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!