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.