Ohhh Benin...

And now for the perfect story to sum it all up...

School starts on Monday, so this past Friday all of the teachers from two regions were brought together at a high school for a Journée Pédagogique- a day to reflect on a certain topic (chosen by the national education system) related to teaching and education. This year's topic was time management-- a very very fitting choice given that the school year was nationally extended a month last year due to strikes and teachers not effectively covering enough of the material in time.

So, as it was scheduled to begin at 8 am, I arrived at 9:15 and we began around 10:30. If you can believe it, thats a fairly good job on their part of getting things started. I moved into a classroom with all of the other (male) English and Physics professors, about 120 in all. We squeezed in three to a desk and began to work on small group activities. Our first small group activity was to read a short story about 4 professors working in a group to get things done for a deadline. One didn't show up, the other two didn't have their work done from the previous meeting, and the 4th needed them to finish their work on Tuesday because he had a tennis tournament on the weekend he couldn't miss. The groups were to discuss why tension might be rising in the group, what the causes of it were, and how it might be fixed. Although the activity took forever, I was bored to death, and you might think it completely pointless and obvious, the truth is that this was a very good idea for an exercise. I was slightly encouraged that the moral of the story- respect your group members and get your work done- might actually stick with a few of the professors in the room. If you're wondering why I might say such a thing, keep reading...

So...here comes the best part...Activity 2. Question 1- "what is time?" (weird question, but ok). Question 2-"What is time management?" Question 3- "Are you capable or incapable of managing your time? Why?" Now, when I read this question to myself, a perfect résumé response came to my mind that I'm sure we've all repeated at job interviews many times- "Yes, I have very good time management skills as can be seen by my work schedule and extracurricular activities." So, you can imagine my slight astonishment when a man stood up and announced that he is incapable of managing his time. It took me a second to realize that in fact he said we are all incapable of managing our time due to constraints and unexpected circumstances. Here again, I was a little surprised, and was slightly relieved when a man stood up to object. His objection, however, was that constraints and unexpected circumstances are not really different and one is merely the subcategory of the other. A 15 minute argument ensued, involving all 100+ men in the room. After that was finally settled (they can be different, but don't have to be), everyone was content to move on to question 4.

Now, when I entered this room and began working on this I had resigned myself to stay quiet, observant, and overall, patient. The one other woman in the room had spoken during activity 1 and although the room would not stop talking to listen to her, you could barely hear her speak anyway. I also didn't see the need to draw even further attention to myself, it was already clear to everyone that I was there. That being said, I couldn't let it go, and I had to raise my hand. The moderator had a huge grin on his face and asked me if I had a question. In the loudest, most calm, cool, and collected French I could muster, I said that I merely wanted to point out that we have all come here today to talk about our problems with time management and how we should work to fix them, thus I do not understand why everyone is content to say that we are completely incapable of managing our time. We wouldn't be here if we couldn't work to fix it, and therefore, I am not in agreement with the response."

The entire room erupted in laughter. I don't know if it's because they thought it was an idiotic and naive response, if they were just laughing because I'm a woman who voiced her opposition, or if because a white woman just told an entire room of men they were wrong and was correct in doing so. I like to think it's a mixture of the three. Anyway, after about a minute of laughter and chatter, the moderator calmed everyone down enough to address me. "Madame, madame, of course in the West, you are fully capable of managing your time. But here, of course you do not know, things are very different, and we cannot manage our time in the same way." (laughter and chatter). Much to his surprise I raised my hand again to respond. "I understand, Monseiur, that time is different here, I get it. I myself arrived at 9:15 this morning, not 8 am. I just want to say that the point of today is to talk about how we can better manage our time, and if you think we are incapable of doing so, we should all just go home." (laughter and chatter).

"Ok, Ok," he announced to the group, "listen, listen...you do not give a child an egg and tell them not to break it...you give a child an egg and tell them to be careful with it..." I have absolutely no idea if he meant that I'm the naive child with the egg of culture, or if they are the children slowly learning how to take care of the egg of time. I really wish I knew. Anywho, they ended up changing the response on the blackboard to "we are not completely capable of managing our time due to constraints and unexpected circumstances." As the group moved on I sat there completely content with myself and my response and even highly amused at the ordeal, regardless of its outcome. Not until later that night did I become infuriated at the entire situation and their willingness to sit in a professional setting (if you could call it that) and admit that it's beyond their control when they can't get their work done. Now I'm back to amusement. Overall, I think it was quite the quintessential Beninese experience and it's a lesson I'll always remember as I begin what is sure to be quite an interesting school year.