The following are excerpts from my journal…for the most part.
6/1/11
Aliou broke my heart a little today because he was the last
one to finish his cloture (fence) that the director made all the kids build
around their trees and they were all complaining about being hungry and he’s so
little and has such a spark. So I
helped him finish up by tying strips of flexible, orange bark to tree branches
and Sabi came over and helped him too.
Today is Benin’s Arbor Day.
I brought moringa seeds to the school and the kids planted them in sachets
(plastic bags). I made a “Journee
Nationale de l’Arbre” sign on khaki paper and had the kids hold it up while I
took a picture. Oh how they love
love love pictures – as long as you show it to them afterwards. They also installed the C.E.G. Tonri
sign today, exciting stuff. I sat
with the director for a while and chatted, mostly about how the school has no
money because people in Tonri won’t pay (the idea is for every adult to pay a
small contribution to the school regardless of weather or not they have kids
that go there). He knew about the
tornadoes that hit recently in the U.S.
Then the professor who lives in Tonri commandéd (ordered, as in he sent one of
the girl students to go get it) what I thought would be normal millet (pink)
bouillie, but was actually something very close to barf in consistency. It was kind of like normal bouillie
with slightly chunky milk in it and, just for fun, small brown chunks (yes
chunks) of something slightly spicy with the consistency of chewy beef
jerky. I was of course given a big
bowl of it and everyone dug right in.
I was going strong until the last third or so that I had to sort of talk
myself up to (honestly the taste was better than I’m sure it sounds, but the texture
really got to me). For a few
minutes I was legitimately worried that I would spontaneously projectile vomit
and embarrass/offend the teachers, but I held strong. Little cautious of offers of free food now though.
6/14/11
When do you know you’re not in America anymore? When you have to wake up the mayor (at
4 pm, at his own house) in order to have a meeting with him. Salomon (my APCD) stopped by on
his way from Kerou and we, along with the premier adjoint (the mayor’s second
in command, she’s (well duh) a woman and pretty awesome) pretty much camped out
outside the mayor’s house for an hour or so until he woke up. Eventually he came stumbling out,
buttoning his shirt as he walked up to greet us. Salomon was pretty persistent and said multiple times, well
I was here two months ago and you (my supervisor) said you would talk to the
mayor the next week. Didn’t happen
of course. (This is in regard to
me moving to Pehunco, the commune head, which I’ve been trying to do for a
while. Both my Beninese supervisor
and Peace Corps are supportive of me moving the 10k from Tonri to Pehunco, but
the hold up has been who will pay for my housing.) By the end of the conversation though they were discussing
potential houses for me so…progress! The mairie (mayor’s office) agreed to pay for my
housing. I still have to get the
house approved by Peace Corps but it’s a step forward. I biked in and on the way out of Tonri
the woman with a lazy eye who does hair and makes gateaux stopped me and asked
me to buy her a kilo of sugar in Pehunco, which I gladly did. I flipped out on some kids on the ride
back home. I had bad timing and
happened to be passing the elementary school in Soassararou which is on the
main road right as school was letting out. I made the mistake of stopping to say ‘i ne madame!’ (‘call
me madame’ in Bariba) aka quit screaming batoure (white person) you hellions,
and I got swarmed. If I can I try
to stop when kids yell batoure at me and say hey, my name is Molly or ‘il faut
dire madame’ (both of which I can say in Bariba so they’re usually understood)
or something, because it’s so much more pleasant to hear 30 kids yelling your
name or madame than it is to hear them yelling BATOURE BATOURE. So anyway some of the older kids
laughed at my Bariba and then chased after my bike when I left, so I stopped
and screamed at them in…well mostly English. I thought it was totally called for, but the couple adults
standing around just stared at me.
