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!