I miss quality control, justice, soup, chilli, and order.

I’ve been sick with diarrhea and fever for the past 3 days. Everything is different in Benin, including illness. The diarrhea I experience here is unlike anything I knew back home. I’m talking 72 hours of yellow colored water shooting out of my ass. Yes this may be TMI and sorry if you’re eating but at least you can drive to a Wendy’s or Panera bread and get chili or soup to ease your discomfort if you so choose to do so.  At least you can run to a toilet and throw-up or shit instead of being stuck to a plastic bucket for most of the day. At least when you buy frozen chicken you know that there is a temperature that that chicken has been kept at and you don’t have to worry so much about getting salmonella poisoning from eating it. Ok, I’ll get back to my story now.

Despite being sick for most of this week I’ve been determined to get work done because most of June I was away from my village. So I went to my ONG on Monday, Health Center on Tuesday, and planned a Moringa session for Wednesday. BTW, riding a bike with diarrhea is not a good idea and that is my main form of transportation. I’ll just leave that at that. Monday morning had my weekly meeting at my ONG and stopped by my health center to inform the head that I’d like to do a session on Moringa transformation. He was all on board and said he’d inform the staff. Monday night things started going downhill and the chamber pot came out and stayed out for the remainder of that night. Broke out with a fever in the night and then Tuesday morning pulled myself out of the bed, popped two aspirin, and visited the latrine before heading off to go do some growth monitoring. I scarcely made it through that and rushed back home for the rest of the day.

I woke up 10pm Tuesday night so hungry and realized I hadn’t eaten anything all day. I didn’t have my tools on hand. I usually have some bread or hot cereal on hand to eat when I get sick, but because market day wasn’t until Wednesday l was not prepared.   It was raining so I went to sit on my porch and enjoy one of the things that bring me a little comfort here- thunderstorms. I’m sitting on my porch trying to hide its cries with the sounds of the storm when I get a text from a village friend, my English club work partner. He was sending it to check in but since he was the only one that had that night I was honest with him (maybe not as honest as I’ve been with you all) and told him that I was sick and hadn’t eaten all day. I thought I scared him away and then 15 minutes later he called me letting me know he was on his way over. He had told his wife about my situation and she cooked me hot cereal and sent that over with some mint vodka infused with medicinal roots. This act of kindness was made even more special because of the fact that it was raining, and Beninese are known to stop everything when it rains; school, work, I mean seriously everything. So I was very grateful and he hung out with me for a good 20 minutes. He is an English teacher and speaks better English than I’ve heard come from some Americans I know and so I was able to talk to him in English about my problems. At the end of the night I went to bed relieved, full, and slightly buzzed.

My landlady woke me up Wednesday morning from a very sound sleep talking about the electric bill. Or rather I should say trying to cheat me out of my money. Normally I get my bill see the amount, we divide it between five houses and everyone pays their part. I don’t know why this morning she felt she could call me up give me a price and just expect me to pay it. No, no, no. So I drag my still very sick and tired self out of my bed to go meet her and discuss the bill and lady isn’t even at her office. I was heated. Mind you this is the same day that I’ve scheduled a training on Moringa with my health center. My plan was to stay in my bed and save up energy until I had to go and do that.  Now back to this electric bill business, this is a common problem among many volunteers. Their landlords will try and unfairly divide the bill and give their friends a small amount (sometimes nothing) and get the volunteer, who in their mind is rich, to pay the bulk of the bill. As I said, not I. I end up talking it out with my supervisor and the next day everything was settled. Later on Wednesday afternoon I show up at my health center and of course the head of the center who I spoke with Monday has not informed anyone, everyone is clueless, he himself is off travelling somewhere, and on top of that the Midwife is a bitch (this is nothing new though) and ignores me when I speak to her. After dealing with my landlady that morning I had no more energy to expend on being angry. I just chuckle, go back home and get in bed for the rest of the day.

Frustrations like that may seem small to you reading this, but these are the things that really make me miss America. In America, we have laws and regulations for how things need to work and if people do not follow these laws and regulations you can call the police or some other higher up and they will go to prison or at least get fined. Here, yeah there are laws but hardly anyone including the police follows them and those who do can be paid off so they might as well not even exist. In America time is money. If someone is late are doesn’t follow through with a task they can be held responsible, you have the right to be angry with them. Here, no one even understands why you’re angry and say things like “God doesn’t rush”. Bitch I’m not God. There are many things that happen here every day that I don’t post on this blog because I don’t want to give a tainted vision of Benin. Because I honestly do love this country and I love what it is doing for me as a person. But there are times when everything happens at once, when you miss your family and haven’t talked to your mom in 4 months, you’re sick and your comforts aren’t around, you want chicken soup but you can’t trust the chicken, you want chili and there is no Wendy’s or ground beef to be found, or when you just want things to make sense and nothing does.
 

I’m still alive and kicking…

For all the people that told me that I’d never amount to nothing, and for them tricks that always talked smack and tried to hold me back when I was just trying to get through life, and all the outcasts in the struggle. Know what I’m saying, baby, baby…

I haven’t exactly “made it” yet but I feel myself closer than I’ve ever felt before. Arriving in this country there were things I never thought I had the strength to do. Like stand before 50 plus people and speak in English and French. Break my own rules. Run 35km .Accept myself as God has made me. Open myself to help. Acknowledging my strengths, limits, faults. And so much more. I may be even closing in on choosing a career (I know let’s have a moment of silence for that one).

So reading that last passage you may think that Benin has been cake for me. I do not want to lie, because it hasn’t. It’s been hard as hell and I judge no volunteer who decides to peace out before 2 years.  But honestly, all the hardships that it offers just make it that much more meaningful. There are still moments where I wonder if I’m cut out for this, where I cry my eyes out, where I think it might be better for me to pack it all up. But I pull through and for me this is how:

1. I pray. We all have our own ways of doing this. For some it may be manifested in meditating or yoga but for me I’ve gotten through some of my toughest moments by taking a few minutes of my time and just praying and talking to Allah.

2. Thinking about the struggles I’ve experienced in my past. When I’m facing difficulties here I like to think back on times that challenged me in the past and think about how I got through them. I like to think about how they made me stronger in the end. And think about how no matter what, when I manage to get to the next day, the problems never seemed as bad as they did the day before.

3. Putting me first. I know I’m here to help the people but I can’t help anyone if I’m not OK first. So I do whatever I need to do to stay sane. Everyone may not agree with my methods. For example, I don’t like being called out of my name (refer to previous blog for more info), and no matter how much I tell people this they still continue. So my solution is that wherever I go my headphones go with me, sometimes I have them in without music. I ignore everyone that  I don’t want to talk to between my home and my destination and when I run into someone later and they’re like “oh hey I said hello to you the other day and you ignored me” I tell them I didn’t hear them. Problem solved. Peace Corps encourages integration, but I’m integrated enough and if this is what I have to do to not get frustrated every time I leave my house this is what I’ll do.

SN: Maggie is back and possibly pregnant!!!

Home is where the heart is

June has been a crazy month. . .

• ·         I participated in a cross country relay run

The so I ran/walked 35k in the Benin sun. Not easy work for a girl of my size and under the African sun but I did it for the girls and to finance gender equality projects and I don’t regret one step.

• ·         Benin received 54 new volunteers

It was really great seeing the new volunteer’s fresh off the plane in Benin. Through their questions and enthusiasm I was brought back down and forced to refocus on why it was I set out to do this journey a year ago. Welcome to Benin you all, enjoy the ride!

Words of wisdom: The hardest thing to do at times is to notice self-change. We change a little every day, and we never stop. Think about where you are now and where you were 5 years ago. Note the old you and the you today, congratulate yourself for your growth and accomplishments and set out to change your faults. 

• ·         I was chosen to be a one of the trainers for these volunteers

Training was heavy but definitely useful. I tend to get along better with people older than me than I do with people my same age.  It was definitely helpful getting a better understanding of why us people of the “millennium generation” are the way we are .

• ·         I helped redo a training manual for other health volunteers

Long and hard work but paying it forward so that the next group has it even a little easier than I have had it is always worth it.

• ·         I celebrated one year in Benin

This basically means that good food is only one year away from my grasp.

• ·         I was a counselor at a week-long girl’s camp.

Around 50 girls from the tops of their classes were chosen to spend a week in the city of Djougou, for some it was there first time ever getting a chance to leave their village. Seeing girls come in at the beginning of the week shy and closed off and leave at the end open and empowered made every second of this week worth it. Some of these girls opened up to me and it is really heartbreaking when you hear what life has thrown at them already in only 16 years of living. I felt honored to be a part of this week, sorry Camp Ramapo, but one week of Camp Success made this my best summer ever.  And I was chosen to be one of the two directors of camp next year. I said a BOOM CHICKA BOOM!

Unfortunately this all meant that I had to be MIA from my village for four weeks. Time away from village is tougher for some volunteers than others. I personally don’t like it and try to avoid it when I can. For one, when your village doesn’t see you for a month they all think you’ve gone back to America and when you show back up are all looking for “les bons choses de là-bas”, or in English, presents. Also when you’re gone for that long you feel overwhelmed with work, or at least I do. I feel like as the volunteer of my village and I owe them a certain amount of work. It’s a really weird type of guilt. The final thing that really sucks from being away from village for a long time is that if you have a pet, like my sweet ball of fur Maggie, they tend to go missing. There aren’t any places that babysit animals, hell children for that matter. If you don’t live close to any Americans you can’t just leave the animal in your house give someone a key, and expect someone to come in and feed her and for nothing to be missing when you get back. So you leave your animal outside but even if you give your neighbors food to give her while you’re gone it doesn’t guarantee that your neighbors will do that or that they won’t wonder into someone’s sauce before you get back.  So my month was productive, inspiring, and an eye-opener to too many things, but the downfall is that Maggie is goneL. 

A Surprise Voodoo Celebration

You never know what a day will be like here. You wake up with a plan, a hope for what you would like to accomplish and you let Benin do the rest.  Two weekends ago I thought I was going to give a lesson to my Care Group on making hand washing stations with using a small amount of resources. I did accomplish my goal for the day but then things took a surprise turn. First mistake, deciding to attend a celebration without knowing beforehand exactly what type of celebration it would be. I was invited to this particular party by a work partner in the village of Kikele, about 7km away from me. She explained that it was an annual celebration of her family. So I assumed it would be a typical Beninese celebration where I'd get fed, so I definitely wasn't saying no to that. 

It began with her leading me behind a cluster of houses where a tent had been set up with chairs underneath. Men, women, and children were dressed in their finest clothes. I sat with the immediate family of my work partner and watched as a man with a small broom in his hand prayed over people and they in turn gave him money. He came and prayed over me in a language I didn't understand, he could have honestly been praying that I give him all of my money and I wouldn't have known. I gave him 200cfa, which is less than 50cents and he went on his way. Once this was finished a traditional music troupe began to play and it was then that things began to get a little strange.

The crowd started to move toward the music and dance. I noticed women were really absorbed in their dancing, even more than I have observed at other Beninese celebrations that I've attended. One women was dancing with her eyes closed, sweating profusely and then had to be carried away to sit down. It is then that I noticed a large male goat tied next to a small mound of clay dirt with brown liquid poured into the dent that had been made on top. People began kneeling around this mound and praying on their money before dropping it to the ground. The intensity of their faces while praying is what really fascinated me. As far as I could see they were just praying to a mound of dirt. It wasn't until I asked someone next to me that I understood what it was that I was witnessing.

The woman told that it was a voodoo celebration and the people on the ground were praying to their voodoo Gods for help with various problems in their life.  The cousin of my work partner explained that some people were praying for their families and ancestors and then knelt down and started praying herself. I know that my co-worker comes from a Muslim family yet this was what everyone was taking turns doing. At that time people began to clear from the around the mound and four men brought the goat over.  At this point I knew what was happening. They were going to sacrifice this animal. It wasn't my first time seeing an animal sacrificed. What surprised me were all the small children around. Children still in their mothers’ arms were watching as the goats neck was held over the mound and cut. Blood squirted into the dent and I was close enough to it all to get blood on my foot. Some children were closer than that.

The dancing was started again and this time with even more intensity. At one point a woman started screaming in local language. My new-found interpreter explained that the woman had been possessed by the spirit of her ancestors and was eliciting all the pain that they had experienced. She was recalling the wrong the Europeans had done to her family and was literally crying at this point. Since I was the only American at this function I felt this was the best time for me to make my exit. I slid out the back and as I was saying goodbye to the family of the coworker, two elderly women walked by and threw two bowls of water on me. My coworker assured me that this was not done with bad intent. At any rate, I was now confused and wet. So I found the first taxi-moto I saw and made a quick exit home.

So I wasn't completely lied to, it was a "family celebration".  It was held to bring together a family for the purpose of celebrating being a family. It was a celebration connecting family members present and those who have already passed. In celebrating the family they had to also recognize the pain that their family had experienced. I noted that Christians and Muslims were worshiping the voodoo mound. I believe that that is because Voodoo is something that is significant to the culture of their family’s culture; something which I have also found to be significant to the culture of the Beninese in general. This is the opinion from an outsider looking in. 

The highs are high and the lows are low

Back to give you all an update on my life here. How yuh do’in? Me, Im fine.

You know, there are many things that set a Peace Corps volunteers experience apart from other international programs but the biggest that I have remarked is that we live with the people. We’re not just visiting. For most Peace Corps countries and especially Benin we’re not given a posh apartment with all the luxuries of home to the point that we don’t realize we’re in a foreign country until we step foot outside. Through living with our communities we learn their beliefs; we adapt to and sometimes adopt their culture. I've now been in this country for 10 months. I’m amazed by how much I've been able to become habituated to and then still at times I’m amazed by how many other things I’m still not used to.

Things I am used to:

-Fetching water out of well and carrying it on my head to my home everyday

-Hand washing clothes in buckets

-Washing dishes in buckets

-Bucket baths; outside rain showers

-Pooping in a hole

-Riding a motorcycle/moped as my main form of transport

-Goat poop on my front stairs

-Spiders hanging out in my home, I realize that they’re there to protect me

-Being disconnected, I use internet once a month whereas when I was in the states I used it once a day

-Recognizing social cues

-Wearing skirts everyday

-Riding a bike everyday
-Communicating in French

-Having worms, it really is the best diet plan

-Daily power outages

-Riding in a 5 person car with 8 people and a goat

-Waiting

-Disputing prices “You want 2,000cfa for that shirt? That’s expensive. I’ll give you 1000cfa. No? OK bye. I’ll go to the next 10 shirt ladies”

-The food. Care for a spaghetti and rice sandwich anyone? Yeah.

-Taking fat as a compliment. “Tu as bein grossi” You have well fattened. Thanks… -_-

Things I am not used to:

-Being called outside of my name
-Communicating in local language

-Lack of customer service

-Fatalist frame of thinking, ou bien “I have six children if my seventh is sick and ready to die I’m not going to worry or go buy him medicine because at least I’ll have six still living”

-Working with people who think they have no control over their future

I’m sure I’m missing some things but for now that’s it. Well hey, would you look at that. The list of things I’m not used to is shorter than the list of things I am used to. That must mean something good. Sometimes I hate this country; other days I love it so much I think I’ll never leave. But hey, it was the same when I was in America. 

March Madness

This last month has been the most productive month I’ve spent in country so far. I can actually say I’ve been busy. Most times I don’t realize how much I’m doing until someone asks what it is that I do and I have to list everything. The end of February was spent for the most part in trainings. There was one training for Moringa and one for my Amour et Vie team (see older posts for definitions). I really enjoyed the Amour et Vie training because it gave me a chance to form relationships with my team members. Both were really beneficial and informative. Plus, I had a chance to see other volunteers and bake a cake for 2 birthdays and make mac & cheese because, well, does anyone really ever need a reason to make mac & cheese or waffles? I finally started my Moringa tree nursery, planted 35 trees and only 10 survived but hey it’s a start. And now I’m a part of the Moringa initiative.

I’ve started consistently doing weekly baby weighing’s and consultations at the health center. It was hard getting started with this because my health center is so busy during vaccination days (we see at least 50 or so mothers and children) and this is the only day possible day to do the weighing’s, but after discussing its importance with the health workers we’ve been able to fit it in. Which was made possible by me being partially excused from paperwork (which can be a headache anyhow) and allowed to solely focus on the weighing’s. And if I see, after weighing, that a child is underweight I tell the mother to wait a few minutes of to the side and then I go counsel her on what she’s doing and what she can do to improve the health of her child. I then give her a follow-up meeting so I can check to see if there was any weight gain.

After the trainings I realized that I only had two weeks to spend in village before our next mandatory trainings on nutrition and sanitation so I went a bit into panic mode. I had so much to get done. However, In two weeks span I managed to fit in three primary school meetings, prepare a Hygiene & Sanitation pre-test to the primary school students, hold two care group meetings, do two baby weighings, one Amour et Vie meeting, one English club meeting, launch my health club, and finish and submit my 6 month report on my work. I tap myself on the back for my efficiency and send a big thank you to to-do lists and calendars. 

By the way, can you believe that by the end of this month I would have already spent 9 months in this country? 9 months, that’s one third of my service already finished. That’s a human life being created. That’s a long freaking time. That leaves only 18 more months until back in the land of fast-food. 

A Colorful Observation

“Matice” “La blanche” “Yovo” all local names I go by in my village, or rather what the locals who don’t know me like to call me. You see, I don’t actually respond to these. The first one means “mixed” in French, the second means “the white” in French, and the third means “whitey” in local language. The local kids even have a song “Yovo Yovo, Bonjour/Bonsoir. Ca Va bien? Merci!” (Whitey, whitey, Good morning/ Good evening. It’s going well? Thank you!) Cute right? Some volunteers here think so too. Frankly, I find it all rather annoying and for the most part I ignore anyone, whether they are little kids, old men, teenage girls, or the king himself who calls me by them.  Before I came to Benin, I had this idea in my head, expectations so to speak. I think most African-Americans (I find this classification funny now) do as well. I had this expectation that I’d be returning to home, that I’d feel I don’t know . . . something. No, I didn’t think I’d run into my great great grands here or find my “roots”. But maybe I was expecting just a bit more recognition, welcoming is perhaps the word I’m looking for. But there hasn’t been much of that. Short of a few long conversations not many people recognize what or who I am. They don’t really get that someone who looks like me cannot be white, not be black, and not be just mixed.

Now understand that the children don’t say it to be mean, it’s what their parents teach them to say. I’ve seen mothers (my own neighbor) teaching their 1 year old how to say Yovo while pointing at me. I don’t get how they can’t find that somewhat rude. Well maybe I do. My French teacher explained it to my language group when we first arrived that back before the independence of Benin, 63 years ago the French would give the kids candy if they sang at them. So it stuck. Today being called Yovo is a compliment to the locals here. When women have babies with light skin they call them Yovo, albinos are called Yovo, and adults with light skin take pride in being called Yovo. When I have the time and energy I stop and tell them how impolite I find it but I can’t change a tradition. I can however not give it any positive reinforcement of my own. “La blanche” is a different story. I usually get that from creepy men who in their warped mind think I’m going to be flattered by it. Yuck. So why do I really mind? First off, I’m not white and I’m not mixed, at least not in the way that they understand it to be, which is that I have a white parent and an African parent. Neither of my parents is white and when someone asks where in Africa my parents come from I can’t give an answer.  Second, I’m still used to it being politically incorrect, even if they don’t see it that way. After I express my dislike for it they should at least respect that right? Lastly, in my family we’ve been taught that being called out of your name is impolite. Getting them to understand the concept of African-American has been really difficult. I think maybe I’m beginning to see why.

I told you that I met a Czech couple around New Year’s. When I first saw them in the market we did the “I spot another yovo glance” where you see a foreigner, they look at you, you look at them and you both try to listen to each other’s French to find out where the other is from. I thought she was French at first, and she was talking to her husband and they both obviously assumed I was mixed. I heard her call me “Matice”.  I corrected her and said I was American. She responded “no but your color” I told her I was African-American, she responded so you’re “mixed”? That’s when I started to get it. That night I had dinner with the same couple and she told me how in Czech her husband is pointed out for his skin color and her children are seen as outsiders. I’ve heard similar things from a friend I know that’s been to India and another I know that’s been to Spain.  In these regions prejudice is outright. You are defined in great part by your color, the lighter the better. I won’t go on to say that in America we are so much better off and I definitely won’t go on to say that prejudice doesn’t exist. But at least we know that to be American means more than just to be a color or speak a language. My friend from Czech told me that in Czech there really aren’t any dark skinned people. There just hasn’t been any opportunity for Africans to really immigrate there. I never thought it possible before coming here that places existed where you could live a lifetime and never meet a person whose color is different than yours. I told her she’s doing her part to better her country by marrying a Beninese man.

I remember a woman I met a little after that who had light skin and wavy hair. Her mother was from Germany and her father from Benin. She said she gets the “matice” and “yovo” as well but she classifies herself as Beninese. Not German-Beninese. I started thinking, are the titles African-American, hell even Caucasian, really doing us justice? Do dark skinned French people have to classify themselves as African-French; in Spain, African-Spanish; or in Britain, African-British? When I think about it, and boy I’ve had nothing but time to do just that, we literally and figuratively are so much more than that. Sure, if you have to classify by color, I can sort of understand black and white. But then again we have so much more than that flowing through our veins and continuously being added that those titles are not enough to accurately describe who we are. At least not today, not anymore they aren’t. Maybe at one point they were. Maybe at one point white and black did the job of accurately describing a person. But today we’re all really mixed and with more than just African and Caucasian. What about our Native-American roots? Which I can’t really count unless I’m what is it, 1/8^th and documented? How do I know I don’t have some Irish or Greek or Hispanic in me? What measurement of what am I? I don’t know and unless I’m willing to fork out a few thousand dollars I never will, and even then who really knows. I find it easy now, if I feel up to putting in the effort, to just say that I’m American. And if I’m asked about my color I say that “Il y a beaucoup des types des gens aux Etats-Unis. Tous les monde est ensemble.” That usually assuages their curiosity or leaves them confused enough to leave me the hell alone.  

New year, new projects, and a new niece to spoil

So this month has been a particularly productive one I am proud to say. Last I let you all know I had just applied for a grant, I found out a week ago that it was approved so that was exciting. The grant is going to help me host a opening ceremony for my Care Group (see last post). Its a Gender and Equality grant which I was able to apply for because my Care group ceremony will help to set an example of how women can be leaders and take charge of the development of their community. At the ceremony, which I hope to have the first week of March, I will give the women uniforms and certificates and they will be recognized as leaders by other leaders in the community. Hopefully this will also give them confidence and get the community to back them. I'll let you all know how it goes and Ill take pictures! Even though I cant actually post them half the time. 
I planted Moringa seeds with my Health Center at my health center this month and hopefully all 35 grow healthy. I plan to use the seeds and leaves from the trees in my future nutrition classes. I'm kinda using this garden as a pilot to see how it goes and if it goes well I'm going to do even more with it in the village over with my care group. I'm starting a health club at the second secondary school in my village, I think I told you all that I have an English club going on at one secondary school but now I'm hoping to work with the second. Even though its a little far out for me I think It will be good to give the students a chance to participate in an extracurricular activity. Oh! More good news! I finished my survey that I was working on for my care group, we did a total of 104 mothers and my partner wants me to come back and do "Au moins" 20 more just to reach some houses in other areas so that mothers don't feel left out. I'm with it. I think it was overall a good idea to do the surveys, even though they were time consuming it was good to get my face seen in the community and build rapport with the mothers, husbands and children on a personal level before I start bringing new ideas to them. In February I plan on having my first couple of meetings so cross your fingers for me and hope that all ten or so mama leaders mesh well. Work wise I think that's all that I'm working on at this moment. Next month I do plan on hosting monthly Baby weighing's and  nutrition classes, and Ill be starting the real work with my Amour et Vie team. We had a training, this morning actually, on reporting our work here so that's like big girl homework that Ill have to work on next month that's due in March. 

I made resolutions the beginning of this month and so far I've been keeping to them so I pat myself on the back for that. 

2014 Resolutions

1)    Become a healthier person

2)    Become spiritually sound

3)    Improve French

4)    Become prepared for life after Peace Corps

5)    Eradicate negative relationships

      I've been running twice a week, attending Friday prayer more, taking my french tutoring more serious, looking at GRE info, and paying better attention to who I let have access to me

In funner news this month my health center hosted a new years party and it was a blast. I made peanut butter cookies that everyone thought were too sweet (the Beninese in general don't like sweets). I actually had one man try to get out of eating them by telling me the sugar here is not safe and may have poison in it. I was like dude, if you don't like the cookies don't eat them "You aints gotsa lie Craig". But I ate good that night, we had two dinners. The first was chicken with rice au gras (rice with fried pasta and veggies) then we danced our butts off (them more so than me) and then we ate Akassa (fermented jelloey flour type stuff) with a tomato and onion sauce and fried fish. It was all pretty good and Maggie ate well. Shes getting so big! And she has already killed a lizard and three mice on my watch. So proud of her. Despite all the work Ive been doing ive actually been away from post this month more than I typically am. I went mountain climbing with my girls and then went to Cotonou to meet up with them again and take care of some business and now Im away again for the training. I dont like being away but looking at all that ive accomplished I don't feel that bad for have treated myself to a little internet, good food, and good company.  I deserve it. 

I don't want to leave on a low but I don't want to leave out the fact that my niece was born (yay!) and no one in my family thought to call, text, or message me until over a week later. I get that people are busy, but it really isn't that hard to email or send a FB message. And using that excuse is kind of like saying you're too busy for me. But oh well, I guess that's life for this PCV. I thought I may have been over reacting but I talked to other volunteers and its unanimous that that's messed up. Its also not normal, I thought maybe many other volunteers have faced this type of thing but no. It really is just that my family is slack. Im pretty confident that if I hadn't called when I did back in September that I wouldnt have found out about my great-grandmas passing until weeks later. Im also sure that if something does happen in my family I wont find out until way too late. Nonetheless, I am happy that my niecey pooh is here, well, and beautiful.  I am now the proud aunt of one niece and one nephew who's turning 4 in 11 days. By the time I get back my niece will be almost 2 and my nephew almost 6. That is just insane. 

I think thats where ill leave it for now folks. Its currently 4am in the morning here and Im streaming the State of the Union address but I think im like 20 minutes behind now. Don't forget me, Im still alive over here you know. A special thank you to everyone who sent me a card or letter or reached out to me in someway. It really means more than you know. 

Je suis Bassiloise

Writing this post has made me quite anxious for the past two months. The further and further away I grew from my last post the more and more anxious I became about writing another one. But I promised  a blog and if there is one thing that makes me loathe myself it’s when I say I’m going to do something and I don’t follow through. I won’t even go into giving reasons because despite their legitimacy I’m sure they will all just sound like excuses to anyone else reading them. So let me jump right in:

September:

After worrying (not really worrying) about whether I would reach the required French level of Intermediate High, I reached it as did everyone else in my stage. September 14th I swore in as a provisional volunteer. We all swore in this year as provisional volunteers which just meant we had certain assignments that we had to complete before the next training in December and that we’d be supervised a little closer. Basically probation. Swear in was great. It was held in Cotonou in the ambassador’s backyard. We were given two tickets for our host family and my host mom and host brother came. All rural community health volunteers were looking sharp. We all wore a matching fabric. The whole process was very democratic but in the end two girls ended up picking and they did a pretty very good job. We recited our pledge to serve and they even allotted the option to refrain from saying “So help me God” if one so chose to do so. It was sad saying goodbye to the host family that I had spent my first two months in the country with and who had helped me deal with the emotions that came with. But we promised and so far we have kept in contact. I know it’s early to say but I really believe that they will be a part of my life for a very long time.

Settling in to my new home was a smooth transition. My bed frame was ready and in my home the first night so I didn’t have to sleep on the floor. I ate an MRE (military meal) that my mother packed for my first night and I set up my gas tank the next day without blowing off my head. I didn’t have electricity the first night but that gave me the chance to soak up the significance of the moment. I was spending the night alone in my first home, in Africa. Wow. I burned some candles and sat on my porch looking up at the starlit sky and the magnitude of what I was doing put me into a state of deep meditation. I have never experienced anything like it in my life.

The next day my first visitors were three little girls (14, 11, and 7) and their little brother (4). I love speaking to children (those who don’t call me yovo) because they can understand and don’t judge my French.  We sat for about an hour and just talked about them and their schooling and the games they like to play. It can be creepy at times knowing that everyone in your village knows where you stay because you are the “yovo” but I was glad these kids found me. I read on someone’s blog that the first people you meet in village normally do not have the best intentions. While that has proven to be very true for some of the first people I’ve encountered, to this day these girls have remained good at heart. One woman I met my second day in walking through MY yard asked me for money, but unlike most little kids here these little girls still haven’t even once asked me for money. Ha-ha, this leads me to a funny story that happened in October …

October:

My birthday was October 2^nd and I had big plans for the weekend following. Since I was a provisional volunteer I knew I wouldn’t be travelling (we’re not allowed to for the first 3 months), but I was glad because that gave me a chance to celebrate a significant day in my life with people in my village. So the day of my birthday I treated myself to French fries. That night the girls visited me again I had informed them that it was my birthday a few days before so it was nice that they stopped by to wish me a “Joyeux Anniversaire”. So we’re standing on my porch and they say something about money, store, and candy/cookies in French and I assumed that the day had come for them to ask me for money and candy. I have a speech in French perfected by this point for anyone who asks me for money, food, and/or the clothes off my back. It basically goes “No. Not all Americans are rich. I am poor. I am a volunteer and this means that I work for free here and I do not make money.  I receive just a little so that I can eat and everything else you see me with is provided for by my organization, Peace Corps. So no, I cannot give you etc. etc.  ” All the while I’m giving this speech these girls are giving me a puzzled look and after I’m done talking the middle one pulls out a plastic bag and gives it to me and then repeats what she said. I misheard them! These little angels put THEIR money together to buy me assorted cookies and candy and just wanted to give me a gift. I cannot describe how big of an asshole I felt at this moment. Here these kids are having just put their spare change together to buy me something and I give them a speech about I do not have any money to give them. Biggest lesson learned so far has been that not everyone thinks I’m a whitey with money.

That weekend I held a dinner at a local restaurant and invited my host family, my partner and his family, and another work partner I work with at the health center. I invited a man who helped me set up my gas tank who brought me a cake and played happy birthday on a guitar but it turned out that he didn’t have the best intentions so we’re actually no longer in contact. Still, the guitar was cool. The dinner was great though. They even had the restaurant play country music for me in English. I danced with the kids and we ate and had a really good time. And that was how I spent my birthday week.

October 15^th was Tabaski which is an Islamic holiday, which I’ve known my entire life as Eid Al-Adha. I didn’t put two and two together until I heard talks of animal slaughtering, then I became excited. I went to the Mosque the morning for the prayer. I was then trampled trying to give candy away to kids. Note to the wise: just throw it on the floor in the opposite direction of yourself if you want to keep your clothes and dignity intact. I ate at my work partners house, was brought food from my neighbor, was gifted a Coke from a store, and gifted a hunk of fresh killed meat from my host family. I believe it was goat; there was still fur on it so I could have done a DNA check. I made it with gravy and rice the first night and as a soup the next. I’m not a butcher but I’d say I did a pretty damned good job salvaging this hunk of meat.

My work this month mainly consisted of helping with vaccination day and giving advice to mothers with malnourished children at the health center and helping at my NGO with seminars they had already started way before I arrived on women’s rights.  I started my study of my village this month which included going house to house and asking about the family’s hygiene practices and food security surveys. I worked with a translator who translated my French to more understandable French or local language for those who didn’t speak French. I also started an English club which was very easy to start up. I just announced one morning at a flag ceremony and there was already a teacher who had tried it the year before and was excited to work with me this year. This is the highlight of my week because for two hours every Friday I am the one with the superior language skills.

November:

November was spent completing my study, writing up my report, and forming a Care Group and Amour et Vie team. So like what the hell are those I am sure you are asking yourself.  So every RCH (rural community health) volunteer is expected to form a Care Group and Amour et Vie (Love and Life) team. The former, Care Group, is a team of 10 women that I and another health advisor from the community will train on various health topics. These women will be assigned 10 houses and after each of our trainings they will be responsible for passing on the information they have received. In this manner approximately 100 houses will be reached. It’s a really effective program; it’s just been a bitch getting off the ground. Before I start I have to go to at least 100 houses and form surveys on the maternal care, hygiene, and nutrition practices. This is so that I can group in my mind the 10 houses the mothers will touch and collect baseline data. Yay monitoring and evaluation. I’m close to finishing my surveys, 40 down and only 60 to go. Pray for me.

Amour et Vie is another team I will be forming. This consists of me, a health advisor from the community, and two responsible youth from the community, one boy and one girl. Unlike with the Care Group I will serve more as a mentor with this team and guide the youth while they design and deliver lessons on various health topics to other youth in the community. The motto is “For the youth, from the youth”, or something like that. Also unlike my Care Group, My Amour et Vie team was much easier getting off the ground, but that’s because my NGO basically chose my members for me. In retrospect this wasn’t the best way to go about this since I’ve had to kick off one member and choose an alternative. But I think my team is pretty solid now.  I’ve been holding monthly trainings with them up until we’re scheduled to start work in February, in part to get them prepared but also just to see how the team works together. So far so good. 

Oh, thanksgiving was awesome. I celebrated the weekend after thanksgiving. I traveled two hours south to spend it with other volunteers and made some of my famous baked macaroni and cheese. We had chicken, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, rolls, green bean casserole, apple pie and a pumpkin cake. I still find it amazing that we were able to make all these things only using care package food and what we could scavenge in village. Good company and great food, or vice versa.

December:

From our thanksgiving celebration I and another volunteer traveled to Parakou for our weeklong post service training. We debriefed on our first 3 months at post and presented presentations with our work partners in French might I add. Score. I turned in my report and sat in for hours of training on monitoring and evaluating or projects according to Peace Corps new standards and how to carry out the behavior change model. Aside from that fun stuff, I had a chance to see my group and catch up on life. We were also in an awesome hotel with good food, a pool, air conditioning, Wi-Fi, and hot water. Taking a hot shower for the first time since being in this country was amazing. I celebrated the birthday of a friend and got my dance on. But at the end of the week I was sent to Cotonou for medical reasons and ended up stuck there for another week. More hot showers, good food, Wi-Fi, and air conditioning were great but I felt homesick and couldn’t wait to get back to my cozy home. There wasn’t anything too serious and I’m fine for the moment. I just have to go back in a couple of months.

Being surrounded by only French after spending two weeks around other English speakers can be a bit gloomy to say the least. So I picked my kitten that the restaurant across the street had promised me the moment I arrived back in village. She is adorable. I think it’s a she. With all the cats I’ve had in my childhood my mom has the right to be ashamed of me if I can’t decipher the sex of a cat by now. I named her Maggi, which is short for Magnolia, my favorite flower. She was the runt of her bunch when I picked her up but she is on an American based diet now and has fattened up nicely. She is doing so well now, she already killed a lizard!

Work wise I am now free to start side projects where as for the first few months we were only supposed to work on assigned tasks and integrate. This has proven to be a good strategy because I was able to identify many potential work partners and projects. For example I will be working with my health center to start a Moringa garden. Moringa is a plant native to Benin that is filled with vitamins and nutrients like protein which many mothers complain is expensive and out of reach here. It has been proven to be helpful in combating malnutrition if mothers incorporate it into their family’s daily meals. Unfortunately hardly anyone in my village has heard about it. So my project will be growing it so that 1) it is available and giving trainings on its benefits so that 2) people want to use it. I will also be starting a health club at the second high school in my village and giving bi-monthly hygiene lessons to three local primary schools. I have more things running around in my mind but I don’t want to take on too much at once so I’m going to take it slow.

I spent Christmas and New Year’s in village. I had no idea how big Bassila did their end of the year celebrations. There was a village wide party from Christmas until New Year’s Day. They held a development festival around this same time and a new Cyber Café opened up so there was a lot going on. I ate dinner at a friend’s house on Christmas. Then I met a nice couple while shopping the next day. The husband was originally from Bassila but had met and married his wife while studying in Czech. It was his first time back in 8 years and they brought their three kids for the first time. We met and had dinner that night. I’ll write another past in the future on that conversation... The next day the Cyber Café opened and hosted a march for development open for all the local youth to participate. The boy and girl who arrived in first place both received laptops, second place received cellphones, and third place received $30. I then attended a meeting with village leaders on the development of the village and the local language, Anii. It was very interesting, what little I did understand, and I’m excited about the ideas surrounding how we should handle trash. This is another post as well. The next day there was a traditional music festival (pictures to come). The day after that there was a soccer match, Ghana against Benin. 3-0 Benin kicked arse.New Year’s Eve I had a dance party with Maggi and fell asleep before midnight. New Year’s DayI was invited to two dinners in one day, oh and you know I made both. 

 January: 

So that brings us to today doesnt it. I just submitted my first grant proposal for a small project so thats exciting. I will let you know if I get approved

My Home Sweet Home

Post visit was a welcome break from the monotony I so despise. Post visit was a chance for all volunteers to spend two weeks at their future home for the next two years. It was so great for me because it let me know that in a month I won’t be in a classroom with the comfort of other Americans or patient professors who understand my botched French but that I will actually be doing what I imagined when I imagined my life in Benin. My village of 40,000 people is about two hours away from the largest cities North (Djougo) or South (Savalou). It has a good number of boutiques where I can find cold drinks and good cookies. There is also a restaurant where I can find French fries, yay! I will be living in a concrete house with a porch right across the street from the Mayor’s office and I will be working at the health center which is oddly placed right next to the hospital. My home has electricity but no running water, but my neighbor’s children have agreed to do that for me. I will try.

Now I get to start the fun stuff, now I get to start tech training and learn how to do the job I can here to do! SO far its been great, learning how to track my projects and measure their effectiveness. I will be learning how to do baby weighing's and track the growth of children. I'll learn how to make nutritive porridge to increase weight and health, and a bunch of other things  

French

One of my goals is to be fluent in French and Arabic by the time I leave here. Now that I’m here I realize that maybe I set my expectations too high. French is so difficult and I have history with it. I took French in high school for two years and in college for two semesters. The foreign language you learn in a classroom is different from the foreign language you actually use in the field. School is good for teaching you the basics, the structure of the language. It is impossible to truly learn a language by sitting in class or sitting in front of a computer. You have to be able to talk to native tongues. You need to hear the accents. I was warned before coming to Benin that the French spoken here is ehm, special. So true.

A Day in the Life of a Trainee

7am: Wake up

7:30: Eat breakfast, head out to class

8am: French class

10am: Break

10:30am: More French

12pm-ish: Lunch (beans and rice, pasta, bread, or fried plantain)

1:30pm: Even more French, cultural class of some sort, personal study time, French game time

5:00pm: Finish! Hang with the wonderful RCH, bike for an hour, or go home for even more French

7pm-ish: Return Home (help mama cook, French review with papa, sit awkwardly while everyone talks)

8pm: Eat dinner with the family, go to the masjid

9pm: Head to my room, shower, and study more, read, watch a movie, type up a blog post, or call home

11pm: Lights out

Pass the bush and to the left

My host family placement far exceeds my expectations. I must say, I really lucked out. In fact my colleagues have deemed me one of the “haves” as opposed to the majority being the “have not’s”. But they are lucky in that they get the gritty experience now as opposed to experiencing true shock when they arrive at post. Because it is highly likely that myself and the other volunteers will be living extremely rural. “En Buisson”, or in the bush. We are only here in the lovely village of Dangbo for 3 months and then we move on to our permanent post for the next two years. So it is very likely that I won’t have all of these conveniences for very long, but I’ll enjoy them while I do.

So what is it that makes me a have? Well I have a fridge for starters. Even though it is not used nearly as much as it should be, I have a full size refrigerator. In fact I’ve never seen an egg, or milk, or any other dairy product inside of it. They mainly use it for La Beninoise (the local beer), left overs, ice, and other things that really have no need to be refrigerated, but I take full advantage of its ability to provide me with cold water on a hot day. I also have coconut and papaya trees that provide me with deliciousness every day. As for my living quarters I pretty much have my own section of the house. I have a sitting room, a bed room, and an attached shower room. I still have to use a latrine outside but I actually find the latrine to work better for me. Gravity gets to really do its thing. I have a couch, a dresser, and a bed frame. In the family room where I eat my meals my parents have a pretty decent size TV (bigger than the one I had in my dorm room) and a sound system. My house is a 5 minute bike and an 8 minute walk away from the school which is wonderful.   The biggest luxury is that I have electricity! It does cut off unexpectedly but I hear that’s because Benin is in debt to Nigeria and they keep cutting the lights out as a way to conserve. But For the most part I always have charged electronics. However Dangbo does not have a Cyber Café and I am not able to afford an internet card on my stipend. Though I may invest in one for post if I’m not near a Cyber Café there either. 

My family is composed of a mama (over 50), a papa (over 50), a brother (24), 6 sisters (19, 27, 30,?, ?, ?), and a male cousin (between 14-19) who does most of the cooking and cleaning for the family but never eats with us. I think he may be living with us to go to school. I know that happens a lot here. However big my family seems, on a daily basis I only actually see my mama, papa, cousin, and neighbors on a daily basis. My siblings are spread out around Benin and all either in school, working, or married. I can tell I have pretty good parents because all their children seem super sweet and smart. My neighbors rent the house in front of mines from my papa, and from what my brother tells me they have been living there for a long time and are now more like family than neighbors. They consist of an aunt (no older than 25), a big niece (23) who is married but whose husband is away working, their son (1yr 8mths) who cries if I come within a foot of him but will smile at me from afar, and two little sisters (8 & 12). They all come over daily and the sister’s even taught me to wash my clothes in buckets. The big sister enjoys asking me to give her my clothes but I just laugh that off. The little sisters do so much work. I enjoy talking to them because they have weaker accents and take it easy on me when I mess up. My papa is a retired primary school teacher and my mama is a vendor of fabrics, beer, and other random things. On my property I have plenty of goats, chickens, and a dog named Yoopie that is 17 years old and going blind Oh and let me not forget about the squirrels that have been hanging out in my ceiling and fight or mate every night. They are so loud! And their poop sometimes falls through the cracks of my ceiling but luckily I sleep with my handy mosquito net every night that has come to protect me from so much more than mosquitoes.

I’m very happy here despite not having internet and I’ve already gone sightseeing with my brother. I saw “Fleuve Weme” wish is apparently the second largest river in the world. Its only 20 minutes away from me! It was breathtaking! It looked like the Africa you see in the movies. Again, I think I really lucked out with my host family and placement. I only hope I’m as lucky with my permanent site. I also love that the majority of the time I feel like an only child because I am able to have a decent amount of me time which I can use for studying French or just clearing my head.

Meeting Africa

Staging in Philly was brief so I’ll skip over that, the only important thing you need to know is that my last meal was amazing. Two ladies and I went to Joes Crab Shack and I indulged in a whole pot of crab legs, lobster claws, shrimp, and clams to myself along with chips and cheesy crab dip. I ate it all. That’s what’s important.

Everything since that has been astounding to me. Just skip the things that seem stupid to you because to me it is all incredible. I have never left the US and I have never been further west than Missouri so the entire flight from JFK to Brussels and then from Brussels to Cotonou had me ooh-ing and aah-ing. I can say I was in Belgium! Only for seven hours but I was there nonetheless. I was able to snag an authentic European croissant, one plain and one chocolate. Yum. I even had my first taste of being swindled abroad. No big deal I just had a hired official tell me that the terminal I was in only took euros when they certainly took USD and exchanged my money at a pretty pricey exchange rate. It all worked out in the end I assure you.  At the Brussels airport I took a picture of the toilet paper because it was different and so was the bathroom. The bathroom doors are so cool, they were full steel doors and in order to flush the toilet you just push a big button located on the tank of the toilet. I soon learned this wasn’t a big deal because in Benin if you are blessed with an actual toilet you will have to pull a knob to flush it.  Another European delight I was privileged to witness was the architecture. Even from the airport and looking from the airplane I was able to see the beautifully built cottages and the airport itself was constructed beautifully. Picture large steel beams painted white forming an arch above your head. Move on from Belgium and take off to Africa. Most of the flight was clouds but the plane had this really neat touch screen display that I could use to track my flights progress from Belgium to Cotonou and I was lucky enough to get a window seat. So when I saw that we were flying over Africa I looked out of the window and was finally able to see the African plains! I may have even spotted a pack of zebras! j/k. Haha.

I landed in Benin around 8pm-ish local time (the whole concept of time change in itself confuses me). The airport is a different world compared to JFK. For one thing we didn’t have a port (?) to walk through. No, we pretty much just walked right off the plane onto a bus with no seats and were taken to the zoo that Cotonou calls baggage claim. After rescuing my luggage I was finally able to make it out of the airport onto another bus to our hotel (?). We ate Pizza!!! And took our Malaria prophylaxis!!!  I must salute Peace Corps here. They did amazing with taking care of our lodging for the first few nights. I feel like we stayed in 5 star resorts compared to everything else I’ve seen these past two weeks. They fed us well, and gave us so much useful (cough cough) information. I’m serious about everything but the useful information. I understand why they had to tell us things like “be safe” and “be secure”. Turn on your RADAR, blah blah blah… but it wasn’t anything my mother didn’t tell me a thousand times or that I couldn’t and didn’t read for myself in the loads of books they gave us. Idk. Maybe I just bore easy, I’m sure it was very helpful for some of the others. However, I was very happy to see that most (all but two) of the staff were Beninese. I don’t know why this surprised my white washed mind so. It was very nice meeting the intelligent, poised professionals and being welcomed to their country, by them. I also had a chance to meet the ambassador of the country who kindly invited us to use his pool every Saturday, or maybe it was Sunday? I’ll find out eventually. I doubt I’ll be doing much swimming anytime soon with all of this “useful” information I’m receiving.

Aside from being welcomed by the lovely staff here I was also welcomed by a not so pleasant host. Hello humidity! Never did I know humidity until I arrived in Benin. The heat is fine. I love the African sun kissing my skin, nothing is better. But feeling stuck to myself all the time? Not so great. Benin really is beautiful, if you just look past the trash on the street and look up at the people or even higher to the trees. Or even higher than that at night and see a sky full of more stars you ever knew existed. If you observe the colorful fabrics, the beautiful dark skin, the tall trees ripe with fresh fruit it’s quite easy to be taken aback. What does Benin smell like? Depends on where you are I’d imagine. But from where I stand the majority of the time it smells like burnt trash. It reminds me of late afternoons in Bamberg, SC when my dad would burn trash, except its all the time here. Unless it smells like fumes but then its fumes + burnt trash, smoked fish + burnt trash, whatever’s cooking + burnt trash, etc. In Cotonou (the biggest city in Benin but not the capital) you may be fooled into thinking you are not in an underdeveloped country if you take in the tall buildings and well paved roads. But drive 15 minutes from the center in any direction and you will as soon as I did be hit with the reality. I know I quickly remembered my reason for being here. Cotonou is city loud, but Port-Novo (the actual capital) is a different type of loud. Close your eyes and imagine hundreds of voices talking in at least 5 or so languages at once, screaming pigs, goats, children, and horns honking. At the resort in Port-Novo I was blessed with the familiar sounds of the Adhan and Quran being recited in the background. Of course I was too preoccupied receiving “useful” information to make it -_- … I recant… I can’t really describe the food just yet since most of that I have been eating is pretty standard, rice, chicken, salad, yogurt, even the spices are pretty norm to me coming from an Islamic background. But Stay tuned. I just moved in with my host family and I’m sure I’ll soon be eating some traditional cuisine.