Holiday Season

Many people have asked me about the holidays, and although it's perhaps a little late to do this, I decided to recap my holiday season in Ouesse.

There were three major holidays that are celebrated every year. These are Tabaski, which is celebrated by the Muslims in my village as a commemoration of Abraham's near-sacrifice of his son Isaac. The Christians celebrate Christmas, and everybody celebrates New Year.

I wish I could tell you that there was something very special about these celebrations in Ouesse, but really all of them consisted of drinking, eating, and talking a lot. Tabaski came and went, and since I didn't really know any of the Muslims who were celebrating it, I didn't slaughter a goat with them. Christmas came and went, Baby Jesus was born as always, and after going to Midnight Mass on the 24th I went over to a couple of different friend's houses on Christmas day, where I ate an enormous amount of food.

New Year's was interesting simply for the fact that people here don't stay up till midnight. They just celebrate when they wake up on January 1st. However, this was not good enough for me, so I made several of my friends stay up till midnight with me. We got some drinks, some snacks, and set up a table and chairs outside. There were a few problems, though. First, we're in the middle of a season called Harmattan, a dry season with dust winds, and it gets very chilly at night. My friends, not being from Michigan, were especially cold. Second, we are all used to going to sleep between 9-10 pm, and midnight was really stretching it. Lastly, since we have no electricity, we had no lights, music, TV, or anything else to help keep us awake. We made it to midnight, toasted to the New Year, and everybody went home at 12:05 am. The next day, though, my friends were all bragging to everybody else who hadn't been there that they'd stayed up to welcome in the New Year. Maybe we'll start a new tradition here in Ouesse.

Not to downplay any of the three more traditional holidays, but we had another celebration around this time that was definitely the most interesting of them all: we installed our new king in Ouesse. Our last king died in 2004, and the oracle who chooses the next king was having a little trouble picking a successor. They kept presenting the men in the village who are of royal lineage to the oracle (whoever or whatever that is), and the oracle kept refusing them. Some of these candidates were upset. You see, being king has positives and negatives. On the positive side, you get a prestigious title, recognition throughout the village, and traditional, if not practical, power. On the downside, your chances of incurring gri-gri (voodoo black magic type stuff), significantly increase. So some candidates wanted the prestige, some candidates just didn't want the potential gri-gri. Finally, a few months ago, the oracle settled on a 45-year old truck driver (actually a pretty lucrative job here). The truck driver didn't really want to be king, because he would have to leave his job, which meant leaving a steady income, but if he refused the oracle, he would die. This man weighed his options for probably about .02 seconds, and then accepted the position.

The installation began on December 21st with a ceremony that I was not able to attend because I was giving accounting classes in another nearby village. After this, the poor man chosen as king had to be shut in his house with ONLY one wife for a week, after which he would be crowned. This is the ceremony I went to, on December 28th. Another volunteer was visiting me at the time, and my friends in Ouesse made sure that we were seated front and center (no reason to hide the white people in the back) under one of the tents that surrounded the main area where the ceremony would be held.

Now, a coronation is not a coronation without Civil War-era muskets being fired into the air. Which brings us to the all-important question: If you were planning a coronation ceremony, to whom would you entrust the firing of these rifles? If you answered "a pack of 12-year old boys," you answered correctly. I was convinced that this would all end tragically. But perhaps I should be glad that this responsibility was not charged to the old men of the village. By the time the ceremony got underway around noon, our village vieuxs were already several shots deep into their respective bottles of sodabi (moonshine). They would take turns getting up and dancing into the middle of the main area where the ceremony would be held. This would draw giggles and laughter from the crowd until one of the security guards would walk over and gently lead the old man, who would have a big grin on his face, back to his seat. As soon as the security guard turned his back, the old man would jump up and make his way to the center of the ring again. I don't think streaking is very popular here, but I kept waiting for that one shot of sodabi to put one of the old men over the edge, so he'd rip his clothes off and make a dash for it across the ceremony grounds. Fortunately, this did not happen.

The actual ceremony was less amusing but equally interesting. The people of Ouesse originally came from the city of Savalou, west of us, so the king of Savalou, a large man by Beninese standards, came to install our king. There were dancers, and an entourage of about 30 women that followed our king, chanting, as he went before the king of Savalou to be crowned. The king of Savalou was flanked by two guards who looked more like pirates, with their black outfits, red sashes, and sabers at their sides. The national TV camera crews followed along. Since my friend and I had the good fortune of sitting in the front, and were the only white people there, the camera crews made sure they got plenty of footage of us. It seems the white people were nearly as interesting as the installation of a new king. And they certainly did not hesitate to use this footage. A few days later, shopkeeper friends in Parakou, a big city north of us, were telling me that they had seen me on TV.

And so now we have a new king. He's a tall guy, actually kind of looks like a king. I'm looking forward to seeing what his reign will bring. Hopefully not gri-gri.