Saturday, January 06, 2007

You know your bien integre when…

You know your bien integre when…

• You answer your phone during meetings no matter how important
• You have a cell phone but no rezo (coverage)
• You feel the sun and run for shade
• You cannot confront someone directly, you need a third party
• Tchuck is not a nonsense word, it’s a way of life
• You greet every person in the room
• You have slept on a concrete floor
• Mixing spaghetti and rice seems normal
• You are marring a Beninese
• You smack around little children in your village just for fun
• Mixing spaghetti and lettuce seems normal
• Tissue is not something you blow your nose in
• You know how to identify good tissue
• You stopped trying to understand why the taxi stops, turns around and turns around again
• You understand the ‘doucement’
• You are more late for a meeting than the Benineese
• You don’t do your own laundry
• You have a petit assigned to every task in the house
• You think that you look good in a full outfit in the same print of gaudy fabric
• You start clicking and doing the ‘Eeh-Heeehh’ thing
• You can eat and actually like the snot sauce
• You can sleep on a marché mama in a bush taxi on terre rouge
• You spend more time greeting one person than it takes to brush your teeth (or chew your stick)
• You have local names that are not Yovo, Batouri, Blanc or Opeie
• You keep your money tied up in the corner of your pangna

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You could add:
- Your grandmother gives you 150 Euro for your birthday, and your first reaction is: how much is that in CFA?

Sounded pretty integré to me! Looking forward to seeing you soon in Benin!

Anonymous said...

Dutchy,

I was playing with Google Blog Search and look what I found... prepare to be bombarded with random nonsense posts!

wattle? don't eat it.