Much to the delight of everyone around me, this yovo pulled out her camera over the weekend and snapped some pictures of the lake I’m going to have to drive through on the way to work every day.

More pictures on flickr.

We’ve had a lot of visitors lately, new to Benin and/or to Africa, who are afraid of food poisoning. I’m going to be really honest here: if you leave Cotonou, have any middle class Beninese friends, eat street food, or do anything but eat at ritzy expat restaurants and prepare your own (vegetarian) food, you’re gonna get food poisoning eventually.

Fish goes bad. Chicken sits out. Beef sits in the hot sun at a market all day. Someone forgets to wash their hands. Flies are everywhere during cooking. A couple of examples:

The family hosting the wedding you’re attending killed the goats three days ago, rented space in a public freezer for the meat, and the power went out. The meat started to spoil, but the freezer owner refused to reimburse the money. Hundreds of dollars have been potentially wested. Instead of throwing the meet away, the family spends a few hours rinsing the meat in vinegar and lemon juice to reduce the smell, then cooks and servers it anyway.

Your host family fries fish and then leaves it out unrefrigerated for several days. In the evenings, they just reheat that night’s portions in whatever sauce is being served.

The power goes out at your favorite shwarma joint between midnight and 7am. Because they close at 11 and open at 8, the outage goes unnoticed, although any refrigerated meat has certainly suffered. Imagine that this happens several times during the week, and suddenly Falafal sounds like a safer bet than that delicious smelling schwarma viande.

You go to a party where a friend is grilling delicious salted goat. It’s mouth watering, and instead of waiting like a smart yovo, you take one of the first slices off the grill, instead of holding off until everything’s throughly cooked. Oops. You’re the only one who got sick, and it was your own dumb fault.

It happens. It’s normal. And it’s usually nothing to worry about, especially since you’re a rich Westerner with access to medicine (Cipro and Pepto Bismal, you are my best friends), you know how to whip up quick oral rehydration salts using ingredients easy to find in the market (water + salt + sugar + lemon), and, in the worst case scenario, you can take Immodium and get the work you need to get done before taking a day or two off to recover.

The point is, almost all of my friends here are Beninese. And my Beninese friends love to party. And my sensitive Western stomach gets upset at their parties all the time. And there are many many many times when I look at a plate and I know that I’m going to regret it later.

And I eat it anyway.*

Because a bout or two of mild food poisoning is nothing compared to the good times I’ve had eating with my friends and family, and all the good will and good memories generated by sharing a plate in good company.

The moral of the story is, be smart, but don’t be afraid of mild food poisoning. It’s unavoidable, so you might as well embrace it. Don’t give up on an opportunity to have a amazing time because you might get sick afterwards.**

* Not recommended for the pregnant, immune-compromised, or the faint of heart. I know some MPH is going to read this and FREAK OUT but seriously, don’t be afraid of food poisoning. It happens to everyone eventually.

** Next post: coping techniques for those times when you really really don’t want to get sick afterwards. ;)

I haven’t written about Haiti because, let’s face it. I’ve never been there. I’m not going anytime soon. I don’t even know much about Haiti today (although I’m reading everything I can get my hands on). In fact, many many others have already done a better job writing about recent events than I ever could. They’re experts in Haiti, relief, aid, and a million other things.

That said, there are a few stories that have touched me. Ushahidi and their unflagging efforts to connect people with the help they need. The outpouring of sympathy and relief from Africa. Plug-and-play hospitals from Doctors without Borders (okay, less touching and more “oohhhh shiny”).

This tragedy touches Benin uniquely, as the majority of slaves leaving the country went directly to Haiti and Brazil. The Beninese consider Haitians to be close cousins, practically Africans. Visiting Haitians have told me they feel at home here, and Beninese who’ve traveled to Haiti feel the same way. The whole country is praying for Haiti, and although our financial capacity for giving is small, I do not doubt that Benin will do everything it can.

Bertrand and are thinking about what we can do to help, and at this time, I think the best thing we can do is encourage everyone we know to donate. Several of our clients have asked for extensions on their bills so that they can do just that. Normally, I’d be skeptical (and was at first). Today, we’ve chosen to give them the benefit of the doubt because, strangely enough, we really do think they’ll give.

She’s Danish.

For everyone who’s not actively involved in the battle for a public option, let me explain something. I do not have health insurance, and I want to have children some day. I can:

1. Give birth in Benin, where, if something goes wrong, there may or may not even be any blood in the national blood bank if there’s a problem and I hemorrhage. Certainly, if my baby is born prematurely or in poor health, the odds of its survival are small.
2. Go home and pay upwards of $10,000 to give birth in the country of my birth, where if something goes wrong, I will be paying off medical bills larger than my student loans for the rest of my life ($50,000 for a premature birth, for example).

There are those of you who will respond that it is my choice to live in Benin. What if I were simply unemployed? Would that make you more sympathetic? If I were on welfare, would you be less sympathetic? Do I have less a right to health care because I live abroad than because I live in the States? Do those without jobs have less rights to health care? Pre-natal care? Maternal care?

These days, the political has become very, very personal.

Accompanying the recent spate of questions about how to find more and better women speakers for tech conferences, the general lack of women in technology, and a lot of comments about women’s capabilities and skills, has been a dreadful abuse of the English language hinting that women just don’t hack it in the technology sphere.

Why is okay to say that Mike Arrington is an asshole, but calling Sarah Lacey a princess is off limits? Why is making snarky comments about Xeni’s good looks bad, but saying that Stii is adorable okay?

In a word, privilege. What? What’s privilege, you say? It’s being the default (male) and benefiting from living in a patriarchal society that is institutionally sexist. It’s not intentional and it is not the same thing as being sexist or misogynist. If you have privilege, you can’t help it, and you can’t get rid of it. But you should realize it exists. Here’s a great list of privileges men have that women don’t. It’s worth reading the entire article, but I’m excerpting items that are particularly relevant to this discussion.

If I am male …

1. My odds of being hired for a job, when competing against female applicants, are probably skewed in my favor. The more prestigious the job, the larger the odds are skewed.

4. If I fail in my job or career, I can feel sure this won’t be seen as a black mark against my entire sex’s capabilities.

10. If I have children but do not provide primary care for them, my masculinity will not be called into question.

15. When I ask to see “the person in charge,” odds are I will face a person of my own sex. The higher-up in the organization the person is, the surer I can be.

24. Even if I sleep with a lot of women, there is no chance that I will be seriously labeled a “slut,” nor is there any male counterpart to “slut-bashing.”

33. My ability to make important decisions and my capability in general will never be questioned depending on what time of the month it is.

41. Magazines, billboards, television, movies, pornography, and virtually all of media is filled with images of scantily-clad women intended to appeal to me sexually. Such images of men exist, but are rarer.

42. In general, I am under much less pressure to be thin than my female counterparts are. If I am fat, I probably suffer fewer social and economic consequences for being fat than fat women do.

45. On average, I am not interrupted by women as often as women are interrupted by men.

46. I have the privilege of being unaware of my male privilege.

So what does this all mean, and how does it apply to talking about women in tech?

There are a lot of snotty jerks who think they’re smarter than everyone else in the tech sphere. There are a lot of pundits whose qualifications are doubtful at best. But singling out women as being particularly unqualified is unfair and contributes to the “boys club” feeling that tech often has. When you call a man an asshole, that man is an asshole. When you say that there are too many princesses writing about tech, you’re making a point about women, not just that woman.

In a male dominated sphere, especially one as related to show biz as the start-up scene, women get farther by being beautiful, charming, and having a larger than life personality. This is not any particular woman’s fault. It’s the fault of a patriarchal system that makes women sex objects first and entrepreneurs second.

In “Technology, the African women in it, and beer”, Miquel said:

For women (again in North America and Europe) the focus is usually on being some cutesy girl who does the occasional special interest piece, but who has no idea which end of a conditional statement is up. The worst of this type are the Sarah Laceys and Xeni Jardins of the world because they create a perception that if you’re a cute, sexy girl, then that’s all that matters. In other words, style and appearance far outweigh the substance of what they write.

Sure, their good looks might be what appeals to a lot of misogynist geeks, but the reality is that these women write very competently about technology. You don’t have to be a programmer to write about tech. Mike Arrington and Corey Doctorow aren’t techies, but nobody runs around questioning their right to write about technology.

Using words like “princess” and “diva” to negatively class women participating in the tech scene reinforces privilege by reinforcing the idea that a woman has to work twice as hard to prove herself, especially if she is beautiful. It’s not enough that she’s participating. Now, she has to participate in exactly the way and manner that men want her to. She has to be conscious of the image she projects, not simply for her own good, but because for many readers, she represents her entire gender.

There are many kinds of women. Happy women. Sad women. Beautiful women. Ugly women. Smart women. Technical women. Nice women. Mean women. We want more women in tech. We want more woman programmers, more woman pundits, more woman critics, more woman writers, more woman presenters, more woman everything. And that means welcoming everyone, whether you feel like you can take them out for a beer or not.

Both Africa and the West need more women in tech. Continuing to stereotype western women in tech as princesses and divas only worsens the problem, instead of fixing it. Certainly, it gives no credit to the thousands of women that spend their entire lives developing new and exciting technologies.

* Parts of this post are excerpted from an email that I sent to Miquel before picking on him in public.

My clients are all businessmen. Accent on men. After over two years of developing websites and web applications in Cotonou, we have a lot of clients (what can I say, we’re good at what we do!). Of these clients, two are women.

Less than 5% of all the clients we’ve taken on in two years are women.

I taught web development at Benin’s best public business school. Less than 10% of my students were women and of these, 100% wanted to go into MIS, not programming. A shame, because the quality of the women’s work was far more consistent than that of their male counterparts. I have yet to work with a female coder.

So why aren’t there more women in tech and running tech businesses in Benin?

• Maternity leave makes women less competitive and more expensive to hire. Despite any legal protections in place, paternity leave effectively does not exist, although most businesses allow a few days.
• There are far fewer girls in higher education than men. Women have lower literacy rates and higher dropout rates for a number of reasons.
• Women face strong social pressure to take on jobs that allow time off to take care of a family because day-to-day childcare is the women’s responsibility and not the man’s.
• Women are considered more caring, more nurturing, and more illogical than their male counterparts. And the behaviors that make for successful managers are socially inacceptable for women.
• Women are expected to get married and start a family. Until they’ve done this, they won’t be taken seriously or considered successful. After they’ve done this, they’ve got kids, which is not conducive to taking risks like starting a business or working for a start-up.
• Paradoxically, the strong pressure on rich upwardly mobile women to not depend on their husbands for income makes choosing a risky career harder for the very women who should have it easier.
• Women who do succeed in tech are marginalized socially for a number of reasons, including their small numbers, their perceived sexuality, and the fact that they can’t out drinking with the boys when there’s a baby at home waiting for them.
• Men don’t like it when women initially intrude into traditionally male spheres.
• Misogyny.

Wait a second, how many of these points are true for the States too?

There’s been a bit of talk lately about the lack of women at TechChruch50, at tech conferences, and in the technology sphere in general*. A great deal of the commentary is women responding, “Yes, of course there’s a problem,” and men responding, “What do you want from me?!?! We live in post-feminist world. Sexism is dead, okay?!?!”

As a woman who lives in the developing world, this kind of rhetoric falls particularly flat because it’s the same rhetoric that encourages sexism and misogyny here. “We let you vote, what more do you want?” “We gave you legal protection from discrimination. If you’re sexually harassed on the job, you must have been asking for it.” “Women are just naturally more nurturing. That’s why they should stay home and take care of the kids.” “Men shouldn’t have to help level the playing field. It’s not our fault women just aren’t interested in tech. Finding quality women conference speakers who can serve as examples and mentors and even tokens is hard and shouldn’t be our responsibility.”

Sound familiar to anyone else? It’s so weird that the same men who can be so open about the difficulties faced by women in emerging economies are so bloody blind when it comes to their home turf.

Going to a cybercafé in Cotonou means two out of three computers are occupied by Beninese or Nigerian boys scamming rich Americans and Europeans. Sometimes, they’re training 9 and 10 year olds.

Benin has a very small IP block, which means that almost all users of a given ISP share the same outward looking IP. Over the past two years, every single IP available to Benin has been blocked by my bank, one by one. My mother checks my online balance back in the States and emails me screenshots. Really.

Scammers from as far away as Ghana come to Cotonou to join scamming cults (in the French sense of the world) and learn rituals that will make their victims more likely to believe the scammers and more likely to hand over big cash. Sakata + Black Magic = Big Business.

Scamming is a mafia operation. The little guys working in cybers do it because its quick and easy cash, not because they’re making millions. Once a scammer gets a hook here in Cotonou, it’s passed up the line, usually ending up at a Big Man in Lagos, who will string the victim along as long as possible. This mafia includes policemen, commissioners, and judges that are regularly paid to look the other way on both sides of the border. It goes all the way up the chain. [1]

Victims are not just rich Americans and Europeans. Many scams involve visas and promises of marriage in exchange for various fees that always seem to create more and more fees until … oops, no more money to pay the rent.

Interesting and related story: SGB is a French bank with branches in Benin (SGBB). About a year ago, they started offering VISA debit cards that allowed anyone holding a bank account with them to make purchases online. Fraud rates were so high that they had to suspend the service.

Interesting and related fact: Banking regulations in the States and Europe protect the consumer. PayPal is on the line for all fraudulent transactions, even if the scammer has already pulled the money out of their system. How is PayPal going to chase down the money in West Africa? They can’t and they won’t.

Perhaps it’s because I live two hours from Lagos in a city where many Nigerians have immigrated because Nigeria has actually started to crack down on online scams (that’s what the immigrants tell me, anyway). Perhaps it’s because scammers make my life, as an entrepreneur and freelancer living in West Africa, bloody difficult, but I’m more sympathetic to banks who cut off Africa than Jon seems to be:

I realize that the problem can’t be solved entirely by Paypal alone but I would appreciate at least an option to flag my account in advance for what might be mistaken for ’suspicious activity’. I’d be happy to leave this to PayPal’s discretion but my problem is they aren’t using any. African transaction? Banned! Banks will allow customers to indicate that they will be abroad for a certain period so that they don’t shutdown accounts by mistake. Why doesn’t PayPal? You’d be surprised at how damaging these blanket policies can be to an organization like mine that simply just wants to pay employees and be paid by clients.

I suppose the complaint is that PayPal doesn’t give me an option to avoid my account getting bricked. It costs me money every time they do it. They give me no alternative to prevent it from happening and when I talk to them, somehow it’s my fault for existing ‘in that country where The Last King of Scotland took place‘.

The lack of e-commerce and e-payment options open to Africans is a huge problem, but the solution is not “make PayPal accept payments.” Don’t forget that PayPal alternative Moneybookers keeps 7% of every transaction in order to have enough cash on hand to refund claims against fraud. Banks and companies like PayPal want to make money. If they saw a way to enter the African market and not lose money, they would be all over it.

Before e-commerce solutions come to sub-Saharan Africa, Africa needs to be a profitable environment for e-commerce solutions. This means cracking down on fraud and improving justice systems. It means a better regulatory environment, or at least, enforcement of regulations on the books. PayPal needs legal protection from fraud as much as consumers do.

Perhaps an enterprising entrepreneur needs to come up with something brand new and not tied to the West.

[1] Note to self: do a corruption 101 post later this week

We all know that there’s no fucking way in the world we should have microwave ovens and refrigerators and TV sets and everything else at the prices we’re paying for them. There’s no way we get all this stuff and everything is done fair and square and everyone gets treated right. No way. And don’t be confused — what we’re talking about here is our way of life. Our standard of living. You want to “fix things in China,” well, it’s gonna cost you. Because everything you own, it’s all done on the backs of millions of poor people whose lives are so awful you can’t even begin to imagine them, people who will do anything to get a life that is a tiny bit better than the shitty one they were born into, people who get exploited and treated like shit and, in the worst of all cases, pay with their lives.

I believe in capitalism. Sometimes, I even believe in free market capitalism. I believe people should be able to buy what luxury they can afford.

I also believe that consumption is only a sustainable lifestyle choice for the West because everyone else is locked out of it.

It is a very useful exercise to ask yourself, “What if everyone lived like I do?” Does what you contribute balance what you consume? I own several computers and an iPod. I like things and I like travel. I do not have any answers.

My lifestyle is more sustainable today because I do not live in the States. I am convinced that it is still not sustainable enough.

I do not know how to fix this.

Flooding in my neighborhood

After a day of rain, a moto braves the water on his way to the main drag

[Photo credits: me and Bertrand, from the roof of our building. More flooding in Cotonou on flickr.]

1. Ask about the price beforehand. Ask a friend. Ask your taxi-moto driver. Ask in another part of the market. Do not ask anywhere near the stand where you plan on making your purchase. For example, if you want to know how much tomatoes cost, go to the part of the market where you can’t see any food items. Go to the “fabric aisle” or the “electronics aisle” and strike up a conversation. Not only will you make friends, but you’ll get an accurate idea of prices elsewhere.
2. Learn a few words in the local language. If you are an English speaker and you come to Benin, French is not the local language. It is a colonial language. In Cotonou, you should learn Fon. In Parakou, Bariba is good. Lagos … Yarouba? Igbo? I have no idea. “Good morning! How are you? How much does this cost? Too expensive! I don’t speak [language].” These five phrases will get you EVERYWHERE with market mamas. And the price will go down.
3. Make friends with the marché mamans. Most of these women love respectful foreigners who speak their language, treat them nicely, and take the time to chat. Take the time to brighten their day. Don’t be afraid to look like a fool. As everywhere in the world, showing a bit of vulnerability goes a long way to earning trust. Mamas who like you don’t overcharge (as much).
4. Don’t worry so much about getting ripped off. No wait, come back! This isn’t going to be a lecture on privilege, I swear! Know going in how much you’re willing to pay for something. If you think those bananas are worth 200 francs, then who cares if you could have gotten them for 100? Your blood pressure is more important than the $.20.

Love, Theresa

P.S. This is not directed at any current or past visitors to the humble Sondjo home.
P.P.S. I end up telling this to everyone who comes through, so I thought I’d just post it and be done with it. :)