I've been in Cotonou for the past five days, first to drop off my parents at the airport, now to do the necessary paperwork to end my Peace Corps service. The latter requires that I spend most of my time at the Peace Corps office, and since the new group of Benin trainees arrived on July 4th, they've been in and out, getting their paperwork done too.

I keep catching myself eyeing them suspiciously. One among them will replace me in Tobre, and I'm scared to death that whoever it is will not appreciate the place as it should be appreciated. A part of me wants to send whoever is placed there threatening notes on scraps of paper - "Warning! If you refuse to shake Bonay's hand and buy him rice from time to time, I'll...!" or "If you don't learn to hang out with the neighbors and eat their food, I'll...!" The problem is, I can't think of a good threat, and even if I could it probably would be impossible to carry out, since I'll be in the USA.

Most likely though, whoever ends up in Tobre for the next two years will be awesome, accomplish a ton, and be loved by all. How could they not?

Those of you in Don Pedro have probably already heard first-hand about my parent's visit. It was great. I can only imagine how nice it will be to arrive home, and have my parents know what/who I'm talking about when I mention the words "zemidjan", "marche", "tissue", "Bariki", and "Roufai". Granted they were here for two weeks, while I was here for two years, there is still a lot that they can now understand and relate to. I was also forced to notice the things that have become routine and ordinary: a herd of goats tied on top of a taxi, topless women, the chaos of Cotonou, how angry I sound when bargaining a price (I promise its all part of the game!).

I was also forced to answer questions that, after two years, I've stopped asking. "Why do farmers use handplows?"

"Why were people singing and wailing in the middle of the night?"

"What are the positive effects of Islam that I've noticed?"

But I was also forced to realize that after my short time in Benin, I've somehow learned that many questions can't be answered with words. Its only after experiencing and witnessing life here that questions get set aside, and one somehow knows that being able to explain all that is going on is an impossible goal, and perhaps an irrelevant one.

But these types of musings are probably themselves impertinent, when the best parts of my parent's visit where:

1. Catching up with my parents, and doing our best to fit two year's worth of discussions into two weeks.

2. Playing spades until the wee hours of 10 pm, with my mom winning (almost)every time.

3. The extravagant welcome that people in Tobre gave my parents. We were given three dozen eggs, a chicken, a guinea fowl, and cheese (remember too that the world is in a food crisis). My dad was given a bushbuck hide. My mom was told she could bring my neighbor's baby back to the States (although I've been told the same thing). And besides the material gifts, people were all around pleasant, or in other words, their hospitable selves.

4. Seeing my parents and neighbors all dressed in matching waterballoon fabric. Comment dit-on "priceless"?

Their visit was a perfect way to end my time in Benin.

And now, I'm preparing to end my time here as well. As Monday night and my Air France flight time approaches, I've been thinking of what it might be like when I get back to California for good. Its pretty hard to imagine. And frankly, its pretty hard to come up with a good ending for this blog. There's no way to sum things up.

Mostly I want to thank anyone who's read whatever I've written, or sent letters, or prayed, or sent packages. Please be patient with me while I readjust back to the US, struggle to explain things, or act like a know-it-all.

I'm 100% against ending like this though, on such a melodramatic note. So here's a short list of things I'm pretty sure I'll miss about Benin:

1. Kids. Especially when they yell goodmorning while they're squatting for their morning doo-doo on a trash pile.

2. Knowing that there is never, ever a limit to what can be squeezed into or onto a vehicle.

3. Bargaining prices. Not only because I like to drive a hard bargain, but also because I enjoy the hundreds of opportunities every day to interact with strangers.

4. Being able to buy a meal (albeit not so delicious) for less than 25 cents.

5. Knowing that generally, anyone I run into will be friendly.

6. Tobre.

N'kwa weru et a bien tot!

This week I finished at school. I gave all my students back their final tests. I showed them all their grades. I returned my copies of the teaching texts. I passed out little business cards I made to all the other teachers, since I knew they would all demand my “contact”. I even trashed the eight notebooks I had filled with two years worth of lesson plans. And that’s that. Two years of teaching done. No more standing ovations each time I step into a classroom. No more having to hold up my hand and count down from five when the students get too rowdy (I never reached one, and I still have no idea what would have happened if I had). No more getting so angry with my fellow teachers about their inappropriate (in my opinion) behavior, that all I can muster the strength to do is storm off to my house. But also no more teaching sixty kids the Hokey Pokey, or laughing when they declare, “Madame! Jou are LUCKY!”

School finished just in time, as the rains really started doing their thing last week. Since over half the classes at our school are held in corrugated tin lean-tos, rain during class means canceling class. I love the rain here. I was just thinking about how weird cold rain seems now. I’ve really gotten used to expecting a relieving downpour at the end of an especially hot day. However, the rains also mean that we are really in the month of July, which means that my time in Benin is nearing an end.

I’ve never been a big fan of closing out big experiences with a list of ways in which one has changed. If the experience was important and big enough, there’s no way to sum it up in a list, or a paragraph, or even a blog. From what I know (which granted is not too much), big things will continue to affect and change a person for many years. Therefore, I will spare us all from any sort of attempt at soul-searching. Mostly, for those of you that will see me when I come home, just be prepared to not find coherent or summarizing responses when you ask me questions. I’m still just figuring it all out.

That being said, I am looking forward to coming home and sharing my photos, my stories, etc, with anyone who will listen. (Did I mention that I’ll be back in the USA around July 20th?)

But I guess I should back up. I’m not home yet, or even extremely close: there are still around three weeks left, all of which will be spent showing Benin off to my parents. They arrive tonight. I’m not the only one excited; all of Tobre has been revving themselves up for weeks about their visit. And their visit will most likely merit its own blog post.

In the days I got back to Tobré after being gone for five weeks, my attitude stank. It was hot. I was tired. Everyone thought I had gone back to the U.S. Looming ahead of me was another month of teaching. Did I mention that it was hot? But I did the things I needed to do: I got up, showered off the layer of sweat I’d built up in the night, ate some millet porridge, headed off to school, taught, lesson-planned, showered two more times, boiled my drinking water. I even managed to admire my neighbors’ newborn baby boy.

But even while I was doing these things, some ugly little guy in the back of my head kept screaming at me, “THREE more months?! Boooring!” And in the middle of this incredulous ranting and raving, my neighbor Nasser asked me what time I would be home. The king was going to send something over. So I said the time I’d be around, and was grudgingly there at the appointed time.

What was sent was a delegation of three village elders, toting two chickens and a bag of guinea fowl eggs. The king had sent them to come, to greet me on his part, and to pass on some of his words. His words were (roughly translated from Bariba to French and now to English): We have not forgotten you. To the person that does good, we do good, and we don’t forget them. Even though I haven’t come myself, I would like to thank you again for teaching our children, for helping our women. We know you’ll be replaced by another volunteer, but even after you’ve been replaced twenty times, we’ll remember you. Because you were the first. To the person who does bad, we also do bad; to the person who does good, we will also do good.

I felt like such a brat.

While I don’t necessarily want the theme of this post to be another story of how underneath it all, there’s always something to remind you of the good (though I believe that), I do want to point out the continued generosity and undeserved care that I receive from my community here. P.S. The chickens and eggs were delicious.

On a different note, I had another slap-in-the-face moment in the past few weeks:

I was walking back from class (in the heat), accompanied by one of my students.

“I want to bring my father’s identity card to show you,” he told me, “He lived in Nigeria for some years and the papers are in English.”

“Oh, okay. Did your dad work there?”

“No no, he was a farmer. He died a while ago.”

And slap!

The light-bulb moment was not realizing exactly why he wanted to show me his dad’s Nigerian immigration papers. I still haven’t exactly figured that out, but I’ve relegated it to the pile of things that I just won’t ever understand. What struck me was actually something much simpler that that – his dad was a farmer. In Benin. In West Africa. Can you imagine being the son of a West African farmer?

One of the things that most Peace Corps volunteers in Benin figure out pretty quickly is that so much of what moved us to join the Peace Corps in the first place – people living without access to clean water, children without clothes, people in mud huts – is actually (don’t hate me for saying it!) not that bad. There is plenty of suffering here, but so much of what we as Americans assume equals suffering, in fact, does not. War? Yes. Living without electricity? No.

Figuring this out doesn’t take long once you’re here. The danger though, is to think that after two years, we have it all figured out. The danger is to go home thinking yadayadayada, just because they don’t have a TV doesn’t mean they need one. The real thing to avoid is thinking that just because I’ve lived in these circumstances for 24 months, that I have some sort of understanding of what life is like for my students, for my neighbors, or even for Africans in general.

So while my student didn’t tell me anything exceptionally shocking that day, I was suddenly reminded all over again that I, with my college education and American passport and couple thousand dollars in the bank, have pretty much no idea of what it would be like to actually be the child of a poor, Beninese farmer. I’m not even close to knowing. For all I know, it could be really, really great! Or, as I’m more apt to believe, it’s not. My capacity for empathy will always, always be limited.

The challenge now is know what to do with this realization. Do I just stop trying? Do I pretend to know? Do I tell myself that, well, at least I know a little bit more about this than most Americans, and hey, I gave it my best shot? I’m not anywhere near an answer. But I have an inkling, which tells me that maybe what I can do is to act on what I do know, and to act in the areas where I know I might have some influence. I know that policy affects lives. I know that while I might not understand what it feels like wake up every single day of my life on a plastic mat on the ground of my family’s mud house and then spend all day planting yams, I do understand (or at least have the opportunity to understand) something about politics, economics, and some history. I (think I) understand how to read statistics. I can type. I can use the internet. I can apply to graduate school.

None of this brings me any closer to getting inside the minds of my students, but its what I can do, and maybe some day I can do it all really well. And maybe my doing these things well can somehow, someday, help to empower my student to tell his story.

Its been nearly four weeks since I was last in Tobré. I’m excluding the one night I spent there en route, since I was only there for about fourteen hours. Here’s why I’ve been gone so much:

1. I was a volunteer trainer for In-Service Training for first year TEFL volunteers. One thing you don’t hear about when you sign up for the Peace Corps is how you will get sucked into doing things like this.

2. I then went to a town called Nikki, which is the seat of the Bariba kingdom, for the annual Ganni ceremony. This is when all (or almost all) Bariba kings make their way to Nikki to celebrate both the birth of the prophet Mohammed, and ironically, the Bariba people’s historical defeat of Islamic proselytizers. I’ve given up trying to reconcile these opposing reasons for celebration. The celebration involves many Bariba princes prancing around on their horses.

3. After passing through Tobré for a night, I went to Park Pendjari, the one place in Benin to catch a glimpse of big African wildlife. Our group was able to see elephants, antelope, warthogs, hyenas, buffalo, and for a moment, lions. It so crazy to see these animals in the wild. I kept having to remind myself that I was not just at the San Diego Wild Animal Park. When you stop to think about it, its incredible that animals as enormous as elephants just roam around.

4. For Pendjari I had to go down to Cotonou for the annual Peace Corps All-Volunteer conference. Basically a vacation. We are put up in a three star hotel (air conditioning! hot water! delicious food! swimming pool! internet!), and spend the day talking about all things Peace Corps. The last night is a fundraiser dinner for Gender and Development efforts in Benin, more widely known as the Peace Corps prom.

5. The morning after the GAD dinner, four other volunteers and I climbed into the first of many taxis, to go to Burkina Faso and Mali. And here’s where the real stories begin…

THE TREK

One of the many benefits of being a PC volunteer is the opportunity to travel around. Since I’m a teacher, and I have to plan my schedule around classes, its been difficult at times to take advantage of this benefit. But for the break in April, four other volunteers and I went through the trouble of requesting vacation days, and headed of to see Burkina Faso and Mali.

Since a day-by-day account would end up being monotonous and lacking in direction, I’ve decided to bullet point the things that stood out the most, in no particular order:

1. Hiking in Dogon country. This is the southern-most part of Mali, where the Dogon people have been living in stone villages on top of, and next to, huge rock escarpments, for hundreds of years. The villages are all about three kilometers apart, but getting from one the next usually requires scrambling up a cliff. We spent four days trekking in Dogon country, with an incredible guide. Everything was incredibly breathtaking: waking up to see a sheer cliff, with an entire village balanced on the edge of it. Looking at how people have figured out how to survive on a giant rock, growing millet and onions in the cracks and crevices. Listening to the lilting greetings people threw at each other as they passed.

The Dogon way of life is in a precarious situation, due to many factors, including desertification (you can literally see the where the desert is creeping closer and closer), population growth, and the presence of tourists. Its overwhelming to think about how I have been able to see first-hand this dissappearing way of life.

2. Getting an idea of what medieval London might have smelled like in the mud city of Djenne. This is home to the world’s biggest mud mosque, and the city itself is made completely of mud. The toilet systems in the mud homes either empty into miniature mud septic tanks OR into the streets. Delicious. Despite the insulting smells, the city is interesting, and completely different from anything found in Benin. Upon arrival we were swarmed by teenaged boys, offering to be our guides. When we declined, one followed us, yelling in English, “This is not your country! You have to be cool here!” This however, was the most trouble we had, and generally things in Djenne are calm. Its completely Sahelian, completely Muslim. People from all over West Africa send their children to the famous Koranic schools of Djenne. Perhaps the best description of Djenne is what it is called in guidebooks: a cleaner (!), less spoiled version of Timbuktu.

3. Gliding along the Niger river in a pirogue at the port town of Mopti.

4. Figuring out ways to entertain ourselves in crammed, long, frustrating taxi rides. Some ideas: ipod speakers, befriending all the women in the car, sleeping, finding new ways to wear your bandana, buying whatever street vendors shove in the windows at check points, counting the freckles on my arm, sleeping, and sleeping.

5. Getting kicked out of a hotel because we WEREN’T prostitutes. Ha.

6. Enjoying delicious cafeteria food in Ouagadougou. Cafeterias are pan-West African eating establishments that serve a trusty menu of omelettes, Nescafe, spaghetti, tea, bread, and occasionally homemade yogurt. The yogurt in Ouaga was indescribably delicious.

7. Making unexpected friends wherever we went. Amongst them: Celeste a drunk man who helped us find a hotel, food, and water late at night. Serena, a woman selling potato salad, who insisted that we meet her entire family. Two Fula girls in the Djenne market, both named Binta, who couldn’t believe how soft our hands were. Of course, our guide in Dogon, Oumar, who swore like a sailor and kept us entertained.

8. Listening to beautiful Malian guitar music. A sweet relief compared to the Ivoiran and Congolese dance music favored in Benin.

9. Bargaining. ALL. THE. TIME. For EVERYTHING. And getting suckered into buying things I absolutely did not need.

10. Enjoying the company of the other volunteers I traveled with. We were able to enjoin the hilariously frustrating times, process what we saw, and appreciate the entire experience together.

11. Coming home to Benin, where everything is cheaper, friendlier, and more familiar.

Sometimes, when so many discouraging, disappointing, and just plain sad things happen, we’re faced with a choice: are these the things that we’ll focus on? Are these the things that will define us?

In the month since I got back from vacation in the US, a number of sobering, and tragic, things have happened. The director (principal) of my school died, rather suddenly, leaving behind a large, young family, a school that was dependent on his authority and guidance, and many friends. In the same week, the director of a nearby primary school died, and so did a little girl that lived near me.

Meanwhile, I was not helping things by reading a very depressing book on the history of post-independence Africa, getting worked up about the primaries in the US (I'm rooting for Obama, by the way), and getting frustrated with my colleagues.

But I will let this all rest. And instead, talk about something that could have added to my layers of sadness and frustration, but in the end, was a source of encouragement.

There are four young boys who live in my compound. Three are the sons of my landlord and neighbor, Saka, who is a primary school teacher. The fourth boy, Dembo, is an orphan who, in return for a place to sleep and food, runs errands for my neighbors. This is a fairly typical arrangement.

Dembo is probably around eight or nine years old. Like any boy, he enjoys running around and throwing things. And like any boy, sometimes this means falling down, or getting hit by something. So Dembo got cut on his leg – a fairly typical thing – but, since he has no parents to notice this type of thing, didn’t wash the cut out, and spent the next couple days running and throwing and scratching the cut. By the time I finally caught sight of his boo-boo, it had morphed into, literally, a festering wound.

So I sat Dembo down, and made him wash it out with soap and water, put Neosporin on it, and bandaged it up. I shook my finger at him, telling him to stop scratching it and to go the health center the next day. He didn’t go, I’m guessing because he liked the attention so much that he figured I would clean out the wound the next day too. And I did. And the next and the next.

He did eventually go to the health center, and they told him, “We don’t wash cuts here.” What???

For about a week, Dembo and I sat down to dress his wound. Of course, I had no idea, really what I was doing. I figured I knew enough to clean it out, to use my filtered water, and to keep it covered. Slowly it started to look less pussy, but still I fumed over the health center’s response: what if he got a staff infection? Gangrene? I checked his forehead often for a fever.

Something, however, that I didn’t count on, was the crowd that we attracted every night with our cleaning ritual. The three other boys, plus some extra ones from nearby, would gather to watch. And I figured this could be a good lesson on hygiene for all of us.

“Now, do I just throw these dirty bandages out in the field?” I’d ask.

“NOOOO!!! Put it in your latrine!” the boys would yell.

“And now that I’m finished, should I just go eat?”

“NOOO!!! Go wash your hands?”

“Ok, what with?”

“With soap, Guannigui!”

When Dembo didn’t want to wear a bandage, because it got hot, I explained that if he sat under a tree all day then I would leave out the bandage. But, since I knew he would keep on running around and throwing stuff, we needed to cover it up. “Is the bandage dirty at the end of each day?” Yes, it is, he nodded. “Well, all that dirt on the outside of the bandage would end up inside the cut if it wasn’t covered.” Yuck! All the boys made disgusted faces.

I had to leave last weekend to go do some work in another town, and I worried that by the time I got back, Dembo’s leg would be back to where we started. But when I arrived three days later, his leg was looking pretty good. I found out that my crowd of boys had taken over the cleaning responsibility, and had cleaned out the wound every night, covering it in shea butter (their own idea) to keep the dirt out.

I praised those boys up and down. I was so proud of them. I was reminded all over again that you just never know when a small victory will pop up. And that in a world where defeat seems to dance wildly and audaciously and ridiculously all over, sometimes I just have to choose to look past it to the small graces that quietly keep working, smoothing ruts and healing wounds.

After three wonderful, relaxing weeks at home in the U.S., I’m now back in Benin. I’m stuck in the capital for an extra day, and have been wandering about, jet-lagged and slightly disoriented.

I don’t think the disorientation is culture shock, after so many days in the lap of luxury in California. I think it really is from jet-lag and plain old just being tired. Actually, it’s a little weird how not weird it is to be back.

Mostly Benin is just how I left it, apart from a few minor, yet exciting changes I’ve noticed in the last 24 hours:

1. There’s a new flavor of Fanta in Benin! Fanta Fiesta – strawberry flavored.

2. Some of the horrendously pot-holed roads in Cotonou have been repaved. Bravo to the Cotonou mayor.

….

….

And that’s about it. The weather is a little cooler too, which is a relief. I’ve been struck all over again by how beautiful people here are. Physically, I mean. While they do sport some crazy outfits (even boarding our plane in Paris I noticed a number of men wearing tight pants and pointy shoes), people here are strikingly beautiful. Luckily with my American haircut and new t-shirts from Target, I don’t look so shabby myself.

Benin is still Benin. I’ve already taken crazy zemidjans (taxi motos) around Cotonou, had several conversations about development and politics with fellow PCVs, and tomorrow will get a 50 cent pedicure. The only thing that might take me a few days to re-adjust to is the food. Somehow greasy omelets and Nescafe aren’t as exciting after my mom’s cooking. Well, that and of course, missing my friends and family.

Tomorrow I will make my way up North, with my two overweight pieces of luggage in tow. I should soon sit down to make a list of all the things I have to do now that I’m back – grade tests, set up the optometrist’s visit to Tobre, start looking into a library project, etc. I also never had a chance to sit down and make some New Year’s resolutions while home, but there will certainly be time to do that when I get back into the rhythm of life in Tobre. I got the sense while home that a lot of people are disillusioned with New Year’s Resolutions, but I always seem to relish a chance to make new goals. Then again, I may just like making lists.

Probably those of you who make resolutions have already done so, but here are a few things I’d like to encourage people to do.

1. Keep yourself informed. Everyone’s life is busy, but it is a privilege and a real luxury to have a myriad of news sources at your fingertips. Caring about certain issues and places (like Africa) doesn’t necessarily mean writing a check to a charity, but may mean educating yourself on such topics. Maybe fifteen minutes a day for news? Just a thought.

2. Enjoy the little things. This is, as my youngest sister would say, CLICHÉ! But relish your cup of coffee. Pet your dogs. Not everyone can do these things.

3. Continue to keep myself, and other volunteers you know, in your prayers. Cynicism, intestinal parasites, and just plain laziness are always lurking around, and I’d like to avoid these things as much as possible.

Hopefully my three requests aren’t too pushy or preachy. Mostly I’d like to say, Happy New Years! And I’ll see you in nine months.

The extremes that one experiences as a Peace Corps volunteer are sometimes so ridiculous as to be hilarious. Case in point: the journey I must take in order to go home for Christmas.

This trip begins with me getting my house ready for a three week absence. Cover my clothes rack so that my clothes won’t be caked with red dust when I get back, empty my water filter so it won’t start growing interesting algae, firmly close my latrine door so that the gnats that insist on communing there won’t decide to expand their colony into my house, and make sure I’ve turned off the gas for my little stove. I handed a spare key over to my neighbors so they can deposit the load of laundry I left them to wash. And once this is all done, the neighbor boys grabbed my bags (one of which is bigger than they are) to set them on the side of the road. Then I found a shady spot, one that is still in clear view of the road, to flag down the next taxi that comes my way.

Luckily this time I only had to sit for an hour, and not the usual three. What was once a green car came rattling around the corner. “Start waving!” I yelled to my entourage of eight and ten year old boys. The oldest one looked at me skeptically and said “THAT car, Guannigui?” You know your standards have reached an all time low when the village boy is even skeptical of your ride. He had a point you know. The car had been welded together more times than scrap metal in a high school shop class. But the car was going my way, and there’s no way I was going to pass that up.

It pulled over to pick me up. At the wheel was a chauffer I’ve ridden with before. Plenty of times, actually. I like him; he has a funny scratchy voice and always talks about when we’re getting married. We both know it’s a joke, which is a relief. But the joke has big enough strokes of wishful thinking in it for me to get the seat of honor in the taxi – the front seat. This is fine with me. The front seat means less dust, and less being crammed between two mothers with babies, a skinny Fulani herder, and the 14 year-old driver-in-training. After dropping off some women at a village on the way, the driver tells me that they jokingly accused him of giving me the front seat only because I’m white. “But what they don’t know,” he told me with a conspiratorial wink, “Is that you’re my wife. And the wife of the chauffeur always gets the front seat.” That’s right, buddy.

But not even this privileged position can make the trip any faster. From Tobre to Parakou should take two and half hours actually took five. This is due to multiple stops to drop people off, pick people up, argue the price, detour to a village to drop off boxes of tomato paste and soap, and the state of the roads. If I hadn’t been picked up by my husband, I probably would have been in the back seat. This means that once we hit the paved road, I look like four hours after smearing cheap self-tanning lotion all over my face. That is to say, orangish, with special emphasis on the creases around my nose.

Once we arrived at the paved road, I switched to a nicer car (by nicer we mean it has a tape deck, but the bass in the speakers went out in 1991, but this doesn’t stop us from playing the twangy guitar music at top volume). At this point it had already been three hours since I left Tobre. I was a little hungry. So I bought a paté, a piece of fried dough with a drop of sardine oil in the middle, for ten cents. Delicious.

One of the most important things to remember on bush taxi trips is that no matter what – no matter how many times the bald tires pop, no matter how many goats are tied on the roof rack, no matter how squished you are – you always get there eventually. This trip was no exception, and at 1:30 we rolled into Parakou. Which is where I am now.

I’m anticipating the next leg of my trip: a bus ride to Cotonou. This trip usually takes seven hours. The bus stops once along the way… in theory. One should expect a tire to blow or the engine to overheat. And also for the women on the bus to force the driver to pull over so they can all go pee on the side of the road. The one official stop is in a southern town, Bohicon. This place is the definition of chaos. All the bus lines stop in a certain bus park. A first-timer might look at the dirt lot filled with buses and wonder how our bus will ever find a place to squeeze in. But it does. And as soon as the bus stops, the hordes of vendors swarm the thing so that getting off is the most overwhelming part of your day. Oranges, soap, ambiguous cuts of meat, packs of Kleenex, plastic bags of water – all placed strategically to catch your attention (translation: shoved into your face). It helps to know ahead of time what you want to get off to buy, otherwise you might get so disoriented that when its time to continue on you miss the bus. I always head straight towards the ladies selling little orange soy crackers. If the season is right, then I go to the women selling pineapple and have them cut me up a little one. We joke about the price, me insisting that it costs 20 cents and them insisting that it costs 30. This place is really a experience during the rainy season. The dirt becomes a swamp, a quagmire, and there’s really no point in hoping to keep your feet clean. It’ll wash off at some point.

If I’m really lucky, the bus I take will have a TV in front. Three possible things can be shown: 1. A Celine Dion music video on loop, 2. A Cote d’Ivoirian music video on loop, or 3. A Cote d’Ivoirian sitcom on loop.

Back onto the bus for another couple of hours, where upon arrival I’ll find a green-shirted taxi-moto driver (a zemidjan), haggle the price, and take off for the cheap hotel we volunteers always stay at. A couple minutes of weaving in and out of the crazy Cotonou traffic and we’re there.

Now. Lets compare this with the transport that I’ll take to get from Cotonou, to Charles de Gualle airport in Paris, to San Francisco International. I will never complain about the leg room in coach again. An entire seat to myself! No squeezing five people in a space meant for three! “Free” meals! Champagne! I’m assuming there will be no flat tires or engine trouble (lets cross our fingers). A movie screen placed strategically to catch my attention (translation: on the back of the seat in front of me, right in front of my face). There will be people talking to be sure, but in hushed tones. If a baby cries, everyone will roll their mind’s eye. The only music to be heard is in the background of the In Case of Emergency video, or in the headphones that you can choose to wear. Upon arrival, the airport will be clean. The personnel will be helpful, if not especially friendly. If I’m hungry while I wait for the next flight, I’ll probably go buy a croissant, which if my memory doesn’t fail me, costs about four dollars. The bathrooms will have toilets (gnat free!), running water, soap, AND paper towels.

I’d like to take a moment to be true to my liberal arts education. The vast differences between the two sides of my trip (in Benin and leaving Benin), should not be compared in order to decide which way is better. Both have their charm. There’s something to be said about sitting on a stranger’s lap, squeezed into a taxi, smelling the body smells of the fifteen other people and five animals that share the vehicle with you. But, there is also something to be said for flush toilets, magazine stands, and a food tray that folds down. There’s something so fascinating about people’s love for Celine Dion, and music video technology in general. There’s also something fascinating about watching a newly released movie (one that isn’t pirated by Nigerians), and the technology that allows me to choose between ten of them. Don’t you think so?

Also, I think it’s worth saying that I’m really looking forward to the meal they’ll serve me on the plane. Not for the quaintness value, which is usually why I look forward to it, but I’m actually looking forward to the taste and nutritional value.

Merry Christmas everybody!

I have been back in Tobre, after my summer of traveling, for over a month. School started the first week of October, the waterpump is now doing its thing in the garden, and the bush is quickly fading from brillant green to straw yellow.

Life is so much easier the second time around. I didn't realize how stressful the first year was for me, until the school year started and I was struck by how much simpler and smoother everything now is. Nothing has changed, besides me. I no longer worry about all the small things: whether or not I'm dressed appropriately, what people think about me, what I'm going to eat, etc etc. I can't explain it well, and I don't think I was completely overwhelmed the first year, but it is just very clear to me that life is just easier now.

As I mentioned, school has been in session for a month now. I'm the head of the English teachers this year, which mostly just means that I get to lead our bi-weekly English meetings. I'm planning on being a pretty strict captain. Only English, an itenerary of the meeting, and holding the teachers accountable.

The women's garden project is rolling along. The ladies planted their potatoes, and have started using the pump. The drilling for the new bore-hole will happen in November. A Peace Corps business volunteer has come to give accounting classes, and the women responded enthusiastically. Next week I'll help them make their notebooks.

Now groupments (garden groups) in surrounding villages have begun to hear about what's happening in Tobre. I've been approached by two different groups, and will hopefully be going to meet with a group in tiny village called Tonri this weekend.

We've also done the pre-screening for the eyeglasses project. I'm going to try to set up the optometrist's visit within the next few days, and am following up on some leads towards getting used eyeglasses.

In general, I'm happy, healthy, and excited about the work I have in Tobre. Yet, at the same time, there are those things in the background that remind me that again and again that village life is not idyllic or simple. I'm worried that one of my fellow teachers is sleeping with the neighbor girl whose tuition I pay. I'm worried about my kindergarten-aged neighbors and the ways in which their environment causes them to experience certain aspects of life way too early. I'm worried about the unnecessary corporal punishment that often happens at my school. The list can go on.

Luckily there is enough to keep me busy. On a less serious note, I've stopped doing my own cooking (laziness), and eat only with my neighbors. Looking back on one of the first blogs I posted, where I was stressing out about not being able to stomach food here, its clear that things have come a long way. Legume sauce, fermented maize mush, boiled yams and oil - I actually look forward to eating it. Things that made me nauseous are now things I crave. I'm sure there's a life lesson to glean from this, but I'm not in the mood to find it.

I’ve just finished reading an article in a July issue of The Economist (there’s nothing new about the news I get my hands on here). The article is titled “Where money seems to talk: the rich are different from you and me – and they say they are happier”. The article discusses two recent polls, by Gallup and Ipsos, which have shown that “in all the rich places (America, Europe, Japan and Saudi Arabia) most people say they are happy. In all the poor places (mainly in Africa), people say they are not.”

The Gallup poll asked the question, “How satisfied are you with your life, on a scale of naught to ten?” The responses, claims the article, shed “unexpected light” on the traditional wisdom that money doesn’t buy happiness. Meaning, according to the survey, that income level does, in fact, insure greater happiness.

The polls’ findings and subsequent interpretation are not immediately sold on me. But on the one hand, as I examine the map that shows who is “happiest” in the world, I am not surprised. Among the least satisfied are Niger, Burkina Faso, Haiti – some of the poorest countries in the world (Niger is THE poorest). If food insecurity, dire lack of infrastructure, poor health, and unreliable education did nothing to a country’s morale; if living on the brink of survival had no effect on your attitude towards life; then all this hubapaloo over ending poverty is just meaningless cacophony. If a mother who can feed her child is just as content as one who can’t, then do we really know anything? Also, if there were absolutely no connection between wealth and happiness, then all of us over here working towards a world without extreme poverty, should pack up, go home, and become investment bankers.

So, as the poll shows, extreme poverty is debilitating in many ways. Those of us who aren’t poor can’t shrug and say, “Well yes, they’re poor, but look how happy there!” Responsibility can’t be shirked, heads can’t be turned.

The poll is also revealing in other aspects. Some of the most violent, law-less, war-torn countries are among the least content. Afghanistan, Uganda, Sri Lanka, and Colombia: all countries in which death at the hands of violence is a daily threat. Note that Sudan and DR Congo were not even polled. Zimbabwe, in all its political oppression, also scored low. And Eastern European countries, like Georgia and Armenia, who sit so close to the glitter of and prosperity of both Western Europe and prosperous Gulf countries, reported low levels of happiness. In places such as these, perhaps the link is less between money and happiness, but security and happiness. Peace and satisfaction.

Yet I still refrain from quickly embracing an assumed relationship between money and happiness, especially when the question posed to test it is “how satisfied are you with your life, on a scale of zero to ten?” While Benin wasn’t polled (its too hard to make it out on this tiny map anyways), its neighbors to the north and east were. All were reported to have populations generally not happy with their lives.

I can’t help but wonder who exactly was asked. I can’t imagine pollsters making their way out to villages in the bush of Africa, translating the question into obscure languages. Were Fulani nomads asked? Were illiterate families? Or was it city dwellers, people who speak English or French, business people and bureaucrats? If this were the case, then of course most responded by saying that they are not too satisfied with their lives. If I posed this question to my neighbors in Tobre, a group of mostly subsistence farmers, I’m 99% sure they would answer with confused stares. People like this are not used to questioning their happiness. The constant self-analysis and introspection that is so normal to us Americans is completely foreign to them. This type of question is as relevant as polling to find out whether or not they prefer PCs to Macs.

However, if I were to ask my fellow teachers, or even well-to-do Beninese, I know they would quickly respond by saying no, they are not too content. I know this because it has been those who are not at great risk (shockingly, a $60 a month salary puts one out of danger here) who have been the most verbal about their suffering to me. People whose children have inoculations and full tummies, who own motos and televisions, are the most outspoken in regards to their poverty. I have no studies to show why this is, but I feel like once people have a taste of prosperity, they hunger for more. I don’t judge this tendency, but I think its an interesting one.

Perhaps national ethos is another factor. Those teachers, business-owners, and other financially secure Beninese, are also those in closest contact with aid agencies and the wider world. And it is the wider world which relays them the message: you are poor. Africa has been told this for decades. People here are pitied, often for good reason, but its not surprising that the pity has been internalized.

Brazil, Venezuela, and Mexico, all middle-income countries, had levels of happiness just as high as the U.S. and Western Europe. Having spent time in both Venezuela and Mexico, I think I can assert that both countries exude a certain pride in themselves. In no other place have I seen such proud national identity and joie de vivre. There are plenty of poor people (yet no starving), plenty of urban violence, and political scariness, but the national attitude of these places is “we are happy.”

This all leaves much to contemplate, and I doubt I’ll come to any definitive conclusions. It’s too easy to forget the number of factors (historical, economic, political, and cultural) that play a part in not only the stability and satisfaction of a country, but also of the individuals of which a country is made.

After spending over a month traveling around (Ghana, training the new Peace Corps volunteers, etc), I’m gearing up for a long stint in Tobre. School begins on September 10, classes begin September 17 (the pre-rentre is the time when students clean the school grounds). I’m looking forward to this new school year. Looking back on how nervous and unprepared I was last year, I can see what I will do differently as a teacher this time around. I know better how to be firm, but friendly. I know what types of activities work in a crowded classroom, how students expect to be treated, and how much I can teach in a two hour block. I have that great resolve that comes with beginning something anew.

Apart from teaching, there are a number of other things that will keep me busy in Tobre. My grant for the women’s garden was funded completely, so when I had back we’ll be able to buy the pump, drill the hole, and get these ladies the garden they deserve. Another volunteer will (hopefully) be coming out to teach them some accounting skills.

I’m also toying with the idea of starting a Girl’s Club this year. There’s a lot to figure out logistically (a time that they’ll be allowed to come, a neutral place to hold the club, a local partner, etc), but once its all figured out, I think a place where girls can come together to learn, think, and just have fun will be of immense value.

All this brings me to what I’m most excited about at the moment. I was recently thinking out loud to another volunteer about the problem of poor vision in my school. My neighbor girl, who is one of my students and who does any number of small chores for me, began getting lower and lower grades this year, due mainly to the fact that she can no longer see the board. Even though she sits in the front row, and copies off other students, her grades have slipped from 16s and 17s (out of 20), to 10s and 11s. And she is not the only one.

Students here, especially girls, must study at night. Since Tobre has no electricity, students study around small gas hurricane lamps. They tend to keep the wick low, as not to use more gas than needed. But couple this practice with eyes that may already be weak, and you have a recipe for disaster.

As someone dependent on glasses, I can’t imagine having to go about my day – from school to chores- without being able to see properly. As I talked about this, a simple idea struck me: bring optometrists to Tobre to test vision, and see if I can find some place to get cheap glasses from. We all had vision tests in school, and after talking to some other volunteers, I learned that there are in fact optometrists in this country that do such trips to villages.

So I made my way to Parakou, and took the 20 minute moto ride to the optometry hospital. I set up a meeting with the director, and came back the next morning to meet with him. I planned out what I would say in French to explain my ideas, but it turned out the director was a British man, so I was able to speak English.

The plan is: I will go back to Tobre with the vision sheet he gave me, and pre-test the students. If there is a number with vision problems, the doctors will come. And now its up to me to find glasses to go along with it all. Any suggestions?

As promised, I will now relate a little regarding my trip to Ghana:

My main reason for going was to take the GRE, which I spent about a month studying for half-heartedly, and two weeks studying for in earnest. Also, I had heard that they sell strawberry frozen yogurt and delicious fried chicken in Ghana.

I planned on traveling with another Peace Corps volunteer, but the nature of life in West Africa meant that she couldn’t get her visas in time. So I went alone. Overland. It sounds a little bit more adventurous than it really was. Mostly I just had to carry my Lonely Planet West Africa guide with me everywhere, and ask lots of people for directions.

I spent a couple nights in the capital, Accra. Accra was amazing. Amazing in the sense that there are tree-lined streets, public spaces, high rise office buildings, and delicious food. I kept feeling like I needed to explain to people that I had just come from Benin, especially when I spent seven minutes staring at the Poptarts and gluten-free bread in a grocery store.

After taking the test (I did fine), I went to Cape Coast, which is the site of one of many colonial slave forts. I found a cheap hotel ($7 a night), and wandered around the town. While still pretty touristy, Cape Coast was somewhat of a relief after the shock of Accra. Here there are plenty of door-in-the-wall shops, street food, and other things that have come to represent West Africa for me.

I took a day trip to Kakum National Park, and did the most touristy thing there, which is a rainforest canopy walk. Lumbering across suspended beams with a group of about 40 other tourists is probably not the best way to appreciate an African rainforest, but its what I did. If I had another chance, I would probably sign up for an early morning or night hike, in order to better observe the forest, and maybe catch a glimpse of wildlife.

Strangely enough, I ran across a couple of volunteers who had recently finished their Peace Corps service and were traveling through West Africa. So I spent an afternoon with them. It was a nice break from all the alone time I was having.

After saying goodbye to my friends, I went to El Mina castle; another slave castle a short ride from Cape Coast. The castle itself is sobering, especially when paired with a dramatic tour guide, who made me stand silently in the female slave holding cell as he gave a detailed description of how the English governor would choose his slave of the day from a balcony above.

(Most slaves sent to the New World came from West Africa. Most sent to the U.S. came from Ghana, while those from Benin were usually sold in Haiti, Brazil, and the Caribbean.)

While in El Mina, I wandered a bit around the port and tried to take some pictures. Unfortunately, a number of people demanded to be paid when I asked to take their picture. Even a little old lady who was selling crabs demanded money – more money than her crabs cost! So I found a way around those saavy guys by taking pictures of kids, since they are too happy about getting their picture taken to ask for anything more. Two can play this game.

The aspect of being 100% a tourist was strange. I’m so used to doing what’s necessary to integrate that accepting people’s attitude towards me as a foreigner in Ghana was a little hard. But sometimes, people could tell that I wasn’t just in Africa for two weeks, like most Americans. More than once, as I was haggling over the price of something, the seller would squint at me and ask where I was from. When I would explain that I’m from the U.S., but that I’ve been in Benin for the past year, they would get an “Ah-ha!” look and resign themselves to giving me a lower price. Ah-ha.

I spent my last night in Ghana though, playing the part. I stayed one night in a nice, ex-pat hotel. The hot water, air conditioning, and Mexican food were well worth it.

But the next day, I was ready to make my way back to Benin, and was even relieved when I crossed the border into Togo and could start speaking French again. As I went from my own seat on a Ghanaian bus, to sharing the front seat of a junky taxi with three other people, I felt like I'd come home.

I just got back from a week in Ghana, or as we call it here, The Promised Land. Since I have a bad cold right now (due to airconditioning, maybe?)I'll write more about my journey when I'm feeling more creative and less congested.

For my birthday, my friend Michelle sent me a copy of Vanity Fair’s Africa issue (thanks Michelle!). One of the things about being in Benin, or Africa, is that you slowly become skeptical of what people back home are saying about this place. First of all, there’s the tendency to talk about “Africa”, as if it were one country. Or an issue, like HIV/AIDs or the illegal arms trade. As in “wow, somebody should really do something about Africa”. Then there’s the tendency to sensationalize, generalize, and simplify. Africa is not a country, it’s a continent, made up of places as disparate as Tunisia and Sierre Leone, Benin and South Africa, Chad and Namibia. It’s impossible to generalize even just Benin, with its 80+ ethnic groups and languages.

So you can understand why I opened the magazine with a bit of distrust. But by the time I’d read the last article, I was surprisingly satisfied. The guest editor, Bono (have you heard of him?), did a good job selecting a variety of articles that touched on the great diversity of this continent: literature, music, economics, and the more usual issues of disease, poverty, and war. Besides a gigantic article on Princess Diana, I was impressed with the justice that was done. I don’t know if the magazine is still on the stands, but I encourage anyone to find a copy.

At the same time, I encourage you to read and listen to news and stories coming out of Africa, or about Africa, with a discerning and judging mind. For example, one of the more shallow articles in the magazine I mentioned was a compilation of paragraph-long statements by U.S. presidential candidates, stating what their foreign policy towards Africa would be like. Would it be fair to ask any candidate what their foreign policy towards Europe, or Asia, would be like? To be blunt, its ridiculous. Some questions I might suggest asking when hearing about “Africa”:

-What country is being talked about?

-What European country colonized this African country? (it does make a

difference whether it was the French, the British, the Belgians, etc)

- When talking about monetary aid, specifically how will the money be

distributed? Who will actually be conducting the programs? The government?

Private organizations? Companies?

- When talking about specific issues, like education, ask yourself what would need to be done to make things better. For instance, one candidate committed themselves to increasing the numbers of children in primary school in Africa. This sounds great, but unless there is also a commitment to train and pay teachers, to expand classrooms, to improve and update curriculum, to provide school lunches, and to make sure that there are more opportunities for people once they ARE educated, the whole idea falls short.

And that’s my rant for the day.

Now for those of you wondering about me, specifically. I’m doing great. After spending two weeks in my village, with no work to do, I’m on my way south for a month. The new crop of Peace Corps trainees has just arrived, so I’ll spend three weeks at their training site. I’m also going to Ghana to take the GRE, and, let’s be honest, take a vacation. This is all exciting stuff, but I’m also excited to go back to Tobre at the end of it all. The last two weeks I spent there were well-spent: studying for the GRE, cracking shea nuts with my neighbors, talking with colleagues, and sitting with friends. One of my friends is a seamstress. She had a baby boy about two and half months ago, and I hadn’t seen her in that amount of time. Last week, she went back to working in her shop, which also serves as a hang out place for women. So I spent hours sitting with her, holding the new baby. Did I mention that she doesn’t speak French? Our only communication is through my scraps of Bariba, her scraps of French, and body language. Beautiful.

Before I left, I was given lists of things to bring back for people. The “bonnes choses” (“good stuff”). Some things specifically asked for were English books from Ghana, a prayer mat, and sea water. I’m still confused about the last one, but at least they’re not asking me to bring back digital cameras and electricity.

I spent the last four days in perhaps the most peace-corpsy way imaginable: biking around from small village to small village, talking about HIV/AIDs. It was as fulfilling, fun, and interesting as it was stereotypical.

Each year a group of volunteers usually organizes a bike tour like this. The goal is to spread awareness of HIV/AIDs, especially to those people and places that usually go untouched. This year, our group was made up of 14 American volunteers, and four Beninese "formateurs". We visited 12 villages in four days, covering over 170 kilometers. The villages had been told that we were coming, and once we arrived the village crier usually went around to announce that we would be talking to people of all ages. Once a crowd had gathered (which didn't take that long, since a group of foreigners on bikes was normally enough to attract people), we broke them into groups: men, women, young men, young women, and children.

I worked with two other volunteers to talk to the women in each village. We were the only group to not have a Beninese talking with us. After giving our AIDs talk 13 times (in one village we did it twice), I was still glad that I chose to talk to grown women. Despite them being the group with the shortest attention span (women here never really have to just sit and listen to anything), they proved themselves to be the most animated group. It was rare to talk to a group without them breaking into singing and dancing at the end. Women here also don't just sit quietly and listen, but love to interact and yell their questions in the middle of a talk. I loved it. And hopefully, some of them women have a better understanding of HIV and of how to protect themselves.

Getting from place to place was incredible. The rainy season has begun, so everything is green and lush. Part of the ride was on main dirt roads, but a large part was on footpaths, some sandy, some bumpy, but all beautiful. We got caught in a rainstorm one morning, but it only made the ride more exciting. Each place we went, we were greeted with Bariba hospitality: drummers played, we visited the king (one village's king gave us five chickens and thirty eggs), and we were fed.

As my dad pointed out to me, this will probably be one of the highlights of my two years here. I agree.

Its incredible to look around and realize that we are already into the month of May. The months here have slipped by, despite the sprinkling of days that felt as if they just might never end. But the signs are all there: the school year is almost over, semester exams are this week, the rains have arrived, and somehow the landscape changed from brown and dry to green and lush without my noticing.

People always talk about time flying though, so I guess I won’t bore you all with a life truth that you’re all aware of. Perhaps one of the most jarring things about it already being May, is realizing that the little routine I’ve set up for myself here is about to be disrupted. Classes are over, soon old volunteers will be leaving and new ones arriving, and my secondary projects are about to get off the ground.

The last month and a half has been full. I arrived home from teaching one day to find that my courtyard had been transformed into the site of a Bariba naming ceremony, which included an oracle, elders shaving heads, and facial scarring. Since then, the neighbors across the road have been announcing the oracle’s presence each morning and night with frantic, deep drumming. A lovely way to fall asleep and wake up…

As for the oracle’s actual duties; don’t ask. For some reason asking for any sort of explanation regarding these types of ceremonies results in frustratingly circular reasoning. For instance:

“What does the oracle do?”

“She tells people their Bariba names.”

“Okay, why?”

“So they can have names.”

Or:

“What is the orange dots on everyone’s head for?”

“Well, they wash it off.”

“Why?”

“To be clean.”

Riiight.

As per the women’s garden that I’m always blabbing on about, I finally turned in a proposal to receive funding for their water pump. A returned-volunteer in the U.S. has $1500 ready to give, as long as the application goes through before June. I’m hounding the Peace Corps staff to speed the process along.

Working with this group of women has been incredible, and has been a lesson in learning to trust. When I first began writing up the grant proposal, I told the women that they had to write up a budget for me within two weeks. Mostly I asked them for the information as a formality, and I’m somewhat ashamed to say, as a test. If they were able to get the information, whether or not it was accurate, I would know that they were serious about taking ownership of the project. So I was pleased when they brought the budget to me, written on a scrap of paper, in four days.

Pleased as I was with their speediness, I pretty much disregarded their information, and set off on my own to get quotes on the price of drilling, labor, and the actual pump. I visited three government agencies in big cities to get quotes, each visit taking a couple of hours, and each time the price quoted to me was outrageous (as in $6,000 instead of around $300). Finally, I visited the small county agricultural agency, and sure enough, the prices they quoted were exactly those that the women had originally given to me on that scrap of paper.

I think it’s worth it to state the painful obvious: I didn’t trust this group of illiterate, non-French speaking women to be able to accomplish the task I set out for them. And something tells me that this sort of thing is not an oddity in the world of development. There is a lot of talk of development efforts needing to be locally directed, but often that seems to just be empty rhetoric. Almost as if development agencies, development workers, and basically people with the money are saying, “The important thing is that these people think they are in charge of this thing called development, but we all know who’s really in control.” This sort of attitude is usually justified by corruption, sadly enough with good reason, and even incompetence. But this small experience with the women’s garden has reminded me that I’m not helping anyone by approaching this work with a jaded, suspicious mindset.

Even if this little rant doesn’t make sense to anyone who has never been involved in the world of development, I hope it at least makes one thing clear: people are to be taken seriously, regardless of where they’re from. Pity doesn’t get things done, cooperation and trust do.

These pictures are of my life.

1. (dancing woman) A month and a half ago, the bigger town 15K from me celebrated International Women's Day. Part of the festivities included dancing by a couple dance troupes. By dance troupes I mean groups of mothers, all wearing the same fabric, dancing to traditional bariba drumming. It was beautiful, or at least it was for the first hour. By the third hour of drumming, I had a slight headache.

2. (woman walking in a field of onions) The women's garden is currently producing lettuce, peppers, African leafy greens, and as you can see, onions.

3. (Me with three women) This is me with some of the women from the garden. Right now I'm working with them to get a new water pump. Currently everything is watered morning and evening with water drawn from a well and watered by hand. This takes some time. With a new water pump, they would be able to cultivate twice as much land, therefore making twice as much profit, without having to put in twice as much work. For women who are working all day - getting water, cooking, getting firewood, chopping firewood, selling food in the market, taking care of their children, taking care of their neighbor's children, and serving their husbands - finding ways to do things more quickly is important.

4. (me sweeping) This photo explains a couple of important aspects of my life:

a. Now that the windy season is over, I no longer have to do what I'm doing in this picture every two hours, because the wind isn't blowing ungodly amounts of dust into my house. Instead, its now the hot season. And it is HOT. The temperature itself isn't necessarily impressive (95 - 105 F), but the duration is. Its hot from morning to night. In a place with no electricity, it means that there's no escape. No fans, no AC, no cold water, no iced tea, no otter pops, no cold water to shower with. The heat is inescapable. But as I'm learning, it isn't unbearable.

b. When I'm done grading quizzes, tired of reading, and tired of trying to understand Bariba, this is something I might end up doing for fun: taking pictures of myself.

I sat here at the computer thinking about a clever title for about three minutes before I gave up and put up the most boring one I could think of.

Currently I am in the sweaty south of Benin, having just finished a week of training. For part of the training each of us education volunteers brought our teacher counterpart, who is another English teacher at our school. I think all of us thought it was a really good week of training, especially because it was an opportunity to allow our fellow teachers to learn more about basics like lesson planning and how to conduct a staff meeting, but also more serious topics like sexual harassment and corporal punishment in schools. I'm looking forward to discussing it all more in depth with my counterpart when I get back to Tobre.

I feel like I say this every time I write a blog, since me writing a blog means I have left post, but I am looking forward to getting back. Granted I will arrive covered in mosquito bites (its too dry in Tobre for them right now), which probably will mean my friends and neighbors will be even more convinced that I'm prone to skin disoders (aka freckles).

Since I'm somewhat at a loss about what to write, I think I'll clear up some things I previously said about food in Benin.

Some things:

1. Food here is good. Most of the time.

2. Food here is usually eaten with your hands.

3. Food here often contains shocking amounts of starch, oil, and pepper.

I know spent a lot of time in one of my earliest blogs complaining about the food, but over time I've gotten more used to it, and also discovered that there are plenty of options. Due to the diversity amongst the different people groups in Benin, there is plenty of regional dishes.

Here are some of my favorites, in order of preference:

1. Yam Pilee: a northern speciality. Really it should be called Igname Pile, since yams here are nothing like what we call yams. Here they are huge starchy roots. To make yam pilee, the roots are peeled and chopped, then boiled. After soft, the yams are put into a piece of hallowed out wood, and pounded into an elastic, soft, almost play dough-like consistency. Once ready, it is rounded into nice plops, and served usually with spicy peanut sauce with chicken or sheep. It is eaten with your hands. It fills most volunteers up quickly, but I can always eat all of mine.

2. Ablo: a southern speciality. These are little steamed rice cakes. They are usually served with fishy, spicy sauce.

3. Beans and Gari: I love beans of any sort, so its nice be in a place where I can usually find someone somewhere who sells beans and gari. Usually the beans are just white beans cooked with plenty of chicken msg. Gari is pieces of ground up manioc. This is usually also smothered with big spoonfuls of oil.

4. Buille and patee: buille is a general name for porridge, and patee (there should be an accent over the first e) are a type of salty, fried breads. This is a breakfast dish. There are two types of buille: good buille and gross buille. Good buille is made, I think, from corn. It is served with plenty of sugar. I'm talking heaping spoonfuls. Gross buille is made from fermented corn meal, or millet. No amount of sugar can make it taste good, in my opinion.

So these are my favorites, and it is also easy to find people selling rice with red sauce and meat (or cheese). There is only one type of cheese, which is made by the Fulani people here. I can't describe it well, but I will say that I know I'll miss it when I leave. There are also plenty of fried balls of delicious dough, referred to ambiguously as "beignets" in French ("cakes"). In Bariba there are specific words for the different types: for those made of corn flour, those made of bean flour, or those made of wheat flour. All of them, of course taste good.

In cities there are often at least one of what we volunteers refer to as yovo stores. These stores are stocked full of western foods that we crave, usually packaged with arabic writing, and sold at exorbitant prices. So there ARE chances to take a break from the fine Beninese cookin'.

To end this post on food, I share something serious. I have actually started working with the gardeners in Tobre, and we have begun the process of looking for ways to get a better water pump for them, as well as looking into alternative to pesticides (a BIG shout out to my friend Kjessie, who researched the bugs attacking plants for me). A week and a half ago I met with them, and found out that they had harvested their potatoes, but that the NGO who promised to buy them still hadn't come to pick them up. At that point they'd been harvested for about a week. My postmate and I tried to think of ways that they could begin selling the potatoes before they went bad. We suggested they try to sell them at the bigger market 15K away, or to stores there. We thought they had a couple dozen kilos maybe, which would be hard to sell in this area since most people don't eat potatoes there, but it might be possible. Turns out they have about three tons of potatoes. TONS. All about to go bad.

Luckily Ly, my postmate, knows a number of people who work in the mayor's office and for the county, and confronted many of them about what's happening with the gardeners and their potatoes. A lot of people promised to look into it, so I'll see when I get back whether or not the NGO ever came.

Its hard to blame either side, because the gardeners really should have made the NGO sign a contract and give a down payment, but this is a group of old, mostly illiterate women we're talking about. Growing three tons of potatoes is no small task, especially when literally every part of the growing and harvesting process is done by hand.

Maybe this was a pessimistic way to end an update, but the reality is that not everything here is as exciting as yam pilee.

the last pictures, in order:

1. the sheep meet my director gave me on Tabaski

2. my friend Bake, her daughter (and my student) Nicole, and her baby, who she always says will be my husband when he grows up

3. and me. hiiii!

and on this one:

1. the very last moments of a sheep's life... he's about to have his throat cut

2. me with the salad the garden co-op gave me. fresh greens are a rare treat.3. and the one above is of a "true" bariba

With the end of the holidays comes the return to routine. Which is nice.

I spent Christmas and the days leading up to it in southern Benin, mostly in a cute little town called Zanganando. I dare you to pronounce it correctly. On Christmas eve a number of volunteers served lunch and handed out gifts to children in a nearby big city. Due to our organization, we handed out probably close to 150 sets of gifts. My job in the assembly line was to mark kids’ hands to make sure none of them attempted the unthinkable: sneaking back in line for a second cadeau from Papa Noel.

Christmas day was spent with volunteers, making burritos and enjoying the southern heat. It was a good Christmas, but I woke up early the next day to catch a bus back up to my home here in Benin. It wasn’t until three days later that I actually arrived in Tobre (trying to get anywhere here is a lesson in patience and flexibility).

New Year’s Eve this year fell on the same day as the Muslim holiday called Tabaski here. I think in the States its called Ede. It marks the last day of the yearly pilgrimage to Mecca, as well as when God told Abraham to sacrifice Isaac (Muslims say it was Ishmael). In remembrance of the ram God sent in Isaac’s stead, people kill sheep and share the meat with their families, their neighbors, and the poor. Tabaski/New Year’s was wonderful. My friends and neighbors in Tobre fed me about four meals. My school’s director sent me a big bag of prime sheep meat, which I prepared with teriyaki marinade and let people have a taste of how we sometimes eat meat chez moi. There were drummers, trumpeters, and a traditional Bariba warrior making their way throughout the village. Apparently the warrior is not allowed to smile or talk when he’s wearing his garb, otherwise he’ll die. I love the way people tell me this kind of stuff – so matter of factly.

Now school is back in session, and I’m realizing more and more how at home I am in Tobre. Gone are the days when walking around was a cause for slight anxiety. Now I have people I can stop in and visit, places I can go to get decent snacks, and people have generally accepted my presence in their quiet little home. My closest neighbors (the royal family) leave me with the key to the gasoline they sell from their house when they step out, and leave me in charge of selling it. I guess first of all I should explain that gas here is brought from Nigeria, and sold on the side of the road in old liter rum bottles. No Shell stations here. Usually its women and children who man the stands on the side of the road. If you didn’t know better, you’d think the bottles were full of apple juice or some other refreshing drink. So now I too occasionally ask the question “How many liters?” and fill up people plastic gas containers.

Recently I’ve been taking advantage of the bike Peace Corps issued me (which is the nicest bike that I will probably ever own) to ride around and visit neighboring villages. On one such trip, I passed a Fulani (Peuhl, or bush person) woman about my age. Instead of the usual greeting that I get when I pass people, she started chasing me and waving me over. So I stopped, and through gestures she communicated that she wanted to ride on the back of my bike. In the same way, I told her we would fall over, but she shook her head. Well, I thought, whatever. So I let her hop on and I pedaled us into Tobre. She also had a baby tied on her back. I just kept thinking “We can NOT fall over. We can NOT fall over.” And we didn’t. At one hill I made her get off and walk, but I waited at the top and she climbed back on. In the end I was especially glad we tried it out, because it turns out she was going to the Catholic clinic. I’m assuming the baby was sick.

So those are the small scale things I’m doing: selling gasoline and giving lifts to bush people. On the bigger side, I’m still trying to work with the women’s garden co-operative, as well as looking into finding grants for my school. Having this kind of work makes me feel like I’m actually contributing something. But I’m still finding plenty of time to sit and read for hours (I’m onto my 46th book since being here – don’t be too impressed, a lot of them were quick reads). Still finding plenty of time sit and watch the stars and try to decipher the conversations in Bariba.

Thanks to all who have sent me mail. I haven’t gotten packages that I know where sent yet, but thank you in advance. You have no idea how exciting it is to receive letters and packages.

And on that same note, I finally have an address at the Post Office 15K from Tobre.

Write it down:

Betsie Frei

(professeure americaine a Tobre)

B.P. 40

Pehunco, Benin

L’Afrique de l’Oueste

I hope the holidays treated you all well. Happy MLK Jr. Day, and until the next time I’m around a computer,

Love and grace,

Betsie

It’s been almost a month since I last added to this blog of mine, though it seems much shorter. Not so much because I’ve been busy, which is usually what makes time fly by, but I think mostly because my life here is just starting to take on a rhythm and routine. Since I last wrote, the Assistant Peace Corps director came to my village to observe me teach, the faculty of my school wrote and administered the semester exams (called devoirs here), and I graded all 250 of my student’s tests.

The APCD’s visit to Tobre was an exciting event for my school, and I think for my director in particular. He went through special pains to really roll out the red carpet for her, which when she rolled up in the shiny Peace Corps Landcruiser she looked like she deserved to have a red carpet. First she observed me teach, which went fine, except that I spoke too much French. Then she gave a little talk to the class about how I’m a volunteer, how I’m in Tobre because I want to be there, and about why learning English is important. To bring about the last point, she asked the students where one might go to speak English. My favorite answers were Cote d’Ivoire, France, Porto Novo, and Parakou (the last two are cities in Benin).

After giving me feedback, my school director ushered in three girls from a higher grade, who served the three of us lunch. He had also arranged for the one place in Tobre that sells sodas to bring a crate-full over for us. I can’t really explain how touching it was that the director went through such pains for that visit.

As far as test-writing and correcting goes, I spent some time running around, typing tests and showing some of the other teachers how to use a flash drive (the priest in Tobre has a generator and computer that we used to type up all the tests). Correcting the tests, as I’m sure any teacher can tell you, was either enjoyable or disheartening, depending on whose test I was looking at. While some students did remarkably well, there were at least a handful of tests in every class that not only didn’t have any English written on them, but didn’t even have real words, French or otherwise. There are students who clearly never even learned to write, and just filled their papers with characters that only resembled letters. What do you do for students like that?

Other than teaching, my days have been filled with whatever one does in a village: chatting with neighbors, helping kids study, reading, getting tutored in Bariba, cooking, and fighting the never ending battle against the dust that threatens to take over my house. With my house right next to the main road, and the dry season creating red dust, everything gets blanketed in a fine layer of terre rouge.

So now I have two and a half weeks break from school, and I hope to travel around Benin a bit. I also hope to look into some different grants that I can apply for to help out my school. Right now there are no doors, windows, or real chalk boards, and there are not enough desks. I would love to start working on getting funding, and I will try to keep everyone updated.

I also may begin working with something called a Groupment, which is like a farmer’s cooperative. The Groupment is already established and working, but the closest volunteer and I are planning on going to their next meeting to see if they have needs we might be able to address. This might include basic accounting, leadership training, and researching alternatives to the insecticides and pesticides they depend on.

As the days go by more and more quickly, and I find more and more ways to be an asset to Tobre, I am more and more at home here. Of course, there’s really no place like home during Christmastime, so for my sake enjoy the festivities and traditions that I missing so.

Merry Christmas and bon fete!

Two days ago was Thanksgiving, the holiday that, in my opinion, kicks off the American holiday season. I am very jealous of all of you who enjoyed delicious thanksgiving food (turkey, turkey skin, cranberry sauce, pies, mmmmm), and even more jealous that you where most likely with family and friends.

But don't feel too sorry for me, because I'm in Benin. You should probably even be jealous. My life is rich, if not slightly absurd at times. And there is no place like the place I'm in.

Since my last post, plenty of things have happened:

1. School is in full swing, meaning that I teach regularly. My classes are big and diverse, with sixty kids ranging from nine to twenty years old in the same class. My classroom resources are the blackboard, chalk, and my own creative mind. On the whole the kids are well-behaved. I don't think this is necessarily because I'm a great teacher, but because Tobre is so small that it would be especially shameful for any of the kids to get in trouble in my class. Everyone would know about it.

2. I took a weekend trip to another town around Halloween to see a Whipping Fete, which is a coming-of-age ceremony for boys. They start at around eight years old, and though I don't understand the whole story, the main gist is that men and boys dance around with whips and whip each other. There's plenty of drums and dancing, and the point I think is to take the whipping like a man. Its pretty crazy.

3. I've slowly been learning Bariba. I'm far from fluent, or even functional, but learning a local language is completely unlike learning a western language. There are no dictionaries, no grammar books, no cognates. Most of the people can't even explain the structure of the languages, so its more like trying to crack a code than anything else.

There are also plenty of small, day to day interactions that can range from incredibly awkward to unbelievably touching. Most of the time though, they include me looking like an idiot. Since I don't know how anything is supposed to work here (do I bow to everyone or just elders? What’s the best method of hand-washing clothes? Should I wear a headscarf everyday? How appropriate is it for me to disagree publicly with my school director? ...), I think most people see me as a sort of half-person. Or woman-child. I am in need of a lot of education and people in my village are not afraid to give it to me (i.e. "Guannigui, that's not the kind of shoes you should wear to market"). Most of the time I feel like people look at me and just shake their heads.

While playing the role of the ignorant outsider is often fun, if not slightly demeaning, it does mean that its harder to be considered a source of advice and help. For instance, I spent a couple of weeks trying to figure out how I could get my neighbors to wash their hands before they eat. I couldn't just say "Hey, you should wash your hands with soap before you eat", because really, why would they listen to some girl who doesn't even know how to carry water on her head? I finally took a high-context approach, and bought a bar of soap, a little plastic bowl, and tied the bowl up in a tree next to the barrels that hold water in our courtyard. Then I innocently asked my neighbor if I could keep my soap there "so I can wash my hands". Wink wink. The first time I saw my neighbors using the soap too, I was so proud you would think that I just found a cure for cancer. In fact, a few days later somebody stole the soap, and I had to buy more. I really can't complain about people stealing soap though.

But hand-washing is an easy topic to address when compared with some of the bigger issues. For instance, there wasn't any way for me to tell people that they shouldn't tie a newborn baby's umbilical cord off with a piece of plastic bag from the ground, when I have never delivered a baby before in my life. Whereas, the village women have delivered countless babies. And so it goes on: how do I address inappropriate relationships between teachers and students? How do I address water sanitation? Proper nutrition? I have no credentials.

But my impression is, these things come with time and with effort.

As for now I will focus on establishing myself as a good teacher and a ready student. I will also focusing on staying amoeba and parasite free (I'm being treated for it as I write this). Other goals include befriending the nuns in village, weaseling my way into the hearts of farmers so they'll bring me fresh produce, keeping my house dust-free (its the windy season so that's harder than it sounds), and making myself a real part of the royal family. I won't however get the facial scars that the old ladies keep insisting that I get.

If anyone is feeling especially charitable and jolly, as you should, since it is now the holiday season, here are some items that you could send to a certain Peace Corps volunteer:

- Wood furniture catalogs (the carpenter in my village asked for some so he could get new ideas for furniture)

- A mini-mag light (for my neighbor)

- mix cds (for my pleasure)

- spice/sauce packets (like taco, alfredo, gravy, mac’n cheese, etc)

- any good books

- anything else you feel like sending (I’m easy).

Likewise, if you have time to add the following to your prayers:

- Continued patience, both on my part and on the part of my community, as we live together.

- Good health. I realize I had almost no idea how much poor health can affect everything. So good health for me and for my neighbors.

- I want to be a good teacher. So pray that I would be creative, be good-humored, and never be lazy.

- That I can begin to see the needs in my community that I might be able to address in my time here. Being a teacher allows time for secondary-projects, and the sooner I see needs and am approached by my community with things they’d like help with, the sooner I can begin.

- For my fellow volunteers. This is a hard time to be away from home. Also that I would be a good friend to those around me.

All my love, Betsie

oh, and a current PC voluteer in Benin has a widely-followed, and frequently updated website, that might be good to check up on:

lostinbenin.com

no real post until some people start sending me emails. seriously kids, a month without checking my email and there were only five new emails? that hurts.

meanwhile, enjoy.

It is hard to know where to begin. So hard, in fact, that the task almost seems impossible. But I have discovered the secret benefits of keeping a blog, which include packages of precious goods from old college professors (Thanks so much Prof. [Calderon] Lloyd!). Thus for your sake and mine I will do my best.

I have been in Tobre for the last month. Thanks to some minor health problems, which I won’t go into online, I was able to go to the nearest big town and use the internet for the weekend, stock up on some bature (white person) goods, and hang out with some fellow volunteers. But besides this little trip, I have been in Tobre. School began last week, and by that I mean that I began holding classes. I think only one other teacher has begun. The official school calendar states that school began on October 2nd, but this really means that the students began clearing all the brush and bush away from around the school. It also means they had to chop down some trees to build some more “classrooms” – tin awnings held up by the chopped down trees. The last I heard there were no desks and no blackboards for these classes, but things seem to come together in strange ways here, so I’m not too worried.

Mostly though, I have been doing my best to learn to navigate village life. Everyone speaks Bariba. Not only to each other, but also to me, even when it is obvious that I don’t understand. One thing I do understand though, is the name I’ve been given: Guannigui. It is the name given to princesses (and don’t picture Sleeping Beauty when you think of an African princess). I also understand most greetings here, which is good since greeting everyone you see is a moral obligation. I spend a lot of time with the royal family, who I share a courtyard with. I’m still unclear on what it means to be royal here, but that is no surprise since I’m unclear on most things. They help me with the language, they let me make their teenaged neice get water for me, they wash my clothes for me, they answer most of my questions, they bring me food and I do my best to reciprocate by giving them loafs of banana bread that I bake when I’m bored.

For your sake, I could try to describe Tobre. I could talk about the topless women, the naked kids, the cows and chickens and goats running around, the Muslim call to prayer at 5 am, the market days, the red dirt, the facial scarring, the interesting food. But I don’t feel at liberty to really go in-depth since at this point I really don’t understand what’s going on. By saying there are naked kids, I don’t want to send the impression that the kids are suffering for a lack of clothes. Maybe its just hot here and there’s no need for them. But then again, maybe it is an indicator of a need. I just don’t know yet. So forgive me for refraining for a little while from painting the sorts of pictures of Africa that are typically painted while I try know what is really happening.

To be honest, I have been on the receiving end of it all. By all appearances, it looks like I came here to be served and cared for, not the other way around. I depend completely upon the people around me for just about everything, since I’m completely uneducated as far as village life goes.

While it is frighteningly easy to get into a funk, and dream about burritos and caramel macchiatos and fall fashion (not to mention hugs from my family or understanding the language being spoken), it is important to remember that I’ve only been in Tobre for a month and that there’s no way to really love and appreciate a place in that short amount of time. I pray for patience towards myself as I adjust to life here. To borrow the words of a certain college pastor, I am “fundamentally sound”. And even more than that – I’m doing well. There is a lot to learn, a lot to discover, and a lot to understand. After one month, the party has b