Merry Christmas from Benin!

Merry Christmas guys!!! Since I couldn't go Christmas shopping this year, here's a substitute present. For all of you.  Fresh from Benin. Hope you enjoy :)  The video won't upload on my blog but you can see it here: http://beninlife.blogspot.com/

There are about 10 of us at the Nati workstation for Christmas - a lot of other volunteers went down to Grand Popo, a really nice resort beach area.  Yesterday (Christmas eve) we made a shopping list and bought all the food we'd need for today from the supermarche and outdoor, regular marche, so now we can stay in and watch movies and EAT.  You can make a surprising amount of Americanish stuff from ingredients you can find here.  Breakfast: cinnamon rolls and scrambled eggs, Lunch/Dinner: lasagna, salad, bruschetta, garlic bread, apple pie, brownies, cake.  This morning we started cooking to Elf, and now Glee is on. The workstation is decorated and we made paper snowflakes yesterday which helps it feel a little like Christmas.  It's still hard to believe, because it my mind it's still oh about...July.  I know time has passed, but it's gone by quickly and it also doesn't FEEL like Christmas (80 degrees...Christmas...what?!). 

I leave tomorrow morning (!!!) for a two day safari in Parc Pendjari, which is a few hours north of Nati.  Our guide is picking us up from the workstation and driving us up.  The park is supposed to be one of the best in West Africa because it has a lot of animals in a relatively small area.  It's also dry season which should increase our chances of seeing stuff.  Hopefully I'll have lots of pictures to put up.  The past few weeks have been really fast - I was in Porto Novo for IST (in service training) for a week, plus the two days it takes to get down there and another two to get back up.  My friend Bailey came back to Tonri with me for a few days in between IST and Christmas to see the water pump in the garden, since she works with the guy who's supposed to be finishing the hosing system.  It was really fun having her there and we made lots of crazy good food.  French onion soup, pizza, reese's peanut butter cup and banana pancakes.  I was at post for two nights and then all of a sudden it was time to head to Nati.  There's only one taxi driver that goes from Pehunco to Nati, but he's pretty good.  Generally leaves early, drives fast, all business.  Yesterday, however, he was in a hurry.  Something about he was continuing on to Tanguieta after Nati because someone was hurt etc etc, anyway we get to a part of the road that is being worked on - trucks are dumping mass amounts of dirt in an attempt to smooth out the ridiculously pitted roads.  Backing up a little bit let me set the stage. Bailey and I (plus the driver and another passenger) are crammed in the front seat, there's 8 or so other people in the car, and all of our luggage plus two guys are on the roof (this is a station wagon by the way).  We approach the construction area and see a guy standing in the middle of the road waving his hands.  Some might see this as a cause for concern, or at least motivation to slow down a little.  Our driver, in a hurry remember, maintains his speed until it's just almost too late, swerves and keeps going, brushing off the arm-waving guy's yells.  Now we're on a road with huge mounds of dirt scattered across it.  We're getting closer and closer to a particularly massive pile and it's clear there's no way to go over or under it, so we swerve around it.  Dirt roads here have big culverts (ditches) on either side of them, and our extremely top heavy car slides into one.  We ride in the ditch for a while, but then we have to get back onto the road.  The driver eases the car up...but it doesn't go.  We slide back into the ditch.  He tries again - gunning it, the car swaying, leaning at a physics-challenging angle, Bailey and I squeezing each others hands not wanting to look but doing it anyway.  We legit thought we were going over.  It was close.  But...we made it.  We screamed.  Then we added it to the tally of craziness in Benin.  About an hour later we hear a loud gunshot-sounding pow.  Busted tire.  We stop, 14 people file out of (and off of) the car, and the driver's assistant changes it in about 15 minutes.  Pile back in (and on), 20 minutes go by, and we're in Nati.  A little Christmas eve adrenaline pump.  Right now we're all coming off sugar highs from the cinnamon rolls and we're starting Planet Earth.     

Stay warm, eat a lot, enjoy the day.  And Happy New Year!

Trois à la fois

Not trying to brag, but...

Also,

do any of you guys have questions you want me to answer? Anything you're curious about? Let me know and I'll write about it...it's getting to the point where I'm not sure what's considered weird anymore, so I don't know what would be interesting to hear about.  Let me know!

Rodenticide

My proprietor's advice for getting rid of the mice in my ceiling was to get a cat and stick it up in the ceiling, thus scaring/killing all the mice.  I took the first part of his advice.  This is Scout.  I know she doesn't look super ferocious, but she's already killed and eaten a mouse.  I think she ate the whole thing - I never found any guts and she had a big belly when she was done.  She likes to sleep and play in the window, and also meow. But pretty cute nonetheless. 

Sunday

November 21, 2010

I’m learning that the concept of a Saturday-Sunday weekend doesn’t really exist here, at least outside of big cities.  It’s true that church is on Sundays and that school is only held Monday – Friday, but other than that life continues as normal on the two days that are so distinctly separate from the rest of the week for us. 

Case in point, today I was in Pehunco for day two of a pomme de terre formation.  Right, ok, what’s a formation and what are pommes de terre?? A formation would probably best be translated by…seminar, I guess, and pommes de terre are potatoes.  I was in Pehunco this past Friday and met briefly with my supervisor to just kind of check in, and he happened to mention that there was a multi-day formation on potato growing starting the next day and that if ça m’interesse I could come.  It was almost too much for me to handle – a legit, organized, environment related activity that my supervisor (and, it turns out, the pres. from Tonri and her husband) was participating in.  So duh, I said yeah.  Potatoes are pretty new to Pehunco – you can find them in big cities in Benin (and by that I mean Cotonou, Parakou, Nati, and Malanville) but they aren’t really eaten a whole lot.  It turns out my supervisor, Djafarou, was pretty influential in starting potato farming in this area.  Yesterday was the theoretical part of the formation, and, incidentally a lesson on the theory of time in Benin.  I was told the session would be starting between 8 and 9 am on Saturday (already there was some ambiguity).  I show up around 8:30 and one other person is there…we hang around and eventually another guy shows up and says oh the presenter came in from Cotonou really late last night so we won’t be starting until 10 am.  I hung around, read, talked to the guys there,…waited.  Long story short we started around 11:30.  But once it started it was really cool!  The presenter/guy running it is indeed from Cotonou (aka legit and educated) and works for an agricultural research department of the government.  He gave a powerpoint presentation on the basics of potatoes, how they came to Benin, potential problems and how to avoid them, and what you need to consider before growing them.  With an “hour” (he said be back in an hour, everyone was back in two) lunch break, we finished at 5, an actual full day.  I was pumped.

Today was the first “pratique” session, where the participants (mostly farmers themselves) practiced the techniques we were taught yesterday.  We met in a village named Bokossi which is about 3 k from Pehunco.  Again, we were supposed to start at 8 am.  I, naively, showed up at 8:30.  We started around 9:30.  The session was at this guy’s field that he had already cleared, plowed, and created rows in.  We reworked some of the rows as an example for him to follow – he hadn’t loosened the soil deep enough and the rows weren’t raised enough.  Quick note on “we”.  Most of today I was standing around watching (but to be fair so was everybody else).  The first time I picked up a hoe (made of a piece of metal driven into a wooden handle, they are the ubiquitous wonder tool used for everything here) one of the women let me hold it for a good 10 or 11 seconds, laughed, and reached to take it from me.  Suffice it to say from that point on I was determined to prove that although I am a Batoure (the north’s word for yovo) I can indeed actually do work.  The next time I saw an abandoned hoe I grabbed it and started hacking at the earth as hard as I could – they let me hold it for longer this time, but everyone started saying things like ha look the batoure’s working! (this is based on interpretation of body language and hearing the word batoure in Bariba converstations).  Not making fun of me per se, just like…what is she doing?! White people don’t…do that.  It was getting kinda hot, the energy (well mine at least) was lacking a little, and the presenter guy started talking about food.  We were kinda in the middle of nowhere, but someone was sent to go find the 15 or so of us food.  In the mean time someone knocked down a somewhat ripe papaya and divvied up chunks, and bananas showed up too.  Food, provided by the family of the guy whose field it was, arrived and someone brought me a plate of two big chunks of boiled yam and really good salty, oily, spicy, red sauce with onions.  Don’t think sweet potatoes – yams here are white and really starchy.  I don’t know if it was the being hungry/hard work phenomenon (like what makes PB&J ridiculously good when you’re hiking), but lunch was awesome.  I ate sitting down in the middle of banana trees because everyone freaks out if I’m in the sun for too long and tells me to go sit in the shade (I’m white, remember). 

Next was irrigation – we dug channels in the field first, then hooked up the guy’s moto pompe that pumped water into the field.  The presenter had people take turns moving dirt and opening channels to adjust the flow of the water and explained the importance of knowing which way downhill is.  We finished around 3 – I was pretty sunburned by then, had reinforced the blisters I got helping plant onions in Tonri last week, and really wanted….hydration.  So I got a beer with Dave.  Sunday complete.    

Also, Happy Thanksgiving! We had real turkey (killed, plucked, and cooked by another volunteer), mashed potatoes, stuffing, green beans, and five pies.  Right now I'm trying really hard to get hungry again so I can eat more.  It's tough.     

Group shot - Tonri's pres is to my right in yellow

How to water potatoes

Happy Halloween!

Eat lots of candy for me, Halloween hasn’t caught on in Benin.  I’m in the Parakou workstation for a few days to go to the bank and use the internet and….oh yeah celebrate Halloween!  There are a ton of volunteers here, which means sleeping on the floor and fun stuff like that, but it’s nice to see people I haven’t seen since swear-in.  Life is pretty good, parasite is still kicking which is not so fun but I've had progress on the work front.  I met with the director of the ecole primaire (elementary school) in Tonri and when I told him I studied science he asked if I'd be interested in teaching the oldest class (CM2, about equivalent to 5th grade) about nutrition.  I jumped at it, and now I'm working on making some kind of lesson plans.  The kids don't have a super high level of French yet, so there's a lot of repetition and lessons are basic.  Hopefully I'll start teaching in November sometime.  I also met with my supervisor and homologue and am going to start going to Pehunco one day a week to hang out at my homologue's ONG's office (ONG = NGO in French) and maybe do some work.  Not sure on that one yet.  

Food.  If the following isn't interesting, my apologies, but I think food is interesting and I like talking about it and eating it, so here goes.  I thought it might be kinda cool to tell you about what I eat and what people in my village eat.  Since school started there's been some more street food popping up, especially breakfast stuff.  If I don't eat bread (if I've been to Pehunco recently) or oatmeal for breakfast, I usually get something from one of the mamas that makes food.  My favorite are these kind of steamed bread things that are made by pouring batter into old tomato paste cans and cooking them in a big marmite (pot) over a fire.  It's eaten with a spicy pepper sauce and no I have no idea what it's called.  Enough to fill me is 25 CFA, which is ridiculously cheap.  You can also get rice with a few beans thrown in (called wake) or bouillie, which is actually available at all hours and is a porridge kind of stuff made with flour and water.   Snacks (ever important) are cooli cooli, fried, spicy, peanut butter sticks, sometimes bananas or oranges, fried dough balls, and after 5 pm fried yams (probably my favorite, also with piment pepper sauce).  I usually cook lunch - pasta with various sauces, soup, peanut butter and banana, rice...I can get tomatoes, onions, garlic, okra, and eggplant at the marche in Pehunco, and with different spices lots of combos can be made.  My concession family gives me dinner most nights, which is igname pilee or, recently, pate (pot) with sauce.  Sauces change every day, but they're all spicy and usually have either a little okra or other green stuff.  No protein, so sometimes I supplement.  The only protein source (unless you own and kill your own animals) I've found in village is fromage de soja (soy cheese), which is actually pretty much tofu.  It's really cheap and is pretty good.  When I was down in Cotonou I bought nutella, which was a really good and a really bad decision because it's awesome but I can't stop eating it.  Thanks to my parasite buddy I'm uh...not really gaining a lot of weight, so when I have an appetite I try to eat as much as I can.  It's funny seeing people after they've been at post for a month - almost everyone, and especially the guys, have lost weight.    

Days are pretty slow paced, I usually get up (ok so really I'm woken up) before 7, since kids and radios playing loud Bariba music are turned on before 6.  I'm asleep well before 10 (ok so sometimes before 9).  I've done some weeding in the garden and have staked some tomato plants with sticks since they were horizontal from the ridiculous downpours we get.  My supervisor told me to tell the women they need to weed the tomatoes, and since I don't have a firm enough grip on Bariba yet I thought I'd lead by example and kinda hope they'd just follow along.  They didn't, but he came and we had a meeting last week and he told them if they didn't weed they be discouraging me and they said oh no Molly we don't want to discourage you so now they've weeded some.  I read a lot, I go sit with people at their houses and just kinda watch what's going on, I walk places, and I get picked on by the little kids in my concession - they like to touch my hair, my book, my pens, look in my window...cute, but knuckleheads nonetheless.    

OMG CAMERA!!! Kids going crazy.

Hope everyone is doing well!  Thank you thank you for your letters and packages :)  

Happy early bday Leslie!  

Parasites

Just a quick update.  I'm in Natitingou right now, on my way back to post from Cotonou.  I've been stomach sick for a while and I got some sort of cold/virus on top of that and basically didn't leave my concession for the first part of this week, so I called the doctors and they said to come to Cotonou.  The Peace Corps medical office is in the Bureau in Cotonou (Peace Corps Benin headquarters), so if you're sick you have to trek down to Cotonou.  Recap of my trip down:  because of where my village is located, getting to Cotonou is a two day trip.  Thursday I went to Parakou, spent the night there, then took a bus to Cotonou Friday morning.  It's supposed to take about 3 hours to get to Parakou from Pehunco.  It took me 7, and three different taxis.  It may sound like I'm just complaining, but really I'm simply providing some insight into the joys of transportation in Benin.  So, got to Parakou finally around 9 at night, left the workstation there around 6 am Friday to catch a bus to Cotonou which arrived late in the afternoon.  To sum it up, I will try my best to never ever be sick again.  Benin is a small country, but Cotonou is far away from Tonri.  Case closed.

 It ended up that I had giardia, a parasite, which was oddly sort of validating because it meant that it was actually worth getting myself all the way down to Cotonou.  They gave me some drugs and hopefully that will be the end of it.  I did get to sleep in air conditioning, take hot showers, and eat non Beninese food, so it wasn't all bad.  You can get parasites from food, water, basically anything so I have no idea how I got sick, I'm just glad it wasn't malaria (a few volunteers in the med unit when I was down there had malaria).  Maybe I shouldn't be brushing my teeth with well water?  I'm heading back to post tomorrow morning - if all goes well it should only be about 3 hours in a taxi from Nati to Pehunco.  It turned out that I was heading back to post when the Peace Corps shuttle (Land Cruiser that goes around the country twice a month to deliver packages and stuff to the workstations) was driving up to Nati, so I got to take the shuttle up.  Awesome.  Again, air conditioning, my own seat (!!!..this does NOT happen in taxis), calm.

Otherwise things are going pretty well.  I'm looking forward to having more energy and not wanting to die after every meal, plus the elementary school in my village should be starting classes soon.  Hopefully I'll be able to do some work (tree planting, env club, etc) with the kids there.  We're in the petit chaleur (literally little heatwave) now so it's been pretty warm, but Harmattan (cool, windy season) starts soon which is pretty exciting.  Halloween and Thanksgiving are coming up too!  Hope you're all doing well.

 

Au village

I live in Africa. I have my own house, which gets lots of light and has plenty of room, and a screen door that I have to keep closed so the baby goats don’t come in. Lots of spiders and recently some mice (wooo...) so I am now looking for a cat... My concession family has 14 kids (not a hyperbole, there are two wives), goats, chickens, and ducks which makes it active and generally pretty loud. My proprietor is a farmer and so he goes to the fields most days to work, taking some kids with him. The wives, little ones, and grandmothers stay around the concession and cook, do laundry, get water etc. It’s funny watching the kids entertain themselves. No one seems to be bored, even though there aren’t toys or what I’d consider fun stuff around. They play/torture the baby goats or whatever other animals are around, cry, practice standing on their heads, throw half deflated balls, cry, play with water, run around, and try, unsuccessfully, to talk to me. They’re cute, but I have no idea what they’re saying…maybe one day? Bariba is coming petit à petit. If I haven’t opened my door yet, one of the grandmothers usually peeks in my windows and says good morning, and a kid shows up at my door every night to get my bowls and brings them back with igname pilé and sauce for dinner.
The first three months at post are considered the ‘integration period’ where we’re supposed to well…integrate. Aka, walk around, meet people, practice local language, get to know your post, find people you can work with later. The amount of time I have to fill was daunting the first couple of days, especially considering the hecticness of stage and swear in. One day at a time. I’ve made myself walk around my village a lot, which isn’t that big, and stop at every concession and say the few phrases I know in Bariba. Sometimes I can do this for a while, sometimes after 10 minutes I’m just done. Everybody, EVERYBODY knows who I am and wants to say hi, which is, you know, cool but it’s hard to have any anonymity. I’ve been going to the garden every day, also a short walk, and saying hi to whoever is there working, and to the president of the gardening group’s house. I’ve taken a couple trips to the pump (still working on remembering where it is, but pump in Bariba is pompi so I just walk around with my container and look confused and say pompi and some little kid will point), I found where the king lives, I’ve had some Bariba tutoring sessions with an elem. school teacher who lives nearby, and I’ve gone on a couple bike rides. That’s sorta life right now. Slow paced, but sprinkled with enough excitement so far to keep my spirits up. Little things have brightened some monotonous, ok I’m in Africa so now what? days, like sitting on the ground in the garden learning the Bariba words for different vegetables or having a Peuhl woman offer me some of the beignets she just bought. The Peuhl/Fulani are an ethnic group that lives around but not with the Bariba – their communities are always on the outskirts of town. They wear amazing jewelry and have face tattoos, herd cattle and make cheese, and are beautiful. Sahadaht, who is around 12 and speaks French, stopped by my house on her way to church on Sunday night and I asked if I could go and she said oui. I found out that adults go to church in the morning and the kids go in the afternoon, and that kids’ church is singing and dancing for a while, a quick prayer, and c’est fini. The church is on the outskirts of the village and is a cement building with one room and a cross in front of it. I…yeah, I danced. Not many people laughed. The songs were all in Bariba so unfortunately no one got to hear my stunning soprano. Alas. I’m in Natitingou for a meeting, hence the access to internet (and running water and electricity!!).

I hope you are all doing well and hopefully enjoying a little bit of a cool down after a ridiculous (so I hear) summer.  I'm not on my computer so I can't post pictures but hopefully next time I can put a couple up here.  a la prochaine!

Post visit

We had our post visit Wednesday – Sunday of this past week. Benin may be a small country, but it is not quickly traversed.  My supervisor, Djafarou, who is the president of the women’s gardening group, came down and was in Porto Novo for meetings and stuff Monday and Tuesday.  It was a little nerve wracking him, mostly because I had no idea what to expect and had to sit and talk to him for an extended period of time. We left très très tôt Wednesday morning (I’m talking 5:45) and were in Parakou by around 3 pm, then I took a taxi with Dave (close mate) to Péhunco.

The pavement ended about a third of the way into the trip, and then it really started to feel like Africa.  The sun was setting, the landscape was beautiful, and I was crammed into a car with eleven other people – I remember thinking to myself dude, so this is it.  It’s weird that you can be in a place for a while without really…realizing where you are, if that makes any sense, but going out to my post was a reality check.  We got to Péhunco around 9 pm and I stayed the night with my supervisor’s family – his wife and 8 kids who were very nice and clearly excited that I was there (a white person!).  The next day we met the mayor, king (also happens to be my language teacher’s father in law), police chief, and ag extenstion office workers of Péhunco. 

Northern Benin is really pretty and has a much different feel and pace of life than the South.  It’s a lot calmer and more relaxed, and because it’s the rainy season it’s very green and is sort of lush grasslands with some tall trees.  It monsooned Thursday night (all night) so we couldn’t go out to Tonri, my post, until Friday. Tonri is about 20 mins (by zem) outside of Péhunco.  It’s tiny.  Definitely a real African village – my host mom called it “vrai Benin” – kids everywhere, sometimes wearing clothes and sometimes with big bellies, animals at random, no latrines, wells and pumps for water.  There is a small store that sells essentials – soap, tomato paste, spaghetti, nail polish (?!?), and sometimes rice, and a small marché every four days.  Other buildings include an abandoned health center, and abandoned micro-lending office, and an elementary school.  That’s sort of it.  Oh but plus my house!  I will be living in another family’s concession, which is the word for a group of houses all clumped together around a center courtyard/cleaning/cooking area.  Floor plan: big, long front room that acts as living room and kitchen, and three rooms along the back – bedroom, bathroom, extra room.  Cement floors, but a real ceiling – Peace Corps requires a roof but not a ceiling, so it’s nice to have one to minimize mice and lizard friends.  Being at post was a little bit of a shock – no one speaks French.  Ok, SOME people do, but it’s not a whole lot at all and it’s mostly older men and high school aged kids who are only in village during school vacation.  I could sort of do salutations but mostly I just repeated the same thing a lot (luckily ‘a laafia’ is the response to a lot of greetings) and smiled.  The volunteer I’m replacing, Kristen, walked me around and introduced me to important people in the village and showed me the women’s group’s garden – pretty cool. I was given two yams and some money as presents, and I had a few women dance and sing for me.  There are a lot of work opportunities with the gardening group but it’s kind of intimidating and disheartening that none of the women speak French.  I guess I knew this before, but now I’m wondering how I’m supposed to help them or make any sort of change if I can’t communicate with them and if they all have more experience than I do gardening.  To communicate anything past greetings I’m going to have to bring someone along with me, but we’ve talked a lot about how it’s better to hold meetings and stuff with men and women separately because women won’t always speak freely in front of men.  So.   Saturday night I stayed at the Peace Corps workstation in Natitingou, a 3-hour taxi ride from Tonri.  Opening the gate to the workstation is like walking into America – there are couches, a whole wall of bookshelves with books you’re free to take, a tv and lots of movies, and best of all electricity and running water.  Even, wait for it, brownies.  Good god, so awesome, even if you have to pay for them.  We left Sunday at 7 am and got back to Porto Novo around 6 pm.  Sounds long, but just wait, because the best part is that the whole trip was on a bus that played ridiculously bad Beninese soap operas played at an excruciatingly loud volume.  I can’t believe it’s already September and we only have two weeks of stage left, it’s crazy.   

Updated mail info!

Letters and padded envelopes from here on out can go to:

Molly Rosett

Corps de la Paix

B.P. 40

Pehunco, Benin

Afrique de l’Ouest

Boxes are fine too, as long as they aren't sent via DHL.  Address for boxes:

Molly Rosett

Corps de la Paix

B.P. 168

Natitingou, Benin

Afrique de l’Ouest

View of my concession from my front door

On terre rouge from Parakou to Pehunco

Bariba and patience

So since last week I’ve changed language classes, and now I’m learning Bariba, the language spoken in my village, with three other stagières – Becca, Summer, and Suzie.  It’s pretty cool to start from scratch learning a new language but I forgot how tough and frustrating it is.  I seriously lucked out coming in with some French, and because of that my French classes have been discussions along the lines of…so why do some Americans not want kids? What has impeded the development of Benin? more so than…ok so, would this sentence use the imparfait or passé composé?  We had language interviews last week to see if our French has progressed – mine was interesting, I was asked how many children I want and had to do a role play thing pretending I was giving a speech to the mayor about the opening of a new health center in my village.  We got the results back today and I actually moved from advanced low to advanced high, which I wasn’t expecting at all but is pretty cool.  I’m so not taking knowing French for granted, and it has definitely made the transition easier, it’s just that it’s also made the wall of Bariba smack me in the face a little harder because it’s been sort of smooth sailing up until now.  Peace Corps’ intention is really just to arm us with salutations in local language, but I want to know it ALL and it sort of irks me to see or hear something and not understand it.  I really like our teacher, she’s actually from Péhunco which is the bigger market town near Tonri.  It’s been interesting learning a new language in a foreign language, by which I mean that Bariba is being taught to us in French.  My notes end up being a weird Franglais mix. Sample of Bariba in case you’re curious:

À kpuna do - Hello    

A bwãn do? -  How are you?

Na siara – merci

Na n duro mo – I don’t have a husband

Woo yendu ka ita wan a mo – I am 23 years old

I’ve been in Benin for five or so weeks now, and I feel like I’m starting to decipher the Beninese little by little.  It’s really hard not to project my own mindset and Americanism onto everyone and everything I come into contact with here; I catch myself doing it sometimes and laugh – like thinking I’ll just microwave something that’s cold…uh...right.  Already it’s become evident how more efficient/cheaper/faster/I WANT IT NOW minded we are.  The Beninese don’t seem to think like that.  There’s not really pressure to get things done faster, because what would you do with that free time you gained?  I would say that they are very patient, but patience implies being conscious of the fact that you could be doing a lot of other things in the time you’re waiting for something else to happen. Stuff that’s considered indispensible in the États-Unis (paper towels, strollers, washing machines) aren’t really missed here – I mean why would you need a stroller when you have a perfectly good back for tying your baby on to?  Not that I don’t miss some of the convenience of the US – I had a dream the other night about Target.  Another thing is trust.  Having petite monnaie (pocket change) is a constant problem here because there’s not really enough of it in circulation, and so a lot of times you have to send a kid to go get change for you.  You can give someone a 5,000 bill though and know that they’ll come back with change for you, just like that.  And I live in a city.  Imagine doing that in New York. 

Other breaking news: there is a gas (cooking gas) crisis here because of a contract negotiation or something with another country, and so everyone’s running out and having to use charbon (charcoal), which doesn’t really affect me a whole whole lot except for the fact that now everything is cooked on the outside stove, near my window, so I have a constant fine dusting of charcoal ash on my clothes.  Gotta cook the pâte somehow though. 

Tech Visit

I’ve been in Benin one month! It’s hard to believe, but at the same time sometimes I feel like I’ve been living here for a while.  Today starts week 5 of 9 of stage, so we are officially more than half way through training.  I’m excited to get to post and see my village and pull out my guitar and start…really living.  We’ve been pretty sheltered so far, less so than the first week in Cotonou, but still I’m surrounded by Americans all day and have between 8 am and 5 pm of every day planned out for me. 

I got back Sunday from my technical visit to Dassa, a pretty good sized town right on the gudrone (paved road) about 4 hours or so north of Cotonou. Two other volunteers, Alex and Becca, and I split the visit between two current volunteers – one lives in Dassa and one lives in a small village nearby.  We were in the Collines, which means hills, and in Benin means huge bare rock boulder things that were really pretty.  We were supposed to hike up one but it was too rainy so no go.  Highlights of the trip: 

• My current record of humans in a ‘taxi’ (aka station wagon retrofitted with a third row of seats) stands at 14 (I was one of them)
•  I ate rabbit for the first time (it’s awesome)
•  I was in my first zem accident (got muddy, not hurt)
• Brigitte and Tony, the volunteers we stayed with, made REAL brownies with frosting
• We built two mud stoves in Tony’s village
•  I tried tchouk for the first time (millet or something beer that tastes like sweet vinegary apple cider…kinda. It’s delicious.)
•  We went to the yam pilée fête in Savalou and danced in front of a few hundred Beninese because it was either that or pay to watch them dance.  The women dancing all had white powder on their shoulders and metal jewelry and beads on their arms.  We were hysterically laughed at by everyone and had to dance around the circle three times trying to copy what the woman leading us was doing.  Seriously, it was like National Geographic stuff except real life. My life.

It was a nice break, pretty chill, and it was good to get out of Porto Novo.  It started to feel more like Africa as we got farther out of Porto Novo, if that makes any sense.  It’s easy to forget sometimes that we’re living in a city and that the rest of Benin is NOT like Porto Novo and Cotonou.  I got back to my host family’s house around 6 pm on Sunday and just sat for the rest of the day.  Two of my host mom’s nephews were here when I got back, not sure how long they’re staying but it’s nice to have some other people around since Precieux and co. left.  Dinner tonight was really good so I’ll share – salad with potatoes, tomato, cucumber, carrot, green beans, onion, and egg, ablo, jus with fish, ananas, Sprite.  Ablo was a special request made by me because I had it last week and I really like it – it’s made with rice and is sort of sweet and a little spongy and is in flower cut out shapes.  Jus is the name for tomatoes and onions cooked in oil (plus piment aka spicy pepper sauce that I’m getting used to petite à petite).  Ananas is pineapple, which is awesome here.   You can buy one off of someone’s head on the street and they peel it, cut it up, put it in a sachet (bag), and give you a toothpick to eat it with, all for 100 CFA (about a quarter).  I’ve never gotten soda at dinner before, special occasion? No idea, but I’ll take it.  Today was also a good day because I got my first mail!! Oh happy day. Thank you thank you for the packages Mom and Dad and shout out to Liles and my grandmother for my first African letters :). 

I bought a cell phone! Fair warning that it will most likely be crazy expensive to call me on it though, but if you call my phone through Skype apparently it’s not too bad. Tomorrow is Songhai, another round of Hep A and B shots, and an American meal for dinner.  I was informed tonight that I will be cooking tomorrow and the plan is eggplant and wagasi (a kind of cheese) parmesan if they’re selling eggplant at Songhai.  Beninese don’t really think it’s a meal if there’s not a carb, a meat, and a sauce, so I figured I should be safe with that.   

All of your emails and notes and letters are appreciated so much more than you know, thank you!

Playing the Africa card

I know, I know, I just got here, but since packages take a while to get here (can’t imagine why… Benin? That’s a country?) here’s some stuff that would guarantee lifetime indebtedness, a real live thank you letter from Africa, and most probably a smile on my face.  If you happen to want to send a package (but by all means letters would be received with just as much eagerness), you can use the Cotonou address I put on here.  There’s a shuttle that comes to Porto Novo from Cotonou every day to carry mail, sick people, etc back and forth.

Wish list/stuff I can’t get here:

-       Magazines

-       Snacks

-       Chocolate

-       Air conditioning

-       Stickers for my zemi/bike helmets (they are very undecorated)

-       Duct tape (for inevitable duct tape fixable breaks)

-       Stationary

-       Ben and Jerry’s (any flavor)

-       Spices, sauces, drink mix, brownie/cake mix, tuna packets (lighter than cans) (to use when I get to post)

Quick note on mail – current volunteers told us that bubble envelopes are better than boxes because they cost less and usually run into fewer problems.  Also, DON’T send anything FedEx rush shipped or something because that will make it way expensive on this end.  Even though you pay for something to be shipped out of the US, we have to pay to receive it here.  For declaring stuff on the customs form, don’t be too specific – just write something like candy and magazines.

Turning to more exciting stuff, I got my post assignment!! After September 15^th, I’ll be living in Tonri, population 3,200, located in the Atacora department and the Péhunco Commune in northwest Benin.  For post announcements, they bused us over to the school where the other volunteers have classes.  The trainers had drawn a huge map of Benin on the floor of a classroom in chalk with all of the post locations labeled, and after your name and post was read you walked in and found your village.  It was neat because we were able to see who was around us. From what I’ve heard, the northwest is a really pretty area.  I learned that I will be enjoying the beauty of the north from a cement house sans electricity and running water. I’m replacing another volunteer, but she was the first at this post.  I don’t have a post mate (volunteer in the same village), but I do have two ‘close mates’ who will each be about 10K away.  The previous volunteer’s primary project was working with a well established and organized women’s gardening group called Unité Communale des Maraichers that consists of 14 different groups of women from surrounding villages that farm communal land. 

I know my response was ‘something environment related but really I have no idea’ when asked what I would be doing here, and now I can explain why.  The way Peace Corps works, at least for EA volunteers, is that you usually don’t have a specific work assignment.  It’s more so your job to integrate into your community and figure out what they need and want the most, and then what needs you are able to tackle given your length of service and the community’s resources.  There are a lot of project opportunities with the women’s gardening group including: starting composting, starting a seed collection system to decrease seed buying, installing fencing for pest control, vegetable drying to deal with the issue of food stocking and conservation, and a literacy program because oh forgot to mention none of these women speaks French.  I’ve been basking in the relative comfort of being able to pretty much talk about whatever I want to in French, but now I need to learn…Bariba!  Supposedly we can start learning local language in our language classes soon.  My host maman already told me that whatever Bariba I learn in class I have to come home and teach her, since she speaks French and Fon, another local language.  There’s also a high school not far from Tonri, so there’s the opportunity for environmental education stuff.  I’m also interested in doing some mud stove building and Moringa planting (look this one up, it’s a drought resistant tree with ridiculous health and other benefits).

I find it really hard to stop once I start writing about stuff here, and even then I feel like there’s so much I’m leaving out.  I hope this at least has been giving you somewhat of an idea of Beninese/Peace Corps life.  We get a break this week – classes Monday and Tuesday and then Wednesday – Sunday is our tech visit, where we go to stay with a current volunteer (different from post visit where we stay in our own village) to see what life is like there and to get to relax a little.  If you ever want to send me a message but don’t want the world to see, my email address is: molly.rosett@gmail.com. 


Love and miss you all!

Bonne fête! Bon appétit, bonne assise, bonne arrivée…

Yesterday was the 50^th anniversary of Benin’s independence (August 1^st, 1960).  There is a fête d’independance each year, but this year it was extra special because it’s the 50^th anniversary AND it was held in Porto Novo.  There was a big parade, dancers, ‘pom pom girls’ (what Beninese call cheerleaders), and speeches by the president and other important people.  The fête went down pretty close to my house actually, but it was crazy packed so we just watched it on TV.  My family’s first volunteer who stayed with them two years ago, Melissa, was in town this weekend and she stayed with us Saturday night.  We made American food on Sunday (tomato soup and grilled cheese – tomatoes and onions are absolute staples here) and I think it went over pretty well.  Oh we also had a cooking session with the PCVTs on Saturday after class and we made a ridiculous amount of rice, beans, guac, salsa, wagasi (cheese), handmade tortillas, cornbread, and CAKE.  Food!!! Good times.  There was even sangria.   

Today starts week 3 of stage (pronounced stahj, it’s French), and days are pretty much like this: bike 20 mins to school, language class, technical training, lunch, more language or bike or cross cultural classes, bike home, eat, crash.  A note on biking.  It’s pretty much like a BMX course every day, plus goats and chickens and cars and zems and motos and sand traps.  This afternoon we got to meet the King of Porto Novo.  Benin has a president, each city has a mayor, and each départment has a head, but there are also kings of several different regions.  He talked to us for a while about the history of Porto Novo and why it has three names (Porto Novo is actually a Portuguese name).  Rules for entry to the King’s house: shoes off, always be seated or kneeling in his presence, and saluate him by kneeling and bowing until your head touches the floor upon entering or exiting.  As we were leaving he passed us a book to write something in as proof we were there I guess, and for some reason the book got passed to me.  So the King of Porto Novo now has some trying-to-sound-formal nonsense thanking him for talking to us in his book.  At least I wrote in English and he said he didn’t understand English…

About the title – saluating (greeting) is big here.  There’s a protocol of what you say when, i.e., every morning the dialogue is:

Bonjour!

Bonjour!   

Tu as bien dormi?

Oui, j’ai bien dormi. Et toi?

Oui, ca va.

Autrement dit: Good morning, did you sleep well? Yeah I slept well, you? Yeah, ok.

But then there are the other greetings that sprout up everywhere.  When I come home after school it’s ‘bonne arrivée’ (literally good/happy arrival) from my family and the women in the little store thing on my corner (everyone knows if there’s a yovo staying nearby).  You can bonne anything though.  People say bon travail (good work) to me when I’m biking (if they’re not screaming yovo yovo!).  It’s also completely appropriate to walk up to someone who is sitting and say bonne assise, which means something like happy sitting or… have a good sit!  way to sit there! Bon appétit gets thrown in throughout the meal.  Bonjour vs. bonsoir is interesting too – usually bonsoir time starts sometime in the evening, but here people will say bonsoir at all hours of the day, mostly starting around noon though.

Some of the crazy things are starting to seem more normal which is weird.  I saw two guys and four (live) goats on a zemi the other day, and it is ridiculous how many people can fit into a station wagon and how much stuff can be put on top of one.  Someone was selling spaghetti sandwiches outside of our school yesterday - spaghetti...on bread.

We get our post assignments on Friday!  Thanks for all the comments guys :) 

Some street in Porto Novo, taken from the bus on our way in from Cotonou.  Pretty typical.

Me, my host family, and their first volunteer wearing the 'happy 50 years of independence, don't get AIDS!' shirts my maman gave us.

En famille à Porto Novo

Thursday 7/22/10

My neck hurts every time we take a bus somewhere because there’s so much to see I’m glued to the window the entire time.  It’s hard to know where to start.  We met our host families yesterday - my maman (mom) came to get me and I met the rest of the family once we got home.  I have a mom (a midwife), dad (professor in Cotonou), sister (Marlyse, who’s studying medical marketing and is around my age), a brother (Serge, who I haven’t met yet), a sister-in-law (Serge’s wife Elise), and two little nephews (Precieux (Precious) and Junior) who are both under 2 years old.  I have my own room with a big bed and my very own mosquito net, and there are a few little lizards that come and hang out in the bathroom whenever I take a shower.  My maman refers to me as her daughter et elle appelle Marlyse ma soeur alors que je me sens comme une membre de la famille, alors je lui appelle maman.  

             I’ve been eating a lot better here than in Cotonou. Vegetables! Fruit! We had to fill out a form with our likes and dislikes to give to our family and my maman has been stickin to it.  I helped her cook dinner tonight, which actually meant standing around and watching her cook.  She takes the must-clean-food-sensitive-American-stomach thing seriously. Case in point, she washed the lettuce six times and let it sit in water with bleach in it for an hour.  She doesn’t want me to get sick and I am not complaining, because so far so good.  We had salad with carrots and egg and peppers, pate (pronounced like pat as in pat the bunny) blanche, which is sorta like glutinous grits and doesn’t have much flavor, and sauce which was tomatoes, onions, spices, smoked fish (watch out for bones), and something spinach-like which is called boma in Fon.  Sugarcane for dessert which is pretty fun to eat. Fon is a local language and an ethnic group, one of the more common ones in Benin.

            I’m in Porto Novo now, which is the capital but is actually a smaller city than Cotonou.  There are some paved roads but most are red dirt.  Not flat, smooth roads with lanes though.  No, no, bumpy, pitted, crazily uneven, muddy, unnamed roads.  Today was our first day of class and Marlyse drove me to school on her zemi.  Riding on a zemi is SOO FUN if you ignore the life-shortening fumes you’re inhaling the whole time. Again, there’s so much to look at it’s like a movie and I just hold onto the back and try to take it in.  We started this morning by having a ‘host family debriefing’, yes they actually called it that, during which everyone just talked about what their night was like.  We had language class after that for a few hours, ate lunch, and then went to introduce ourselves to the mayor of Porto Novo in a 60s era bus with a door that didn’t shut all the way.  A bus full of white people is understandably an oddity in Benin, and it was entertaining to look out the window and see everyone completely stop whatever they were doing to just stare.  Hair cuts, meals, conversations all came to a halt.  Lots of little kids jumping up and down yelling yovo, yovo! too.  Yovo means foreigner/whitey. 

I miss you all TONS and I will try to keep this updated as best I can.  I’m planning to buy a cell phone sometime soon too so I may even be able to call!         

p.s. I'm posting both of these today even though I wrote them earlier because we're at Centre Songhai and can get wireless here! 

First few days

Tuesday 7/20/10

Today is day 5 counting Friday (we got in around 10:00 pm), but it seems like we’ve been here at least a few weeks.  I think in a new place it takes a few days for some (some) of the craziness to wear off and for you to begin to look around and realize where you are, who you’re around, and what you’re looking at.  It has been a JAM PACKED few days though.  Here’s the rundown:

Wednesday and Thursday –

Wednesday was pre-orientation in Philadelphia, which was a lot of information, skits, coping strategies, and “you’ll find out more about this in country”.   There are 60 of us and it’s a really fun, good group. We got some free time Thursday and got to see the Liberty Bell (from outside actually because the line was too long) and some of the city.  Thursday got yellow fever shots so they’d let us into Benin, and then hauled our stuff onto buses and drove to JFK.  In Paris we got shepherded (remember, 60 people) onto a bus to a different terminal, went through security, and got right on the plane to Cotonou.  We flew Air France so it wasn’t half bad, but two back-to-back 7 hour flights is not the most fun thing to do.  

Friday –

Time change, fast forward to Friday. We got into Cotonou around 10:00 pm.  I wish I could have taken pictures of the baggage claim mêlée.  We had a few people looking out for our bags (we had to tag them with yellow ribbon) and then they’d chuck them to the next person and on until they got to our corner of the room and then we’d yell out a name for whoever’s bag it was.  That taking place in a small, crowded, hot hot room, plus jet lag was chaotic but oddly sort of exciting.  We were met by Peace Corps staff and current volunteers (PCVs, we’re actually PCTs – Peace Corps Trainees - until swear-in) who gave us an awesome welcome, and then we loaded our stuff again into big vans and were driven to our ‘hotels’.   My guitar made it in one piece!  The place I’m staying is a priests’ college, we think, and the rooms kind of feel like dorm rooms in a Catholic girls’ college.  We have our own rooms and bathrooms with flush toilets, which is a lot nicer than I was expecting.

We had dinner at the other hotel where the other half of the group is staying, and were kindly given an appetizer of malaria meds as an appetizer.  We eat most of our meals at that hotel in a little room outside with two really long tables.  Standard breakfast: bread, jelly/butter/nutella, sometimes fruit, ovaltine/tea/instant coffee; lunch: carb like rice, couscous, pasta, meat (beef, chicken, fish), some kind of salad, bread; dinner: pretty much like lunch, plus more bread. 

Saturday and Sunday –

Full, full, full of information, meningitis shots, books, language interviews, and bike fittings.  I got a brand new Trek mountain bike (!!!) and they give everyone saddle bags, tools, a helmet, etc, and we got our zemi helmets.  Quick word on zemis.  Zemis are zemidjans which are motorcycles, or really more like mopeds.  Zemis = Cotonou.  They are everywhere.  Really.  There are cars, but there are soooo many zemis.  We had sessions on language and culture, safety and security, how to deal with Beninese men (as in what to say and what not to say, i.e., it’s a pretty good idea to lie and say you’re married when you’re asked), met a lot of the Peace Corps staff, and met the US ambassador. I tried and am now hooked on Fan Milk.  Fan Milk is a cheap Beninese equivalent of ice cream, vanilla or chocolate, sold in little plastic pouches you eat it out of for like 250 cfa (~520 cfa = $1).  The Fan Milk guys drive around little carts and honk so you can find them.

Monday and Tuesday –

Medical interviews, sector specific interviews (sector meaning environment, health, TEFL, or small enterprise development (SED)), zemi training, and group walking tours were split between yesterday and today. The tour was pretty cool – we walked around in groups of 10 or so with a PCV who’s been here for at least a year in a big marché area of Cotonou.  It made the area we’re staying in feel like the suburbs.  It was crazy – lots of zemis everywhere, lots of people selling anything (shoes, food, plates, cds), and lots of trash.  We walked down to the beach and saw the water but didn’t actually get too close.  You wouldn’t want to.  It could be this beautiful tropical beach complete with sand, but it’s a trash-infested playground for kids.  I saw a little girl dragging the head of a doll by its hair. None of it really hits home though because I’m still so overwhelmed by all there is to see and absorb.  

Today I had my medical interview and I’m now on a weekly instead of daily anti-malaria medicine.  Most people switched unless there was a reason not to.  Mefloquine is the one that gives you vivid dreams and sometimes even...hallucinations!  Tonight will be my first time taking it so I’m pretty curious.  We get typhoid shots tomorrow.  Also, zemi training.  Papa vélo (the guy who handles all the bike fittings and bike gear) hired a bunch of zemi drivers and we had a lesson on how to get on and off, how to negotiate the price (you barter for everything here), and what to say to the drivers.  Then they took us out on a couple of short trips so we could get a feel for it.  You hop on, hold onto the back, and that’s pretty much it.  Honestly the scariest part about the whole thing is the roads, but somehow the drivers manage to swerve around the sinkholes and random missing pavement and piles of sand.  I met my language teacher, Rigobert, and he actually helped found an environmental NGO (ONG in French).  I’m pumped that I can still speak in French – we talked about the government in Benin, cultural differences between here and France and the US, and why going to the doctor in the US is complicated.

I should have started lifting to prep for this...

Made it under 80 lbs, at least the pack + guitar...

ADDRESS

Here is the address for the Peace Corps office in Cotonou. I'll have an updated address once I'm at my post, but for now all mail, packages, money, and nutella can be sent to the address below. The word is that letters take about 3 weeks, and packages take 3 weeks - several months. Peace Corps also says...."don't send expensive items, such as the Volunteer's favorite pair of one-carat diamond earrings. Items such as food and clothing have usually arrived with no problem, but it's expensive for the sender and receiver. If sending packages, "bubble envelopes" work best. If sending any food items, put them inside a ziploc bag. This will reduce chances that bugs or rats will devour them."

Molly Rosett, Peace Corps Volunteer

Corps de la Paix

B.P. 971

Cotonou, Benin

Snakes, vegetables, and loneliness

A while ago, when Peace Corps was still 'something that may happen but I don't know, I think I might be leaving in July and teaching science?' those were my three biggest fears.

1. I've probably made my fear of snakes well known. Come on, they don't have legs and they're long and move weird and they're scary!!! This feeling is completely rational. The scarier part is that I know that Africa has snakes, unlike New Zealand which my sister told me when I was little has no indigenous reptile species. But alas New Zealand is slightly too developed for Peace Corps to send people there. Honestly, I am pretty scared of snakes in Benin and even more scared that some little kid will find out how much they freak me out and put one in my room or something. Other wildlife (mammals) I'm super excited about. But legless creatures I could do without.

2. Vegetables. Ok so hear me out, when I interviewed the interviewer asked me how I would feel about eating a different diet or having only limited foods available to me as a volunteer. I think I said something like I would be fine with that and that eating new kinds of food would be part of the adventure. I didn't lie, but I was worried about what that actually meant. I didn't know if that meant I'd be eating rice and tomatoes for every meal or if I'd be eating meat from animals I'd rather pet or what. Fast forward to what I know now, and Beninese food sounds awesome. The family Sandy and I have been tutoring lived in Benin for 15 years and they had a lot to say about how many fruits and vegetables are available and how good the food is. So...now I'm pumped! There's even a Beninese beer.

3. Loneliness. Buzz kill, sorry. It's a little daunting though when they tell you not to worry, there will be another volunteer within 50 km of where you're posted. But but...50 km?! That's kind of the point though, and I do want the challenge, but that doesn't mean it doesn't scare me. It's liberating to leave all of your ties behind, but with that comes the task of making new ones. I don't HAVE to be lonely though, right? It's not that I'll be isolated from people in general, just that I'll probably be isolated from English speaking Americans. So why can't I make French (or otherwise) speaking African friends? Scarier, sure, but the opportunity for new relationships will be laid out right in front of me. Proactivity!

Packing/unpacking/repacking is going well, almost all of the stuff that will stay at my parents' house is now in the attic or a closet or a pile for Goodwill. I'm going to attempt to do a trial run of packing to see how I'm doing space-wise. I found out that my guitar case counts as one of my two allowed checked bags, but I'm hoping that's not an issue. I don't think the weight limit (80 lbs) will be tough considering I do have to carry everything I bring, and...80 pounds is a lot. I feel like I've bought SO much stuff recently and I don't really like that feeling. This experience is a step away from materialism and here I am buying things, but they say it's stuff I need? Hope I'm/they're right. The days are going FAST.

Less than 2 weeks!!!

So I'm packing my Carrboro room. I have an exceptionally hard time packing all at once because I find pictures I want to look at or stuff I forgot I had and then of course there's facebook and on and on, so I end up packing more in fits and spurts. This is at least a semi-productive way to fill one of the blank spaces in between bouts of packing. Current countdown to Africa is 12..TWELVE..days. Every time I ask myself (or am asked) how I feel about that my response is different. It's sort of a wheel of fortune wheel with mostly average answers supplemented by bankrupt (freak out mode, i.e., what the hell am I thinking) and 1 million (oh my god I can't wait this is gonna be awesome and I get to speak french!!!).

My biggest concern right now is just having enough time to get everything done. Six weeks ain't a lot.
Sample to-do list:
- buy glasses
- order contacts
- turn in bike form (so Peace Corps knows what size bike to give me)
- fill out pre-orientation (the thing in Philadelphia) forms
- move out of Carrboro and into my parents' house
- figure out taxes
- buy a guitar case
- decide on and buy a camera
- sell my car
I'm big into lists, so much so that I make multiple with overlapping things on them and then I lose some of them and then it just gets all jumbled up in my head. Really I'm an organized person, but that's all gone out the window in the last couple of weeks. June was travel month - I made three separate trips to Milwaukee, Kentucky, and New York, and at this point I've just stopped putting my suitcase away. Traveling combined with ending work and two years in Africa prep just does not lend itself to an organized mind. So my apologies for being all over the place and not knowing what's going on (shout out MH).

I've visited everyone I think I had time to visit - though NOT everyone I wanted to visit (Lahls, Ann-uh,...:(). My last day of work was Friday the 25th, which was coincidentally also my last FTF. Ohh I'm gonna miss you guys. FTF is French Toast Friday for those unfortunate enough to not spend 40 hours a week saving polar bears at EPA. There was a little goodbye thing with an awesome cake with wild (plastic) animals and a map of Africa on it. I got to keep the angry gorilla. I guess it's true of most situations, but I know I'll miss the people at EPA more so than the actual job. I will always love UNC and think the campus is beautiful, but it loses some of its magic without BSE there. Last weekend was also my birthday/goodbye thing. We went to Lake Crabtree on Saturday and laughed, ate, and played, and then relived college on Franklin St. It was awesome :) Thank you thank you guys for showing up and blasting me with water balloons and bringing awesome food and cake and manning the grill and making me have so so much fun. Je vous aime.

I hope this is semi-readable, if not, well...see above. Casey is here this weekend until Wednesday which I'm super excited about. So now it's: finish packing for the day, pick her up at the airport, get to eat whatever my mom is making. Ready set...weekend!