morning, October 26th. I painted some decent watercolors in Niamey, and came to know my host family a little better: uncle Mahumud and I discussed travel plans in sign language and diagrams, little Habibublai taught me some Fulani by naming animals I drew for him, and I got along in a formal, cordial way with Mr. Alzouma, the patriarch of the family. They took good care of me and set me up with their relatives in Tera, down the road in the western tip of Niger, another family that was really kind to me. They had at least ten kids, I couldn't count and neither could they.
West of Niamey, across the Niger River and across to Burkina the landscape became truly fantastic. Where before it seemed bleak, here it seemed majestic, biblical even. The land is hot and flat and dry, and small fields of millet and sorghum punctuate a vast backdrop of sparse green trees and dry grass. Sheperds tend flocks of goats and gaunt, wild-looking cattle, women gather firewood, people wash in the occasional watering hole, all of them dressed in billowing robes and scarves and headwraps. When you add to this a very religious people, with names like Ibrahim (Abraham), Issaka (Isaac) and Zara (Sarah) it really seems like you're two thousand years back in time.
(I should also say that while this part of the world is almost entirely Muslim, and life comes to a halt five times a day for prayers, it's not at all like the fundamentalist Muslims you read about in the paper. I honestly feel no animosity from them.)
From Tera I went on to Dori, in Burkina Faso. The speed of travel in Africa depends almost exclusively on the quality of the road, so this 100km stretch took an entire day. I waited four hours while passengers slowly gathered, and then took off in the back of a burly Toyota 4x4 pickup. It was by far the funnest ride I've ever had in my life, and it's a real shame riding in the back of a pickup is illegal in the States. We were crammed a dozen people and a goat in the bed of the truck, another dozen on the roofrack, and heaps of sugarcane and baggage strewn about. The 'road' was in fact a series of converging and diverging sand tracks, with plenty of potholes and ridges that left us flying all over each other for the rest of the day. We stopped many times, border checks, prayers, food, unloading and loading, and by nightfall I landed in Dori.
In Dori I reconnected with a Peace Corps volunteer I had briefly met in Grand Popo. Yaneth let me crash on her couch, and it was just really great to relax for a few days, to speak English, to have a conversation with similar cultural references, to find real vegetables at the market and cook food again, to let someone else take charge. I got to know Dori a bit, we visited an orphanage where she volunteers and played with the kids, and we took a trip to nearby Bani to see a series of mud-brick mosques built in the 1970s by a latter-day Islamic prophet.
From Dori I travelled with Yaneth to Ougadougou--the capital of Burkina Faso. Ougadougou is a surprisingly sophisticated city: big buildings, restaurants, traffic lights, traffic that's merely stressful and not terrifying, a city that somehow keeps the choas of Africa at bay (we did however see a crocodile in a creek just outside of downtown). We met up with a bunch of other Peace Corps volunteers, and I spent two days forgetting I was in Africa: We went out to western restaurants, relaxed and swam in the International School's pool, read English magazines, and visited Siao, a big, biannual arts and crafts and music festival. Morale was high among this group, they were kind to make room for me , and it was definitely a high point of the trip.
This morning I left for Ouahigouya, a depressing border town on the way to Mali.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Sahel
I left Cotonou early Tuesday morning, October 21, for the long busride to Kandi in the north of Benin. It was a rare, comfortable, western-style bus, playing pop music and WWF wrestling as we passed endless miles of flat African countryside. The landscape changed slowly from the greener coast to a drier soil, less underbrush and more grass, people in longer, billowing clothing, more mosques. I was nervous, hoping each stop was not mine and glad for the comfort and safety of the moving road.
I stayed in Kandi one night, made a bad watercolor from the rooftop of my sweltering hotel room, walked around Wednesday morning along wide dusty streets, stopped in a cafe and made a watercolor of one of the guys there, amused crowds gathering around me.
From Kandi a short 'bush taxi' ride to the village of Alfa Kouara, on the edge of the large 'Parque National du W.'
Bush taxis are the main transport linking smaller villages in West Africa, and they're a chaotic, cramped, unbelievable way to travel. The taxis, either station wagons or old peugot's, are banged-up, creaking, moving wrecks, complete with cracked windshields and missing mirrors. On the inside they invariably smell like gasoline, but to beat the headache and roll the windows down you have to first ask the driver to pass the handcranck, and forget about seatbelts, locking doors, working speedometers, or other luxuries. They don't leave until fully loaded, which means four people plus kids in each row, and three, sometimes even four, in the front (that makes eleven and sometimes twelve adults plus kids in a station wagon). I once sat in a taxi where the driver shifted gears between a passenger's legs. The luggage is strapped to the roof -- huge bags of grain and miscellaneous pots and baggage, often taller than the car itself, laboriously loaded and unloaded at each stop, which means every ten or fifteen minutes. At the larger taxi stations, and sometimes the smaller stops, inevitable arguments about who-knows-what...the roads aren't too good either, paved but little wider than a suburban street in the States, sometimes more potholes than smooth surface.
The park entrance at Alfa Kouara was officially closed for the rainy season, but I got a ride in on a motorcycle anyway, really fun, and beatiful, colorful, long-tailed birds, a troop of monkeys, but none of the big mammals. Ate a meal of paté with the park rangers at night under a thousand stars, and shared a nasty mix of pastisse and syrup, their preferred drink at a nearby 'bar'(I declined to sniff the tobacco powder mixed with 'medicaments').
On Thursday a short ride from Alfa Kuoara to the border town of Malanville, lingering long enough to send some postcards, then the police check and a walk across the bridge spanning the Niger River, Africa's third longest, and into the country of Niger.
Niger is immediately different. At the bus depot at Gaya, a beautiful tall woman with a glossy, blind eye, henna-painted feet, long black headscarf, praying with a crying baby on her back. Miles and miles of even drier and bleaker countryside, now only mud huts instead of cinderblock, thatch traded for corrugated roofs. Many stops, police checks, stops for prayer, who-knows-why stops. People don't always smile back when you smile, or wave when you wave, and they don't ask for gifts unless they really really need it. People who don't speak French. Thinner people, more 'Ethiopian' features, longer wraps, solid colors mixed with the ubiquitous patterns of the coast, headscarves, muslim hats, clothing taken out of a Rafael painting. More cripples, more deformities, a man in a white headcap and his adolescent child with an impossibly small head, eyes right out to the perifery, like someone you might have seen at the circus a hundred years ago. Sweltering heat, forgot to bring enough water, cramped bus, my seat tilted seat in the aisle with luggage, people climbing over each other at each stop.
Arrived in the capital of Niamey Thursday night well after dark, was supposed to stay with relatives of Abdullay from Grand Popo but didn't dare venture into the periferies that late, found a taxi driver I trusted and a hotel. Issaka picked me up in the morning, and I found a city much calmer than I feared, wide streets, spread out city, not unnerving and polluted like Cotonou. Errands, visa for Burkina, bank, phone, tour of the city, a break at Issaka's and two watercolors, the first good ones on this trip, of him and his wife. Stronger colors, more agressively painted. His wife only spoke Hauossa, both had long tribal scars across their cheecks, I couldn't tell if she minded me there. A watercolor on the bank of the Niger, women washing clothes, across to the Harobanda district where I met Abdullay's family. Kind to offer food and shelter but little chit-chat. A maze of alleys, courtyards, mud houses, slept outside under a mosquito net, woke up predawn with a bad dream and the call for prayer, painted the crescent moon rising over the rooftops.
Planning to leave Niamey tomorrow or Monday for Burkina Faso.
I stayed in Kandi one night, made a bad watercolor from the rooftop of my sweltering hotel room, walked around Wednesday morning along wide dusty streets, stopped in a cafe and made a watercolor of one of the guys there, amused crowds gathering around me.
From Kandi a short 'bush taxi' ride to the village of Alfa Kouara, on the edge of the large 'Parque National du W.'
Bush taxis are the main transport linking smaller villages in West Africa, and they're a chaotic, cramped, unbelievable way to travel. The taxis, either station wagons or old peugot's, are banged-up, creaking, moving wrecks, complete with cracked windshields and missing mirrors. On the inside they invariably smell like gasoline, but to beat the headache and roll the windows down you have to first ask the driver to pass the handcranck, and forget about seatbelts, locking doors, working speedometers, or other luxuries. They don't leave until fully loaded, which means four people plus kids in each row, and three, sometimes even four, in the front (that makes eleven and sometimes twelve adults plus kids in a station wagon). I once sat in a taxi where the driver shifted gears between a passenger's legs. The luggage is strapped to the roof -- huge bags of grain and miscellaneous pots and baggage, often taller than the car itself, laboriously loaded and unloaded at each stop, which means every ten or fifteen minutes. At the larger taxi stations, and sometimes the smaller stops, inevitable arguments about who-knows-what...the roads aren't too good either, paved but little wider than a suburban street in the States, sometimes more potholes than smooth surface.
The park entrance at Alfa Kouara was officially closed for the rainy season, but I got a ride in on a motorcycle anyway, really fun, and beatiful, colorful, long-tailed birds, a troop of monkeys, but none of the big mammals. Ate a meal of paté with the park rangers at night under a thousand stars, and shared a nasty mix of pastisse and syrup, their preferred drink at a nearby 'bar'(I declined to sniff the tobacco powder mixed with 'medicaments').
On Thursday a short ride from Alfa Kuoara to the border town of Malanville, lingering long enough to send some postcards, then the police check and a walk across the bridge spanning the Niger River, Africa's third longest, and into the country of Niger.
Niger is immediately different. At the bus depot at Gaya, a beautiful tall woman with a glossy, blind eye, henna-painted feet, long black headscarf, praying with a crying baby on her back. Miles and miles of even drier and bleaker countryside, now only mud huts instead of cinderblock, thatch traded for corrugated roofs. Many stops, police checks, stops for prayer, who-knows-why stops. People don't always smile back when you smile, or wave when you wave, and they don't ask for gifts unless they really really need it. People who don't speak French. Thinner people, more 'Ethiopian' features, longer wraps, solid colors mixed with the ubiquitous patterns of the coast, headscarves, muslim hats, clothing taken out of a Rafael painting. More cripples, more deformities, a man in a white headcap and his adolescent child with an impossibly small head, eyes right out to the perifery, like someone you might have seen at the circus a hundred years ago. Sweltering heat, forgot to bring enough water, cramped bus, my seat tilted seat in the aisle with luggage, people climbing over each other at each stop.
Arrived in the capital of Niamey Thursday night well after dark, was supposed to stay with relatives of Abdullay from Grand Popo but didn't dare venture into the periferies that late, found a taxi driver I trusted and a hotel. Issaka picked me up in the morning, and I found a city much calmer than I feared, wide streets, spread out city, not unnerving and polluted like Cotonou. Errands, visa for Burkina, bank, phone, tour of the city, a break at Issaka's and two watercolors, the first good ones on this trip, of him and his wife. Stronger colors, more agressively painted. His wife only spoke Hauossa, both had long tribal scars across their cheecks, I couldn't tell if she minded me there. A watercolor on the bank of the Niger, women washing clothes, across to the Harobanda district where I met Abdullay's family. Kind to offer food and shelter but little chit-chat. A maze of alleys, courtyards, mud houses, slept outside under a mosquito net, woke up predawn with a bad dream and the call for prayer, painted the crescent moon rising over the rooftops.
Planning to leave Niamey tomorrow or Monday for Burkina Faso.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Moving Forward
My painting residency finished and I left Villa Karo and the village of Grand Popo this morning. By the end this strange place and unlikely collection of people started to feel a little like home. There was Jaakko, the Finnish intern, with whom I travelled to Togo among other adventures; Liz, the American peace corps volunteer who brought a little good-old-USA with her; Kaisu the older Finnish painter I connected with; Boris the vegetarian carpenter who never failed to bring a smile; Marcel the raggedy, drooling speach-impaired kid who never left us alone, but who was too adorable to chase away; the family of Adrienne and Francoise and their six kids, who farmed and hunted crabs and lizards for a living and were so warm to me; Abdullaj the easy-going Fulani night guard, who cheerfully ascribed every misfortune to fate, and with whom we shared many funny, mosquito-laced conversations, Victor who guided me safely across the seedy side of Cotonou, and many many many others. It was sad to leave but I left properly, said my goodbyes, didn't leave things unresolved...I'm leaving with less baggage than I came with.
In the end I did make some paintings, although painting here never ceased to be difficult and I'll have to finish most of them in the States: A flowering, overgrown garden, a painting of Abdullay, the night guard, a painting of the sea at sunset, palms in moonlight, two portraits, and maybe a dozen small watercolors.
So I'm leaving, but I'm not going home yet. I'm single for the first time in a long time, I have no apartment, no studio, not really a city to call home, I have no shows scheduled, and it occurred to me that I have no reason to return to the States just yet (although sadly I'll miss the election). I have enough cash from my open-house show in August to keep me going another month or two, so if I want to see the Sahara Desert, if I want to ride a camel or float down the Niger River or sit on an overcrowded train for two days straight...then why not?
I'm in Cotonou tonight, and tomorrow I'll start a one-way trip across West Africa.
I'll travel alone with a small, efficiently-packed backpack and a colorful new watercolor-bag made by Florence, the energetic local seamstress. I got a faux-hawk haircut last night courtesy of Liz and Jaakko, as a kind of going-away-ritual, and it feels great and anyway no one here knows what white people's hair should look like. I've looked at maps and talked to people and made a plan, I feel good and strong and I'm ready to go.
If all goes well I'll travel through Benin to Niamey in Niger, across northern Burkina Faso, up to Mali through the Dogon country, to Timbuktoo and the edge of the Sahara, then up the Niger River to Bamako and across to Dakar, leaving Africa in early December.
I'll write again soonish.
In the end I did make some paintings, although painting here never ceased to be difficult and I'll have to finish most of them in the States: A flowering, overgrown garden, a painting of Abdullay, the night guard, a painting of the sea at sunset, palms in moonlight, two portraits, and maybe a dozen small watercolors.
So I'm leaving, but I'm not going home yet. I'm single for the first time in a long time, I have no apartment, no studio, not really a city to call home, I have no shows scheduled, and it occurred to me that I have no reason to return to the States just yet (although sadly I'll miss the election). I have enough cash from my open-house show in August to keep me going another month or two, so if I want to see the Sahara Desert, if I want to ride a camel or float down the Niger River or sit on an overcrowded train for two days straight...then why not?
I'm in Cotonou tonight, and tomorrow I'll start a one-way trip across West Africa.
I'll travel alone with a small, efficiently-packed backpack and a colorful new watercolor-bag made by Florence, the energetic local seamstress. I got a faux-hawk haircut last night courtesy of Liz and Jaakko, as a kind of going-away-ritual, and it feels great and anyway no one here knows what white people's hair should look like. I've looked at maps and talked to people and made a plan, I feel good and strong and I'm ready to go.
If all goes well I'll travel through Benin to Niamey in Niger, across northern Burkina Faso, up to Mali through the Dogon country, to Timbuktoo and the edge of the Sahara, then up the Niger River to Bamako and across to Dakar, leaving Africa in early December.
I'll write again soonish.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Eating in Africa: An Ode to my Favourite Food Blogger.
For the last many years, Nicole made dinner. She made wonderful dinners: homey, vegetarian, colorful, soft, mouth-watering dishes with strong and simple ingredients, often from that week’s farmer’s market. She made roasted cauliflower sizzled in olive oil and salt, chick peas in a tomatoey sauce with onions over barley, quinoa soups with mushrooms and spinach, amazing pastas and pesto, quiches, mashed sweet potato, marinated tofu, corn on the side, even eggplant, which she hates but I love. Her meals were fantastic, always hearty and warm, filling and light at the same time, and enjoyed with her great company at the table or on the couch watching Seinfeld after a long day, a cold beer never far away. I admit I was spoiled rotten, and that’s before I tell you that rarely a day went by without homemade cookies, cupcakes, muffins, or cakes of all kinds filling the kitchen. I had it good.
I’m in Africa now and alone for the first time in a long time. So, in honor of a great cook and an even greater food writer, and since she's not here with me to tell the story herself, I’m sending this report about the food of Grand-Popo, Benin, West Africa:
In the States I’m mostly vegetarian. Here being vegetartian is almost impossible. There’s obviously no tofu, but there are precious few of the other protein-rich plants: few beans, and anyway I have no patience for cooking beans, no broccoli, no peanut-butter, and some really expensive lentils in a can at the far end of town. I also really miss snack foods, like cheeseits from Trader Joe’s, and black-pepper kettle chips, and haagen-daaz vanilla…
As for other vegetables, the local grocery-shack stocks soggy green cabbage, small roma tomatoes that get pecked by the chickens when no one’s looking (but hey, the chickens are free-range), occasionally eggplant and zucchini, wrinkled green peppers, string beans (I have no patience for the endless chopping), avocados that are purply and red with big pits and an odd taste, and ridiculously spicy habanero-style peppers and dried chile peppers. They also sell garlic and small red onions. (Onions are a big crop here, and on harvest days you can smell onion in the air and can peek over fences to see families working small fields or sorting onions into bunches).
The fruit department is more specialized: You can get a delicious personal-sized pineapple for a quarter, and tiny little bananas that are tough and tasty, and papayas which are fine enough but no match for a good American cantaloupe. They occasionally have apples, but they’re brought in from Togo and aren't cheap. I had never seen either papaya or banana trees before, and they’re both incredibly gorgeous. Bananas hang ‘upside-down’ in clusters in the middle of big, broad-leafed palmy type trees with a kind of purple disc coming out of them, and papayas grow at the top of short, straight-stemmed trees that open like umbrellas into canopies of enormous, serrated leaves.
Canned and bottled goods are limited to tuna, olives, tomato paste, corn and peas, things like that. There’s no juice, and you get your coffee fix with nesquick instant, and don’t leave the sugar out unless you like ants in your coffee. Bread is unfortunately always the white loafy kind that you know is terrible for you, but it’s so much easier to make a sandwich than to actually cook something. Eggs are abundant, and mayonnaise exists, so you can make tuna, egg-salad, and avocado-tomato sandwiches. I’ve seen lettuce here and there, but the SF health clinic instilled the fear of God into me about uncooked foreign bacteria so I don't touch it (two of seven yovos here have been violently ill, surely I'll get my turn soon enough).
The staples are manioc flour and corn-mush, either of which is made like polenta but without cheese, just a big ball of solid porridge. Also popular are white rice, couscous, and western-style spaghetti. A typical West-African dinner is pretty good, and consists of one of the staples plus fried fish in a spicy tomato-onion sauce. You can also get chicken, goat, and occasionally beef in that same type of sauce, but there’s an avian bird flue scare and I just could never eat goat.
I’ll only eat fish when I go out, and a favourite spot at the end of town serves dinner for about two dollars but it’s a hike to get there. The fish is fresh from the sea every day, and when you order you never know what it will look like. Sometimes it’s a frightening, full long-headed, toothed predator, other times it's the bottom half and tail of a flatter fish. I’m always grateful for the protein and the sustenance, and also feel a pang of guilt for the animal before me. The food at Chez Desi’s is really good, but on the other hand I’ve heard you can tell the quality of a restaurant by the way it keeps its bathrooms. When I asked for the bathroom, the owner asked me if I intended to pee, and then vaguely pointed to the rear of her backyard. Nearby was a large ceramic pot behind an open-air thatched screen, the purpose of which would have been difficult to discern if not for the smell. There was no water, much less soap, but thankfully it rains pretty often.
My first successful home cooking experiment was with my buddy Jaakko, the Finnish intern, in Villa Karo’s cooking room. A cooking room is similar to a kitchen, because it conatins a rusty stove with one good burner and possibly an old refrigerator, but the similarities end there. The water supply comes from a garden spigot on the outside of the building, for example. We’ve repeated this meal several times with different variations. I’ll call it Grand Popo Soup.
Grand Popo Soup:
Fry four small red onions and some garlic in a pan with low-grade soy or palm oil, and throw in some diced jalapenos.
Add four small diced roma tomatoes to the mix, be careful to cut out the bad parts.
Meanwhile, cook two cups of rice in extra water in a large pot and add a large lump of tomato paste.
Add the fried stuff, add some salt.
Throw in an old sliced cabbage or eggplant or a can of lentils or whatever, boil until they’re done.
Serve with sliced lime in an old metal container and a flat spoon.
It’s somewhat better than it sounds.
I miss you Nicole.
And the food's just a small part of it.
I’m in Africa now and alone for the first time in a long time. So, in honor of a great cook and an even greater food writer, and since she's not here with me to tell the story herself, I’m sending this report about the food of Grand-Popo, Benin, West Africa:
In the States I’m mostly vegetarian. Here being vegetartian is almost impossible. There’s obviously no tofu, but there are precious few of the other protein-rich plants: few beans, and anyway I have no patience for cooking beans, no broccoli, no peanut-butter, and some really expensive lentils in a can at the far end of town. I also really miss snack foods, like cheeseits from Trader Joe’s, and black-pepper kettle chips, and haagen-daaz vanilla…
As for other vegetables, the local grocery-shack stocks soggy green cabbage, small roma tomatoes that get pecked by the chickens when no one’s looking (but hey, the chickens are free-range), occasionally eggplant and zucchini, wrinkled green peppers, string beans (I have no patience for the endless chopping), avocados that are purply and red with big pits and an odd taste, and ridiculously spicy habanero-style peppers and dried chile peppers. They also sell garlic and small red onions. (Onions are a big crop here, and on harvest days you can smell onion in the air and can peek over fences to see families working small fields or sorting onions into bunches).
The fruit department is more specialized: You can get a delicious personal-sized pineapple for a quarter, and tiny little bananas that are tough and tasty, and papayas which are fine enough but no match for a good American cantaloupe. They occasionally have apples, but they’re brought in from Togo and aren't cheap. I had never seen either papaya or banana trees before, and they’re both incredibly gorgeous. Bananas hang ‘upside-down’ in clusters in the middle of big, broad-leafed palmy type trees with a kind of purple disc coming out of them, and papayas grow at the top of short, straight-stemmed trees that open like umbrellas into canopies of enormous, serrated leaves.
Canned and bottled goods are limited to tuna, olives, tomato paste, corn and peas, things like that. There’s no juice, and you get your coffee fix with nesquick instant, and don’t leave the sugar out unless you like ants in your coffee. Bread is unfortunately always the white loafy kind that you know is terrible for you, but it’s so much easier to make a sandwich than to actually cook something. Eggs are abundant, and mayonnaise exists, so you can make tuna, egg-salad, and avocado-tomato sandwiches. I’ve seen lettuce here and there, but the SF health clinic instilled the fear of God into me about uncooked foreign bacteria so I don't touch it (two of seven yovos here have been violently ill, surely I'll get my turn soon enough).
The staples are manioc flour and corn-mush, either of which is made like polenta but without cheese, just a big ball of solid porridge. Also popular are white rice, couscous, and western-style spaghetti. A typical West-African dinner is pretty good, and consists of one of the staples plus fried fish in a spicy tomato-onion sauce. You can also get chicken, goat, and occasionally beef in that same type of sauce, but there’s an avian bird flue scare and I just could never eat goat.
I’ll only eat fish when I go out, and a favourite spot at the end of town serves dinner for about two dollars but it’s a hike to get there. The fish is fresh from the sea every day, and when you order you never know what it will look like. Sometimes it’s a frightening, full long-headed, toothed predator, other times it's the bottom half and tail of a flatter fish. I’m always grateful for the protein and the sustenance, and also feel a pang of guilt for the animal before me. The food at Chez Desi’s is really good, but on the other hand I’ve heard you can tell the quality of a restaurant by the way it keeps its bathrooms. When I asked for the bathroom, the owner asked me if I intended to pee, and then vaguely pointed to the rear of her backyard. Nearby was a large ceramic pot behind an open-air thatched screen, the purpose of which would have been difficult to discern if not for the smell. There was no water, much less soap, but thankfully it rains pretty often.
My first successful home cooking experiment was with my buddy Jaakko, the Finnish intern, in Villa Karo’s cooking room. A cooking room is similar to a kitchen, because it conatins a rusty stove with one good burner and possibly an old refrigerator, but the similarities end there. The water supply comes from a garden spigot on the outside of the building, for example. We’ve repeated this meal several times with different variations. I’ll call it Grand Popo Soup.
Grand Popo Soup:
Fry four small red onions and some garlic in a pan with low-grade soy or palm oil, and throw in some diced jalapenos.
Add four small diced roma tomatoes to the mix, be careful to cut out the bad parts.
Meanwhile, cook two cups of rice in extra water in a large pot and add a large lump of tomato paste.
Add the fried stuff, add some salt.
Throw in an old sliced cabbage or eggplant or a can of lentils or whatever, boil until they’re done.
Serve with sliced lime in an old metal container and a flat spoon.
It’s somewhat better than it sounds.
I miss you Nicole.
And the food's just a small part of it.
Working in Africa, Part II
Yesterday was a good day. The morning started with me trying again to make stretcher bars out of some crap wood I bought. The saw was dull, the nails too thick, the wood split, and it occurred to me that I don’t have to stay here. I decided I’d call Air France, change my ticket, stop wasting my time, go home and be happy. As I was daydreaming, one of the local guys, Boris, came by. We had played soccer on the beach together last week, so I didn’t mind him hovering around for a bit. He observed my efforts with concern, and politely told me that he was a carpenter. I’ve learned to doubt people here, but I had nothing to lose and long story short, he went home to get a set of real tools and spent the next ten hours, without break, making four great, sturdy canvas stretchers. He planed the rough wood down, even sanded the stretcher bars which was technically unnecessary but absolutely admirable. He was happy to have work on a day without work, and I was thrilled to be moving forward.
While Boris was working I started a portrait of another guy I know here, Matthias, one of the many underemployed guides. There are too-few tourists to give everyone work, but Matthias always has the air of being busy, things to do, deals to arrange. He’s a sharp dresser and an interesting character, and for the first time here I felt myself painting smoothly, at times effortlessly. I got a good start, and he’s coming again tomorrow to model. I’ve also been working on a larger, colourful tropical garden landscape, and another portrait, and now with four new canvasses waiting for action (I spent today stretching and priming them) I feel I’m finally on my way.
While I was painting Matthias, two enormously tall Norwegian reporters came by. They were working on a story about democracy in Benin (intending to write about a successful African democracy, they found the political situation a bit more complicated) and were in Grand Popo for something or other, and decided to stop by Villa Karo. It was fun to speak Norwegian again and meet someone so randomly, and it never hurts to give a reporter your web site.
I also had a talk with Juha yesterday, he’s an old ‘Africa hand’ and the founder of Villa Karo, and he told me that most resident artists here over the years have taken a long time to adjust, and they don’t necessarily make much work at all. Sometimes the work comes later, after leaving Africa and remembering it from a distance. So that was encouraging, and perhaps it’s ok that it takes a good three weeks to adjust, learn the pace and the routine and the landscape. I know from other times in my life when I’ve moved to a new place, or even to a new studio in the same city, that it takes time to learn things and find a new work rhythm. Perhaps a little self-compassion would be in order.
After three weeks here, existing is no longer exhausting. I have figured out many of the little-but-important things, like where to get food and how to plan meals so I’m not hungry, and how the phone and internet systems work (or sometimes work). I’ve learned, like the locals do, to take long siestas and walk slowly (in the States, I routinely pass people like being a pedestrian is some kind of sport). I’ve learned to be less ambitious. I’ve learned more about the culture, and have gotten to know both local people and Villa Karo people better (many in a jovial good-to-see-you kind of way, but also a few deeper connections). My French is better, if still perfectly terrible, so I can understand people I want to talk to, and not understand those I don’t want to talk to. I’ve found places where I feel good painting, and I’ve remembered how to paint again.
Juha went back to Finland today, and there was a formal goodbye dinner for him yesterday evening. As the sun set and the day came to a close, Boris was still hammering in the background while I sat at a long table, eating a rare good meal, drinking too much wine, enjoying good company and a cool breeze, and looking forward to three more weeks in Africa.
While Boris was working I started a portrait of another guy I know here, Matthias, one of the many underemployed guides. There are too-few tourists to give everyone work, but Matthias always has the air of being busy, things to do, deals to arrange. He’s a sharp dresser and an interesting character, and for the first time here I felt myself painting smoothly, at times effortlessly. I got a good start, and he’s coming again tomorrow to model. I’ve also been working on a larger, colourful tropical garden landscape, and another portrait, and now with four new canvasses waiting for action (I spent today stretching and priming them) I feel I’m finally on my way.
While I was painting Matthias, two enormously tall Norwegian reporters came by. They were working on a story about democracy in Benin (intending to write about a successful African democracy, they found the political situation a bit more complicated) and were in Grand Popo for something or other, and decided to stop by Villa Karo. It was fun to speak Norwegian again and meet someone so randomly, and it never hurts to give a reporter your web site.
I also had a talk with Juha yesterday, he’s an old ‘Africa hand’ and the founder of Villa Karo, and he told me that most resident artists here over the years have taken a long time to adjust, and they don’t necessarily make much work at all. Sometimes the work comes later, after leaving Africa and remembering it from a distance. So that was encouraging, and perhaps it’s ok that it takes a good three weeks to adjust, learn the pace and the routine and the landscape. I know from other times in my life when I’ve moved to a new place, or even to a new studio in the same city, that it takes time to learn things and find a new work rhythm. Perhaps a little self-compassion would be in order.
After three weeks here, existing is no longer exhausting. I have figured out many of the little-but-important things, like where to get food and how to plan meals so I’m not hungry, and how the phone and internet systems work (or sometimes work). I’ve learned, like the locals do, to take long siestas and walk slowly (in the States, I routinely pass people like being a pedestrian is some kind of sport). I’ve learned to be less ambitious. I’ve learned more about the culture, and have gotten to know both local people and Villa Karo people better (many in a jovial good-to-see-you kind of way, but also a few deeper connections). My French is better, if still perfectly terrible, so I can understand people I want to talk to, and not understand those I don’t want to talk to. I’ve found places where I feel good painting, and I’ve remembered how to paint again.
Juha went back to Finland today, and there was a formal goodbye dinner for him yesterday evening. As the sun set and the day came to a close, Boris was still hammering in the background while I sat at a long table, eating a rare good meal, drinking too much wine, enjoying good company and a cool breeze, and looking forward to three more weeks in Africa.
Working in Africa, Part I
(From a few days ago)
It’s hot and sticky here, everything is slow and difficult and inefficient, there’s no studio space, there’s no privacy, I have no energy, and just trying to paint here is exhausting. If I return to Africa, it will be to visit and travel and see, and not to work because working here seems impossible.
I met some Peace Corps volunteers at a bar last week – they had worked in neighbouring Burkina Faso for the last 15 months with 9 to go, and they also felt it was impossible to get things done. People show up hours late, the food is unfamiliar and irregular, the heat wears you down, and just nothing really works. Every other “yovo” (white person in Mina, the local language, and a word you hear incessantly) I meet here feels the same way, and maybe that’s ok. Africa isn’t meant for yovos: It’s its own special place with its own schedule and purpose.
Little things in Africa take a lot of time. For example, it’s a three-mile walk to the internet café. That’s three hot, slow miles, made slower by the constant stop-and-greet (most people don’t work as much here as they do in the States and spend lots of time talking). At this point I’ve met a lot of people, so the stop-and-greet adds a solid half-hour to the day if I’m feeling chatty. (It’s also important to remember people’s names; I can’t tell you how many people I’ve offended by forgetting their names or forgetting that I had previously met them at all, especially in the first week).
At the internet place, the people are grumpy and the connection is slow, so catching up on a few emails can take over an hour. The keyboard is French, which means the a,m,z,q, w, period, comma, and a few other keys are in different places, so typing takes longer. At this point at least four hours have gone by since you left the house, and you realize you’re incredibly hungry. You go to a cheap restaurant to order some food, and it comes an hour later if you’re lucky, two hours later if you’re not, even if you’re the only customer there. People show up to chit-chat, on your way home you stop to buy some things, and when you get home it’s late, you’re hot and exhausted and think that tomorrow, yes tomorrow you’ll get some work done.
Strangely, there’s no studio space at Villa Karo. Before I left I just assumed that an artist residency would have studio space, but not so. Apparently they often host writers and composers and others who need little more than a desk, so the 'studio' is an open-air concrete patio with turquoise walls and a straw mat for a roof. There’s no privacy from curious villagers, and when it rains, as it has for the last two days, there’s no chance of working at all.
It took days to find wood, nails, a hammer and a saw to make stretcher bars for canvasses, and the quality of all the above was abysmal. The laundry lady has had all my clothes except what I’m wearing for the last three days. My mosquito net couldn’t quite tuck under my mattress, which was fine until a few nights ago a plague of mosquitoes appeared and easily breached the gap, and we fought until the net was covered in blood smears (after the one day I forgot to take my malaria meds). Buying groceries can take hours, and yet if you neglect that most basic of chores, you grow hungry and ever-more lethargic. It’s not that I need a perfect set-up to work, just that when I’m already sapped of energy, the little problems seem big, and after a hundred little problems I want to give up.
So, don’t expect to see a whole lot of great paintings when I come home. Just to exist and survive in Africa seems good enough. I’ll write something more positive next time.
It’s hot and sticky here, everything is slow and difficult and inefficient, there’s no studio space, there’s no privacy, I have no energy, and just trying to paint here is exhausting. If I return to Africa, it will be to visit and travel and see, and not to work because working here seems impossible.
I met some Peace Corps volunteers at a bar last week – they had worked in neighbouring Burkina Faso for the last 15 months with 9 to go, and they also felt it was impossible to get things done. People show up hours late, the food is unfamiliar and irregular, the heat wears you down, and just nothing really works. Every other “yovo” (white person in Mina, the local language, and a word you hear incessantly) I meet here feels the same way, and maybe that’s ok. Africa isn’t meant for yovos: It’s its own special place with its own schedule and purpose.
Little things in Africa take a lot of time. For example, it’s a three-mile walk to the internet café. That’s three hot, slow miles, made slower by the constant stop-and-greet (most people don’t work as much here as they do in the States and spend lots of time talking). At this point I’ve met a lot of people, so the stop-and-greet adds a solid half-hour to the day if I’m feeling chatty. (It’s also important to remember people’s names; I can’t tell you how many people I’ve offended by forgetting their names or forgetting that I had previously met them at all, especially in the first week).
At the internet place, the people are grumpy and the connection is slow, so catching up on a few emails can take over an hour. The keyboard is French, which means the a,m,z,q, w, period, comma, and a few other keys are in different places, so typing takes longer. At this point at least four hours have gone by since you left the house, and you realize you’re incredibly hungry. You go to a cheap restaurant to order some food, and it comes an hour later if you’re lucky, two hours later if you’re not, even if you’re the only customer there. People show up to chit-chat, on your way home you stop to buy some things, and when you get home it’s late, you’re hot and exhausted and think that tomorrow, yes tomorrow you’ll get some work done.
Strangely, there’s no studio space at Villa Karo. Before I left I just assumed that an artist residency would have studio space, but not so. Apparently they often host writers and composers and others who need little more than a desk, so the 'studio' is an open-air concrete patio with turquoise walls and a straw mat for a roof. There’s no privacy from curious villagers, and when it rains, as it has for the last two days, there’s no chance of working at all.
It took days to find wood, nails, a hammer and a saw to make stretcher bars for canvasses, and the quality of all the above was abysmal. The laundry lady has had all my clothes except what I’m wearing for the last three days. My mosquito net couldn’t quite tuck under my mattress, which was fine until a few nights ago a plague of mosquitoes appeared and easily breached the gap, and we fought until the net was covered in blood smears (after the one day I forgot to take my malaria meds). Buying groceries can take hours, and yet if you neglect that most basic of chores, you grow hungry and ever-more lethargic. It’s not that I need a perfect set-up to work, just that when I’m already sapped of energy, the little problems seem big, and after a hundred little problems I want to give up.
So, don’t expect to see a whole lot of great paintings when I come home. Just to exist and survive in Africa seems good enough. I’ll write something more positive next time.
Friday, September 12, 2008
I’m in Africa
I’ve been in Benin in West Africa for a bit over a week. It’s a crazy place, bewildering at first and just completely different from the States in every imaginable way. You realize even at the airport that things are different here, as a huge mob rushes the rolling baggage tray, and suitcases roll by alongside taped plastic bags, large rice sacs, broken cardboard boxes, and all kinds of improvised packaging. My own bags would arrive three days later on the next flight from Paris.
Alphonse, the driver for Villa Karo, took me to a hotel in Cotonou (the capital) that first night, and the next morning we drove to Villa Karo in the village of Grand Popo where I'll be staying. The weeks preceding this trip were exhausting, and the trip itself was long, so I spent the first days here just sleeping and taking a few small walks in the village. I was unshaven, wearing the same clothes, it rained a lot, and morale was low.
Since then I’ve had time to explore the village, get to know people a bit, get on my feet as it were and finally start to paint. So, before I post another blog I want to give you a little tour of Benin, and Grand Popo in particular:
In Benin, there are no stores like there are in the US. Instead, just about every household along any main road has a shaded stall -- typically some tree branches covered by a thatched or corrugated steel roof—where they sell anything from a few fruits and vegetables to rice, batteries, toothpaste, paper, and even gasoline, which amazingly comes in recycled glass bottles. This means it takes a really long time to gather ingredients for a meal, and it also means the “highway” and roads are in constant activity, with people coming and going and buying and selling all the time, from morning until late at night. There are few sidewalks, so pedestrians share the streets with run-down and overloaded “mopos,” (mopeds), cars, and burly trucks. Even areas away from the roads seem active, as fishermen ply rivers, farmers tend fields, and people gather coconuts or just stroll about. It's hot like Maryland in August with no air conditioning, so people mostly hang out outside, and walk slowly, you could say it's laid back and active at the same time.
The only traffic “rule” I have discerned is a general preference for the right side of the road. There are no seatbelts for cars or helmets for mopos; there are no speed limit signs and few traffic signals (none in Grand Popo); you make left turns across heavy traffic by inching forward until that traffic is forced to abruptly stop; at night there are few streetlights, and headlights on vehicles are common but apparently optional, so you walk with great care.
People are really colourful here. The women wear dresses and wraps of brightly-patterned fabrics, and wear their hair in any number of fashions, often with braided extensions or headscarves. One of the most beautiful - and common - sights is to see women walking down the street carrying baskets on their heads – surprisingly big baskets and buckets filled with coconuts, bananas, dishes, anything at all. The men also wear colorful and patterned fabrics, sewn into loose pants and shirts, as well as western-style dress. Sandals and flip-flops are the main footwear. Dressing well seems to be important, and only children wear shorts or raggedy t-shirts, and only farmers in the field will go bare-chested.
Grand Popo, where I will stay for the next several weeks, is a village of a few thousand people on the coast of Benin. It’s two hours west of Cotonou and an hour east of the border with Togo, and squeezed between the Atlantic to the south and a river and wetlands to the north. It’s about three miles long and maybe half a mile wide, with most of the commerce and activity along a mostly-paved road that leads to the highway. Grand Popo is on a coastal plain, so it’s sandy and in some places marshy, with lots of coconut trees, banana trees, papaya trees, and other short-but-lush vegetation. People live in small cinderblock houses, mud huts, and improvised structures, often with thatched or corrugated roofs and fenced-off gardens and courtyards. Instead of glass windows, they use wooden shutters. Colorful lizards scamper about and you see small, colorful songbirds, but there are no big animals, only lots of really small goats, some really small pigs, chickens, and sad-looking and also very small and often-pregnant dogs.
People here are really friendly, sometimes just to sell you something, but often genuinely so. It’s a relatively poor place, with fishing, subsistence farming, commerce, and some tourism making up the economy.
I’m staying in Villa Karo, a “Finnish-African Cultural Center” in a large house on the main road. I’m here as one of six resident artists, all of them Finnish except me, their annual international artist. A Finnish intern, a Columbian spouse, and a large African staff make up the rest of this place. We get along well in a cacophony of languages: Finnish, Swedish, English, French, Spanish, Mina (the local African language), and when that fails, hand-gestures usually work.
Besides hosting artists, Villa Karo has classes and cultural events for the village, things like dance performances, movie night, and an annual boat race I saw which was just absolutely fantastic: fishermen from four villages competed to launch their 8-man dugout canoes into the ocean in a terrible surf, then around a buoy a kilometre offshore and back again through the surf. Three flipped over either on the launch or return, while a beautiful, colorful, roaring crowd of at least a thousand cheered wildly from the beach.
That’s all for now, I’ll write more about life in Grand Popo soon, but I hope this gives you a rough image of what things are like here. Unfortunately there’s no chance of uploading photos (including video of the boat race), as just connecting to the internet can take 20 minutes if it works at all, and then it’s painstakingly slow. But when I get back to the States I’ll get some pictures up.
Alphonse, the driver for Villa Karo, took me to a hotel in Cotonou (the capital) that first night, and the next morning we drove to Villa Karo in the village of Grand Popo where I'll be staying. The weeks preceding this trip were exhausting, and the trip itself was long, so I spent the first days here just sleeping and taking a few small walks in the village. I was unshaven, wearing the same clothes, it rained a lot, and morale was low.
Since then I’ve had time to explore the village, get to know people a bit, get on my feet as it were and finally start to paint. So, before I post another blog I want to give you a little tour of Benin, and Grand Popo in particular:
In Benin, there are no stores like there are in the US. Instead, just about every household along any main road has a shaded stall -- typically some tree branches covered by a thatched or corrugated steel roof—where they sell anything from a few fruits and vegetables to rice, batteries, toothpaste, paper, and even gasoline, which amazingly comes in recycled glass bottles. This means it takes a really long time to gather ingredients for a meal, and it also means the “highway” and roads are in constant activity, with people coming and going and buying and selling all the time, from morning until late at night. There are few sidewalks, so pedestrians share the streets with run-down and overloaded “mopos,” (mopeds), cars, and burly trucks. Even areas away from the roads seem active, as fishermen ply rivers, farmers tend fields, and people gather coconuts or just stroll about. It's hot like Maryland in August with no air conditioning, so people mostly hang out outside, and walk slowly, you could say it's laid back and active at the same time.
The only traffic “rule” I have discerned is a general preference for the right side of the road. There are no seatbelts for cars or helmets for mopos; there are no speed limit signs and few traffic signals (none in Grand Popo); you make left turns across heavy traffic by inching forward until that traffic is forced to abruptly stop; at night there are few streetlights, and headlights on vehicles are common but apparently optional, so you walk with great care.
People are really colourful here. The women wear dresses and wraps of brightly-patterned fabrics, and wear their hair in any number of fashions, often with braided extensions or headscarves. One of the most beautiful - and common - sights is to see women walking down the street carrying baskets on their heads – surprisingly big baskets and buckets filled with coconuts, bananas, dishes, anything at all. The men also wear colorful and patterned fabrics, sewn into loose pants and shirts, as well as western-style dress. Sandals and flip-flops are the main footwear. Dressing well seems to be important, and only children wear shorts or raggedy t-shirts, and only farmers in the field will go bare-chested.
Grand Popo, where I will stay for the next several weeks, is a village of a few thousand people on the coast of Benin. It’s two hours west of Cotonou and an hour east of the border with Togo, and squeezed between the Atlantic to the south and a river and wetlands to the north. It’s about three miles long and maybe half a mile wide, with most of the commerce and activity along a mostly-paved road that leads to the highway. Grand Popo is on a coastal plain, so it’s sandy and in some places marshy, with lots of coconut trees, banana trees, papaya trees, and other short-but-lush vegetation. People live in small cinderblock houses, mud huts, and improvised structures, often with thatched or corrugated roofs and fenced-off gardens and courtyards. Instead of glass windows, they use wooden shutters. Colorful lizards scamper about and you see small, colorful songbirds, but there are no big animals, only lots of really small goats, some really small pigs, chickens, and sad-looking and also very small and often-pregnant dogs.
People here are really friendly, sometimes just to sell you something, but often genuinely so. It’s a relatively poor place, with fishing, subsistence farming, commerce, and some tourism making up the economy.
I’m staying in Villa Karo, a “Finnish-African Cultural Center” in a large house on the main road. I’m here as one of six resident artists, all of them Finnish except me, their annual international artist. A Finnish intern, a Columbian spouse, and a large African staff make up the rest of this place. We get along well in a cacophony of languages: Finnish, Swedish, English, French, Spanish, Mina (the local African language), and when that fails, hand-gestures usually work.
Besides hosting artists, Villa Karo has classes and cultural events for the village, things like dance performances, movie night, and an annual boat race I saw which was just absolutely fantastic: fishermen from four villages competed to launch their 8-man dugout canoes into the ocean in a terrible surf, then around a buoy a kilometre offshore and back again through the surf. Three flipped over either on the launch or return, while a beautiful, colorful, roaring crowd of at least a thousand cheered wildly from the beach.
That’s all for now, I’ll write more about life in Grand Popo soon, but I hope this gives you a rough image of what things are like here. Unfortunately there’s no chance of uploading photos (including video of the boat race), as just connecting to the internet can take 20 minutes if it works at all, and then it’s painstakingly slow. But when I get back to the States I’ll get some pictures up.
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