Erica Bleeg spent two years learning about customs that heal and wound. Her conversations with Beninois women involved soy bean cultivation, child nutrition and devastating effects of excision.

Distracted from her paperwork, Fatouma tells me it is the coming dry season she fears most. The first months are reserved for excision. During December and January, she says, the harmattan winds that sweep down from the Sahara help wounds bind faster. Wounds stay open in rainy season. She describes her own excision at age 12 when a village matriarch, her great aunt, kneeled beside her with a razor. Fatouma swears if anyone touches her own daughters she will kill them. Later, when we walk the dusty roads together, she spots girls walking bowlegged at a strained and deliberate pace and tells me these girls have recently undergone "the operation;" their rounded steps are a way to get around the pain.

A month later, I set out to plan Bemberéké's first International Women's Day celebration. According to Beninois protocol, the first step in organizing community events is to notify the village's official leaders. Bembéréké's head administrative official, Abdoulaye Bakari, nods at my proposal and asks what kind of publicity he can get from Peace Corps for this. Benôt, his secretary, draws up a list of members for the planning committee and names Bakari "honorary president." The list includes the village's notables, 10 men and two women. I ask Benôt to add three women and suggest Fatouma would be a good choice. Under her he writes in Marthe, an administration typist, and Marietou, a secretary who would attend no more than one meeting -- she never believed the day would come, so would not waste her time planning for it.

As the first to arrive at the government administration building for our first meeting, I am disappointed but not surprised. In Benin, time is an elastic, inexact concept. After living in country for a year, I know that attendance at professional engagements is rarely considered a commitment. Three o'clock borders the relative end of repos, the French-African siesta, and no one is in a hurry.

The women's group president, Madame Celestine, arrives soon after me. When I introduce myself, she looks at me as if from a restrained distance, curious but cautious. I hand her a copy of the Women's Day proposal and watch as her eyes stammer across each line. Eventually she looks up at me with tired disbelief. "Good," she nods flatly and passes up the steps to greet the people she knows. They sit in offices that line the open terrace wings.

Our first meeting begins almost two hours late. Eventually the men on the list appear: the mayor, the village delegates, the directors of the community and youth centers, the literacy coordinator. Across the street I can see Fatouma reclined in her afternoon routine. She and her cousin Arouna eat fried dough cakes and chat on a shady bench
on the center's front terrace, where they
people-watch.

In a room set with rows of wooden benches, the men seat themselves facing the mayor, who is seated to my left, and the women sit closer to me. At some point, Fatouma sidles in and takes a place among the women. Checking off attendance, I find the women's group vice president, Marietou, and the committee's "honorary president" are missing.

I introduce the idea of organizing a Women's Day celebration by carefully describing the event's history and purpose. For many of the members this is the first time they have heard of it. Some nod vaguely, others stare, and their diffidence protracts the minutes. It makes me tense. Marthe keeps worrying her head scarf. Finally, the mayor gets agitated enough to speak:

"This is not just one party and it's over! This is something for our children!" An animated and practiced orator, he takes over the meeting and repeatedly quips, "But where are your women? This is for women, and we've got a room full of men!" He rallies the men into joking, and soon one side of the room is uproarious while, on the other side, the women are sitting with folded hands. I adduce my thoughts on the benefits of collaboration between men and women, adding that cooperative goals will help build a healthier community, etc., and just as I feel these platitudes growing thick in my throat, the mayor seizes upon the suggestion and announces, "That's right! Women can't do anything alone!"

Madame Celestine slams her hand against the bench. "Not all men support their wives. He has his kids with her and leaves without burying so much as 10 francs in the yard for support! You know it and you know and you -- onto another wife and more children!" In Bariba, she shoots a litany of indictments at the men sitting across the room. The furious intensity of her voice is mesmerizing as she names each finger with an injustice or hardship: the food, the money to pay for school fees, the money for clothes, shoes, just the work to keep everybody clean and going, to keep the house from crumbling! She stops with an appalled look on her face. Marthe and Fati look sideways toward the floor.

Shifting in their seats, the men turn the subject into a defense of polygamy and succeed at restoring their good cheer. One of the delegates proclaims that female births exceed males by almost double. "Triple!" He ups the stakes. "And all those girls need husbands!" The women smile faintly. They have no comeback.

Throughout January, Madame Celestine, Marthe and I continue to meet regularly. My relationship with Fatouma changes. At the office, she parries conversation with me and often dodges our Wednesday meetings. I remember when the idea of a Women's Day celebration made her whole face bloom. Now her anxious maneuvers to avoid me warn: Don't push hesitant women. Perhaps it is cultural instincts that tell her we would fail.

Meanwhile, Madame Celestine and I establish a rapport and routine. She arrives on time for every meeting. Joining me on the steps, she first looks at her watch. While waiting, she sometimes tells me about the local groupement des femmes, citing its history back to the 1980s. Solidarity among the women has always been tenuous.

By 3:30 she sighs, "L'heure Africaine," and screws up her face. "Why do people think it's OK to waste another person's time?" Then we turn to discussing plans for the fête. Madame Celestine and another village woman will give testimonies on their girlhood struggles to defend their right to a formal education; there will be traditional dancing -- from the Bariba and the Peulh women. The high school girls are rehearsing an original satire and a dedicatory song for their mothers. To launch the occasion, we will march through the village with banners and song; and in closing, I will distribute accolades to local female artisans for their submissions to a tapestry contest. Envisioning the day to come, her words become buoyant.

For two months, planning the celebration involved less than a handful of women. If Marthe did not work in the same building as our meeting place, I could count only on Madame Celestine. In our modest negotiations, there is no loneliness between us, only a dubious faith and a sense that we have no other choice but to be effortful. She is my strength. She leans over to me and says, "The women are organizing in the village."

On a Wednesday in the middle of February, a procession of veiled Muslim women appear, ambling up the long entrance grounds to the administrative building. They head straight for the meeting, finding seats at the front of the room. Some remain standing near the doorway.

Only a few days left before Women's Day, I ask Benôt to send summonses out to the initial committee members. Gathered at the final meeting, the small nucleus of original members find themselves surrounded by a throng of women girding the back wall. We assign almost all of the tasks -- sweeping the grounds, transporting benches, delivering invitations -- the simple thing left is to write the invitation announcement. No one comes forward. To Marthe and Madame Celestine, I suggest: "You could do it together." They look at each other. I take out a piece of paper and put it on the bench. Marthe declines, mumbling something about too much office work on her hands.

But I persist. "It will only take a couple sentences. You can write it here."

Casting Marthe a glance, Madame Celestine rummages through her purse and pulls out a pen. She leans closer to Marthe and looks at the mayor, as if waiting for a cue. Soon Madame Celestine implores him for assistance: "Mayor, could you help us with the wording?"

Crossing his arms, he retorts, "No. You should know how to do it!"

"But please, Mayor. You know there's a certain way to write these things."

"It's simple. Just write. It's your day, and you don't even know how to make up the invitation? Ha!"

Benôt's eyes chortle. He slides a pen across his moustache. Madame Celestine proceeds to sound out the words for the invitation. Marthe transcribes, all the while looking up for affirmation from the mayor. Once finished, they pass it reluctantly across the bench. The invitation reads: We would be honored by your attendance at the International Women's Day Celebration, March 8, 1999, 11 o'clock.

"Great," I tell them. "I'll make copies when I go to the city."

By the end of the meeting, Madame Celestine had restored her own hopeful force. In a flowy mango dress, her stern reserve had transformed into joy, and she wandered from office to office, greeting everyone, spreading cheer around the corridors.

The day before the celebration, Madame Celestine and I meet one-on-one to reconfirm some details. Her work in mobilizing the women, her determination and faith have been tremendous, and I thank her.

"No," she says, "we should thank you." Then she takes off her glasses and looks
at me. She says, "You have taken us out
of obscurity."

Obscurity.

Until that moment, in Beninois French, I had only heard l'obscurité used in reference to night, particularly a night when the moon hides past midnight. There is the shimmering web of stars, but virtually no light. In moonless conditions and without electricity, familiar places appear threatening. People confine nocturnal habits to the indoors. Even with lanterns, most people demur from venturing outside. My adoptive papa once explained that at the end of every moon cycle there is an unstated fear that the darkness will never end.

I have a similar fear when Madame Celestine uses "obscurity" to name the place of women. I look at her, neither of us knowing whether there really will be a celebration tomorrow.

Erica Vleeg ('96) served as a Peace Corps volunteer form 1997-1999 in Benin, West Agrica. In June 2001, she earned her master's in humanities from the University of Chicago, where she received the Ruth Murray Memorial Prize from the Center of Gender Studies for an essay on ritual of female initiation in Benin. She attends the M.F.A. program in creative nonfiction at the University of Iowa and instructs undergraduate classes in literature. She is writing a book about her experiences with the people of Benin.