cultural differences

i realize that there are many cultural differences between american culture and beninese culture. due to a situation that occurred last week, i am becoming more sensitive to these issues. my host family had a girl working for them named asana. she was 17 yrs old and lived several hours away from cotonou. i quickly noticed that the family was not exactly nice to her. she worked very hard from 6 am to 12 or so at night doing everything from cooking to bathing ida's daughter to cleaning. she did it all. nevertheless, ida would get angry with her for not doing things correctly and threatened to slap her several times. i really felt sorry for this girl and i would try to do little things for her just to make it easier for her. for example, one day i brought ida home a brownie and i gave asana a cookie or i'd let her have half my pop. just little things like that. however, i didn't let ida know i was doing these things. i also let assana use my cell phone to call her family b/c who better than i knows what it is like to be apart from your family living with strangers.
anyway, so last week everyone was taking turns listening to my mp3 player. the little boys were listening with one ear phone each, ida had a turn and she was dancing around the yard, we were just having a good time. the next day, asana asked if she could listen to it. i said, of course, but when they boys were done b/c they were listening at the time. to make a long story short, ida caught asana listening to it while sitting on her bed. then later that night when i asked for my mp3 player back from ida, it was not where she left it. she accused the little boys of moving it and woke them up, had them search all around. then she accused asana of having taken it. after much yelling in both french and fon, i was feeling really guilty b/c for me it wasn't worth waking up the whole house to get the player back. i could just find it in the morning. however, it wasn't a question of the mp3 player, it had turned into a question of respect.
ida was angry that asana had the audacity to ask to use my cell phone and listen to my mp3 player when i was clearly in a position of authority over her. since i am older than her, she has to respect me and it was a question of disrespect that she asked to do these things. apparently there had been an instance when we were in the same room and she was sitting and i was standing. i don't even remember this and would certainly not have found it remarkable, but they said it was extremely disrespectful for her not to have offered me the seat since i'm her elder. i suppose that in some ways we have the same idea, but i wouldn't consider someone only 5 yrs older than me an elder. anyhow, ida was so angry that i think she beat her the next morning, but i'm not certain and the next day she sent her back home.
i asked ida to please let me know if i ever do anything disrespectful or out of line like that. she was really nice and said that of course she'd let me know and i'm her little sister, that's why she looks out for me. maybe it is for the best that asana went home b/c i know that it wasn't easy for her here, but i am also concerned about how her family is going to do without the income b/c she clearly needed it. hopefully everything will be alright.