Client sends email late on Christmas Eve. Client is angry when, at 8am on the 26th, his seventh round of revision requests isn’t integrated yet.

People Online works on a fixed rate system because local businesses don’t trust us to be honest about reporting our hours. And we like it that way. Not having to keep track of hours means not having to keep track of our designers’ hours. It means not having to worry non-billable work. It means not having to argue with clients that yes, the two hours they kept us waiting for a ten minute meeting will, in fact, cost them money.

However.

Mornings like this one make me pull my hair out.

NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM

Bertrand: I want you to kill it.
Me: I’m not sure I’m strong enough to do it cleanly.
Bertrand: Have you ever killed your own dinner?
Me: I am a harbringer of death … to chickens anyway.
Bertrand: I don’t believe you.
Me: *brandishes a knife* BRING IT SANTA CLAUSE!!!!

Apparantly, early this morning, our landlord had two goats delivered for his wife to prepare for the holiday festivities.  I know one of them is for the building party on the 27th. Delicious!

Today is Benin’s last real working day before the New Year. And of course, you should understand that, as Christmas is an entire season in the States, the New Year actually lasts several weeks here. Although it’s a Friday, and technically, Monday and Tuesday are still business days, the party starts today.

Today’s the day everyone goes and buys a couple-three bottles of liquor (whiskey, by preference, but also Campari and Baily’s and all sorts of rums) that they’ll use to entertain their guests over the next several weeks. If there are still holiday decorations to buy, today’s the day. Christmas/ New Year’s presents? Yup, today. Tomatoes and onions and corn flour and rice and oil and anything else you’ll need to cook for the fêtes? You guessed it, everyone’s buying today.

Think of it as our own Beninese “Black Friday.”

The whole country is breathing a sigh of relief. It’s been a hard year. The economy’s taken a hit. Prices are up. Corruption is down. Nobody has any money. But hey! Even those who have to work during this season (like Bertrand and I) are happy. It’s the end of the year. We’ll spend the next three weeks visiting friends, toasting our good fortune, and welcoming those who visit us into our home.

It’s not a time of resolutions, but a time of thankfulness. We have our health. We have a roof over our heads. We have enough to eat. We have friends. We have family.

Bonne fête, alors !

I recently found Afrigator, an aggregator for the African blogosphere. Actually, I found it a long time ago, but just recently created an account. I’m not only jumping back into blogging myself, but also working to encourage blogging and bloggers here in Benin, and Afrigator’s a great tool. Right now, there isn’t a better way to see what’s going on over here.

If you’re an Angolphone.

I’ve fallen in love with Afrigator. I spent the morning perusing blogs and adding them to my newsreader. But I can’t recommend it to my colleagues here in Benin. Because they don’t speak English.

Benin has lots of interesting bloggers. Huge numbers (okay, not huge numbers, but statistically significant numbers) of our media personalities are online. People Online is increasingly in touch with this audience. But we can’t tell Benin’s journalists (for example) to “just run Afrigator through Google Translator.” The site needs to be multilingual. “Join Afrigator,” means very little to someone who doesn’t speak English. At the least, once logged in, users should be able to browse the site in their own language.

My pet peeve for the AfriGreater December competition is that Afrigator is distressingly Anglophone on a continent that is … well, only partially Anglophone.

So what would it take? If you guys just have a strings file, send it over and I’ll translate it. If you don’t … shame on you! Just kidding. But I’ll be happy to lend a hand with EN-FR translation when you’re ready.

I should also add that I already asked about filtering posts by language, and the team said no problem. Which is a great start.

I should also add that, seriously, I love Afrigator. And I really really really want to get Beninese bloggers on it.

Virgil Houessou , journalist at L’événement Précis, one of our client newspapers, recently won the  

What a fantastic weekend! Saturday, Bertrand’s brother celebrated his daughter’s baptism. Then a business dinner with Cagesco-Afrique, a client of ours. (He asked us to conduct an email campaign to market the dinner; we did it in return for a minimal fee and free invites to the dinner). Then a birthday party at Bertrand’s family home.

Sunday was a colleague’s birthday, so more delicious food and drink, followed a meeting for Pink Bénin, an organization founded by a friend and breast cancer survivor to help women pay for treatment of the same here in Benin.

And of course, yesterday was Tabaski (Eid al-Adha, elsewhere in the world). More drink. More food. We stopped by a friend’s place to drop off some information for Pink-Bénin. His office is in a Muslim neighborhood, and all up and down his road, there were crazy wooden structures designed for optimal grilling deliciousness. Here in southern Benin, most Muslim families each buy a sheep, to be slaughtered and prepared the day-of. In the north, families buy sheep, goats, and cow. Delicious!

Grilled or fried red meat + starch (akassa or pâte) + insanely hot pepper sauce + beer (or not, depending on where you are in the country)+ good company = my idea of a perfect way to celebrate just about anything.

Anyway, that’s where I’ve been for the last three days and why I didn’t even get a chance to look at the enormous pile of work currently sitting in my inbox.

I am working on that. Right now. As you read this.

Annnndddd . . . it’s fixed. COME BACK AND READ, PEOPLE!