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. Don’t drive without a seatbelt, don’t smoke here, don’t eat the yellow snow, whatever. I suppose one important reason for the Scandinavian obsession with safety stems from the environment. After all, the climate in Finland is for the most part of the year hostile. You stay outside for long enough, you die. The little life that can prosper in the Arctic wastes of Finland is precious.

Here, close to the equator, life is emergent. Every niche is neatly filled with life. The flora and the fauna are everywhere, ever-present. Lizards climb the walls, plants grow everywhere, farmyard animals run freely about.

Life is emergent: you don’t have to control it to help it find a way. Same goes for human life as well. And, it seems, for society at large.

The anarchy of family

Take child-rearing, for instance. Never have I seen such independent, active children as I have seen here. For the first few months, the newborn is carried around on her mama’s back, after which the little is let loose to crawl about, stick whatever she wants in her mouth, to explore. I’ve seen one-year-olds running in traffic in front of their parent’s house, two-year-olds diligently washing them with soap and all, five-year-olds carrying their baby brothers on their backs. All this without a parent in sight. These are free-range children.

The concept of family in general is loose. Married couples can live in different towns, many generations or even different families can live under one roof. Sort-of adopted children can work as maids for a household. A man can have several wives, if he can afford them. You get the drift, I’m sure: the two-plus-two family unit is a rarity here, an impractical forced state, I’d imagine.

I have only gotten one marriage proposal here, a knife-wielding saleswoman casually asking for my hand with my apparent future mother-in-law saying that sure, why couldn’t I have two wives? The women were joking, but a monogamous, stick-in-the-mud like me finds it slightly unnerving how easily people seem to couple here. All those AIDS-campaigns (Abstinence! Fidelity! Failing that, a condom!) for nothing…

The anarchy of business

The concept of a job seems slightly elusive here. People seem to work, yes, constantly. Or at least they hang about the places of work. It’s not uncommon to take your kids to the workplace, for instance, or visit your friends at their jobs. A few people have a nine-to-five (or as it is here, an eight-to-twelve and four-to-six), but most have daily routines without a distinctive label. As protestants, we Scandinavians are used to define ourselves with what we do. Here, not as much.

Everyone has a business in Benin, it is a true free market anarchy. I do have a hard time imagining the bloke selling smuggled Nigerian petrol at the street corner worrying about his tax returns.

Everything is negotiable. There might not be a mass transit system, for example, but the masses of transit. Going to a different town, to sell goods at the market? Just hail a passing car and start talking prices.

This is the Western liberal (right-wing) paradise: everyone is an entrepreneur, no-one pays taxes. It does work. Mr. Smith is right: supply will meet demand, and the Invisible Hand will distribute wealth – or poverty – not quite equally, but still. The legless man begging for loose change at the Cotonou market might appreciate public health care or a nursing home, but eggs and omelettes, eh? I’d like to welcome the Finnish nouveux riche here, to meet their dream society first hand.

The anarchy of faith

Riikka’s written about this already, but the point bears reiterating. In a world riddled with religious conflict, Benin manages to mix Vodou, Christianity and Islam with no apparent difficulty. The Northern gods and profets have found a home here amongst the Vodou spirits.

It does make perfect sense for a country with millenias of history in Panteism. After all, what’s one god more? Especially if you consider the divinities aspects of a greater whole, an omnipotent God fits in the picture nicely as a sort of an Ur Quell for the specialized lesser gods.

Be as it may, picking and mixing beliefs goes naturally for the Beninese. In fact, the mix is so potent that no-one seems to agree what Vodou is actually about. Vodou is witchcraft, Vodou is tradition, Vodou is bad for the children, Vodou is animism, Vodou is a force of good, Vodou is outdated superstition. Ask a different person, you get a different answer.

It all comes back to anarchy, of course. Without sacred texts and institutions, Vodou is mainly an oral tradition, passed from generation to generation. There are no government-sanctioned Vodou schools or churches, just the myriad ways to practice Vodou, some convergent, some conflicting. Religion is as it should be, a choice of personal preference.

In conclusion

I hope my few rambling observations have provided some kind of insight to the way I have experienced the West African way of life. My kind hostess here, on the very first day of my visit, told me that in Benin, she has learnt not to be afraid. Afraid of death, of life. Here, both are ever-present; cattle butchered at plain sight, children scattering about, magic rituals performed in the streets.

All this gives the impression of a society, of a world, without control and rules, still managing to create a meaningful environment for its people. It can be an overwhelming, exciting, frightening, experience to witness firsthand the anarchy of life here. To the wealthy westerner with enough money and patience, Benin can be the paradise previously heard only about in Finnish tangos. For the locals, it’s just the way they live. And for a casual tourist like myself: it is life-affirming to realize that it doesn’t have to be in no way, a lesser way of life.

7.12.2006 Otto Sinisalo / Grand-Popo, Benin