The Good in Everyone

Aw ya... listening to some Herbie Hancock, rockin the air conditioning, just got back from my first walk to the beach (the feeling I had this morning that I should buy a plane ticket home vanished when I saw the waves roll in on the sand -- home? what home?) and an uber-filling lunch. Oh my gaaaad I can't wait to be more familiar with the food here so that my friend Jean can stop ordering for me. I accused him of trying to fatten me up. "Just a little," he said.

My colleagues here are all awesome. Such thoughtful and hard-working people. At noon today, I thought, "Holy shit, if I have to wait til 1pm to take a lunch break and go for a walk, I will DIE." They work straight from 8h30 to 1pm!! NO CAN DO! Call me lazy, I call it HUMAN.

I asked Jean - don't you get hungry?? No, apparently not. Then again, at the age of 6 he was getting up at 5am to walk 20km to the fields where he spent all day under the hot African sun cutting down branches, pulling weeds and burning stuff only to walk the 20km home afterwards. There is no lazy work-ethic here.

Anyway, as I made my way to the door at noon -- actually, a funny language barrier here. They didn't understand when I said, "Je m'en vais prendre une marche." Apparently they don't "take" walks. It's kind of a funny expression when you think about it. We could just as easily say, "I'm going walking," or "I'm going to walk," which is way more accurate. Anyway, everyone was working, but I found Jean downstairs reading the paper, so I asked him if he wanted to join me on my walk. Once he figured out what it was I wanted to do, he came with me. "Do you want to go to the beach?" EEEEEK! Yay!

We started to walk and a bunch of kids came out of a school nearby for lunch. The children here are SO CUTE!!!

They have a word for "white person" in Fon, the local language, which sounds like YEY-VO (I'll have to ask how to spell it). The children see you and sing a song that goes something like, "Yévo, yévo, Comment allez-vous, ça va bien merci!"

I'll have to learn way more Fon while I'm here. I wonder if I can find a textbook of some sort. SPEAK WHITE, DAMMIT! (kidding, kidding...)

This little boy was hiding in the shade under a bench, playing in the sand while we were walking along the beach. Jean wanted me to try some local fruit... and we bought it from his mother. She had this little bundle of baby blubber straped to her back, sleeping soundly... I wanted to eat the baby!!!! It's hair was all natted with different coloured elastics... holy cuteness! While Jean was negotiating the price, this little boy started to sing to me.

I'm sorry Maria, WHAT?! Yes, I've been eating the fruit here.

Those who know me, know I don't eat fruit... but I promised my friend Dair that although I wouldn't go out of my way to eat any, if any fruit was offered I wouldn't decline. I think my body will go into shock, but we'll see. Speaking of which, I think he left the bag of fruit we bought from the lady at the restaurant we stopped in after -- I should go ask him. In any event, he made me eat some local fried bananas at lunch, so I think my fruit quota has been met for the day. HAPPY DAIR?!

Anyway, during lunch we got on the topic of fear... oh right, because we were talking about how people here talk to each other and aren't really afraid of one another, and how when he went to Toronto, a girl was afraid of him when he went to help her take her bags off the subway, or the time he was walking down Gerard and a girl started to run in the other direction (he's not shady or anything, quite good looking, he's just black). Or how our first instinct is fear (or annoyance) when we go to a bank machine and someone is waiting behind us. It's a crazy world we live in. It's just not like that here. Everyone talks to each other, or doesn't. Whatevs.

We started to talk about how important it is for the good in the world to stand up. The bad in the world speaks very loudly. The good whispers. The news we watch is all bad, all the time. Violence, war, disease, corruption... why? Is it not the minority of events? Isn't there far more good going on in the world?

I wish people would talk more about organizations like UNICEF or Right to Play rather than Al Quaeda. Why not promote these messages of hope rather than the messages of violence? It's important to know about the bad, but far more important to know that there is good. Why not mention that a black man saved a white couple from drowning rather than splatter the headline, Black Man kills White Couple?? Why doesn't the first make the news?

This is why I watch The Hour and not The National. It has an effect on us -- don't think it doesn't.

When was the last time you smiled at someone on the subway? Or said, "Hi, good morning" to the people who work in your building, in the elevator? What happened to our humanity?

Of course our conversation ended with Obama. He is the quiet good majority turned into a roaring lion of hope. SPEAK UP DAMMIT. Make the kind of world you wished you lived in. What's the worst that could happen? Someone will look at you funny for saying hello? For helping them with their bags?

The risk of violence and accidents exists no matter what we do.
So forget the bad for a moment and do more good. Ignoring each other is not good.

Oh my god - 2 of the 4 croissants they brought me for breakfast are staring at me... "we are chocolate and we are delicious!!" oooh my belly is so full from rice and cheese and plantains... Africa's gonna make me fat.