The View from Mama Houndja's
Last week was spent in cushy beds, swimming pools, and buffet lines. Mid-Service Training in Peace Corps Benin gives volunteers the chance to reconnect, recharge, and reevaluate their service amid all the conveniences one of the country's nicest hotels can offer. I found the day’s conference sessions engaging and the evenings of leisure and play joyful. The occasion also gave me time to reflect on sentiments that I’ve dwelt on for months. Mid-Service and a certain anniversary have aligned to underscore my point, which originates in the View from Mama Houndja's.
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Mama Houndja lives about a mile from me in a small cement house that welcomes the narrow northbound dirt road to her village. Two cement rooms are raised above the ground by a few steps and a narrow porch. Behind the house in an opening of the road lies one of the village meeting places. There the water pump stands just outside the shadow of a seemingly ancient and crooked white tree. The tree appears to grow sideways, bestowing plenty of shady space and delightful opportunities for climbing and hanging and other fun. From the porch of the house you can see beyond a short hedge and Mama Houndja’s mudbrick cooking hut the mix of tin and thatch roofs that crown the mudbrick neighborhood. A banana grove lies beyond the road to the west, punctuated by a few palm trees. To the north grows a small forest, the view to the east taken up by the ascending houses of the village and a kola nut tree. You cannot see the lake, but it’s breezes keep the air cool and moving.
The interior of Mama Houndja’s house exudes comfort. The walls are painted pink and blue but are covered by an eclectic array of plastic posters ranging from the Crucifixion of Christ and the 2010 Real Madrid roster to a chart of common animals with their English names and a collage of American hip hop’s bigger stars. The furniture is hardwood with comfy cushions numbering a couch, two chairs, and a coffee table. There is a diploma hanging in the corner above a heap of dusty and decrepit benches, sacks, and miscellaneous wood. They recently installed a 21” flat screen that remains covered by a sheet. There is rarely enough energy to power it let alone find anything to watch. They don’t have cable. It was a gift from Mama's son Henri who migrated to Lagos, Nigeria where money is earned by time, effort, and wages instead of toil, patience, and soil productivity.
Mama is thin with long arms and large, active hands. She is a devout Christian. This might explain her joyous presence, for even when she’s not smiling there’s a sense of joy at the ready in most things she says. She works daily in her garden, sells fruit, and attends church 3-4 times per week. Mama is old, but her husband looks ancient as he spends his days on the porch greeting passers-by in his grisly voice and felt hat. Their daughter in-law, a sandwich vendor and hairdresser, lives with them in the second of two rooms with two small children: Martin is around 4 and is nonverbal, and Noélie is 3 and a bundle of all things cute. Mama also takes care of her 6 year-old grandson Moïse who landed his family’s joyous genes as he neither stops playing nor smiling in one way or another.
Everyone knows Mama Houndja and her family. It’s not only because she’s the trusted custodian of the village water pump, but her porch and warm welcome are available to all at all times. When other women gave up gardening when goats ate their produce, Mama redid their garden for herself and filled it with okra, which goats refuse to munch. It doesn’t matter if I’ve been away for two weeks or two hours: Mama Houndja and her husband always greet me enthusiastically and ask me to sit and stay a while. They often give me gifts of bananas or oranges, and I buy them sweet bread when I travel. Mama’s garden provides most of their vegetable intake. Sometimes they eat fish, but most of the time it’s just rice or pâte with sauce. Everything is cooked on their little charcoal stove. Believe it or not, Mama Houndja is one of the better off villagers. Her family doesn’t have much, but they would have even less were Henri not sending some of his wages back from Lagos. French is rarely spoken at the house, but I have never felt more comfortable, at-ease, and valued at site as I have the many mornings and evenings I have spent on that porch or in the salon.
The view from Mama Houndja’s features love, welcome, community, family, hard work, dedication, natural beauty, and resourcefulness. It also features poverty, food insecurity, a separated family, and the landscape of a poor community with deteriorated infrastructure on an eroding hillside. If you’ve been following my blog, then none of this complexity and nuance should come as a surprise. I’ve written about the culture of familiarity and hospitality, gender inequality, and the legacy of colonialism. It can nonetheless be easy to forget the complexity of far-off lands and peoples when a PCV's blog isn’t in front of you. You may not even have known before that such places exist.
The title of this piece is borrowed from an essay by David Foster Wallace on the innocence of the average American on 9/11. From his vantage point in Bloomington, IL and more specifically Mrs. Thompson’s house, those who lacked cynicism about the media, politics, and international affairs and only cared for each other were the heroes of 9/11 (in and outside of New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington, respectively). The cynics and self-righteous could neither save the day nor be trusted with cleaning the physical and political wreckage. Wallace found that the view from Mrs. Thompson’s of good, caring people who recognized humanity when they saw it, afforded him empathy for those he would have culturally and politically maligned just days before. They also saved lives where terror struck.
Consider again the view from Mama Houndja’s. Benin is among the poorest nations in the world, and my community is certainly average to poor by the country’s standards. The cynics and self-righteous might call it a shithole or, what is worse, take to Facebook comments sections to defend why a place they’ve never visited or even read about deserves no better descriptor than a shithole. A culture they’ve never read about, let alone engaged. A history intertwined with theirs they never cared to learn. Human dignity they rejected because someone’s poverty was offensive, worthy of repute. This is the view from Mama Houndja’s of a widening swath of America.
But cynics aren’t allowed at her house. In fact, they never come to fruition. Like Mrs. Thompson’s 17 years ago, neighbors like Mama Houndja build a world of empathy and comfort founded in the strength of solidarity, evidenced by the warm welcome of a stranger such as I and all those who pass Mama’s porch. This cannot be a shithole by any definition. In America, cynics populate our newsstands, social media feeds, and many halls of public service, but the right way ahead still lies in the hands of the empathetic, humble, and caring. The view from Mama’s and Mrs' differ insubstantiality in this regard, but the distance widens only if we let it.
Cited
Wallace, David Foster. 2005. “The View from Mrs. Thompson’s,” in Consider the Lobster and Other Essays. Little, Brown and Co.: New York. Originally printed October 25, 2001 in Rolling Stone.
All names have been changed to respect privacy.
All names have been changed to respect privacy.
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