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.