Go and Grow - opportunities to travel for cheap

Posted by Gaurav On Tuesday, November 1, 2011 0 comments

WARNING: Before we get into the meat of today's post (which begins 3 paragraphs down for those who want to skip ahead), I thought my return to blogging after a long hiatus needs some explanation, so I wrote the following intro.


When I was younger I used to be a big fan of the WWF. Yes, I loved baby pandas and still do, but the other WWF(E), was where the real entertainment was. The storylines, the personalities, and the struggle they all went through to try to stay on top. To me, the blogosphere is kinda like the world of the WWE. Bloggers come and go, each with their own goals, trying to catch the attention of the readers out there. Everyone’s got an opinion, everyone tries to stand out, and everyone wants to win over the readers (or for wrestlers, the fans). 

So where does this analogy put No Prereqs? Well, let’s just say I see myself as one of those new wrestlers (a scrawny one?), trying to develop a fanbase, only to leave the ring for a 3 month hiatus. First, life took over. Shortly after my last post, I backpacked through France and Italy for two and a half weeks. Then, within hours of stepping on Canadian soil for the first time in almost 4 months, I got swept up with family and friends. I got back to school, and didn’t have the motivation to get back into this. I tried a couple times, but it was like firing blanks – getting started is the tough part, especially when you’re not even sure what to write about. But now I’ve made my return, firm with a goal in mind, knowing that I’ve gotta re-develop the whole readership thing.

 I started this blog as a leadership blog focused on high school students, but most of my recent posts have been about my travels in Benin. I decided that it would be a good idea to use this post to bridge the two ideas now that my bank account has told me it’s not interested in traveling again for a while, and since I’d like to move my content back in the direction of how this relates to you, the readers. I also wanna throw in some cost effective ways for those of you who are interested in travel to do some of it without cracking open your piggy banks (mine is still intact and thank god, breaking it would be a shame). 

How Travel Helped Me Do Me

A completely relevant question to this conversation has to be – why even travel to begin with? What is so beneficial about spending money on plane tickets, having to eat out all the time, and maybe getting lost, just to “go see places”. I did not come from a family where we took frequent vacations when I was growing up. Before this year I had been to a total of 3 countries: Canada, US, and India (trips to which I can’t even remember because I was so young). So to be honest, the benefits of travel have never really been apparent to me, until this year.

For me, travelling this summer was a big deal primarily because I left everyone familiar and almost everything familiar to my life behind. Being isolated from the usual environment forced me to adapt to the changes around me by changing my behaviour. I gained respect for the little things, by doing what some consider mundane tasks like arranging my mosquito net everyday and hand washing my clothes. Doing things like this humbled myself. I grew because I was put in situations where I was in danger: arriving at the airport at 3 am without someone to pick me up. Haggling, conversing, interacting with the people from whom you buy things. It gave me perspective on my society back home. Even when I was in Europe, it was not the sites I visited that made me grow so much as the interactions with people, the situations I found myself in. Travelling is about living experiences moreso than seeing sights, and that’s what helped me grow.  

Travel experiences are more than just the sights, but I won't lie, sometimes the sight creates the experience. Seeing the leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy was one of those times.


How You Can Travel Cheap

So, travelling is about experiences that help you grow. But up till now, all I’ve been doing is talking about my own experiences. Maybe you want to travel for yourself but you’re not sure what is right for you and you don’t know if you want to spend a lot of money. First you have to decide what you want to do. There are many different types of travel: weekend trips or even day trips to somewhere close by can have just as much of an impact on you as can a trip to Benin. Vacations to a resort can also help you grow just by giving you time away to relax.

But, this is a personal blog and I’m definitely going to push my bias – I think the best trip is one you do without family or friends. A trip where you aren’t just visiting something – but going to accomplish something, because that poses a true challenge to yourself to grow. I guess the government has the same mentality, because there are huge ways to cut travel costs for trips where you set challenges like learning a new language or doing community development work. As a result, a trip like that can cost little or next to nothing, so finances don’t tie you down.

Here are some examples of things I wish I knew about earlier :

Katimavik

Ages: 17-21
Duration: 6 months
Student status: Not necessary
Location: Canada-wide
Cost: about $225

Having just been recently introduced to this program, I have to say that I don’t know the ins and outs of it. However, I can say from what I know that it is extremely affordable in comparison to other programs similar to it, since it is funded directly by the government. The application process takes into account diversity and full representation of the reality of Canada’s youth. The program that one of my friends did is the 6 month program with 3 month in an Anglophone community and 3 months in a Francophone community (you get to learn French!). Travelling across Canada doing community projects in a group of people you don’t know for 6 months is just the type of crazy shit that might just be the best experience of your life. There is also some valuable stuff on the website that discusses taking a gap year – you might even get course credit. Oh, and the program fee for this program is about $225 for 6 months. That’s $1.25 a day.

My Explore

Ages: Grade 11+
Duration: 5 weeks
Student Status: Yes, at least 1 semester during school year
Location: Francophone community
Cost: $200 + travel

My Explore is a good option for those who aren’t comfortable with taking a gap year but still want to learn French in Quebec. It is a little more expensive than the Katimavik program but most of the costs are still subsidized by a $2000 dollar bursary. Based on what school you go to, you may even be eligible to get course credit for this program.   

Canada World Youth 

Canada world youth is a large organization with lots of various opportunities for travel. Some of the programs are 2 weeks long, while others are up to 6 months. Since there is so much variability, I don’t want to put a summary type thing up, you can just check out the website and see if there’s something that interests you. Most programs have low costs but you must fundraise a lot of money (with their help), so that Canada World Youth can continue to run on its own. Fundraising might seem like a lot of work but honestly I had to fundraise for my summer as well, and it is a small sacrifice for something that can potentially be life changing.
 
What Else is Out There??

These are just a few resources that I listed off the top of my head and by no means constitute a complete list. There are many programs out there that you just have to spend a little time looking for that might be the perfect fit. It is possible to find more programs that might be cheaper than these or even free, it just takes a little bit of initiative and access to the internet. Google searches like “Canadian student travel programs” or “international student travel bursaries” might get you started. Don’t forget that administrative offices at your school are also great resources because they can help you narrow down your search to things more relevant to you. They might even offer you financial support if you need it to cover the costs of a trip. Finally, the 3 programs I listed are all associated with the Government of Canada. The Canada website, government offices or even the hotline 1 800 OCANADA are good places to start your search.

Anyways, I hope this post has done something to get you excited about travel. There are tons of opportunities out there, just step up and take them! Bon voyage :)


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Top 10 Pictures from Benin: #9

Posted by Gaurav On Monday, August 1, 2011 3 comments

9
EDIT: Both these posts are late, late late... but I’m too lazy to change the main text to reflect it, so lets live in a bit of nostalgia:


So! I know this was supposed to be a ten day thing, 1 post per day, but each time I head to the cyber I’ve just been so occupied that I forget to put up the #10 post I wrote earlier this week. So now I’m going to release numbers 9 and 10 today since I’m getting a little short on time before my trip comes to an end.

Number 9 (help me come up with a good name in the comments), is a simple picture that tells few tales, but the ones it does tell it shares loud and clear. My initial reaction was, “cool” after I took it (a couple weeks into my stay here), but now I know it is much more than “cool”. Maybe even more than “really cool”... only time will tell.


L’Ordinateur

Let’s start with the device itself. This is one of two pictures that I took during my time here that my computer found its way into (the other was a picture of the kids at the orphanage practicing typing on it). Rightfully so, you might think. Why would anyone want to photograph a plain old PC (not even a Mac) in the middle of a trip to Benin?

Well photos aren’t always about what looks good, they are about the memories they invoke. And in this case, the memories are of many dull days of typing at my computer: searching for and filling out grants, translating English to French and vice versa (no google translate unfortunately), reading books in pdf format, creating management material for the orphanage, pretending to do work for the orphanage while really doing nothing, and of course the least dull of all: writing this blog.

At least now when I look back at this picture, I can nostalgicize about those feelings of dullness... that’s not something that every picture can do for you. Think about that the next time you... um... yeah ok, there’s no point in pretending that the computer actually adds something to this picture. We all know the reason this made the top ten is...

The Philosopher

Yes, our very own Aristotle, the youngest of my host family coming in at an impressive 2 years old. He leaps tall footstools with a single bound and runs towards first sight of his older sister’s Nintendo DS faster than a speeding bullet. Here he is pictured in action, though it is unclear what is going through his head at this moment. He is either trying to imitate his favourite safari animal, or preparing to leap off of the chair he was sitting on by striking a daredevil pose. Most probably a combination of the two. This guy has so much energy that it’s pretty much written that he’s going to grow up to be an athlete. As you can see, he’s already practicing his best “Patrick Kane’s mouthguard hanging out the side of his mouth” impression.

The Rest

There’s not much else of note in this picture, but I’ll list the remaining things that caught my eye:

- those greens poking though the stone railing give you a small idea of how beautiful my host family’s veranda is on a nice breezy summer day.

- that’s my knee in the bottom left of the computer screen. Sloppy photography? Maybe. Kurtha pyjama? Definitely.

- you can see the reflection of a plant pot, albeit distorted, in the shiny glossy area below the keyboard. Why is this even remotely interesting? The pot holds a prickly variety of cactus with an extremely bitter tasting inner flesh (I was bored). That same week my host dad shows me how he spices up vodka: with cubes of the meat of this plant fermenting in the alcohol for a week or so.

And that’s picture number 9! Numbers  8 and 7 tomorrow :)


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Top 10 Pictures from Benin: #10

Posted by Gaurav On Sunday, July 31, 2011 2 comments

10
And so it begins… the beginning of the end. I thought of this new feature, “Top 10 Pictures” while keeping in mind that my time in Benin is slowly drawing to a close. For the next 10 days, I will (do my best to) post the countdown from #10 to #1 of what I believe are the top 10 pictures from my time here in Benin. By the end of this series, my time in Benin will pretty much have come to an end. 

I have taken more than 3600 photos during my time here in Benin so far. If my math is right, that’s operating at a clip of about 49 pictures per day. So although it will be quite tough, we’re gonna narrow it down to the top 10. The panel (me) will be selecting the photos based primarily on artistic sentimental value. Thus I will be choosing a group of photos that complement each other well and then ranking them.

However! If someone with a keen eye has any suggestions for how I could’ve made it a better picture, I’d really appreciate your advice in the comments! 

Anyways, let’s kick this off with #10, shall we?

#10

This picture originally squeaked into the top 10 contenders list based purely on sentimental value, but now that I look back at it, there are minor subtleties to it that made it too good pass up for the list. I call it “The Silent Plead”. Let’s take a bit of a deeper look into this picture and what it tells you about my time here in Benin:

The Expression

The first thing you might notice about this picture is the expression on my face, and rightfully so. They say the eyes are the window to a person’s soul, and that could not hold truer in this context. It was taken after my first week in Benin, with the initial intention of taking a weekly picture to monitor the progress of my trip (lol). 

This is the kind of expression I would imagine a prisoner in a cell uses to silently communicate their deep heartfelt “Get me the hell out of here!!” to everyone that passes by. Fortunately, I was not in a cell in this picture. I was in my bedroom, a simple structure made of four reinforced concrete walls, with a nice window (although with bars on it) and part of a larger complex walled by reinforced concrete, with the only exit being a heavy gate that I didn’t have the keys to. “Not a cell, not a cell, not a cell” I told myself throughout that first week.

It was a tough week that had me crying for mommy by the end of it. The first couple weeks were tough like that, but I can laugh at it in hindsight knowing that now I only feel like that 5 of out 7 days a week.

The Hair

There I was, so eager, yet so foolish in my inexperience with that hair of mine. It would’ve been wise to come to Benin bald to minimize the impact of the heat, but there I was, with a full head of hair. You can see my hair matted to my forehead with sweat and the unbearable heat that came with my first couple of weeks in Ouidah: unfortunately, this was a couple minutes after I had dried myself off from a shower.

It’s not only the hair proper that tells the story here, it’s the dishevelled facial hair – normally, I do the dishevelled facial hair much better than this, but that difficult week had reduced me to producing a meagre patchy beard worthy of being placed in the same league as a Sidney Crosby playoff beard. Shameful.

The Obscure Objects in the Background

Only further complimenting this picture, we’ve got my classic sky blue mosquito net hanging in the blurry background. Those were back in the days when I still needed a clothes pin to put my mosquito net up. Still the attempt was feeble, you can see how it hangs in a loose parabola... I’d say that’s like a 5x squared even. Sad. I was young, I have learned. Soon after, my expertise with the mosquito net would quickly eclipse any other skill I would learn during my internship for the months to come.

Finally, we’ve got the bottle of sunscreen with the conveniently blurred label. The best part about this bottle is that it still sits in that exact same position that it was in on that day. I haven’t used it since coming here. The problem is that the heat here welds the sunscreen to your skin so that when you take a shower, it doesn’t come off and you have to scrape it off your body like dirt afterwards. That being said, I probably should’ve used it anyways. Sunscreen offers protection from skin cancer, and I’ve had experience this summer with neglecting to properly use things for the prevention of diseases coming back to bite me (literally).

Stay tuned for picture number 9 tomorrow!   


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Lokossa and Possotomè

Posted by Gaurav On Monday, July 18, 2011 4 comments

                Although I did spend the majority of my time being sick last weekend, I did also get a chance to head out to the city of Lokossa and Lake Possotomè on a day trip with my host dad, Melissa, and Aristotle. It was surprisingly fun despite not feeling so well.


On our way to Lokossa, we stopped by Comè to visit a friend of my host father who works for the government. Although he was not home, his wife let us in and I felt surprisingly reminded by my visits to aunts or uncles houses: being seated, brought drinks and snacks by the daughter, chatting with the mom, and saying hi to the son who awkwardly steps through the door and tries to get away as soon as possible. Their house was magnificent: I learned that it belonged to the government and their family moved cities every couple of years based on where the government positioned the father.

After this short and pleasant detour, we continued on our way to Lokossa. It is a small city of about 50,000, 2 hours northwest or so of Ouidah. It was by far the cleanest town that I have visited in Benin, outdoing even the capital Porto Novo that has a reputation for being well kept. We went to Lokossa to visit my host dad’s niece who is studying at the U of Abomey-Calavi campus there. She offered us a tour of the campus. Although much smaller than the main campus, the campus of was very pleasant. We got a tour of the dormitories, some classrooms, the cafeteria, and study room. All in all it was interesting taking in the similarities and differences between university life in Canada and Benin. Once out of the campus we drove around a bit of Lokossa and visited the city centre. Lokossa is built on a region with rolling hills and so some of the views from the town are quite gorgeous. The name of the city means “place around the giant tree”, but since it is hundreds of years old, no one quite knows which tree. It has probably been my favourite town in Benin so far.
Me  posing for a rare picture in the walkway to the restaurant on Lake Possotomè.

On our way out of Lokossa, we saw a sign for Possotomè, and my host dad decided it would be nice to visit before heading back. Possotomè is the most famous lake in Benin because of the never ending hot water geyser that is the source of Benin’s most popular brand of bottled water, also called Possotomè. The company that bottles the water has made a fountain from the same source for the local people, and it was nice to see people using the water for showers or filling drinking water nearby. The lake itself is quite small, and surrounded by thick foliage on all sides, except for a small hotel restaurant that juts out on to the lake. The restaurant structure, which rests on the water, was made entirely from wood. We rested there for a bit and took in the lake (and of course drank Possotomè water). It was serene.

So that was last weekend! All in all, it was great. Just reinforces that sometimes the best days are unplanned and spontaneously happen as long as you are ready to get up and go for it!


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10 Things I Learned this Week, Edition 8

Posted by Gaurav On 1 comments

Boy, have things ever flown by fast eh? Here we are in the middle of July, halfway through my 10th week in Benin and already the 8th edition of this post. For things I learned points 70 – 80, I was as not as stretched to find as you might think, there always seems to be something new to learn. So here is my collection from the past week:


1. Although locals might find it cute when you say hello in Fon, make sure you also know the term “I don’t speak much Fon” as well, because they usually revert to their more comfortable language otherwise.

2. Made my first trip to the police station, and it wasn’t a visit. A senior officer stopped me while I was walking to the orphanage around 8 in the morning, and demanded that I show my passport to prove my Canadian citizenship. After quizzing me on visa specifications he figured it was ok to let me go. Odd.

3. Staying on the subject of police, I saw my first up close and personal bribe when a policeman stopped us and saw that my host dad wasn’t wearing a seatbelt (no one here does). He refused to issue a ticket, instead insisting that we help him pay for a couple of beers tonight.

4. My leg hair is by far the most interesting thing about me to the Beninois. I wore shorts frequently last week and was fielding questions from the kids at the orphanage about it at work, and then at home when I returned.

5. As a result of personal observation: kids become sneaky around 2 and a half. Aristotle tries to convince Alberique to go eat with the rest of us so he can play with the Nintendo DS: “Rico, va manger no?”
Delicious slice of birthday cake for Mama's birthday. Iced cake is significantly more expensive here compared to other food, but they personalize the icing and it was scrumptious!

6. The Beninois generally don’t resent their socialist history as much as many other countries in the world. Many previously government owned farms that produced vegetables and livestock are now just overgrown patches of useless land.

7. A large portion of the Nigerians living in Benin are refugees of the Ogoni ethnic minority in the Niger Delta area. Read more about the conflict here.

8. The reason why using two hands to eat in Benin is frowned upon is because traditionally, one hand was used to eat, and the other used to wipe your butt.

9. The school system here, based on the French system, requires that the Beninois learn two languages in addition to French in school. That’s aiming for proficiency in 4 languages, including their local one!

10. The Beninois opinion of France is generally very low, but the country relies very strongly on France (as the most powerful Francophone country in the world), for everything from international news to financial aid, so it is an interesting love hate relationship.

And that’s all for this week! Hope you enjoyed and lease leave a comment or two of feedback, as always! Are these starting to get stale??


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Ten Things I Learned This Week: Malaria Edition

Posted by Gaurav On Saturday, July 16, 2011 1 comments

So, as some of you might already know, there’s been a combination of reasons why I haven’t posted a blog in more than a week now. Firstly, the internet connection has been down in Ouidah since that big storm about two weeks ago that I mentioned in my previous TTILTW post. The internet only returned yesterday. In the meantime, I had to make do with my cellphone internet, which is only reliable enough to use facebook and google (my previous posts I put up during a trip to Cotonou). Secondly, that trip I took to Cotonou was to the hospital because I was feeling sick. I had learned that I had malaria, along with, um, digestive track issues caused by a bacterial infection. Needless to say, it was tough, but I also learned a lot from the experience so let’s not delay:


1. Malaria is the tropical equivalent of the flu (the illnesses are very different, but I mean the local people’s perception of each). Annoying, happens often, and it is relatively harmless if identified and treated with medicine.

2. Likewise, The Flu would probably kill as many people as malaria does if it was present in the tropical areas of the world: the problem isn’t so much the disease as it is the lack of prevention, identification, and treatment.

3. Day trips are slightly less fun when you feel like crap. Malaria makes you feel dizzy and weak, aside from an occasional fever and painful gums, I didn’t show any other symptoms. It was a weird adjustment being sick without the customary cough or runny nose.

4. Malarone is an adept beast. It is a preventative medicine that can be used in the treatment of malaria as well, just by changing the dosage.

5. The local herbal remedy for malaria is called Tizan (tease-ann). It is a tea made with the leaves of a certain plant. After much pressure from my family, I decided it take it on the 4th day of my sickness. Does it work? Maybe... it might have been the Malarone finally kicking in or the Tizan, but I got better soon after.

6. Tizan is the most bitter tasting thing in the world. Honestly. I got some pineapple and grapefruit juice in mine to counter it, but I tried some of Yannick’s (he was also sick later on), and he wasn’t as lucky.  

7. I saw another government ad on TV: this time about how each family can pick up complimentary mosquito nets and how important they are for preventing malaria.

8. Middle class Beninois people are kind of resentful of the developed countries media portrayal of complete poverty in Benin (especially malaria and disease), as it glosses over their existence. It will be interesting to see how this impacts the culture as the middle class continues to grow.

9. Malaria (carried in your bloodstream), stays in your body for 6-7 days after the mosquito bite that carried it before showing any symptoms, so it’s not even possible to point to a mosquito bite and say, “This is where I got malaria”. I was looking forward to that.

10. The digestive problems turned out to be more of a pain than the malaria (they were unrelated). I didn’t really stop feeling those until a couple days ago whereas the malaria was gone by Monday.

And that’s all for this edition! I hope you were able to take a little bit away from this post, specifically how much the media has the power to warp our perception of things. I was mortified of getting malaria when I first got here because my only knowledge of it had been seeing headlines like “2 million die from malaria” in the news. Now, I know it is relatively harmless as long as you’ve got some medicine (the pharmacy has lots of medicine that has scientifically proven to work, and it’s actually cheaper than the stomach ache stuff I bought here just because of the high demand). Take care until next time!


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Ten things I learned this week, Edition 6

Posted by Gaurav On Thursday, July 7, 2011 2 comments

This week, I had to think hard about what to include and what not to include. It was a week full of travel and sightseeing, new experiences and lessons. I am now more than halfway through my trip to Benin. I hope you enjoy this edition!


1. How the dread feels when you eat a delicious mango, only to inspect the plate and see tens of tiny white worms wriggling around the inside of the peel.

2. Zangbeto, the Voodun god of the skies and thunder, has a cruel sense of humour. On the day I wanted to try my new swim shorts out at the beach, it rained for 7 hours straight and a pool of water formed inside my room.

3. Being caught in the middle of a mom – dad argument is significantly more awkward when they are not your mom and dad.

4. After about 50 days of setting up my mosquito net, it has become so routine that I can do it in pitch black darkness... that’s going on my CV.

5. How to say “no” in the local language, Fon (“EY-yooo”). It’s helpful for the market when people won’t understand “non, je ne veux pas ça”.

6. You pretty much have to walk through the market saying “EY-yooo” at regular 2 second intervals.

7. The largest university in Benin, Abomey-Calvari, has an absolutely dreamy main campus, tranquil off the side of a busy road. It is larger than any campus I’ve ever seen and is about 80% green space.

One of the roads in the expansive university campus.
8. University students are the same everywhere. Saw “Vive la revolution” spray painted on a couple of buildings on campus. Vive la revolution indeed.

9. The people of Ganvié, “The City on Stilts”, have to leave their homes for land every October because the water level rises about a metre and a half and floods their houses, about a metre deep. Every year.

10. The unlimited mobile internet that I’ve been lead to believe exists by the posters plastered across Cotonou doesn’t actually exist, it’s just false advertising, as calmly explained the service provider representative.

Here’s to hoping this week is just as active. It got off on the right foot: today when Aristotle and I were having lunch he looked at me and said, “Gaurav... c’est chaud” with wide eyes, as if to say be careful. (this coming from a guy who couldn’t speak a word of French when I arrived here in early May). The cutest thing this kid has ever done lol. Anyways, as always, leave one. Peace!


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The City on Stilts

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The veil of opaque water trembled as our guide’s paddle made contact with its static surface. I watched in silence as the ripples began to augment, soon lapping at the side of our wooden canoe and rocking it ever so slightly. Above us, the tattered cloth tied to a wooden pole that served as our makeshift sail also did its part to carry us ever so closer to what has been called the Venice of West Africa: Ganvié, the Beninois village of about 30,000 people – built entirely on water.



One of our guides steering on our way to Ganvié.
There is something uniquely charming about canoeing. Perhaps it is the fact that it is such a basic method of transportation and lends some old world charm, or maybe it is because you are so close to the water, and you can feel its pulling and tugging strength so intimately. But my favourite thing must be how humbling it is to propel yourself metre by metre through still waters in a world full of automatic pedals, 0 to 60 in a couple of seconds, and instant gratification.
The city approaches.

My mind churned through these thoughts while taking in the sights, sounds, and smells of life on the lagoon as the canoe turned a corner, and there it was. An entire village of houses and buildings: each supported by a number of tree trunks that extended about a meter above the water before plunging into its murky depths.
Ganviéans literally eat, sleep and work on the water. Within the city, canoes are the main method of transport, and instead of roads there are water ways with self regulated traffic. Going to a friend’s house means hopping down from your home into your canoe, rowing your way there, and tying it back up at their place. Fish and marine agriculture are their main source of income, and there is a daily market at the port closest to Ganvié that sells fresh seafood, often still wriggling around in the shallow plastic basins where they are put on display. There is no absence of vendors in Ganvié itself either: they roam the waterways in canoes full of their products. We passed by a health clinic, school, nightclub and mosque in the city, among other things. The people of Ganvié pass most of their day on the water and climb back up to their homes when it becomes too dark and mosquito infested to navigate. 
Here, a young Ganviéan demonstrates both sleeping and working on the water.

Passing through the city, looking up at the buildings towering over our heads was quite the experience. The structures are modest in Beninois terms, and probably would be considered shacks in Canada. Still, their strength and durability is impressive, and what the city lack in flashiness it makes up in rich history and wonder. The habitants of Ganvié are descendants of a kingdom of people who lived on the present day border shared by Togo and Benin, close to the coast. When the slave trade in West Africa brought war to their land in the late 1770s, they left their homes to become nomadic. One day their king and leader received a spiritual message from a messenger eagle and crocodile that the people should settle on the lagoon and there they would remain safe. Thus, Ganvié is the French interpretation of the word in their language meaning “place of safety and peace”.

It is remarkable how people can live, and furthermore find happiness in such different manners. I can’t imagine how my life would be if most of it was spent on water, as much as many of them must not be able to imagine how life would be if most of it was lived on land. The people of Ganvié live a simple life: many of them don’t have more than the basic necessities, but most have what they need to live happily, and that’s what matters. This city on stilts not only offers a view of the incredible adaptability of humanity, but also a view into how there is a wisdom in the way people of more humble backgrounds find happiness in their lives. Appreciation of the little things in life: who would’ve thunk it?


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Dantokpa: Navigating the Largest Market in West Africa

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The endless blaring of horns. Fumes from a moto that just barely missed your arm as it whizzed by. Claustrophobia as you realize you can’t step aside for the girl with a basket of fish on her head because the man holding wooden statues in his hands to your right is backed up by a group of children selling cookies and a woman bartering with a merchant in front. Squinting to avoid getting the dust that perpetually blows through the market in your eyes. Being constantly convinced that I need a new belt, a bar of soap, a baggie of peanuts, a keychain, Gucci underwear, or something neither I nor the vendor know the exact purpose of.

It's difficult to get a picture of the market as a whole because of the risk of taking out your camera. This fruit market wasnt as densely populated.

This is a small sample of the strain involved in navigating Dantokpa: a behemoth of a market sprawling the ravine through downtown Cotonou, where the equivalent of 5 million US dollars changes hands every day. The bustle of the market is unlike anything I have ever experienced: it is a sensory overload and it takes a toll on your body just to walk through it. While the smaller markets might be comparable as less organized versions of flea markets in Toronto, Dantokpa is a whole other story. I spent a good 4 hours just walking through the market and probably only covered about 20% of it.

Spend a day at Dantokpa and its a guarantee that you will come out of it having bought something you didn’t want, purchased at least one delicious frozen beverage from a Fan Milk vendor, and gotten out-haggled by someone who does it for a living. The busy nature of Dantokpa is also a great way to lose your wallet to sticky fingers well versed in the art of pickpocketing if you’re not careful enough. Equivalently, it’s a great place to meet and talk to people.

Wait, what? Yes, the thing that sets Dantopka apart from other chaotic environment I have experienced in my life is that amid all of the insanity, the merchants and vendors are often calm and approachable. This is not a stock exchange, or Bay Street, where you don’t get a second look from other people unless you’re a good friend. Numerous times during my trips to Dantokpa, I stop by a stall and use my broken French to engage in conversation with a merchant pertaining to just about anything: where they are from, what types of prices I can find for other things in the market, their perception of foreigners, and even simple stuff like the weather. Instead of being upset with me for “wasting their time” by chatting, they are delighted to take time away to engage in conversation, asking me as many questions as I pose to them. 

Is it ironic that you can find peace and kindness in the middle of chaos and commercialism? Maybe back home, but it is the norm here. The vendors at the market don’t just work at their shops, they do it for a living. Yes they are passionate about making sales, but the majority are also naturally charming and brilliant speakers, even when they are not trying to sell you something. Back home, it’s difficult to find that kind of intimacy – not because there aren’t enough flea markets – but because it’s fundamentally a different commercial culture and a different mindset.    

So maybe I did buy a belt that I didn’t even like at double the going rate. So what? The vendor was fine with joking around with me whether I bought it or not. He had emotion, he was human, and that is what is so amazing about Dantokpa. Admist all of the currency changing hands and motos nearly running people over, if you really spend some time there, it is clear that the whole place has a distinctly human feel. It’s not just a market: it’s a living, breathing, hub of emotion – and that is truly spectacular.  


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The First Lesson

Posted by Gaurav On Friday, July 1, 2011 1 comments

I gripped the chalk, a grain about half the size of the nail on my pinkie finger, and about as thick – tightly between my thumb and forefinger. My hand trembled slightly as I raised my hand up to the smooth wooden chalkboard. It leaned against the wall behind me and rested perilously upon a wooden bench opposing another one of the same, upon which sat my first ever class of students. Eight pairs of eyes stared up at me eagerly: some familiar, some not, and all clearly waiting upon my next words of instruction. Each of them had already flipped to a fresh page in their books, pen or pencil at the ready. I turned to face the board, and began to write, a shadow of chalk powder trailing my fingers as I sketched out the letter “E”. And so it began.


The class, as of now comprises of 8 kids. Some of them are from the orphanage, and others are from the community around the orphanage. I hope I can find a couple more children over the weekend in bring the number to about 15. We meet at the orphanage from 10am to 12pm, Tuesdays and Thursdays. They vary in age from 10-16 and all have some background in English, but nothing more than “good morning” or “fine, thanks”.        

I am not a qualified teacher. I don’t have experience teaching groups. I’ve never even tutored English. Before my first lesson on Thursday, I hadn’t created a lesson plan, anticipated the interest level of the students, formed a method to gauge the previous understanding of English my students held, or realized how hard it would be to keep everyone engaged when I had such varied levels of comprehension to work with. So you can see why I was nervous right before the lesson.

                Although we started kind of shakily, just like my confidence, the lesson began to settle as I got into a steady rhythm. Before long, it was flowing naturally. The most rewarding thing as a teacher is when you spend 10 minutes explaining something and then a child is able to apply what you said to answer a question about it. Not only does it keep the kids engaged, but it is such necessary feedback for me to receive when I’m up there, just so I know if I need to do a better job of explaining or if I can move on.

                On the other hand, it can be equally frustrating when you feel like you’ve spent your time teaching something and not a single hand goes up when you ask a question. Or when you have to stop mid sentence because it is clear that no one is listening. Nevertheless, after my first lesson was complete, I was feeling pretty good about myself and what we had gotten through – then one of the students reminded me that they need homework. 

                After assigning the homework, I could already see myself thinking ahead to the next lesson, anticipating how it was going to play out. I was kinda excited! Starting these lessons was a great idea – it provides some structure to my day, and gives me a set schedule. And to be honest, its more motivating than grant work because with this you can see the results much more immediately.

                I have a lot of respect for teachers. I always have, even before Thursday, but a little more empathetically now. It is not easy to stand in front of a class full of people and keep them entertained while juggling parenting, teaching, staying patient, being a role model, and always trying to spark some passion all at the same time. However, teachers have to deal with more than just these things. Back home, I have shied away from thinking about a career in teaching just because of all the inner politics that exist within the education system’s hierarchy. It is disheartening how the school can be a truly bureaucratic institution, and that is not something I think I can deal with. What I’ve seen as a student is probably only the tip of the iceberg. I’m glad that I can stay away from that in my small English lessons at the orphanage, but there are those who don’t, and brave the sometimes hostile environment to teach kids who might never realize or appreciate the impact that their teachers often have in shaping who they are. 

So I guess the title of this post ended up being one of those classic “phrases with intended double meaning”  (is that really classic? I kinda just made that part up). I suppose it’s only fitting that I probably learned more than my students during my first lesson, because part of being a teacher is having a constant willingness to learn as well as teach. Teachers deserve a lot more respect than they ever actually get, and in my eyes it’s as prestigious of a profession as the doctors and lawyers of this world can lay claim to. The role of a teacher is so important that becoming one should be just as selective of a process as choosing doctors or lawyers. My thoughts on how little training teachers require in comparison to those two other professions is a rant made for a different post. Here, let me just take the opportunity to thank the teachers that have been such an important part of my life. 

One love to my teachers, if any of you are reading this. And if you just so happened to teach me English in primary school, would you mind if I took a look at your lesson plans quickly? Peace.


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10 Things I Learned this Week, Edition 5

Posted by Gaurav On Tuesday, June 28, 2011 0 comments

So! I didn’t get a chance to visit Parakou this weekend. Instead, I spent Saturday in the market at Cotonou and Sunday at home. Although I don’t have a summary of my trip to Parakou, I still did learn a lot over this past week. Here is a list of 10:


      1.       The worst sound in the world is the wailing of a handful of baby goats tied together by their legs to the top of a car. It’s literally disturbing – especially since their cries almost sound human.
      
      2 .      One of the shops in the airport at Cotonou has a photoshopped picture of Bob Marley holding a bottle of their sexual potency product in hand. Last minute souvenirs anyone?
    
      3.        Being alone at the beach after dark is scary as hell, and extremely dangerous. All of Ouidah becomes a ghost town past 8pm because you can’t see two feet in front of you most places.
     
      4.       Some massive eggs can have double yolks in them!!!
      
      5.       The Beninois government deserves some credit – they put together this commercial stressing the importance of wearing a helmet when driving motos. I was genuinely impressed.
     
      6.       The kids at the orphanage often use their vacation from school to spend time away from the orphanage living either with extended family, or with a host family. 
      
      7.       The rainy season means you might have to stick with dirty clothes for a while if the weather is not being particularly helpful.
    
      8.       For Beninois to get a visiting visa to Canada, it is about 3x more expensive than the same visa for the US. Bizarre, considering Canada is a French speaking country.

      9.       The grain that I have for breakfast (no idea how to spell the name), is usually only 2 spoonfuls per full bowl because it is expanded by the water added.
     
     10.   When a restaurant in Benin has air conditioning, you’re paying for it in the price of your meal. 

The eggstreme ends of the size spectrum for chicken eggs.
That’s all for this week! I know there wasn’t too much cultural stuff in there – if I head to Parakou next weekend you will definitely see more of that. If you have any other comments or feedback, please leave it, peace!


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Porto Novo

Posted by Gaurav On Friday, June 24, 2011 0 comments

This weekend I will be heading to Parakou, a city about 6 hours from the capital of Cotonou, in central Benin. Thinking about this last night, I realized that I still have not written about my trip to Porto Novo, 3 weekends ago. But, better late than never! Getting this trip down in ink would be a good idea because it’s probably been my most adventurous experience in Benin. You cna also expect a post about my time in Parakou when I get back as well :)


I travelled to Porto Novo with my buddy Stephen, who is doing a volunteer placement in Cotonou. On Saturday morning I headed down to Cotonou and then we caught a bus at the market going to Porto Novo. It is about an hour and a half long drive, and it’s really gorgeous because there are plenty of lagoons and stretches of open greenery on the way there. It was nice to just sit and chat with Stephen a bit, especially since we talked a lot about how different it is for us here than back home in Montreal. The ride was therapeutic for me, because there was finally someone who could relate to a lot of what I had been feeling.
Porto Novo is the official capital of Benin, but that designation is a little cloudy because the seat of government is Cotonou. All of the embassies are in Cotonou as well, but the official government buildings are in Porto Novo. It’s a smaller city of about 200,000 people compared to Cotonou’s 2 million. It’s generally considered to be a cleaner, nicer place than Cotonou as well. Since I was expecting that, I was kind of shocked by what we saw when we finally got there. It seemed just like Cotonou, except less crowded. However, I learned that I had to hold off judgement, because we had gotten off at the wrong stop and ended up on the outskirts of the city, rather than the downtown area. 

For our first sight, we decided to visit the Ethnographic Museum. Previously I had been to two museums in Ouidah, and this was by far the better experience, mostly because the guide spoke English. I learned a lot about Beninois culture and the voodoo religion. Pictures were strictly forbidden, but they had some really cool masks that used to be used in religious ceremonies for different purposes. Most masks were carved out of a single piece of wood. One such elaborately carved mask, about the size of a small projector style TV had a monkey bearing a terrifying facial expression carved into the surface. Once this mask was placed on an individual, that person had to die. The Fa of the community (the rough equivalent of an Oracle in ancient Greek tradition), would receive a message from God telling him who had to don the mask. There was a set up of a typical residence of a Fa, showing a tableau of figures participating in a Fa reading. Really cool stuff.
After the museum, we spent time wandering around downtown (we just stumbled upon it), checking out a church that we found and park at the heart of the city. One thing I noticed in Porto Novo was an abundance of mosques. I think we sighted at least 8, and this is a big change from largely Voodun Ouidah and Roman Catholic Cotonou.  About 20% of Benin’s population is Muslim, 50% Voodun, and 30% Christian (mostly Roman Catholic). 

After waiting about an hour and a half for an overpriced dinner, we headed to a hotel. We found, tracked, and murdered about 5 massive roaches in our room before going to bed, but the night was generally still quite paranoia filled and uncomfortable for me. Thankfully, we were outta there in the morning and back in the city. We consulted our list of sites to see and decided that it would be a good idea to visit the Songhai centre for stability, so we caught a couple motos going there.

I can honestly say that the Songhai centre is the most impressive infrastructure I have seen in Benin. The centre is a huge complex of housing, agricultural, and power generating buildings. The people who work on the farms and with the animals live in the complex. It creates its own power and so it sustains its own operation. There is a visitor’s centre with a restaurant selling food made exclusively from the produce of the centre, and the list goes on. Unfortunately, the centre was closed for Sunday, so we had to sneak in and didn’t benefit from a guide. 

We had some fruit at the restaurant but decided not to have lunch there and took off for this place supposedly close to the government buildings, Place Bayol, but it ended up being the same park we had visited the day before! Thankfully the moto drivers took a route that showed us where the government buildings could be found. After seeing the main government building, and the much less impressive others, we visited another park close by where we were delighted to find monkeys J We hung out there for a while and then took off to explore the city a bit more on foot. We had an awesome lunch at this roadside place, and got to see many brilliant mosques and churches. By the end of the day, we realized that we had stumbled upon every tourist site in the city, and then some! 

Tourism in Benin is not like it would tourism back home. To be honest, there’s not as much to see, just because the museums and similar tourist attractions are still quite underdeveloped. A lot of the older buildings have been destroyed or poorly maintained. Some of the best moments of the trip came just from walking through the city itself: I remember one time me and Stephen had to walk single file through a crowded market, and just taking in all the sights, sounds, and wide array of smells while being trapped so claustrophobically was such an experience. Since Porto Novo was quite small, all the sights were accessible by foot and so we didn’t have to take transportation from place to place, which just added to the experience. And finally, I ended up spending about 45 bucks on the whole trip. Not bad for a weekend away! 

Here I've included some pictures which will have to suffice until I take the time out to put a slideshow into this page with more pictures. :)
More coming soon!


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Having Younger Siblings (Now with Contest)

Posted by Gaurav On 0 comments

As the baby child in a family of six, I’ve never really understood what it meant to have younger or baby siblings. It’s something I’ll never experience fully, but living in a host family with 3 younger kids is the closest I think I’ll ever get to it. Forgive me if this is a bit of a boring post, but the dynamics of having younger siblings is so unique and interesting to me that I had to spend some time talking about this.


I get to observe how the baby always gets his way (now I understand why I was resented by my sisters), all the sibling infighting, and daily ups and downs first hand. Sometimes the patience of Yannick and Melissa when dealing with Aristotle amazes me – they will endure random abuse, hair pulling, and spitting as if it is nothing. Aristotle cries about everything and I often get so annoyed by him, but the next moment he will do something so adorable that all is forgotten.

So much is always expected out of Yannick and Melissa as well, and they seem to handle being pulled away from what they’re doing to go help their mom so well. Melissa a bit less, but to be fair she is younger than Yannick at 12 by about 3 years, at 8. Their relationship is so entertaining to observe. Yannick is a little too cool for Melissa, and is always jokingly asserting himself as the clear superior, which often results in hilarity when Melissa outdoes him. It is so interesting to note how much he changes when 17 year old Alberique is at home, to be in his favour! 
Being young - caption contest in the comments... winner gets a small souvenir!

Melissa and Yannick chase each other around the house, always playfully – I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen them fight. Aristotle no doubt joins in, never wanting to miss out on the fun. Right now Yannick is using the classic “run circles around a central object” method to avoid Melissa’s chase. I was a student of that style myself about 8 years ago, on the other side of the world... some things are universal. It makes me feel so nostalgic! 

Melissa and Yannick will have their moments where they team up to tease Aristotle as much as they can without making him cry – their method of exacting revenge on him always getting his way. I’m not gonna lie, it looks pretty fun. But it’s all in good spirits and all is forgiven by the time dinner rolls around... only to start again the next day! 

I can write so much on this subject, but I guess the point of it is that I miss being a kid. However, I have many memories of my own that I cherish and being able to life it again vicariously through this host family is satisfying enough for me, at least for now. Please leave comments! What’s your favourite childhood memory?


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Let's Be Franc

Posted by Gaurav On Thursday, June 23, 2011 1 comments

A common theme throughout all of my posts has been perspective. Money is no different. In this post, I want to talk a bit about how I value the same amount of money so differently here than I would at home. This might be a common thing for those of you who had made trips to a country with a currency valued significantly less than your home currency. For me, this is a new occurrence.


The smallest coin of currency in Benin is the 5 FCFA coin (the equivalent of roughly 1 cent CAD). The bills start at 1000 FCFA and the largest bill is 10000 FCFA (the equivalent of roughly 20 dollars CAD). The fact that the largest bill in production is equivalent to our $20 bill speaks volumes about how much cheaper the cost of living is in Benin. In general, the trend is that everything except electronics is cheaper here than you would find in Canada. To illustrate this point: 700 FCFA is how much it costs to buy about 14 fresh pineapples at the local market, or scan one page of a document at the local cyber.

What does all of this mean for me, someone used to a whole different currency? I probably hadn’t eaten 14 pineapples total in my life before coming here, and I’ve never paid anything to use a scanner. Well first and foremost, the large numbers, and to a greater extent the fixed mindset of 100 cents in a dollar has led me to be stingier with my money here. I treat the 100 FCFA coin as if it had the worth of a dollar (I think that is how the locals treat it as well, at least from what my friend Stephen and I have deduced).

Now it might seem ironic, and downright cheap that I am shying from spending money here, especially given the economic situation of Benin and its people. However, I don’t know if I would be so protective of my money if it weren’t trying to be scammed from me every second! I take the same route to the orphanage every day and I still have taxi drivers trying to charge me double the normal price. As soon as you’re recognized as white, the price for everything (especially any souvenirs, etc) is hiked up about 4-5x higher than it normally is. Even though I enjoy bargaining, knowing that you’ll never get it down to the price a local would pay gets frustrating after a while.

The concept of change here is also very foreign. I’ve waited 10 minutes for change for a 2000 FCFA bill only to be told that they don’t have any, and that was at a bar and not a street vendor. I’m thoroughly convinced that there are more 100 FCFA coins in circulation than 50, 25, and 5 FCFA coins combined. Even in the rare event that they do have change, if the amount they owe you is reasonable (less than 200 FCFA), they will just pretend they don’t have any. You can ask a driver how much it costs to go somewhere, and they will often just avoid the question and request a ridiculously high amount after they drop you off. After a while, this constantly having to be on your guard really gets to you and just becomes second nature! Sometimes I lose myself in arguments about such small amounts of money that when I take a step back and think about what I’m actually arguing over in terms of Canadian money, I feel embarrassed. Of course not everyone is always trying to cheat me out of my money, but it happens often enough.

It is kinda pleasant seeing price labels and stuff occasionally at the supermarket. I’m sure when I get back to Canada, I will appreciate knowing that I’m charged the same price for a pastry at Tim Hortons as the customer before me a lot more than I have in the past. Here in Benin, you can forget about paying tax with a purchase. I wouldn’t mind paying taxes because the government would benefit a lot from revenue like that but because of the change issue, I think that would be a nightmare. And it’s not like it could be enforced anyway, with the majority of Benin’s businesses being street side or marketplace vendors without licenses to sell anything. Finally, when the vendors aren’t trying to take your money, they are significantly nicer and more polite than the majority of cashiers you’d find in Canada. They always take out a bit of time to chat and I just find that buying stuff here is much more memorable because of that interaction. 

When all is said and done, after I put this post up at the cyber I’ll probably stop someone carrying a tray of pineapples on their head, pay them 50 FCFA (or about 10 cents Canadian) and watch as they peel the pineapple for me so I can eat it fresh, holding it like corn on the cob.  Now that’s customer service you can’t get at Tim Hortons.   


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Dix choses que j’ai appris cette semaine : édition 4.

Posted by Gaurav On Monday, June 20, 2011 0 comments

           Finalement, après une telle attente, je suis prêt donner vous ma première affiche en la belle langue de Français. Je connais il y aura beaucoup des erreurs, mais quand même, il n’y a pas mal en essayant. Si vous voir quelque erreurs flagrant, n’hésitez pas me dire dans les commentaires. 


1.       Il y a une 250 pièce de monnaie. C’est bizarre que je n’aie pas vu l’avant, considérer que j’aie été au Bénin pour plus qu’un mois.       

2.       « Aller à la plage » vraiment signifie, « Épiler sable de votre chevelu pour les 3 jours suivantes ». Et mes chevaux sont 1 cm long.

3.       Le marché, et presque tout en Cotonou ne va pas dimanche à cause de le présence religieux dans la cité. J’ai appris cet à propos un dimanche trop retard.  

4.       Bien que « Amélie » peut-être un gagnant Oscar, le n’est pas un film pour famille. Et l’est bizarre. Encore, j’ai appris ça par le difficile chemin.

5.       Alberique étudie des informatiques. Tout ça temps j’ai pensé il était étudier gestion… mon français devais vraiment mal !

6.       Mon ami au cyber (il a 10 ans), trouve mon photo sur Facebook être « super funny ». Merci mec… je suis en train de prendre ça comme un complément.

7.       « Tu as faire un peu ? » n’est pas vraiment une expression français, à vrai dire, c’est un résultat de la directe traduction de la même expression en Fon, la langue locale.

8.       Le jeu de dames est plus lourd en stratégie que j’ai pensée.

Un autre type de nourriture durée, le termite volant
   9.       Mange les épis des mais, peut te donner un mal de tête. Oui, c’est aussi duré.

  10.   Vous saviez ça était venir : écrire en français est un casse-pied !




Je sais j’ai dit il y aurait deux affiches aujourd’hui mais à part du fait que personne ne se souci, honnête, écrire un affiche en français est assez pour moi ! Jusqu’à la prochaine fois !


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Lazy Saturday

Posted by Gaurav On Sunday, June 19, 2011 1 comments

EDIT: This post was supposed to go up yesterday, but I ended up getting sidetracked on my way to the cyber because Yannick wanted me to whoop his butt in foosball again (thank you to the free foosball tables at |New |Rez, I.O.U.). So tomorrow there will be another two posts up. I figure I’ve gotta start being more productive and keeping this blog updated goes hand in hand with that. Enjoy!       


Today seems like it’s going to be a lazy Saturday, with me just spending the majority of my time hanging around with Alberique and Yannick watching TV movies and maybe playing a little soccer later. I thought I’d use the time to provide a little update on my day to day life here because I haven’t been posting much recently. 

I’ve kinda settled into a rhythm and I think after more than a month in Benin it’s safe to say that I have gotten used to my new setting and lifestyle. Of course there’s the odd thing here and there that catches you off guard, but that is what my 10 things I learned this week posts are for! I think my host family has gotten used to me to – it’s a lot less formal and I finally get to carry my own dishes back to the kitchen when I’m done eating without one of the kids being scolded because they didn’t do it for me.

Work is going ok. For the past couple weeks I’ve taken a step back from working on the website and applying for grants, instead working more with the children because their exams were taking place over this period. With the end of the last exams this week, I have gotten back to working on the website a bit, and looking at some more grants. I hope the site will be ready by the end of next week, but there’s still quite some work to put in. It’s kind of a bummer that I don’t really get around much, and most of my work is either in the orphanage or in front of my computer, but that’s the nature of work I guess. Going to the orphanage is pretty fun because the kids have started to open up to me a bit, and I’ve even made some friends on the route from the orphanage to the main road where I usually catch a moto from. 

I got a haircut this week! I avoided paying the “white people” price (5x the price of a regular haircut) because someone working at the place told me beforehand that I had to pay the regular price, and I stuck by that quote when the haircutter wanted me to pay up. I want to do a post on my concept of money here, because it’s funny how it changes when you come to a country with such depreciated currency (I think the exchange rate is currently somewhere around 459 FCFA to 1 US dollar).

One thing you really notice here is how much more important arts and entertainment is than you would expect it to be in one of the 30 poorest countries in the world. Personally, I had the perception that people would be more concerned with saving money or making money than they are, but most people I’ve met would rather spend the excess of their hard earned money either going out, buying credit for their cellphones, or purchasing expensive electronics – just like how we would back home.  But I guess humans are humans, and everyone needs time to relax and make the most of enjoying their lives. Besides, the people here are probably used to the rhythm of life here and so they might not a need for change as pressing as someone from a developed country might. 
Enjoying the arts and entertainment at Grand Popo during Festival Nonvitcha

Just one month here has made me used to this lifestyle, including the regular power outages and internet connection problems. It doesn’t even bother me anymore, and I kinda appreciate the chaos... it is difficult to explain. I even feel like I might experience a bit of a shock adjusting to life when I get back home. If one month can do that for me, imagine how I would feel if I grew up here? 

This is an interesting thought – some of the aspects of these people’s lives that many of us in the developed world are so appalled by may just be appalling because we aren’t used to them, not necessarily because they are negative. Many of the things we see as necessary might just be considered luxuries to the people here, or vice versa. The ability of the human body and psyche to adapt to its surroundings is truly amazing. Another lesson learned in Benin...

Please share your thoughts in the comments, and as always let me know if there’s anything specific you’re interested in hearing about!


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Failure: A Complete Breakdown

Posted by Gaurav On Friday, June 17, 2011 1 comments

This is a blogpost I hope a lot of my readers will be able to relate to, and take something from. I know it’s great hearing about my adventures in Benin, but with life kind of settling in this past week, I thought it would also be helpful if I addressed a topic I’ve been meaning to write about for a while now – failure. A couple weeks ago, I got a rejection letter from McGill University telling me I was not admitted into Neuroscience, the program I had wanted to major in. I had set a goal at the beginning of the year to gain entry to it, and I failed. The following is by no means concrete advice – it’s just me organizing my thoughts on how I think would be best to approach failure, and everyone copes somewhat differently. So, without further ado, let’s get started.


Preparing for Failure

I know it sounds silly at first, but preparing for failure is one of the most important things you can do. The fact that everyone fails at something or another at some point in their life is unavoidable. In preparing for failure, you can often cushion the blow when you don’t reach your goal, allowing you to bounce back quicker and set goals all over again.

Preparing for failure involves thinking long and hard about expectations. When I say that it is inevitable that everyone fails at something, I’m not advocating that you expect to fail. Just the same, you should never expect to succeed. I’ve come to a conclusion about expectations through reflection and experience. To make this a little easier to show than a big fat paragraph, I’ve summarized my thoughts into this table below:
As you can tell I’m not a huge fan of expectations. Now, an opposing view to my opinion might go something like, “But Gaurav, what about when you are expected to fail, but then you go ahead and succeed, isn’t that a positive thing?” Yes, that is a positive thing, but it happened in spite of the expectation, rather than because of it. Expectations are often thought of as a type of motivation, but I’m of the opinion that that motivation comes from the final stage of success or failure, and motivation’s correlation with expectations is purely coincidental. I will get into more about why I’ve come to this conclusion, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

The point is that in order to best prepare for failure, you must temper expectations. Notice that I used the word “temper” instead of “eliminate”. It is human nature to hold expectations, so unfortunately it is something we all have to deal with. When you are working towards a goal, try to imagine both scenarios and your reaction to either attaining your goal or falling short. So, preparing for failure means knowing that it is possible, thinking about that scenario, and imagining how you will react.

Coping With Failure

No matter how much you prepare for failure, once it hits, it is never easy to take. Coping is an important stage of failure because oftentimes emotions ride high after you set a goal and you are unable to accomplish it. If you don’t take some time to understand and work through these emotions, they can often complicate understanding or learning from your failure, or even worse linger and settle as negativity.

The first thing is to accept the onslaught of emotions. When I got the news that I didn’t get into Neuroscience, I was devastated. My emotions went from a plunging feeling of despair deep down inside of me, to being angry at the selections committee, and then shortly afterwards being angry with myself. If you repress these emotions and try to instead immediately focus on the positives of a failure, you might feel better in the short term, but eventually those feelings will resurface. It’s kinda like when Homer Simpson had those wart things popping out of his neck that he pushed back in every time he was angry, only to eventually lose it. Learn from the Simpsons, and don’t let this happen to you.

As important as allowing yourself to feel negative after a failure is, you must move past this stage. Sometimes this just happens naturally, but it can also be difficult to do when you suffer a major setback. Personally, I find talking it out with someone else is the best way to get over feeling negative. Other people often provide good insight or opinions, but mostly, just the fact that they are there to listen is the best part. In my future studies, I want to learn exactly why getting things off your chest and sharing your thoughts with other people makes you feel so much better, because it is interesting how effectively it works.

Another thing to consider is whether your failure is actually something to be upset about. It’s interesting to note that feelings associated with different types of failure are very culturally dependent. In our individualist culture, we value standing out from the crowd and being individually successful. However, in some collectivist cultures, if you failed at being personally successful, this would be viewed as an opportunity to avoid the shame of standing out from the crowd and leaving behind your friends and family. Sometimes seeing things from another perspective, and noticing just how arbitrary the feelings you associate with failure are, can help you feel better as well. 

Analyzing Failure

 After you have coped with your failure, you are in the state of mind to analyze it. Why should we analyze our failures? It’s pretty self explanatory: you have to understand what went wrong if you want to prevent it in the future. If you begin this stage too early while you are still highly emotional, pointing fingers and making excuses can become a part of your analysis, rendering your failure difficult to learn from.

So how exactly can you analyze your failure? Well firstly, it is important to gauge how much responsibility you hold in your failure. For example, in failing a class you should take a lot more responsibility for your result than if you failed to win a multimillion dollar lottery. To make this judgement, you need to understand what factors played into your failure, and group them as within your control and out of your control. 

Let’s take Joe for example, an imaginary figure who fails his physics class. After failing the course, Joe determines a list of core factors that contributed to his failure.

Factors
1.       Getting sick a day before the final exam
2.       Not turning in a couple of homework assignments
3.       His teacher was a harder marker than other physics teachers
4.       Never asking questions in class or going for extra help even though he didn’t understand
5.       It was his birthday the weekend before his midterm

Joe came up with these factors by comparing the things he did differently in this class with the other classes he was in during the same time, as well as the physics courses he had completed in the past. He decides that factor 1 was out of his control, because he didn’t do anything before his exam that would make him more vulnerable to getting sick than normal. He also decides that factor 3 was out of his control, because he didn’t choose his instructor. Finally he decides that factor 5 was out of his control because he doesn’t control when the midterms are placed and it was just bad luck. The other two, he admits, were his fault.

Now, many of you might see that factor 5 is not really out of his control. Although the midterm was right after his birthday, he could have started studying for his exam earlier since he knew his birthday was coming, or he could have put off the celebration for a week until his midterm was over. All of this to say that you should often check your groupings with someone else, just to make sure you aren’t too lenient or too harsh on yourself.

Anyways, now that Joe has grouped the factors, he has to decide what he could have done about the things that were in his control. There is no use worrying about factors beyond his control because usually they are exceptional and won’t recur on a regular basis. He can’t do anything about them! To find a better model for the things he needs to approve on, Joe should look towards other times he has succeeded at something similar, or how other people around him did well in his Physics course. Personally, if I usually do well at something and there is a time when I fail, I prefer focusing on my own experiences of past success because sometimes what works for others isn’t what works for me. Regardless of the situation, keeping an open mind when talking to others will only benefit you in the end, giving you more avenues to learn from your mistakes.


Moving On

After feeling negative, analyzing your mistakes and then learning from them, you must prepare to move on. Setting goals after a failure is one of the most important things you can do. In my case, my goal is to re-apply for Neuroscience in the coming year with better marks and a stronger essay, and take a second crack at getting in. In Joe’s case, his goal might be to retake the physics course and ace it, or to choose a different course and make up for the fail with an excellent mark. Only by setting new and attainable goals will you have the motivation to succeed, and the opportunity to use the knowledge you have acquired from your previous failure. Now although this post is about dealing with failure, this paragraph is also perfectly applicable to success. After you bask in your success a little bit and go over the things that made you successful, you’ve got to set a new goal to put what you’ve learned to use.

 Finally I wanted to revisit the idea that expectations do NOT provide motivation. Expectations are passive and encourage being passive, but motivation is active and so is goal setting. For example, if an Olympic high jumper sets a goal to clear a 3m bar, they will train harder and harder to achieve that goal. However, if the jumper develops an expectation that they can clear a 3m bar easily, or even the expectation that they will never be able to make a 3m jump, they might train less vigorously or might stop training altogether because they already have an expectation. I hope this example explains how goal setting encourages motivation, and expectations can discourage motivation.

I hope this post is of value to some of my readers – it certainly helped me organize my thoughts on success and failure. Although I don’t expect anyone to take notes on this and then make a list of factors to analyze their failures every time, I broke it down with the hope that going through this process might provide a logical framework for most situations. I personally have never written out a list of factors (although it is a good idea now that I think about it), but I definitely go over that stuff in my head when I’m reflecting on my experiences. Anyways, here’s to hoping you set goals and work hard enough that you don’t have to think about this post when it comes to the things that matter most to you.

                Best of luck! 


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