INTERVIEW: Erin Hastings 4/10/99 On April 10, 1999 I interviewed my good friend and fellow English teacher, Erin Hastings. Although Erin and I came to Benin together and have had many similar experiences, due to the nature of the experience we've been forced to go it alone and on separate paths. I spoke with Erin about her experiences here in Benin so far, her views on teaching English as a foreign language and about the role gender has played and will continue to play in her work and life as a volunteer.
VO: Well, here is our interview. Normally to get started I ask something like how many kids you have or something like that.... EH: I don't have any kids. VO: Right, okay. Let's see. How would you describe your experience here so far in Benin? EH: That's a really large question. Well, I realize that it's extraordinary but at the same time it's become so common place and normal. It makes you realize that even though things are not the same at all, you can adapt to whatever they throw at you. VO: What would you say is extraordinary? EH: The fact that a year ago I lived in America. It's just a completely different world. And now here I am and my friends live in mud huts and draw all their water from a well. And now I travel around in beat up bush taxis with 20 other people shoved in, but this is all so normal to me. The extraordinary thing about the whole experience is that it has become so common place, but also that it's an experience of life that's so completely different from ours. VO: From ours in the United States? EH: Yeah. That's what's extraordinary about it. And I live in a different language. VO: What do you wish you knew before you came now that you know what's here? EH: There's always something. The times when I usually think about that, it's just something small. Like I wish I'd know I could get such and such here and I didn't need to bring it with me. Honestly, though, I can't really think of any really big overriding themes. Maybe, well, I guess I wish I'd known how long it was going to seem. I mean, 10 months and it already feels like I've been here forever. VO: And you've still got a long way to go? EH: Yeah. VO: So you came here the same as I did, to teach English, and would you say teaching has been a challenge? EH: Yeah. It takes a lot of reflection and I'm never completely happy with what I've done. I always feel like I could've thought of something else that would've involved more students or whatever. And the kids here, school is just completely different. It's not a necessity. Everybody in America takes it for granted that doing well in school will improve the rest of your life, improve the quality of your life, allow you to get a better job, to be happier, etc. Here it's not taken for granted if you're in school. It's not everybody that sees it as a given, that it's a really positive thing. So you have to work a lot harder to get kids to work. You have to trick them into being interested in what you're doing and to be motivated even to study for a test. Something every kid in America would realize you have to do, but here it's just like, "If I succeed in school or if I don't succeed in school, I'll be doing the same thing." VO: So coming from America, well, success is within your grasp. Anyone that works hard enough will succeed is basically our mentality.... EH: Well, that's what they tell you. I don't really say that I believe that. VO: Yes, okay. Now that you can actually say that you have been a teacher, how do you feel about that? I mean, is it something you would have wanted to do or...? EH: In the future, I don't know. I mean, I had misgivings about teaching English before I came here. I mean the fact that we're coming here to.... I admit this has changed my whole viewpoint on this issue, but before I came here I was thinking: These people have already had colonialism and western culture and on and on for a long time, and it's not good. It lessens the value of what's important to these people. But it's just irreversible now and what can I do about it? And still the teaching English, it's unfortunate that it's something they need. But the way I justified it was that maybe some of these kids I teach will use that and it will allow them to go out into the world, such as it is, a world we can't change anymore. VO: I don't know if you'll agree with this, but I look at it as English is the vehicle that gets me to be a part of their lives. It's because these people that are in charge of their lives and English and then I get to try to give them English and everything else I possibly can. EH: Yeah, oh yeah. I just had misgivings about the neocolonialism, imperialism.... VO: Trying to get your political statements in there. EH: No, that's the truth. Shut up. VO: Okay. Now for other people, maybe with the Peace Corps, or maybe without a program, or anything but just to teach English as a foreign language. So apart from governmental influence, what kind of advice would you give to those people who are going to do what you've set out to do as an official job? EH: And they're going to come here? VO: Not here specifically here. Anywhere in the world and for any reason including their own volition. What do they need to know about teaching? EH: I don't know if I can give general advice like that because I really think that everything I've learned about teaching has really been centered on what works here and what is going to motivate or at least interest Beninese people. I don't know how much I can say about teaching that could be in any context to any people. VO: Well, could you say something about the integration of their culture into the lesson as a means of motivation? EH: Yes, that's important. I mean, we talk about this so much among us teachers. About how there are lessons in the English books that are so completely irrelevant to these people's lives. I mean they really don't need to learn that, and they're never going to use it, and they don't want to learn it. They don't care about a Scottish wedding. VO: What do they care about here in Benin? What do you need to teach them? EH: What kinds of things are they going to learn here? Well, here's an example. I studied a little French before in school but when I came here, you know my French wasn't super or anything but now the vocabulary I use is centered around things you find here, words that you would never use in France like "igname" (African yams) or "piottes" (thatch-covered hut) so the words they will use in English will sort of be the same. Elaina was talking about how in her class they had a lesson on fax machines and stuff like that. I'm not going to teach my kids "fax machine" because that is not important. Most of them, maybe a few, will grow up and use fax machines in the future, but most of them are going to grow up to be vendors selling things in the marche, and taxi drivers, and guys who work at the post office and stuff. VO: So are you saying the language has to be centered around commerce? EH: Well, not necessarily, just around whatever they're going to do. I guess a lot of it has to do with some sort of small commerce. Most of the kids we are teaching if they are ever going to use English it's going to be to talk to Nigerians or Ghanaians, and it's going to probably be about business or something along those lines. A few of them may become diplomats or something like that and for them it will be different, but most of the kids, if they ever use English, it will be on a simpler level. VO: So then you could say that you need to find whatever is important to that culture as a means of sustaining themselves and use that language? EH: Yeah, that's what they need. I imagine in TEFL classes in America what they're learning is words to deal with their day-to-day lives. If they're high school students and they just moved to the States they are going to learn language to get around a high school. In any case, I think it has to be about what their needs are going to be. VO: Okay, we're going to get off the education subject a little bit. What has been the most difficult part of being the person you have to be to live here? EH: Having to be totally on my own. I mean, we've grown friendships here and they're good, but I'm still in a completely different world, like I said, from the people I know best and love best. Just to be totally on my own and not to be able to share the experience in a way that I could otherwise maybe. And then after that so many other things. Having no choice but to live life at least partially like an African woman. I mean not being able to be as a woman as I would like to be. VO: Okay, so you say you have to live your life like an African woman. EH: At least sometimes. VO: In terms of how you're treated? EH: Well, you know, when a man says something offensive to me, I can't just say "Fuck off." VO: What do you say? EH: You just have to be nice about it. Not always, but I have to accept in some ways the way men treat women here or else I'm not going to be able to co-exist with these guys. I have to work with them; I have to live with them. I can't challenge their beliefs too much. VO: And when you're with the women, are you able to challenge their beliefs any? EH: Yeah, some. That's interesting. A little bit. Sometimes I talk to women about things like that and just in general about the way women get treated, and about the way women have to live their lives. And they say, "Yeah, you know, it kind of sucks." and I say, "Yeah, it does suck. And I can do this, and this, and this at home." But it's such a complex issue. In the first place, all of the women I talk to are educated women, educated enough to speak French. They've already gotten glimpses of what a woman's life could be if they weren't held down the way they are in this country. VO: So basically you only have contact with women who have already succeeded somewhat? EH: Yeah, pretty much. I mean that to all the other women I can only say things like "Hi. How are you doing?" and your family stuff like that. VO: So you've already been here 10 months and the whole thing is supposed to be 27 months, so basically you're on the fast track out of here. EH: I don't know. It doesn't feel like it. VO: Well, it's not going to be the fast track but it's not going to be like the first 10 months. There's no way. Nothing second hand can be like something new. EH: Oh, definitely. VO: So what are you going to do with the rest of your service? EH: I want to do more work with women. All this year I've kind of wanted to sit the girls in my classes down and say, "This is what you could do and this is how you could do it within the system you have to live in." And to say, "You don't have to take abuse from these men and to know when they are abusing you." I just haven't gotten around to it. I'd like to do stuff with the girls and I'd like to make it more overt. You know, I don't even know if they see me and think: "Wow! She's doing something positive." Like one of my kids was talking to me outside of class one time and I mentioned I'd done such and such when I was at the university and she was like, "Wow! You went to the university?" And so I want them to see me and think of me positively. To say, "She's been to the university and she's been around the world a bit." But mainly I want to make it more overt. VO: So that they can understand that they have the potential to control their lives the way you've controlled yours? EH: I don't even know if it's fair to give them that expectation but at least to say, "You're just as smart as all these boys and you deserve to do whatever you want to do just like them. If you want to be this or that, you can do it. You deserve to think you're capable of that or you're worthy of that." VO: So that sounds like a really heavy issue for you? EH: Yeah, you pretty much think about it every day. You really don't have any choice. VO: Now, were these big issues for you before you came to Africa or specifically since you've come? EH: I thought about it but I didn't think about it nearly as much as other things I thought about. It was an issue, it was there, but I wasn't a big feminist-going-out-on-marches kind of person. In fact, even in the development context I was always really aware, when we discussed it in my civil development classes, that there was a different reality for women here. And what we think is right for women can never be the same here. Culture and traditions have some value too and it has to be balanced against that. At the very least it's not for me to say that what I think about what women's roles should be can come first over culture and tradition. VO: Do you think where you're coming from is a society that, well, you know, a lot of us would say we really don't have the right to interject our ideas and values into this culture in terms of things like what's a good kind of government or what's a good way to live, but you're saying that even on a human realm of how to treat the other human beings.... EH: Well, it's hard to say what's absolute and what's not. I don't know. It's just not for me to say -- that's my whole point. Sure, I think women here should be like women are in the United States, even better, because it's certainly not perfect in the US either, but I can't effect that change. Even more, it's not for me to say what's right for their culture. VO: Okay. What has been the funniest thing so far? EH: It was kind of funny you ran into that bush. VO: Yeah, that was kind of funny. EH: There are so many funny things that happen every day that it's hard to rank them. VO: Well, what do you miss the most about life in the United States? EH: Well, at the risk of sounding like a weenie, well, my boyfriend. VO: Yeah, okay, we'll just omit that question! Then you won't have to sound like a weenie and I won't have to sound like a tool box. Okay, that's our interview.
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