I know. I’ve been a bad blogger. However, that does not mean that I have been curled up in my house in a depressed lump, or decided to give up all electronics, or, perhaps, forgotten how to speak the English language. Rather, I’ve just been incredibly busy, preferring to lie prone on workstation couches when in range of internet instead of pecking away at my laptop. I still love you. I’m just lazy.

Six months have passed now at post, and each month has brought with it new challenges, pitfalls, and accomplishments. That may seem cliché, but the emotional rollercoaster that Peace Corps Volunteers ride can be compared to no other. Learning how to deal with failure has been an absolutely profound challenge, as has been the lack of respect for scheduled meetings. This, however, makes the successes that much more wonderful. I no longer stand tentatively at my door, anxiously garnering the nerve to step outside of my house and immerse myself into Benin (a common phenomenon among new volunteers). Rather, I have boldly dined upon frog (like chicken), danced alone for large groups of spectators (not pretty), and determined that magical amount of sass needed to navigate Beninese life as a white person (a lot).

As intimated,a long with this experience and confidence have come work related challenges. How, for example, can I be effective when my work partners live six miles away? Or if I can’t speak the local language in a village where few know French? Or if problems of “access” for the villagers seem insurmountable? Indeed, often I feel as if I’ve found a solution to a local problem, only to look a little further along the line to see that the problem is inextricably knotted to another “lack”, and then to another. What looked like a very manageable section of rope from afar is actually, upon much closer inspection, a tightly tangled mess. Compost is the perfect example. It is probably even a development worker’s dream solution, and they see the problem as that very manageable and tangible section of rope: one can sit in their office from abroad, note that the female gardeners of Benin face decreasing soil fertility, observe that the women don’t use compost, and boldly declare, “Compost is the solution!” In many cases, they are right. But what if, like in my village, the garden is just too far away to transport food or animal waste? Or if there is barely enough water to water the gardens, never mind a compost pile? Or that the garden becomes someone else’s rice paddy during the wet season? Ugh. Although challenging, it has been eye-opening to see the realities of “producing change” and the complicated interface of development work on the ground level.

But six months also means that I’m getting some meaningful projects off of the ground. Thank God. It feels wonderful to have a little bit of direction. Some of the bigger projects I’ve been working on:

Seed Bank and Conservation Initiative – Giving presentations to my five gardening cooperatives on how to conserve seeds, and then initiating a seed bank in each village. Gardeners can take seeds from the bank for free, but at the end of the season they must return double the amount that they took. Free seeds should therefore always be available. Hopefully this will ameliorate what seems to be a constant seed crisis.

Fruit and Vegetable Drying – I’m in the process of having a solar food dryer built (read: a wooden box covered with mosquito nets). The women of my village’s cooperative will dry mangoes with this, increasing the availability of fruit during the off-season and make a little money through a value-added enterprise J . Besides, who doesn’t like dried mango?

“How to Garden” Posters for the Illiterate – My art project! I get to sit in my house, listen to music, and draw vegetables. My posters describe, in a way which people who can’t read letters or numbers will understand, how to cultivate seven of the most popular vegetables. One is going to each of the gardening groups in my commune (20+).

Demonstration Plot – This has been a wonderful opportunity for villagers to watch me wrestling with my African hoe, or literally beating the earth with a stick, and say “Oh look, Ganegui! Look at that white girl trying to garden! How cute!” We have four new vegetables growing in their own plots to introduce a little bit of variety. We are also keeping accounting books for each of them to look at the financial feasibility of these vegetables and provide a basis for basic illiterate accounting skills.

Anyways, I’d like to give a shout out to everyone who has sent me letters and packages- You guys are absolutely wonderful J . When having a rough day, nothing is better than to sit down and look at a card from home. I hope everyone is well, and keep me updated on your lives! I will get better about responding to letters and packages, I swear.

Happy holidays from Benin! I am currently at the fourth PC workstation in Benin, and I must say that this northerly post is by far the coziest and most tight-knit. I spent Thanksgiving here as well, when fifteen PCVs descended upon it to celebrate Thanksgiving Benin style, which meant without a turkey because live turkeys are simply too much of a boisterous travel companion. Well, I’ll clarify that that is the case for the uninitiated PCV. Beninese people have a wonderful knack for live animal transportation and appear unfazed by the prospect of a few goats on the roof or chickens in the lap.

Back in village, the dry season (i.e. – it hasn’t rained a single drop for two months and a half) has ironically brought with it the gardening season. Small(er) scale gardening clustered about the disparate water sources (a river and a pump) replaces large scale agriculture, less feasible during the dry, dusty season the north experiences. Everyone in village is busy harvesting their crops, lighting fire to their fields, and, for some, getting ready to plant their gardens. Thus, village has become a ghost town during the day as people head to the fields to pick cotton, the largest contributor to GDP in Benin and a topic which is on the tip of everyone’s tongue throughout my town. If the road is not bustling with Mac sized trucks bearing tons of cotton heading across the Atlantic, it is literally littered with hundreds of cotton balls. With the harvesting of the cotton crop, people are beginning to have a little more time to shift their efforts towards clearing out their communal gardens.

Thus, this newfound activity also means I get to see a little bit of the work that the gardening cooperative of my village does and the challenges they face. Drama surrounds, in particular, the group’s pump because it was poorly placed and constructed. This means that if there is water in it, during the mornings it is only on a first come first serve basis. However, the other groups I work with face different challenges. I bike to at least one of my five villages a day, all the while praying that I might meet someone who could at least pretend to know French. Generally, I bike into village amidst swarms of children (and the occasional adult) who are screaming “BATURE!”. Luckily, I am usually able to escape these gaggles due to the speed my bike lends me, often only to have them catch up as I stop to ask someone where the president of the gardening group is. On these days, I thank God for my trusty 21-speed, silver Trek mountain bike J . When I find her and a French speaker, either an impromptu meeting with the entire group forms or we wander over to look at the status of the garden and chat about what’s going on. Now that my first three months of “integration period” at post are over, I can actually begin my primary and secondary projects, meaning I can hopefully be a little more useful to the women and hold meanings to give them technical advice.

I have several other secondary project ideas that I hope to begin in the next few months, including:Accounting for illiterates in my groupements (“is growing those cabbages really getting you any money?”)Moringa tree plantation (reforestation and excellent for nutrition!)Fruit and vegetable drying (the availability of fruits and vegetables during certain parts of the year is a huge problem in northern Benin)Demonstration garden plotMiddle school gardenPanel of professional women for Women’s DayMango graftingMud stove construction (to save firewood and money) World map at the high school! (people here often have very little knowledge of geography)Seed bank (seeds are difficult to get in my village and expensive – we’ll see what we can conserve and trade…)Anyways, I hope that you all have a wonderful holiday season and best wishes from Benin! Keep in touch.

Eating whole, raw tomatoes as if they were apples (when in the States, tomatoes were only appropriate in the condiment “ketchup”) Impulse purchasing of guavas by the gross – “How much do all of the guavas on your head cost?!”Calling your friend to tell him that you found canned peas (canned peas!) in an up(per)-scale shop in the town north of you.When 90% of your texts to your post-mate concern food.When you look forward to the 120 degree hot season because it means mangoes.

As of tomorrow I’ve been in village for a month and a half. Vrai village life, no strings attached. Finally, villagers are beginning to know my name, relationships are being built, I’m finding work to do, and, thank God, my local shop owner knows that I eat about seven guinea fowl eggs a week. Although I still suffer from a lot of critters in my house – lizards, mice, cockroaches, and ginormous spiders – I have become horrifyingly used to our uneasy cohabitation. Furthermore, I have finally transitioned from “Bature” (white person) to “Anna” in village and just about everyone knows who I am and greets me on my daily village wanderings. Thus, these past few weeks in particular have been particularly successful.

Immersing myself into the local secondary school has produced some of the most drastic effects. I greeted the director of the high school/middle school and informed him that I wanted to start an environmental club at the high school, a venture which I hope to begin next week. Rallying interest and participation will definitely be the biggest challenge due to the busy lives the students lead, with girls (my secret target audience) particularly occupied with duties at home. Last week I went around to all of the high school/middle school classes, introduced myself, and advertised my club. It is the first club to exist in the school, so I’m forging new ground and I’ll see what happens at the first meeting next week!

Besides planning out my environmental club, taking Bariba class, and doing my greeting rounds, my life has been absolutely consumed with meetings for my gardening cooperatives. In each village surrounding Kerou, a group of gardening women has taken form so that they can better address technical or marketing challenges. My job is to provide further expertise when it comes to both of these aspects. Thus, every day I visit two or three villages (24 in total!) to introduce myself to the gardening groups while my supervisor informs them of new legislation regarding “groupement” formation. Thus, one visit looks like this:

I begin the day by riding my bike from my village to Kerou, where the commune seat and my boss’s office is – 7 miles. Arrive at the office at 8:30, like he said. But in Benin, “8:30” really means at least 9:15. Wait outside the office and chat with small children. Hey, they speak French.I hop onto the back of my supervisor’s motorcycle and we are off to the first village, usually about 20 minutes away through beautiful Beninese countryside.We arrive at the village to find the groupement waiting for us under a tree. We join them and take attendance, noting the presence of the officers (often including a designated singer), and have everyone sign next to their name. In 99% of the cases, the women can’t read or write, so thumbprints take the place of signatures. My supervisor speaks for about 45 minutes about the legislation, entirely in Bariba. The he turns to me. “Do you have anything you would like to add, Anna?” I give him a blank stare.I settle on simply introducing myself (for now, still in French) and my supervisor translates everything into Bariba. The women clap at the end and then, as is customary, the singer does her thing and I am asked to dance for the group. You can only imagine what this must look like – twenty five women singing and clapping in a circle while I do my Beninese style white-girl dance in the center. Actually, please don’t imagine it. At least for now, I am providing these poverty stricken, malnourished women with entertainment. They present me with a gift – inevitably yams. When you get three five-pound yams per village, the weight on the back of the motorcycle for the ride back gets a little unwieldy, not to mention the difficulties one person has in consuming that many yams. The evidence:

8. I thank them profusely, hop onto the moto with yams in hand, and head to the next village.

Thus, life in a nutshell. Hopefully by the next time I can write (Thanksgiving), things will have taken a little more shape. Until then, hope all is well and keep in touch :).

Our long awaited move to post, the “Grand Trainee-Volunteer Migration”, happened three weeks ago yesterday, perhaps resembling college-move in day on a grand scale. Just replace your chauffeuring and teary parents with a cantankerous taxi driver, friendly welcoming upper-classmen with a gaggle of village children, and your dorm room with a village house inhabited by more insect species than exist in North America, and you have the basic idea. This merely illustrates the average PC Benin Volunteer’s experience. My own was a little more rocky and perhaps a bit more bug-ridden.

My adventures began immediately upon my arrival at post. There, I learned that my proprietress had mysteriously lost the keys to my house. Yes, this was one challenge I hadn't planned on facing, and therefore, had no idea about what to do. I brilliantly faced this problem by blankly staring at my house for twenty minutes surrounded by all of my belongings and the aforementioned gaggle of children. In turn, the proprietress spent that amount of time staring at me, and staring was about all we could do given the language barrier. When it was clear I wasn’t about to immediately herald the next taxi bound for the airport, the proprietress decided to allow me to stay in a different room next door, where the gaggle and I dragged my mattress and things. I ended up staying in this small, poorly lit, chamber for four days as the proprietress “looked” for my keys, after which I decided to approach a locksmith about the situation. This issue, compounded by the fact that my latrine still was not built, there were no screens on my windows (I would regret this later), and that I did not have any furniture made these initial few weeks a little uncomfortable.

Nonetheless, I have had the chance to meet some amazing people within my community and get a greater understanding of where I might fit into this village’s picture. I've been working on becoming acquainted with any structures existing in my village and the local leaders. Just figuring out where to get water is a week long project. Integrating and discovering are the goals of the first three months at post. Therefore, my days generally follow very similar patterns consisting of local language lessons, hunting down the elusive fresh fruit or vegetable, taking the most beautiful bike rides, and, most time-consuming of all, greeting everyone in village. I have made it a priority to take a walk through village every day and say hello to the people I pass. This is particularly challenging given that I must do this in Bariba. Nor is it polite to simply say “hello”: Their household, work, health, children, husband, sleep the night before, second cousin twice removed, must all be inquired about in turn. It’s a slow process, to say the least.

Luckily, I got a bit of the malaria to make things a little more exciting. Having malaria is an uncomfortable experience I've found, particularly when you inhabit the boonies of Benin and need to take a two day journey to the PC healthcenter in the capital. I quickly consulted my doctor and decided I had to go to the Peace Corps health station last Wednesday after I woke up with a 104 degree fever. The driver I asked to bring me to Nati didn't quite understand the gravity of the situation, which I only realized once he came over to my concession and told me we had to go look for parts for the moto we would be riding, and parts are never easy to find in a Beninese village. Therefore, I ended up stumbling through the village, halfheartedly performing my obligatory greetings and attracting a lot of attention. I'm not quite sure I was looking my best. However, you will be glad to know that it all paid off and the moto was fixed :)

However, the first leg of the journey to Natitingou is quite rural, and I found my feverish self on the back of a motorcycle driven by a one-armed man. For five hours. Wildly clutching my 2 hastily packed bags (you always need a bike tire pump, right?) as we maneuvered through the rural back roads of Benin. The second day of malaria journeying was little better. I was on a bus for 16 hours straight, producing more sweat than I ever thought humanly possible, and placed next to screaming newborn child. The woman next to me kept giving me the stink-eye and shifting further away, while one man took my near-to-tears, pallid patheticness as a classic case of home-sickness. No good, but at least he gave me a very uplifting talk about the values of family and friends.

However, sickness does mean a hot shower, electricity, and seeing friends for a few nights :).

Hope all is well in the states, I miss you all immensely, and keep in touch!

Love from Benin,Anna

A day in the life of one PCV’s training:6 AM - Wake up to:a. A roosterb. The morning call to prayerc. Small children cryingd. Your neighbor’s operatic singing, heralding thenew morningAlthough none of the other options are out of the question,option “D” usually applies to me as might be guessed from the specificity. Observethat “alarm clock” is conspicuously missing from the list.

7 AM – Eat breakfast (omelet and instant coffee) whilestudying French.

7:45 – Ride bicycle to class with friendly neighbor- co-volunteer.

8 – 12:30 AM - Frenchclass. Organized based upon comprehension level and composed of no more than 4trainees. Try to tell jokes in French to Beninese teachers, only to be met byblank stares and long explanations for why what you are saying is notreasonable.

Example: When talking about the freedom Beninese people havein taking livestock and domesticated animals on public transportation, onetrainee suggests that perhaps a camel might also be usefully transported in ataxi. (Attempts at jokes are often this pathetic when crossing languagedivides.). Language trainer, frowning, says, “No, that’s impossible”, andquickly tries to draw attention away from the apparent stupidity of thetrainee. Move on.

12:30 – 1:30 – Lunch! Mad rush to the local, trustedrice-and-beans lady. Sum total for lunch = $0.60.

1:30 - 2:30 – Technical Session. May include: building moreefficient mud-stoves (reduce wood consumption); gardening techniques;information session on moringa trees; teaching a sixth grade class aboutdeforestation; bicycle maintenance; natural insecticides.

3-4:30 - Visit alocal village and teach the gardeners how to make a compost pile. Imagine agroup of over-zealous and excitable trainees talking to a group of ruralfarmers in painful French. Now, remember that none of the villagers speakFrench, but are receiving the information through a translator. Successfully compose organic matter into apile to make “compost”.

4:30 – Ride bicycle back home to a chorus of “Yovo!”. Yovois the “mzungu”, or “white-person” call of Benin. Here, it is even accompaniedby a song which seems to be taught to all young children. Dodge motorcycles enroute.

4:45 – Study French or read.

6:30 – Hang out with my host sister while she makes dinner. 8:30 – Eat dinner while watching “El Diablo”, the mostpopular soap-opera on television. It is a rejected Spanish show dubbed intoFrench which takes place in New York City. As might be guessed, it’s my life inAmerica in a nutshell.

9:00 – Play cards or mancala with my little brother and ourneighbor. Lose miserably every time.

10 - Read and sleep. Repeat the following day.

Quick note: because I will be moving to post in less than two weeks, I have updated my mailing address! Rather than sending any letters or packages to the Cotonou office and having it wait there for what could be months, please send them along to my workstation in Natitingou. Check out the address to the left!

Finally, we trainees have seen a little bit of Benin. Yes, perhaps our lives as volunteers might consist of something more than marathon language classes and awkward homestay family encounters: We just returned from visiting our posts. For five days, the trainees were set loose upon the country to see their villages, meet their counterparts, and get a taste of what their lives might be like as volunteers. This was certainly a refreshing break and a wonderful opportunity to see a very different part of the country for me, as the north, I found, is a totally different world than the south.

My post is one of the most remote volunteer sites, which means, unfortunately, that it takes almost two days to get there from PC headquarters in Cotonou. This is particularly impressive when you remember that Benin is only about the size of Pennsylvania. Additionally, transportation is not always (read: never) comfortable in Benin. I had to take three different taxis during the second day of my journey and there were never any fewer than seven additional people carefully arranged in the cab with me. Imagine riding for five hours in a seven-seater station wagon with twelve (twelve!!) other people and a chicken, and you might have an inkling of what traveling in Benin might entail. This doesn’t even include the man who had to ride on top of the station wagon.

Luckily, the north is absolutely beautiful during this part of the year. The rolling green hills of cotton and corn, dotted with huge trees such as the baobab, are certainly enough to draw your attention away from the discomforts of an overcrowded bush taxi. As an Environmental Action volunteer in my village, I am lucky enough to be working (often outside!) in this beautiful area with local gardening groups, promoting sustainable gardening techniques and trying to help them increase their profits. Cashews and shea in particular have a lot of potential to be an excellent source of income, while the moringa tree and environmental education classes may improve food security in the area. Indeed, the differences in income levels and education between my village and Porto-Novo are breathtaking: only a few people in my village have electricity and no one has running water. Additionally, the poverty level means that finding people who are educated enough to understand or speak French will be quite a challenge.

Anyways, this does give me an excellent activity for my first three months of post: learn Bariba! Until then though, we still have two weeks left to pack in as much French as possible and prepare for our departures. In my case, I have also been poring through my Beninese cookbook and dreaming of conquering the kitchen at post. How many ways can one use rice and beans.

Also, I should add that I am currently distracted by the lizards which always seem to lurk in this gazebo. Half of the time when writing these posts, I am cowering over my computer, ready at any point to fend off any lizards which may leap upon me. This is a real possibility. And these are no small lizards.

I'll leave you with that :)

Last week five of us taught a village garden group how to make a compost pile. Success! The palm leaves cover the pile to speed up decay.

I have been in Benin for over a month now, during which time I have honed my bargaining skills, added a few words to my French vocabulary, and, most recently, learned how to make natural insecticide. The environmental sector has now launched itself almost fully into technical training and we spend our days wandering the Songhai gardens, meeting with local village garden groups, and finally, learning how to talk about these activities in French. And, lest you think that I am starving in Africa, we are also indulging in quite fine Beninese cuisine. Think of cheese (often fried), beans, vegetable sauces, hot peppers, a mysterious and always tasteless starch, and onions, and you have nearly all of the ingredients for a number of quite tasty Beninese dishes. Not to mention very cheap and very fresh fruit- Just today I was horrified when a pineapple vendor tried to squander me out of 50 francs - an entire 10 cents! – which is an amount large enough to put the peace corps volunteer out of house and home.

The past week has been one big celebration: last Friday we learned where we will be posted for our service. We are still marking where everyone will be living on our maps, asking about what languages will need to be learned, and figuring out which volunteers will have running water and electricity, and therefore who will be hosting the rest of us for mini-vacations in the future :) . I have received one of the most northerly posts, way up in the boonies of Benin where the nomadic Fulani live and where the temperature can supposedly creep up to a scorching 120F in the summer months. This was, however, just what I wanted. The north may get a little warm, but it is also home of the coolest winter months, the calmest people in the country, and, most importantly, the longest mango season. I have heard only good things about the north, and I can hardly wait to visit my post in two weeks! Several of us got together on Saturday to bake one of the most delicious chocolate cakes I have ever had and celebrate this exciting news.

And, of course, we were given a little bit of a vacation today to visit the cultural center of Ouidah, where a variety of religious, cultural, and historical factors coalesce into a thriving tourist center. There, we learned more about Ouidah’s history as a large slave-trading port and visited the cultural heritage site in the city: the gate of no return. Ouidah is also the home of a sacred forest (there are actually many of these in Benin, but this is the only one which the uninitiated are allowed to visit). Voodoo’s roots are embedded within Benin’s history and a large proportion of the population continues to practice voodoo to a certain extent. Volunteers in Benin need to be wary in certain parts of the country and parts of the year to ensure that they don’t accidentally stumble upon an Oro ceremony, the consequences of which could actually be deadly.

Anyhow, all has been very well in the past few weeks as I have become very accustomed to Beninese life. Only a few more weeks until we all head out to post, and we already have elaborate plans to celebrate this event in style (read: amazingly absurd dresses and “boombas” for the guys). Expect pictures of our swearing-in ceremony to be gloriously ridiculous – all of the trainees in the environmental sector as well as our language facilitators will be wearing the same beautiful fabric. Undoubtedly a spectacular event.

Hope all is well in the States and elsewhere!

One of our planches at Songhai. Never have lettuce rows been more perfectly spaced.

I had to take a picture of this artfully composed salad: lettuce, cucumbers, onions, beets, avocado, carrots, and of course, french fries. Another unusual combination: quartered avocado with a hot dog piece, encircled by an onion ring, in the center. The salad, if not entirely healthful, was definitely tasty after the addition of their homemade mustard vinaigrette :)

Today marks the beginning of a new phase of the “environmental action” (EA) sector’s training regimen, giving us a much needed break from intensive French, 24/7. We are finally commencing our technical training (primarily) in gardening, environmental education, and forestry. Furthermore, we are getting our hands dirty in one of the premier environmental sustainability research institutes in sub-Saharan Africa - Songhai. Songhai, simply put, is on the cutting edge of almost everything sustainable. For example, one of Songhai and Peace Corps Benin’s focuses is to promote increased planting and use of the moringa tree, the leaves of which have a phenomenal amount of essential nutrients and can simply be boiled in a sauce. This hugely underutilized tree could have enormous positive impacts for the nutrition of northern Beninese people, who often cannot get fresh fruit and vegetables during certain parts of the year. Very cool. Now, if only they could somehow make it taste a little better…

This is just one of the many projects that an EA volunteer could delve into. I just returned from a weekend trip to central Benin to visit a current volunteer, and it is awe-inspiring to hear about the numerous and varying projects that she has implemented in her past two years at post. She has everything from the construction of twenty-four latrines to the start-up of a girl’s group under her belt. On Saturday, these girls and I dug our hands into the earth to try to coax some life into their picturesque garden, and I can’t wait to hear about the results (nor start one of my own!). Homemade cinnamon-raisin bagels as well as superb tacos bookended the weekend experience with a little taste of home.

Travelling in Africa, however, never happens without some sort of wrinkle (see photos of road flooding in Tanzania!). Five other trainees and I shared a bush taxi to get to our volunteers’ posts, only to have our taxi hit almost immediately by a tree. Usually it happens the other way around in car accidents. However, traffic in Benin doesn’t stop for pedestrians, including those who are carrying entire trees across the road. Thus, one man’s tree crashed into the roof of our taxi as we drove by him, sending our taxi-driver into a rage and causing him to leap out of the vehicle with terrifying determination to give the tree-bearer a piece of his mind. Scarily, this event was actually preferable to the ride back to Porto Novo yesterday: Seven of us were packed into a 5-seater sedan for five hours, and, of course, African vehicles never have air conditioners. We are very well acquainted now.

In other news, I've discovered that I can receive packages! Thanks Ginger! USPS is the way to go, and bubble-padded envelopes are the cheapest :) .

Hi everyone! Sorry about the delayed post, but it not been easy getting myself to an internet café in the past couple of weeks. Peace Corps Benin has kept the new volunteers (54 of us!) quite busy with information sessions, vaccinations, a meeting with the American ambassador, and most recently, language classes. We stayed in Cotonou, the largest city, for the first six days and now I am living with a quite wonderful Beninese family in the capital city of Porto Novo. Porto Novo definitely beats the wild traffic of Cotonou, where the zemidjans (motorcycle taxis) make American city drivers look amazingly tame. Undoubtedly, Frogger’s inception came about after its makers tried to cross a Beninese street.

About a week and a half ago we were all driven to the suburbs of Porto Novo, where we are living with host families for the next three months. Every day but Sunday, we undergo fairly intensive training in French language and, in my case, gardening techniques (yay!). I haven't yet told them that I can't keep my jade plant alive. Anyway, someone was telling us that the Peace Corps used to require a physical training regimen back in the day (think military style!) so I am quite grateful to be chatting with Beninese and tending to gardens from 8 to 4:30 everyday instead.

Thus far though, my family has been quite grand. They have put up with my ridiculous French for the past week or so, seemingly unperturbed, even as I walk around the house saying random French words or as I haltingly utter sentences during which a person could easily take an entire nap through. At least they smile and nod. They also feed me really great food. A lot. Really - expect me to weigh an extra couple hundred pounds when I return in two years. This has even been the stated goal of my maman, and I bet that the French fries I was served for breakfast this morning was part of that plot. Oh dear. Besides eating a lot and butchering French, I’ve begun to train the children in my family the finer points of Frisbee, and (Seth, you will be proud!) I have also been named the reigning champion of Tekken 4 on the family’s Playstation 2. Those horrible combat games are clearly my life calling. Also, you’ve probably gained a better idea of my family’s socioeconomic status from that Playstation 2 reference. All of us have been placed in homestays which are in the upper echelons of Beninese income and I definitely will be living quite comfortably in the coming months.

One very important thing which I discovered last week: women in Benin are never allowed to whistle! Of all the countries which I could have been placed in, I am in one where whistling is prohibited among women. I’m missing a part of my soul already…

Anyways, although it is nothing too exciting or exotic, my experience has nonetheless been wonderful thus far. Indeed, it definitely makes the transition to our final posts (where I won’t have electricity or running water) quite a bit easier. I’ll update more in the coming months about my life as a Beninese Peace Corps trainee. A bientot!

So, I’m leaving tomorrow. This is a reality that I don’t think I can fully comprehend until I land in Philadelphia. Or perhaps not even until I am hit by the inevitable (and very real) wall of humidity upon stepping off of the plane in Benin. Well, just to be safe, maybe I better give it a couple of weeks after that. I have spoken with a lot of people about this “leaving” business (“I’m doing what?”) over the past two weeks, and, for lack of a better word, it has been unreal. I don’t think that I had even thought about “leaving” and all of those things that accompany that word until I spoke with my Aunt Michele on Saturday. After I photocopied some of my vaccination records at the farm, she said goodbye as she walked out of the office and hugged me, explaining: “just in case I don’t get to see you again before you leave.” What?! Of course you will! Only then did it occur to me that my departure was around the corner, threatening to collide with me if I rounded that corner too quickly and naively. Sure, I’ve been going through the motions of packing, shopping, and making travel arrangements, but little did I think about how I was doing all of this so that I could “leave” at the end of it.

Probably because “leaving” implies so much more than what I intend to do. As long as two years might seem at times, it also has a tendency to fly by just when you want it to take its time. Gosh, many of my friends will barely be half way through their graduate studies by the time I get back! “Leaving” is also a nearly impossible feat when even people in developing countries (read: me) have access to technologies like Skype and universal cell phone coverage. Indeed, I will be anything but totally disconnected. Time and distance become so finicky in these types of situations.

Luckily, I’ve had a few experiences which have brought this realization home and which have made my “leaving” a little more tangible and less nebulous. We are in the process of selling my beloved Tortoise (so many wonderful miles in that car!) and I called Verizon the other day to ask about discontinuing my cell phone service. I’ve even made arrangements for my faithful companion Stanley to be taken care of by my family (Mom and Dad – just drop a few pieces of Betta food into his bowl once a day to win his heart over). So final. It’s almost as if I’m moving to Africa in a few days or something.

This brings me to your role in all of this. I will miss all of you immensely, so I hope you’ll write me a letter updating me on your latest adventures. Also, please follow my blog by clicking on the link to the left of these posts! Do it.

Keep in touch everyone.

Now, off to make this experience a little more real…

I know that most of you will find this boring, but I really appreciated reading other people's application timelines when I was applying to the Peace Corps. The process is so long and convoluted that once in a while, I think everyone asks themselves whether their application has somehow, purely on accident, fluttered off of some administrator's desk and been carried down into the darkest recesses of our nation's capital, only to be found again during the next government shut-down. Thus, these timelines reminded me that yes, other people experience it. Nothing will test your patience more than a Peace Corps application.

It went something like this:

June 11th (2010): I begin my application online.

September 30th (?): I finish my application, after numerous career planning appointments, several recommendations, and a few essays. And then I wait.

November 10th: I interview with my regional recruiter. She tells me at the end of the interview that she will nominate me for a position! Hooray!

November 12th: After a quick call from my recruiter, I receive my official nomination by email: Environmental Education in sub-Saharan Africa, to be departing in mid-August, 2011.

November 23rd: I receive my medical packet.

January 17th: I send in my completed medical packet, but only after three appointments with the college health center, the loss of at least 5 vials of blood, the most thorough physical exam of my life, a dentist appointment, and wrestling with a ream of paperwork regarding a recent concussion. I wait (quite a while).

April 12th: My patience exhausts itself. I send an email to PC making sure my application isn't missing anything. I get a reply back immediately saying that the nurse has not had time to review my file yet.

April 26th: Call from the PC nurse. Something is wrong with my blood test paperwork. My doctor fixes it and I send the new paperwork in two days later.

May 2nd: My online status says medically cleared!

... 3 hours later: My placement officer calls and says that she has a position for me, but I would leave earlier than expected. French-speaking Africa as an environmental action volunteer to depart June 29th. She says I need to make a decision about this position by the following morning (Eeek!!). After agonizing over the departure date, I call her the next day and say yes.

May 6th: My invitation comes in the mail, and my placement is in Benin! The entire application took about 11 months from start to finish.

Hopefully this may serve as a reassuring resource for those of you who wish to or are applying to be a Peace Corps Volunteer. Good luck!

Hi everyone!

I finally have my blog up and running so that, in the future, the very elusive blog reader may find all of the juicy details of my life right here. I know, you're pumped. Don't get too excited though - I'm here until June 30th and therefore won't be blogging until a bit after that. I would love to see everyone before then, so feel free to stop by the house some time to distract me from my packing, French learning, and paperwork :) .

Here is a rough map in case anyone is interested: