Friday, July 23, 2010

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.

Thursday, July 8, 2010

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.


Friday, July 2, 2010

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!