Anarchy in the RB
Riikka has asked me to write a few words on my brief visit to the Republic of Benin, so here goes nothing…I’m scribbling these notes to a notebook adorned with the visage of the current president, the esteemed Dr. Yayi, while sipping my coffee at a hotel bar on surprisingly cold Monday morning. The Harmattan has started and the temperature is down to a chilling twenty-something degrees centigrade… On my choice of terminology The more pedantic may be annoyed by my layman’s usage of the term anarchy, but bear with me. It is after all a word inflated by its usage, meaning different things to UK punks and Spanish socialists. In this text, I use anarchy loosely to describe complex systems run without apparent centralized control. For that, to me, is the quintessential Beninese experience as a tourist: to witness a (semi-)functioning society with very little apparent organization. From where I come from… Growing up in Finland, one gets used to rules, regulations and restrictions: the don’ts....