It’s ironic: A month ago already I was on my way to Cotonou for a PC conference when I saw 4 dead bodies on the side of the road during the 3 hour trip from Dogbo; 3 were in a car accident, and the 4th in a moto accident. I was really shaken up and was going to write a post about all the traffic accidents I’d been seeing lately and the reality of traveling around Benin. Ultimately I decided against that because I knew that my parents would be coming to visit in a month and I was nervous enough for them that I did not want to make them more nervous than they already were in traveling to Benin.

Have you ever seen a dead body? After accidents like that, they lay unnaturally on the ground, bent and broken. I remember talking to random volunteers in Tanzania, and reading testimonials about service in Africa that all said after some time spent here, one comes to see and really understand that death is everywhere and just a part of existence. But after a year and a half of serving here, I don’t really see that at all. The way I see death here is unnatural; unexpected, and so often unnecessary.

In Kandi in early November, I saw a small child’s body covered with a pagne, just his small feet sticking out from underneath. His broken bike was a few feet ahead of him and a crowd had already formed. Nearly every time I traveled in the past 3 months I saw a large camion or car completely overturned on the side of the road. Roads here only fit 2 cars across, and wind circuitously so that if the brush is high, one can’t see around the bend in advance. Drivers cut into the opposing lane to pass slow cars and camions and sometimes it is the last thing that they will ever do. People here seem to think that what happens while driving is a less in their own power than it is willed by the grace of god, thereby relieving themselves of much of the responsibility of safety and of power over their own lives.

I was coming back to Dogbo with Michelle in late November and saw an awful accident on the side of the road; a man’s skull bashed open upon the road, blood pooling out beside him. I never knew before that blood could be so vividly bright and red, even when against blacktop pavement: It almost looked fake to me. His skin was scraped away on his leg to reveal raw pink flesh—I remember thinking that it was such a striking contrast to the brown of his skin. My eyes lingered on it. His moto was fallen over on the side of the road and people had begun to gather palm reeds to cover his body. I cried when I got home, but again, I didn’t tell my parents about it that night when they called.

There was a quote by Ernest Hemingway that I read during college: “To live in Africa, you must know what it is to die in Africa.” I remember thinking then that there was something so exotic, maybe even romantically so, about that idea. But I can not say that I truly understood it until now. I will never forget the first body that I saw cast off on the side of the road after an accident in Porto Novo when I was still a trainee two summers ago. It caught my breath and I squeezed myself over the person sitting next to me, pushing off of my toes in the trou trou bus trying to see out the window. I think it was the first dead body I had ever seen outside of wakes and funerals. And I understand what Hemingway means now. I know what it is to live here in Benin: And in order to do that for the past year and a half, I’d tucked away that dead body and all the others to the back corners of my mind and didn’t think of them anymore.

In July, for the first time in a long while, I was put face to face again with Hemingway’s idea when a car drove into my from behind while I was riding on a moto. Knowing what it meant to be here and the reality of traveling around, I had to decide whether or not I wanted to continue doing it. I struggled for weeks to push it to the back of my mind, to get on a moto again and feel comfortable being here. But in the end I did it and I have no regrets about it. The time I’ve spent in Benin from July until now has held some of my hardest struggles and personal challenges, and it has also held some of my happiest and most rewarding moments during all of my Peace Corps service. I am amazed to see how far I have come in the past 6 months and what I have accomplished here.

Unfortunately, the day after I came down to Cotonou last month, again I was in an accident where this time, a moto drove directly into me from behind as I was getting onto another moto. I was knocked off of my feet and my helmet, shoe, and glasses flew into the road. I braced myself against whatever might be behind me (I was on a main street), but fortunately no other cars or motos came since I’d fallen at the side of the road. After a few seconds of shock that this actually could have happened again, I got up and hopped over to the sidewalk to call Peace Corps to come and get me. I was very bruised and cut up, and needed stitches, but I am okay. For the third time in the last 10 months, I was extremely lucky to walk away with so few injuries compared to what could have happened. I’m not going to play ‘what if’ with the thousands of minute ways that instant could have played out differently. The fact is that I am lucky. I know that.

My trip to Mali planned for a week later--Christmas and New Years--was cancelled since it was a trek in Dogon country and my injuries were prohibitive in terms of hiking. But like I wrote before, I was given the opportunity to realize how excellent and supportive my friends here are of me by their coming to keep me company in the med unit here (and hold down the fort with air conditioning, our own fridge, and a pretty shnazzy tv in sick room 1) for the holidays.

I waited for about a month to make my decision to leave. I wanted to heal and spend the holiday season here with my friends. I didn’t want my pain or the prospect of spending Christmas in NY to impact my decision, and besides, Christmas at home probably wouldn’t have felt happy at all given everything that happened anyway. But after a lot of reflection and consideration, I have made the very difficult decision to end my Peace Corps service in Benin. It is hard to think that I have so much little time left here anyway, but I can’t stay just to prove the point that I can either. I think had I left in July I would have regretted it. But now I know that I can stay here. I know that I can get back on a moto and readjust to my life here and all that that entails, and I know that I can succeed. I’ve done it already. I know that I can be happy here. Having realized all that, I choose not to do it again. I’ve had a marvelous experience in Benin but for me it just feels like my time here is over.

Packing up the life that I built for myself here was very difficult. Saying goodbye to Scout, to my volunteer friends, and to the friends and colleagues I have made in Dogbo is painful. And I think that saying goodbye to my host-family, who have supported me and really been my family throughout my time here, and not knowing if or when I will see them again, will be agonizing. Coming home to a place where I don’t have a job and to a place that hasn’t really been my home in 18 months is terrifying, but it does not diminish that I think I am making the decision that is best for me at this time.

I might update in the weeks that I get home with photos, etc. but this will be my last blog entry written in Benin. I want to thank everyone that has supported me so much throughout my service in Benin. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to share my experiences in this remarkable country with you, and I know that I have been blessed to have your support. Certainly it would have been difficult if not impossible, for me to make it here without your phone calls, letters, packages, and blog comments. I hope that I was able to keep you entertained from time to time. So a thousand times, thank you!

Look no further.

Click on the following link to donate to Peace Corps Benin's 2010 Camp GLOW. GLOW stands for Girls Leading Our World (Les filles guident notre monde) and is held annually in Porto Novo by Southern volunteers. About 50 girls from across Southern Benin are invited to participate in a week-long escape from their daily lives at home. Camp GLOW emphasizes the importance of staying in school for young girls and gives them an opportunity to learn about their bodies, finances, be introduced to computers for the first time etc.

I went straight to camp Glow after coming back to Benin last June and it was a pretty amazing week spent with these girls. Probably the most awesome thing to me was seeing these girls finally just get an opportunity to act their age and goof off with each other. Their brothers might get a opportunity to go out and play soccer with an old messed up ball. But at home, girls are cleaning, cooking, carrying their little siblings around on their backs all day, and often don't even have the time to study for school, never mind play. At first it was clear that they weren't even really sure how to and they were shy with each other. But by the end of the week they had all become friends and free time was no longer filled with awkward standing.

Last years camp was funded by PLAN, an international ONG. This year PLAN is unnable to fund the Camp and so we're asking for donations from home to help make this incredible event possible through the PCPP--peace corps partnership program. Please consider donating to this amazing cause. Really, even $5 helps, and if all of our families donate a little, it will go a long way to making this project a success. I'm including a link and instructions in case the link doesn't work. If you were going to send me anything, please consider doing this instead...i really don't need anything anyway. I appreciate your generosity especially given that it is the holiday season and we aren't in the best of financial times. Merry Christmas everyone.

Link

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=680-182

Directions in case links don't work

1. go to www.peacecorps.gov and click on "Donations"

2. at this point, you can search by my last name, "Hurst", OR click on "view all volunteer projects" on the right side of the page

3. you can then search under "Benin" or "Michigan" (my home state)

4. click on the Camp GLOW PCPP. They can then read a short description of the project, see how much of the total has been raised, and make a donation.

Remember, all donations are tax deductible! Thank you everyone, and happy holidays!

Look at Scout...isn't she cute. I took these pictures to emphasize her pudgy belly pleine pleine with kittens. 2 Weekends ago I was in Lokossa working on my world map with Michelle. I had to go to Cotonou on Sunday...I'd just like to say that i didn't want to come to cotonou. Not at all, actually. Peace Corps asked me to come down for training review and to begin planning next year. I didn't feel comfortable traveling in Benin with all of the fetes coming which implicitly means lots of alcohol added into the mix of already terrible drivers. I even said that to michelle before leaving her house.

I went back to Dogbo (entirely opposite direction) first to check on Scout who was so so pregnant I thought she'd pop any day. SHe was still pregnant on Sunday and I left, planning to be back on Tuesday. For reasons that I'm not going to get into now, I didn't make it back Tuesday, but i found out from Kristin that Scout gave birth to 3 mouse-like cute little kittens under my bed. I had confirmation that they were all doing well on Thursday when someone checked in on them. I left cotonou Saturday for the sole purpose of making sure they were all okay and giving them to Basil to look after. But when I walked into my house, it swiftly became apparent that something was wrong. Scout ran right up to me, while Kristin told me she didn't leave her kittens at first when she walked in. Scout was clamoring for attention and pretty obviously distressed. As it turns out, there wasn't a single kitten in my house. Scout was so stressed out being in the house that she ate them all. There wasn't a trace of them...and there is no way in or out of my house for them. So feline infanticide. Have a holly jolly christmas. I am at least grateful that scout herself is okay because I would have been terribly upset if something had happened to her. She didn't let me out of a 6 inch range from her the entire 3 days that I was home. I guess in a way, it is also good that I never got to see the kittens...it probably would have been more upsetting had I seen them before she ate them. Anyways, who knew cats do that? you learn something new every day.

Merry Christmas everyone! It is hard for me to believe that it is already December 24th...the date has certainly snuck up on me. Experiencing Christmas this second time around has been a very different experience than last year. I remember last year being asked by a fellow volunteer what I was doing to remember the Christmas season and I had told her nothing because I wanted to forget it was the Holidays altogether. Being away from home last year for the first time ever was fairly difficult for me and I found any reminders of what I was missing to be miserable. I didn't really enjoy Christmas day meme at all. THis year though I found myself getting really excited for Christmas. I started playing music about a month ago and took out all the decorations and cards i received last year to decorate my house. Plus i had a holiday crafts session--benin edition, to see how i could use the things in my marches to "spruce" up (haha) my holiday season in hot hot benin. Pictures included for your viewing pleasure.

painted winter scene on a calabash half

Calabash snowman! Hammered nails into the 3 halves to make holes and tied them together with string. Made the hat out of tissu scraps and a cotton ball, and the scarf was a tissu piece

My christmas wreath made out of tissu scraps tied around a manipulated coat hanger (idea courtesy of Mrs. Walsh's 4th grade activities). Topped off with ribbon and an ornament that Aunt Nancy wrapped my present with last year

cards that i got last year

advent wreath constructed entirely of computer paper that i colored laboriously. Every sunday i taped on a new paper flame.

lamp decorated with some of the ornaments that Aunt Annie sent me last year

I forgot to take pictures of the nativity that aunt Mary sent last year and the mini tree that my neighbor sent me, but oh well...there are some of the highlights.

I have to say I am really grateful to be spending the holiday season here with some of my closest friends. Being in Benin really has altered my understanding of family and what it means to be there for people. I might be an ocean away from home of birth, but I still get to spend Christmas with the family that I've found here and for that I am extremely lucky.

Just last evening my mom and dad’s 2 christmas boxes came in and so did my 2 thanksgiving packages so it is looking like we are going to have a pretty spectacular meal by Beninese standards. I have to say that I will miss that. Opening a box of gingerbread cookie mix probably would never phase me at home to any degree but I opened it here and everyone in the bureau with me now is RIDICULOUSLY excited to make gingerbread cookies tomorrow. Plus I received lots of ziplock bags that you can snip the ends off to make icing bags to decorate.

So like I said, December has been crazy. For my birthday Angelina and Michelle came over on the friday before to make dinner with me and just hang out. We had mexican and listened to Christmas music and watched the Muppet Christmas Carol and the Nightmare before Christmas. The next day we got up early and went to Hoedogli to do Kantos's annual talk about girls staying in school and gender issues in Benin as compared to the US. The taxi ride to Azove was chock full of harassement and then we were SWARMED when we got to Azove by the zems wanting to take us to Hoedogli. That might have been the scariest zem ride of all of my time in BEnin--barring the zem ride that landed me on the hood of a car in JUly. My driver took off first down the narrow dirt (but for all intents and purposes sand) road to Hoedogli. It was covered with people walking to and from Azove's marche and the sand kept making the zem wobble, which always makes me nervous. I thought my zem was going exceptionally fast so i told him to slow down again and again and he didn't listen. Then all of a sudden angelina and Michelle both passed me on their motos and my driver became indignant saying "tu vois?" (you see?) and sped up to beat them. THen it became a contest of idiots to see who could pass the other and Michelle Angelina and I were all screaming at our zems to slow down because they were being dangerous and we were nervous. When we finally got to Houedogli we were all shaken up and it kind of tainted our mood for the talk and the rest of the day.

Girls talk in Houedogli

Then on my birthday meme, Kristin came over, bearing mozzarella that she had brought up from Cotonou the day before and kept in my "cool bag" to keep it slightly cooler than normal temps in Benin. We made delicious calzones and watched Pearl Harbor in the spirit of the day.

Calzones!

With the World Map a week later, and being in Cotonou since then, December is practically over and soon we'll be ringing in 2010! Unbelievable. Well, Anyways, i hope that everyone has a very merry christmas tomorrow with their families--I know I will. Hope you all get what you want. Me? I have eggnog in a can sent from the USA...what more could one ask for?

The weekend after my birthday I went back to Lokossa to follow up on the world map with Michelle. Once again it went amazingly and was so much fun to hang out with the kids. It went much quicker than we thought it would with the painting and was much more rewarding this time to see it get filled in little by little. We thought the black background would really make it pop. IT still isn't finished--we have to outline countries and write all of their names and oceans and stuff in French, etc. That will probably take awhile, plus we're on the search for teeny tiny sharpies to do it. But I'm posting up additional pictures for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy!

Charlie doing his compass

Almost done!

Me painting

Dieu donnait painting

Africa

Willie, emion, georgie, and 2 other kids

Michelle and all of the little camera monsters

Painting

Kids goofing off

Janvier 2 and Marcellin painting

Frederick being silly

Janvier, marcellin, and michelle

Michelle, Angelina, Heidi, Sarah, Claire, and I are slated to leave the day after Christmas for Ougadougou in Burkina Faso for a night, before heading onward to Mali. We're planning on going to Djenne to see the mud mosque there before heading to Mopti to begin a trek of Dogon Country through new years. Due to recent kidnappings and growing threat to tourists in Northern Mali, especially the timbuktu area, Peace Corps is urging caution for travel there. Timbuktu is now off limits and Mopti was discouraged as well, though now that has been changed. So far we are still planning on going on our trip as are 2 other groups of Benin PCVs--the guide we have has worked with Benin PCVs in the past--took Kate and a group of TEFL volunteers through Dogon Country last year and got really good reviews. There is Peace COrps in Mali and they are not on standfast or consolidated or anything like that, so I'm hoping it remains okay. I'm attaching articles regarding the issues for anyone who is interested and will keep you updated.

French Kidnapping of November 2009

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8381200.stm

Large Group Kidnapping Jan 2009

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7846134.stm

Update re: January Kidnapping--Murder of British National

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8080447.stm

US Arming Mali to Fight North Africa Al-Qaeda Branch

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8316269.stm

My thoughts and prayers go out to the So-Youn family and to the Peace Corps Morocco community as they mourn the death of one of their volunteers.

http://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.media.press.view&news_id=1507

This past week has seen a lot of good food and fete-ing in Dogbo! Wednesday was Kristin's birthday so we went to eat at the local buvette and then people came back to my house for cake. I found balloons in Cotonou, which added a little bit of flare as well.

Thanksgiving au Benin, round deux was excellent. I was freaking out that none of the Thanksgiving boxes my family had sent me made it here but we managed to scrounge up a delicious meal in Dogbo with all Beninese found items anyway (with the exception of 2 cans of cranberry sauce, lovingly donated by Michelle and Kristin).

I never really thought that the first thanksgiving I hosted would be in West Africa but it was pretty awesome. There were 11 people at my house on Thursday for dinner. Angelina and Andrew were over all day cooking with me and then Kristin came over after class to help, and Michelle as well. Everyone else just came to eat, which worked out fine—too many cooks in the kitchen and all. We made cornbread stuffing (made the cornbread the day before and attempted to let it dry out—let me take a moment to expound how successful THAT was in a tropical climate…all I succeeded in doing was getting it covered in ants and having to brush them all off the next day before people got too grossed out), Turkey legs that Meredith brought down from Azove, glazed carrots, green bean “casserole” sort of, cranberry sauce, corn, gravy (Angelina made it from bouillion cubes and it was wonderful…don’t know how she did it. We didn’t have drippings because we fried the turkey and even though we boiled it first because meat here is too tough to eat if you don’t boil, the water got thrown out by accident). We also had garlic mashed potatoes, glazed “sweet potatoes” (not what you r thinking of—Beninese sweet potatoes). And I got up at 7 to make fresh onion herb bread which was a HUGE hit….so delicious…and it made a ton. We brought down the extra to Cotonou yesterday and bought meat to make sandwiches…AMAZING! Dessert was apple crumble pie and Michelle whipped up a “Green Papaya tastes just like Pumpkin Pie” that really did taste pretty much like a pumpkin pie. We had an amazing time hanging out together and cooking. We even splurged and bought 3 things of real butter!!! The smell of ACTUAL REAL butter melting on my stove to make the crisp topping was unbelievable. Never in my life have I appreciated that smell before like that. Angelina and I actually stopped dead in our tracks at the same time just realizing that the kitchen smelled like actual butter and we sort of basked in its glow for a few moments. Same thing with the smell and taste of turkey. All in all a great day. And Kristin’s mom had sent down thanksgiving napkins, plates, and tablecloth which set a nice ambience! No refrigerators here are inherently a problem for leftovers so my neighbors made out like bandits (as did scout…she is eating for several, after all), and we gave them the oil we fried with, which I think probably made them happier than any of the food we gave them. Friday morning we cleaned up the house and migrated down to Thanksgiving Round 2 in Cotonou for ALL of the Southern volunteers. I am bien full and can’t even think of food right now!

The cake!

My house decorated

Make a wish!

Bread in the middle of rising...there was so much dough

MY kitchen in the middle of cooking

Apple crumble pie...even made little leaves!

Andrew standing guard over the turkey

Angelina and Michelle, who always gives me the peace sign in photos

Our Thanksgiving spread

my plate!

Scout in a post turkey-scrap coma...or maybe in just a "I am so knocked up and tired" coma

Here's a little holiday randomness. I just realized some more things that have come to be normal to me that wouldn't be to anyone who had never been here before. Wood branch scaffolding to build buildings. It is interesting to me to see that since they used bamboo in China.

Then this is a fairly typical type of sign for coiffures in Benin...but I enjoyed the incorporation of the word seduction in this one and the picture was pretty jazzy.

So i was listening to BBCnews when i was cooking dinner the other night and almost fell down with shock at hearing "Cotonou" on BBC. So i turned up the volume more to hear what ever could have put Benin in international news. Naturally...piracy. I thought piracy was really just a problem around Somalia but apparently not. THe pirates, or rogues, are believed to be Nigerian (There's a shocker...Nigerians get blamed for EVERYThing bad that happens in Benin)and they even killed a man on board. Personally, I blame Johnny Depp for making piracy seem such an appealing career move. Looks like someone needs to send the Kraken out on these guys.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8376715.stm

Stay tuned. Thanksgiving and World Map pictures to come soon!! Happy Tabaski

Vraiment? It’s already after Thanksgiving!! What happened to November? I have been really busy since the start of the month and so I can’t even believe that it is over. In little over a month from now I’ll be ringing in 2010 on an escarpment in Mali and then fete-ing my SECOND (and last) voodoo day in Benin and getting ready for my parents’ visit!! I’m overwhelmed at how fast the time is going.

When I got out of the med unit and back to Dogbo this summer, I started to freak out that I didn’t have any work happening and hadn’t accomplished anything since coming back from the states. I spent a week at post, 3 weeks in the med unit in cotonou, 2 weeks at post, then 2 weeks in Porto Novo during training, and since my real work partner was in Porto Novo for all 9 weeks of training and I had been in the States for nearly a month, I really have ANYthing going on. I sat sitting in my house pondering why I was even here and what I could possibly do and thought of the world map. I went to an orphanage in Lokossa last year to learn how to make soy cheese and remembered they had a really great wall for one so I asked Michelle if she’d want to do one.

Several months later, the project is finally underway! It took awhile to talk to the matron of the orphanage, coordinate a time to go, and get together what we needed but last weekend we showed up Friday morning ready to start. Most of the children were at school when we started, which was good because it gave us some time to get our bearings and figure out how to get started. The World Map manual of Peace Corps plans it out along a grid method so we had to mark off the walls and then, possibly the hardest part of all, do math. As anyone who knows me might imagine, we had some technical difficulty with that and ended up erasing the entire grid.

Admittedly, I had been nervous that, given my motivation of my suggestion to do a world map and the way in which we started going about it, that there would be no sort of ownership of this project by the orphanage itself—that we would be just these two foreigners coming in and designing and doing a project all by ourselves that didn’t really make any difference there. I could not have been happier or more pleasantly surprised when the kids got involved. AS they trickled in from school they were all so curious and wanted to help put up tape, draw, and paint. I was really unsure about the kids (especially the little ones) helping to draw and paint the smaller detailed areas of the map—More so than Michelle, who is a teacher here and works with kids all the time. But I forgot to take into account how precise and neat Beninese people are in general in things like measurements and line drawing. It kind of in a way goes back to just the way they are taught…it HAS to be precise…everything. Works out perfectly for things like this—they are great!

When I came to the orphanage last year, the children were gathered around to greet us in rehearsed unison. It was cute and I’ve seen it a lot in Benin and Tanzania. But there is just something so artificial or at least superficial about it that it becomes frustrating. Working with the children for even just a few hours served to tear down all of the walls of formality between us. Michelle and I are now called by our first names instead of “Madame” or “Tata” and the children hang on us, play with us, tickle us and run away, clamor to help, correct our French, and act just as their impish selves. They are AMAZING and I think that this might be my favorite thing that I’ve done so far in Benin. I like that I can walk into the orphanage and not feel like an outsider and that the kids are actually happy to see me. On our second day a group of Beninese men came in to talk to the Patron there and the children came out and did their little rehearsed welcome and I smiled to myself, knowing that that morning when we had walked up, they came running toward us to take our stuff inside and play and work with us.

We didn’t get to finish the map in a weekend—and even if we hadn’t lost time with our miscalculations, we wouldn’t have finished. So we are going back the second week in December to finish. On the agenda before then is finding accurate information since the manual we are using still has Zaire and Yugoslavia on it, and we can’t find slovenia. Plus we need a list of country names in French to make it more useful for the kids. I am excited to go back to the orphanage with them and do geography stuff with the kids because they haven’t a clue about how to read maps or the world in which they live. We might even write another small grant to go back and do a mural of just Benin and its Departments. My Porto Novian host brothers came to visit me and couldn’t find Dogbo on a map of Benin so I think that would be a good project as well. Anyway, I’m putting up pictures for your viewing pleasure…enjoy! I’ll update again when it is finished.

Me spinning the kids at the end of the first day of world map painting--as soon as one went up they all wanted to spin

Frederick, Georgie, and I

Michelle with blue paint and gas for cleaning burning through her skin...beause in every picture I take of her she has to give me the peace sign. :)

Michelle with the plumb line before we even started drawing our first line

Mariane--she used to be highly anemic and has gotten so much healthier. I remember seeing her last year and she was so timid...seeing her warm up to us has been really great

Me taping up the border so we don't paint outside of the box

Me with Eduad, my little helper; and Florence, there for moral support

Michelle with Eduad, Janvier 1 and Janvier 2

Kids assessing the measurements

Michelle mixing up the "pate" and "sauce" as the kids were calling the paint and tints. Bon Cuisine!

Me with Eduad--he looks cute but don't be fooled...i have never met such a whiney and cry baby child in my life...every 2 seconds it's something. Eh...he is still cute though

All the kids...they were surounding a picture of a plane they just drew for us in the dirt but i don't think you can see it. They were the head bands for gym at school

Georgie being held by his friend who's name I forget...God, they love the camera

Me with all the kids

Janvier 1 and 2 heading up the grid efforts

drawing the grid...round 2

Georgie and Frederick...my 2 favs

Charlie painting our compass...he was SO excited to help and can't wait to paint it

Ironically enough this boy's name is Dieu Donnait. I always feel badly for albinos here because they look like they are physically in pain with their blisters and their squinting from the sun. But Michelle and I thought it ironic that he is albino and that she had christened my halloween "yovo baby" Dieu Donnait as well.

Michelle drawing Europe with some help from the kids

Thumbs up, seven up everyone!

Sylvie and I painting "yellow" countries. Russia is ridiculously large. And the peace corps map for frame of reference still has Yugoslavia and Zaire up so we're going to have to do some editing/research!

Janvier 1 and Bienvenue painting...with a baby on her back--that is pretty amazing.

Have you ever heard the cries of a petrified mouse in the agonizing throes of death? When I said to my host family that I wanted a kitten to rid me of the burden of personally dealing with all manner of creepy crawlies in my house, i never took into account the pitiful frightened shrieks of mice that that would entail. Cockroaches crunch, lizards are noiseless--When Scout catches them, I can handle it...but mice, that is a different case entirely. Maybe it's the fur (or that i had hamsters and worked in a vet's office for 2.5 years), I don't know why it bothers me more--I mean, i think lizards are pretty cute here, but i don't mind if scout kills them so long as she eats them all and doesn't leave half a corpse for me to clean up later. But as I blogged a few weeks ago, when for the first time Scout caught herself a mouse at night, I found it really disturbing to listen to her killing it.

And that is why I am in the med unit right now--because I'm the only freak volunteer in Benin that tries to save a mouse in her house, instead of trying to hit it with a shoe.

So last Saturday morning (the 24th) i woke up and it was pouring. It is the end of the short rainy season now in Southern Benin--the last hoorah before my life will grow decreasingly pleasant in direct correlation with the increasing temperatures until about May of 2010. I didn't want to get out of bed at all since it was so delightfully cool with Scout curled up next to me, and I love listening to the rain patter on my tin roof. But i did drag myself up because I was supposed to go to Come by 1 for a meeting to plan the English competition across CEGs in the MOno Kouffo this spring.

So I walked into my kitchen to open up my back door and when I turned around, I jumped back. There in my basin that I use as a sort of pseudo-sink, was a mouse, swimming and struggling for dear life, trying not to drown. It couldn't climb the plastic and kept trying to jump out but couldn't make it--it must have just fallen in because it didn't look like this itty bitty thing could keep up this effort for long. Scout hadn't noticed yet so I took a step toward it to lift the basin out and throw the whole thing outside. But then the mouse jumped again and i freaked out. So I got a second basine to cover it and took the basin outside in the rain, closing the door to keep scout in the house. I tossed all the contents out and this stupid little mouse that apparently can't take a hint, bee-lines it straight for me. I squealed and jumped backwards, kicking my foot against my wooden door by accident. It stung quite a bit, and i got a small cut on the back of my ankle that started to bleed, but I didn't really think anything of it. I rinsed it and put a bandaid on, and that was that. I certainly have dealt with much worse in Benin.

When I was up in Badjoude for the whipping fete my bandaid fell off. I didn't really care because the cut looked pretty much healed. i didn't even think it was open anymore. But toward the afternoon I noticed flies kept landing on it so I figured it had to be open after all, and asked Heidi for a bandaid. Too late, I guess. I came back to Dogbo, and everything seemed totally fine all week.

Friday evening i got back from my walk and the back of my heal was hurting me. I looked and there was a little lump that i took to be a blister--no big deal, I get blisters a lot here and I thought it was probably just because I chose socks that weren't thick enough. As the evening went on I started to think maybe it wasn't a blister since it didn't appear to be filled with liquid at all and was just red and inflammed, and hot. Well, maybe the rubbing of my sneaker just irritated the cut on my ankle...whatever. i went to bed.

Halloween I woke up sweating first thing in the morning and had a slight headache. I stepped out of my bed and immediately felt pain in my foot from a cramped muscle and my ankle. I went outside to look at it in the sunlight and it appeared that the lump had grown slightly bigger. It was really sore and tender when I touched it. But I didn't cover it up because it didn't even look like there was any sort of open cut at all TO cover. I took 3 advil and went to the orphanage. As the day progressed, so did the lumpage. It kept getting bigger, redder, and hotter, and i verified with Dennis, our infection expert, that I probably indeed had something. I knew I was supposed to be down in Cotonou this friday so figured I would just see the doctor then. The whole day though i felt rather hot, dizzy, and feverish and had a headache. I left the Halloween fete early with Michelle and found when I went home that I had a 102 temperature. I took some tylenol and figured i would just see if that helped at all. It didn't.

My fever went down a bit, but when i woke up in the morning i saw that the infection was circling my ankle--it was red, warm, and swollen, and it kept growing. By the time everyone made it over for breakfast, general consensus was that I had a rather disgusting looking club foot and considering the rate at which it was puffing out, I would be stupid to wait until friday to see the doctor.

So i was that volunteer that called the PCMO on a Sunday morning, and interrupted her day off. She told me i should come in immediately and I kind of had to kick everyone out of my house, close up, feed scout, and peace out. But I'm glad I came in. It had encircled my ankle even more by the time i got to Cotonou and was very hot and red. I still had a fever and the teeniest tiniest opening of the teeniest tiniest stupid mouse-induced cut had started to dribble nasty smelling ooze down the back of my ankle by the time i saw her. At least she wasn't annoyed that I came in, and seemed to be worried about it.

When she asked me if i had any allergies to medications and I told her Keflex, she looked at me like I was playing some sort of sick joke on her. Never in my life has that been a problem, but naturally, that was exactly the medication she wanted to use to treat the infection. So she put me on a different type and is making me stay 2 nights to make sure it works, otherwise I have to do some I.V. therapy...yippee. Fortunately though..it appears to be working. I woke up this morning and after my first dose of the antibiotics last night the swelling had gone down and the redness had dissipated a bit. It is actually kind of incredible to see how quickly it turned around. At any rate, once again I am in the medical unit, but thankfully the crisis seems to have passed. By Sunday noon i was actually starting to freak out with flashbacks to osteomylitis, and Dennis teasing me about amputation, etc. so i am glad that I seem to be bien on the mend with no fever and back to post tomorrow.

But really, November wouldn't have felt complete if it didn't start out with some sort of medical crisis...I mean I am, after all, averaging about one a month at least since returning to Benin in late June, n'est pas? So, lesson learned. next mouse I find. no mercy. Scout can have at it. Bon freaking appetit.

Kristin as a zem and me as a maman!

So Saturday was my second and last Halloween in Benin! I woke up in the morning and headed to one of the orphanages in Dogbo to start 'Lifeskills' activities with the boys there. Since they are in school we can only do it on weekends and there is always so much stuff and travel going on on weekends that it has been hard to coordinate. But anyways, I thought it started out great, and then halfway through working with them I was sure that they were bored to tears. But then when we were figuring out when I would come again they were all really excited and asked that I come back in 2 weeks.

After work in the morning, the fete-ing began! No one in Benin knows or has heard of Halloween so for the second year in a row, most neighbors thought we were pretty insane. But we still had a lot of fun anyway. Dennis came to Dogbo early to cook chili and we had our quarterly VAC meeting for volunteers in the Mono Kouffo regions. Afterwards we all ate and hung out for the night with a lot of fun costumes. I was a marche maman with my tacky gold earrings and necklace and fake baby--he didn't make a peep the whooooole night...just the way I like 'em. He was named Dieu Donnait (God Gives, more or less) by Michelle.

The next morning everyone came over to my place where angelina, michelle and I had been whipping up yummy cinnamon rolls! Kristin and DEnnis swooped in to make yummy pancakes and we all gorged ourselves before calling it a day.

I don't think I've ever sweat so much on Halloween before in my life--even last year...though granted, this might have been cause i had a fever--but I just kept telling myself that I will be enjoying the fall foliage and a warm cup of tea next year on Halloween. Whoo hoo! Enjoy the pics!

Miranna, the gym rat...scandalous outfit for benin, which is funny, when I consider what the girls at Holy Cross usually wore, or didn't wear on Halloween...oh, america

Dennis as...I don't think we ever really figured out what he was...a billboard for "seeing the world? sure, why not.

80's gal Angelina and moi, the maman

Nathaniel as a mechanic fixing charlie the zem driver's bike

Tuesday was the Whipping fete or...fete de chicotte in Badjoude. Turns out it isn't a coming of age ceremony for Muslim boys but it is just a tradition of the Lokpa people who live in this area of Benin. Gong up to the Donga was probably one of the crazier or more impulsive things I've done since coming to Benin since it was a really long trip for 2 nights and quite a bit of traveling...but it was completely worth it. How many times in ones' life do they get to see grown men whipping each other?

Monday morning i got up early and took a taxi to azove, then an hour long zem ride up to bohicon where I caught the bus at 10 to go to Djougou. Once i got to Djougou I got on another zem for over an hour out to Heidi's village, Komde. I get annoyed with the dust here in the Kouffo during dry season, but my lord...I hadn't known dust until then. The rains are still falling a bit up north and even so I was literally covered in red earth when i got off the zem in Komde. It is a totally different world up north--far more arid and not at all tropical. And much more Muslim as well. Hearing the call to prayer was really beautiful...and Heidi's village is teeny tiny. I loved it. I got there around 3ish and then all the other volunteers (i was the only one that came up from the south) arrived after nightfall. The stars up in northern Benin are absolutely gorgeous. I think they are beautiful where i am, but there is even less light pollution up north--Heidi's village really doesn't have electricity--so you can just see everything. I love being able to walk around outside at night with just the light of the moon--I know I'll miss that. And now that the rains are finishing up it is once again beautiful to take a bucket shower under the stars. But anyways...

So there were 13 of us, and on Tuesday morning we woke up at 4:45 to get into Badjoude for Chicotte, which starts at daybreak. We were sitting in their marche when the first group of men came up dancing and stomping their feet to create a rattling noise (they had these reeds tied up with beans or somehting around their ankles to make a baby-rattle effect that created music) As the sun rose the fete got underway and many of the men and boys of the village came out marching toward the marche.

A lot of the men were dressed up as women with bras and skirts, etc., though I have no idea why. Women were marching with them, but when it comes down to the whipping, it is men only. They reached a small clearing and had at it. All the women, PCVs, kids, and some men were circled around the field and they just kept blowing their whistles and whipping it out. You kind of march around, get an opponent and brace yourself as they try to whip you before you whip them back. The whips are made of trees and reed-like things so they broke sometimes when someone met their touch with a raised stick in defense. There were men circling around carrying extra whips with them for just such an instance. You can't cry if you get whipped because the ceremony is supposed to show your manhood and that you are ready to fight. By the end, there were plenty of bloodied backs and arms but that is just a badge of honor. I myself, got smeared with blood by a passerby, and hit by a rogue whip--i guess it just means i am bien integre! Every few minutes there was a little “dance break” for lack of a better term. All whipping stopped and the women hopped in with the men, circling around making music and blowing whistles. After a few moments, everyone but the whippers ran back out of the circle nearly crushing the people on the periphery as the whipping would recommence. And on this cycle went for a good long while. Watching the younger boys whip each other or go up against an older man was really interesting, and I do not really understand how “opponents” chose one another. At one point, all the PCVs got into the circle in a dance break and moved around with everyone, and we got baby powder thrown on us just like the whippers. I don’t really understand that tradition either (I got doused at the voodoo day fete as well) but I think we were told it was just to keep people dry when they were perspiring.

ANyway, the fete was awesome to see and really interesting and I hope you enjoy the pictures I am putting up. I have a lot more and videos too but I think I put up a good sampling. We had a lunch planned with the second to the Maire of Ouke and before that, the King of Badjoude invited us to his house for Tchouk--a local alcohol that I really do not enjoy. But when we got to the Kings house he said he couldn't have us and not feed us so they whipped up igame pile with a delicious sauce and mouton for us, followed by a plate of rice. It was sooo much food and it was only lunch number one for the day. Really, it was a fantastic gesture for them to feed that many of us, and to give us meat besides. In general the people of Badjoude were thrilled that we were there—this is Kate’s village and given the past year, they did not think that we were going to come. I think that having such a large PCV presence was really great for their community morale and for Peace Corps as well. I had been apprehensive about going—I wasn’t sure if it would be sad or difficult being there, but it felt good getting to see where Kate lived and the friendly community members. Everyone there was just so welcoming, and the King took one of us aside to tell him how thrilled he was that volunteers came and how sorry he was about everything that happened with Kate. For awhile after it all happened in March, it was very difficult for me to not put a wall up against Benin and the people here, and so it was nice, I guess in a way, to come to understand first hand that her community grieves with us—that we aren’t the only ones here who are horrified and hurt by her death.

Afterwards we headed out for lunch number 2…more igame pile but with a different kind of sauce. Fortunately for me, igame pile is still a novelty because you really can’t get it down south, but most of the northern volunteers are pretty jaded by the pile deliciousness so I don’t think they were at all excited to be eating it in such quantity. By the time our bellies were stuffed to bursting, it was already almost 3 and we had been up since before 5am and walking around in the sun all day (note to self…buy a wide brimmed straw hat before trekking around Mali at Christmas time…the sun up in that arid climate kills) so we were exhausted. We hopped in our rented van and drove back to Komde where everyone took off toward Natitingou. I stayed in Komde 4 the night and got the grand tour of Heidi’s village before leaving her house at 6am to catch the bus in Djougou heading back down to Bohicon. I can’t believe whipping fete is already over—I remember talking about going to it with Heidi and Rut since last December, and now it has come and gone. There is no way I will be here for it next year. Im about to celebrate my second Halloween here, and it is almost November. I say it in nearly every blog entry now because it hits me nearly every day, but the time here is flying by so fast! I’m going up north to Kandi next week to do post visits for the Peer Support Network, in Benin (like a peer counseling thing—I go to visit new volunteers and see how they are doing while bringing them delicious baked goods since they technically aren’t allowed to leave their posts 4 the first 3 months) and with Halloween on Saturday, more pictures are definitely forthcoming. Happy Halloween! Enjoy your cold weather.

Man dressed to the nines in the march to the marche in Badjoude

A view from Badjoude

Making Igame Pile (usually it is women making it, so i really like this shot)...my favorite meal in Benin. Get psyched, mom and dad...we'll be entering igame pile land when you come! The 3 people work themselves in a rhythm, pounding the cooked igame with water until it is a delicious blob.

Little girl walking by a baobob tree...I just like how small she looked here. Baobobs are HUGE. There aren't too many in this area compared to up north.

lunch #1 with king of Badjoude

obama-rama at its finest in Benin. When you make it onto a sweetened condensed milk can in a random little village in West Africa...that's how you know you've hit the big time

This and the next few pics are just of some of the men dressed up for the whipping

Sacred tam-tam (drum) of Badjoude used to announce warfare, etc.

Action shot of the whipping

boy bracing himself for the whip

Me, Heidi, and Christopher

more whipping

chaos...absolute chaos. This was what it looked like...hundreds and hundreds of people crammed in a tiny field, where all the men and boys were whipping each other all willy nilly.

group shot!

Picture: Scout shenanigans...making herself at home in my window slats at night.

So Scout has officially gone rogue. Within the past week she has run out of my house like a bat out of hell when I take my bucket shower at night EVERY night. She climbs my cement wall because, apparently, she is a spider-monkey now; jumps, and stays out all night until she saunters back in a walk of shame like the scandalous little harlot that she is at around 6AM, at which time she jumps onto the window screen of my bedroom and howls at me mercilessly until I get up and let her in. Honestly, it is kind of lonely at night without her in my house. She used to always cuddle up on my lap and I felt better sleeping, knowing that I had my own little cockroach destroyer in the house with me. I can kill scorpions like nobody’s business but cockroaches still seem to paralyze me with disgust. Then during the day she just creeps under my bed and sleeps until it’s time for her dinner. I feel so used and abused. In fact, last night when I was making her dinner, her little “friend” had the gall to sashay up to my front door for a cat call, if you don’t mind the pun, and she flat out left me to go see him. So, as I’ve indicated, kittens seem pretty imminent.

Her disreputable behavior would bother me more though if it didn’t seem to be a scourge of lasciviousness on felines across Benin. Simultaneously so many volunteers’ cats have been doing the same exact thing. It’s like some coordinated feline mating ritual. And speaking of rituals…

I’m heading up north to Badjoude on Monday to see the annual “Whipping fete” that acts as a rite of passage for Muslim boys. It is going to be kind of crazy (not to mention expensive)…going all the way up to Badjoude and back in 2 days (we only get 2 days away from post at a time without taking vacation), but how many times does one get to see a whipping fete, really? Plus there are whipping fetes all over the north but Badjoude’s is supposed to be especially large and interesting. So fun stories and pictures to come.

Picture: Marianne with a famous Beninese TV star that came to swear-in...yes, the head gear is normal formal attire in Benin.

Picture: Michelle and Angelina at my house for our initial Mali planification!!!

Life is getting pretty hectic here now, and my work is really picking up. I got my first issue of Bisou Bisou out to the schools this week, and announced the girls club I’m starting with a woman at my NGO. We are picking up their application essays at the schools tomorrow and then will choose 8 to work with us over the year. We’re going to discuss sexual health stuff, female empowerment, strategies for academic success, etc., as well as train them on computers so that hopefully they can continue with the newsletter themselves next year. Yesterday I went back out to Koutime to weigh babies with Kantos and the new health volunteer that just moved nearby—a LOT more women came than the last time. We weighed 79 babies, and talked to each mom about her child’s eating habits, reinforcing exclusive breastfeeding for 6 months, and weaning strategies, etc. so we were there for about 6 hours. And there was a fete going on so a lot of women couldn’t come, which means next time will probably be longer. But I really enjoy it—it is satisfying work.

Several women prepared us food as a thank you since we had been there all morning and well through the afternoon—pate with moringa sauce. It’s tends to be a little uncomfortable to me when I’m in that kind of situation because inevitably, all eyes are on my while I’m eating. The women just sat around the periphery of the room while Charlie, Kantos, and I dug in…literally…because traditionally in Benin, one eats with his or her hands. I myself still struggle to cross some kind of mental barrier I seem to have put up against eating with my hands so that in situations were it wouldn’t seem overly rude—like a restaurant—I ask for a fork. This however, would have been pretty rude in this situation so I ate with my hands. It’s just that everyone in Benin always makes fun of me because I eat with my thumb, index, and middle fingers as opposed to eating with all 5 fingers. They think it is dainty and ridiculous, and, because I can’t shovel the sauce in at warp speed, it takes me awhile to finish. I don’t know why I don’t like to use my last 2 fingers. After all, my hand is getting gross anyway and I’ll still have to wash it. But I think if I tried to eat with all 5 fingers I would just end up dribbling sauce down my face and if I get laughed at that much for eating daintily, I can’t imagine the teasing—even if it is friendly teasing—that would accompany thoooose shenanigans. But anyways…

I often talk about how much I can’t stand men in this country. It’s true…I find constant sexual harassment and cat calls, leering looks, marriage proposals, and lewd comments utterly exhausting and degrading and it has given me really negative feelings toward the general male population here. But now I’m trying to work with that, or at least take a first step. I was reading Helen Epstein’s book, The Invisible Cure, about HIV/AIDS in Africa and stumbled across something that stuck out as a very important point to me. She writes “Empowering individual women without addressing the attitudes of men and society in general risks creating empowered women who antagonize men.” I’ve noticed this before in my work since I tend to so much focus on women, but generally never felt moved enough to start to engage men here more than I already did. Men will hover around the periphery of my womens’ groups meetings to hear what we talk about. And when we announced the girls club at the schools the boys took umbrage that I wasn’t having a club for boys too. And I have noticed that including men in my work with womens’ groups usually goes over really well, and they enjoy learning the information too. You can tell they feel important because they sort of puff up a little and seem really happy to be there. Actually, the secretary of the Koutime group is a guy (since he can read and write) and he is AMAZING at baby-weighings. He helps translate into Aja or Fon and is really involved in organizing the moms and the babies for actual weighing.

Still, I do think it is important to work with girls in an all girls environment sometimes for their development because they do have hard lives and not as many opportunities as the boys in Benin. When they are together without boys, they talk more openly. But I can’t expect that what these girls will learn will help them at all if the men in their lives aren’t equally informed and receptive to new ideas. New-found independence and any efforts women take to assert themselves WILL antagonize the men in their lives. We always have Camp GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) in Porto Novo for the girls in Southern Benin and there are smaller versions across the country. This year 2 of my friends up north are organizing a Camp BLOW in addition to the girls camp, which seems like a pretty awesome idea, when I think about it. I’m not starting a boys club at the CEG but I am starting to work at one of the orphanages in Dogbo where there are only teenage boys living, and I am really looking forward to hanging out with them. My first “official” time to work with them is the morning of Halloween (if you have any costume ideas for me since we’re having a party that night with mono-kouffo PCVs, let me know). We’re going to do a bunch of different “Lifeskills activities” about their development, where they see themselves in a few years, academic planning, HIV/AIDS info, etc. It should be good!

I can’t believe it is almost the end of October and that Halloween is coming! It is so strange that I am experiencing things in Benin for the second time, and knowing that it is also the last time. The time here is really going by SO quickly and keeping busy is making it fly even faster. I have something every weekend planned through December, and then I’ll be going to Mali (can’t WAIT!!!) for Christmas and New Years. I am starting to hash out fun plans for when my parents visit in January and THAT will be here before I know it. I don’t know what it is but the time in Benin since I have come back from the States has absolutely just gone with the snap of a finger. I realize there is so much I want do here and I have only about 9 and a half months left!!! How did that happen? It is pretty amazing to think about because I remember getting ready to move to Dogbo last year and freaking out about living there for 2 years. Even now looking at the people who have just arrived at their posts it feels like they have SO much time left. There is just such a difference in perspective between that first and second year as a volunteer for me. I feel like I am finally back in a good place being in Benin as well, emotionally speaking. Life was admittedly a little dark for me between March and August (which I especially realized after re-reading my blog and journal entries), with a succession of bad events happening one after another in what seemed like the universe having a twisted sense of humor about my life here. But I feel really great right now and have for the past few weeks. I’ve been having a lot more “wow, I’m actually living in Africa” moments like when I was weighing babies, or ran into the president of the kpodaha groupement who told everyone to call me Catherine instead of yovo last week, or even during my bucket shower when I looked up and saw how beautiful the stars are (during rainy season you couldn’t see them…it was always cloudy…and I forgot how lovely they are). Maybe it’s just because I feel like I am actually accomplishing things right now and feel good about my work, but I’m really happy and really happy to report it! Donc, pour le moment, a bientot!

Picture: Angelina, Charlie, Dennis, Michelle, and Weihow at the Lokossa B-day celebration last week. Get excited, mom and dad, we are going to eat at that maquis for lunch one day...delicious igame pilee and sauce d'arachide with wagasi!!!

Pictures!: (I know it has been awhile since i posted any) The first 2 are of the brand new CEG that they built near my house, and the third is Maman, their trainee from this summer, me and all the kids at this years swearing in ceremony for new volunteers.

So the 2009-2010 academic year is FINALLY really getting underway here in Benin. Every year the Beninese government sets a date for school to start and then inevitably continues pushing it back so that school actually started on October 5th. But classes don’t actually start right away. First the kids have to come to school and work for a day or two to cut down the brush and tall grass that has grown up over the course of the summer on the school grounds. Then they clean out the classrooms. The 2 main CEGs (College d’Enseignants Générale—General teaching school of the middle school and high school levels) in Dogbo are still not entirely organized for the year. There is a lack of many teachers so that kids just don’t go to class because no one is there to teach it. Also, the classrooms where classes are to be taking place still aren’t set for many classes so that it is always moving around. Sometimes, teachers just won’t go to class and the kids will just sit around. And a lot of the kids haven’t started yet just because they lack the money for supplies.

In an effort to encourage attendance at schools President Boni YAYI (Family names in Benin are always spelled in all Caps) made primary school entirely free nation-wide. A lot of parents still gripe about how it is expensive to send their children because they need to buy notebooks, pens, pencils, etc., and khaki fabric to make the outfits that serve as a national school uniform for the children (simple dress for girls and shorts and button shirt for boys). To put it in perspective for you, a cahier (notebook—they make them really simple here, about 100 pages with a paper cover and half the size of marble notebooks in the states) costs between 85-100CFA and the exchange rate right now is about 450CFA per dollar. So a notebook is less than 25 cents. But when you have a lot of kids, it adds up to be getting supplies for all of them to start school. Still, the president’s plan worked and attendance in recent years has jumped considerably. The problem with that was the lack of foresight as to how that would impact the secondary schools (the CEGs). Attending a CEG is not free. There is an enrollment fee for new sixieme students (The French system works backwards so that they start in ‘6th grade’ and move up through premiere and terminale) and then a yearly “contribution” in addition to having to buy supplies, khaki for uniform (but you don’t need new khaki every year…just as you outgrow it), and pay for photocopying the books necessary for your coursework since there is no program to distribute any sort of textbooks to kids here. But even though CEGs are not free, the number of students coming up from primary schools has gretly increased and there aren’t enough CEGs to handle it. There is a lack of teachers, supplies, classrooms…everything. Last year, my postmate had to teach one of her classes outside because there was no building for her to teach in.

There are 4 CEGs in Dogbo, 2 of which are in Dogbo-meme, which is to say in Dogbo proper as opposed to outlying villages. CEG-1 has been around the longest and is completed. There are a lot of buildings, all finished in cement, and an administrative building for the censor ( a main administrative officer who oversees all the teachers and classes, etc), director, and surveillant (disciplinarian—sounds ominous, doesn’t it? Discipline here sometimes includes beatings but generally for more mild offenses consists of hard physical labor dolled out in “hours.” You talk in class, your teacher might give you 2 hours so you’ll have to stay after school and cut down the brush or something to that effect.) But CEG 2 is much newer and far from completed. When my post mate first got there her administration kept telling her “we need buildings” because many classrooms were just wooden frames covered in reed walls with a tin roof (which makes it virtually impossible to hear if it rains, so fortunately school ends right around the start of rainy season) and dirt floors. AT least they had “chalkboards” though (pieces of wood or concrete walls, depending on the class, that are painted over in black paint). At any rate, they have some finished cement building classrooms and need more, and still don’t have enough classrooms for all of the kids that go there.

I recently found out though, that they were building a 5th CEG in Dogbo—on the route that I go walking on every night. They just constructed it a few weeks back and I had been wondering what would be there—I thought maybe a church. SO I walked by the other night to check it out. It is one building that is split into 2 classrooms. It is just a simple wooden frame with reed walls and dirt floors. There are no chalk boards, and the roof is tin. 20 months ago I might have thought “what a cruddy little building, I can’t believe this is a school where kids actually go” but now it is interesting to me to realize how differently I see this school. Currently there is no administrative building, and the classes could use some chalkboards, I think. But other than that the place is fine to me. I remember being in Tanzania and being taken to a newly built cement school that even had toilet seats for the teachers (no running water…you just pour water down the seat when you’re done). It was supposed to be a huge novelty but the woman showing us the school admitted that it was really so hot in the building that it was uncomfortable—they preferred teaching in a in a simply constructed classroom. I didn’t get it then, but after 15 months living in the little oven that is my cement house with a tin roof seemingly designed to trap in heat, I get it…and Benin is hot enough just being outside. During the chaleur (hot season around February through April) you can actually see the kids in class getting more lethargic because of the heat. When it’s hot for a Beninese person, I know I’m not just being whiney. So not only do these simply built wood and reed classrooms stay cooler because of the dirt floors and open breeze passing through, but they are also just more economically savvy in a place where there is a huge lack of classrooms.

One could build a ton of these classrooms for the price it would cost to make one cement building—and it would serve so many more students. Granted, I think it would be better if they at least put up chalk boards at CEG-5 but I am sure that they are going to shortly (they really only just built it and are getting underway. In all likelihood, they ordered boards a few weeks ago from a menusier who still hasn’t finished them).

So that is the situation in Dogbo in terms of school—not enough classrooms, not enough buildings, not enough teachers, and a ton of students. Supplies are a non-issue…there is no classroom decoration here and no supplies. The school issues a box of chalk per semester to their teachers and that is all. Anything that PCVs want to use in their classrooms to make their lessons more dynamic they have to provide themselves. But dynamic lessons don’t really get very far here because the education system is based on rote learning. Kids don’t know in ANY capacity how to think critically (they just memorize and spit back facts), and they have no toys or any other kinds of activity to intellectually stimulate them. My friend gave her neighbor kids a coloring book with crayons and realized a week later that they didn’t know what to do with them so she had to explain it. My postmate gave her kids markers to make nametags at the beginning of the school year (which is itself an anomaly because Beninese teachers don’t bother learning names—there are upwards of 70 kids in a class and they don’t care) and the kids didn’t even realize they had a choice in what marker color they could use. You do that in the U.S. and children will be arguing for the pink or blue marker. It’s surprising to me how much you get used to things like that, but sometimes, I still take a step back from the situation here in Benin and try to see the bigger picture, and it is really sad to me that this is the reality for the kids here. I don’t think they are ever taught to think that they can have a future and accomplish things if they want to. I know that this will take time to change…this is the first generation of kids going to school for many families, which is in and of itself a great feat. But still…sometimes it is sad.

I’ve decided to pay for Filomene to go to school this year. Normally I hate doing anything like that that would come off as me just giving away money because then everyone clamors for the yovo to buy this or that for them. But she is a sweet kid who always helps me out by getting me water, etc. and I want her to go to school. Plus, people at home randomly gave me money to do something good with it here, and I think this meets that criteria. Her “contribution” plus all of her supplies and photocopies is going to cost me around forty US dollars, and she’s promised not to tell anyone that I am the one paying for her. What she will do to continue her education after I leave boggles my mind. Her father died recently and he paid for her to go to school in the past. Her father had 10 wives and over 50 kids so now it falls to Filo’s mother to find her money for school, and she won’t do it. Her mom just doesn’t think school is important since she herself didn’t go. Actually I was really angry with Filo because the volunteer before me gave her $80 to pay for her school and told her explicitly to safely hide it and tell no one about it, but Filo gave it to her mother, who spent it. I know that family loyalty and umbuntu (to borrow a South African term for lack of a better idea) is very important here but I just don’t understand the lack of looking out for oneself also. People won’t pay for education because they don’t see that it is important. It is one of the most frustrating things EVER to me. It is like people who won’t pay $3 for a mosquito net but will pay HUNDREDS of dollars for meme tissue and a huge funeral party for someone who dies from malaria. I’ve come to learn that people will find money for what is important to them, and education has clearly yet to become a priority in Benin for most people outside of Cotonou and Porto Novo. I guess since I am such a nerd and am myself clamoring to get back into the world of academia when Peace Corps is over, I can’t really understand it. But at the same time, I know there are kids in the US who could care less about school too.

At the end of the day, I don’t think that Filo is the brightest child I’ve ever met, and I don’t think she will do much after school but settle down and sell things in the marche like her mother does, but I still want her to go to school. Filo is starting the “5th grade” cinquieme but should probably already by in the 3rd because she is older. She started late as kids in village often do, and had to re-do 6th grade because she failed a subject. From what she told me, a teacher made a pass at her and she turned him down so he failed her. If you’re shocked, don’t be, because that happens ALL the time here.

Most teachers are male, and most of them are sleeping with their students—plural. It is a 2-way street: Many professors use their positions to get laid by giving out passing of failing grades, presents, etc. Also though, many girls will play the same game because they are lazy and still want to get good grades, and they are raised in a culture where it is ok. Sometimes parents even encourage them sleeping with their teachers because if they get pregnant they hope that the teacher will marry them, even if she would be a second wife. Unlike in the US, where teachers don’t really make a lot of money, being a teacher is one of the highest-earning jobs you can find in Benin. That means that a lot of teachers are in their profession for the wrong reasons—ie: money, prestige, and easy access to lots of young females. I can only hope that over time, this starts to change, and that more and more women become teachers as well. Only time will tell.

Granted, this is an obscure reference that maybe only my dad will get, but if you add to that phrase some lively hand gesticulating, you’ll have what is my favorite moment delivered by Will Smith in the movie ‘Independence Day.’

When I was growing up and my mom worked the night shift at the hospital, my dad and I would always have these movie nights when we would watch all the movies that my dad absolutely loves and my mom can’t stand—ie, lots and lots of repetitive viewings of ‘Independence Day’, ‘Waterworld’, and ‘Star Wars.’ I’m pretty sure that the moment after the marital vows were spoken, the rings exchanged, and the honeymoon over, when my dad found out that my mom didn’t actually enjoy the Star Wars series like she had fronted during their courtship was a pretty devastating blow to him, and so at least I enjoy watching them with him. But anyways, I digress…

I was walking on the outskirts of Dogbo by one of the schools here and stopped at a ‘cafeteria’ (where they sell things like Nescafe, omelets on spaghetti—you get really used to that delicious combination—or oatmeal, etc.) to buy a water sachet. They had a T.V. and, ironically enough, a French dubbed ‘Independence Day’ was playing on exactly this scene between Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum. I found it doubly ironic that Smith’s line was stated in barely understandable French because I’ve been thinking lately how hard communication actually is here.

Sometimes I stop and wonder how different my Peace Corps experience would be had I been placed in an English speaking country. I don’t think it would be easier per se—at least I know there would be other types of difficulties to make up for the language barrier—but sometimes, communication issues so get in the way of accomplishing things here. I can have an hour-long discussion with someone and realize afterward that they weren’t taking in anything that I said. I can confirm a meeting time 10 times and still have people come 2 hours late. I can lay out expectations with a work partner when we are starting out on a project and have them completely disregard everything that we agreed to because they didn’t “really understand” no matter how explicitly I speak.

This very morning, I woke up at 5:20 to go to my health center and work on the national polio vaccination campaign with them. Cases of polio have cropped up across West Africa last year so the Southern Departments of Benin and several other West African countries were coordinating a 5 day door to door vaccination campaign. It was supposed to start October 1st and run through the 5th but when I went to the health center on Wednesday to confirm our going out yesterday morning I was informed that the campaign was being pushed back: We would start the today, the 2nd, instead because if we went out on the weekends it would be more likely people would not be out in the fields etc. Arriving at the health center at around 6AM as I was told, I found that I was utterly alone, which, this being Benin, wasn’t entirely surprising. So I sat around for a bit until a nurse from the maternity ward came out to tell me they changed it again and are going to start on the 7th. Fabulous…thanks for the call to let me know.

Then I went to my ONG to tell my homologue I was going to Cotonou. I had walked over in the midday sun (always a mistake in this country) and so was sweating massively when I arrived (as per usual). My homologue looks at me and warns me that I should not be walking around in the sun so much because I will catch the “pallu” aka, malaria. Back in April we had an IST—additional weeklong training period that volunteers attend WITH their homologue. The topic of our additional training was Malaria…cause, myths, treatment, symptoms, state sponsored efforts at combating it, etc. Anything and everything regarding malaria was discussed. The fact that my homologue, who had been at this week-long conference with me, still managed to come away thinking—like many Beninese people—that the sun causes malaria blows my mind. I mean, at least I know from that situation that it isn’t just me. I wasn’t running the workshop: An American who is fluent in French and 2 Beninese people were. So clearly not all the fault in the communication issues that exist in this culture lead back to my dismal French skills.

And also, at least sometimes miscommunication can be equally amusing so it offsets the frustrations. For example

When I came back from America, I brought the director of my ONG a reed diffuser for his house because, his words, he likes “pretty things.” When I gave it to him I explained—I thought pretty clearly—what it was and how to use it. Yet the other day he thanked me again for the gift that he is apparently using as a body perfume. When he said this I just kind of gaped for a moment before being able to compose my facial expression. I’m hoping he didn’t notice. We were at my ONG with a lot of other people and in my head I was trying to very quickly calculate whether or not it was worth it to explain to him that he was not using it correctly. After a fraction of a second I decided I did not want to say anything and have it end up being embarrassing so I just smiled and said I was glad that he liked it. But walking away from him I couldn’t help but wonder, “Where did I go wrong in my explanation?”

So as much as “we have got to work on our communication” seems ironically fitting for how I have been feeling lately, I am pretty certain that even if I lived here a decade, communication would still get the better of me in Benin.

On an unrelated note, I think that this time of year might just be scorpion season. I hadn’t seen any in my house in a long time but have recently started finding them again. And for the first time ever, I had a mouse in my house. My doors were closed so I have no idea where it even came from. I know my neighbors have mice sometimes but I always thought that Scout acted as a deterrent to them even dropping down from my ceiling or what not. But I guess not. I was reading last night and all of a sudden heard this horrible squealing sound. Scout trotted happily into the room with this poor little mouse squirming in her mouth and proceeded to play with it for about 10 minutes, batting its rigamortis-y body around my living room before eating it. Bon appetite!

When I got back to post after my elongated stint in the medical unit, I had to finish giving out souvenirs and stuff to people around Dogbo that I hadn’t gotten to see yet since coming back from the states (I had only been back at post for 5 days). On the way to the marche here, there is a cabine (where people sell phone credit or where you can use their phone to make calls and pay for the credit that you use—they are just a little one person stall) that I always stop at to buy my BBCom credit. I started going there because the woman sold credit in larger denominations. I could buy a recharge card for 2.500CFA as opposed to a lot of other places around town that sell increments of 500CFA. Every time I want to add credit to one of my phones I have to go and buy a recharge card for whatever amount, scratch off the code, enter it in the phone, and send it. It sometimes can get really annoying to have to buy several 500CFA cards and constantly enter in different codes so I always liked bigger amounts. Now however, I realize having credit is an enabling factor and I buy smaller amounts at a time so that I don’t call someone and spend a ton of credit really quickly. Anyway…that is all somewhat beside the point.

So I used to walk to the marche every day and the woman at this cabine would say hi to me and run through the course of typical Beninese salutations before convincing me to buy credit at her place. She was always extremely friendly and struck me as genuine. I still struggle with this but it was even harder when I first got here to discern who was being nice to you to genuinely be nice and who was in it to see what they can squeeze out of you. In Burkina Faso the PCVs call it “faux types.” Anyways, the maman would always ask me whether or not I go to church and why don’t I go to church and people here don’t really understand the concept of not being overly religious so she never really seemed to grasp my logic (that’s okay…they told us that was coming during training). I used to think she’d given me up for a certain future of fire and brimstone but aside from teasing me about not going to mass she was still nothing but friendly to me. After awhile, whenever I would stop by to buy credit, she would cadeau me (give me as a present) a little sachet of soy cookies that she sells next to the cabine.

I had taken her picture to show my family when I was home and while in the States got a copy of it printed. She was so excited when I took her picture and told her why, that she gave me 3 pieces of gum. She’s really hoping my parents come to visit…wink wink. So when I got back to Dogbo I passed by the cabine to leave the picture with her along with a rosary I had brought back for her, she was so happy that she invited me inside her house. I didn’t even know she lived right in the area until she walked me back behind the cabine. It was a simple mud brick house with cement veneer that was crumbling off. After a year living here I wasn’t entirely surprised to enter the mud house and still see a large tv, dvd player, and stereo. That afternoon turned out to be probably one of my favorite times in Benin. I learned the maman’s name was Michelle Diane for the first time in about 10 months. It doesn’t entirely matter because people don’t really get called by name here—more like “menusier” or “maman Kevin” (furniture maker or Kevin’s mom)—and I still call her ‘maman,’ but it was nice to find out. I met all of her adorable kids—she has 3 and thinks that I should start reproducing myself soon since I’m getting up there in age and I had earlier in the year lied to her about being married with a husband la bas. I met her husband and she and I talked for about 2 hours about anything and everything. It was hands down the best conversation I had had with a Beninese person since coming to Benin.

I hadn’t seen Michelle around the past few weeks because she started a new job at a health center a half an hour away and she stays in that village for the week, coming back to Dogbo only on weekends. So Friday afternoon I decided to stop in to say hi, but what was intended as a 10 minute visit ended up being a 5 hour affair in which I ended up staying to cook a meal with her. One of the little kids around kept trying to touch my arm and Michelle was clearly speaking about it in Aja with one of her friends who had stopped by (she cooks outside so everyone passes by). When I asked her what she had just been talking about she told me that they were pointing out that the kid wanted to touch my skin because it was white. This prompted a discussion between the three of us about the “beauty” of white skin and how Africans LOVE white skin. All over the marches here you can find skin whitening creams that don’t really work and are, I am convinced, actually dangerous to use, and they were just going on and on about how much prettier white skin is than black. I told them that didn’t make sense to me and that I disagreed, and that it was impossible to change your skin color so why waste money on those ridiculous products (leaving MJ out of this). It was interesting to hear them argue their side because it struck me that they really didn’t make any good points as to why white skin is better. Besides…people in Africa aren’t meant to have white skin. The sun here is too strong…there is pigmented skin for a reason. They only laughed when I said that. I asked, since they were so in love with white skin, how they felt about Albinos in Benin. Albinos here don’t seem to have it AS bad as in a place like Tanzania where they were being killed for parts recently under the urging of witch doctors there. But sometimes, life really isn’t too easy for Albinos here either and there are certainly plenty of them. That—I was told—is a different story altogether. Albinos don’t count, apparently, for Michelle and her friend, because their skin is not lovely at all like a white person’s. And that is when I grew exasperated—but in a good way—with that conversation. Another conversational highlight was when I was talking about my family in the US and Michelle asked me if that was anywhere near Angola because she has a brother who lives there. Michelle grew up in Porto Novo and is educated and works in a health center just below the level of a nurse. She only came to Dogbo to get married, and so I found it interesting that even she didn’t have any kind of geographic sense of the world. As a health center worker, it was also interesting to me that she didn’t wash her hands before cooking or eating—and people eat with their hands in Benin. I asked for soap and water so that I could do so and was hoping to lead by example but she told me flat out when I offered her the soap afterwards that it wasn’t necessary for her to wash her hands.

Anyways, I suppose that story was a bit random, but what can you do. I’m putting up a picture of Michelle in her cabine for your viewing pleasure. Please note the spongebob square pants t-shirt the little boy is wearing in the background. Today is my 1 year anniversary of moving to Dogbo! It is pretty unbelievable. Hope all is well at home.

So I made it traveling through Cotonou for the first time again alive (though not entirely uneventful) and worked stage (training) in Porto Novo for 2 weeks. Peace Corps puts volunteer trainers up in a pretty swanky house (ie-electricity and running water) and gives us lovely per diem so it was a not-too –shabby stint

Last Sunday I was out looking for pineapple for breakfast with Heidi (because constant fried food and palm oil and street-food that I eat since I can’t cook in Porto Novo was wreaking havoc on my digestive system) but we were unable to find any. We saw two girls selling bread on the side of the road and asked them where we could find some. When they told us that the women only came out to sell that at night we just replied jokingly that we wanted some right now and the girl got up and decided to walk us to the woman’s house who sells them. So we walked off the main road into an area of mud-brick houses and came across 2 men milling about who looked quite surprised to see two yovos in their midst.

The girl told them of our pineapple needs and they brought some out and proceeded to hand them to me after discuter-ing the price. Seeing as how we don’t have any knives in our house we asked them to cut them for us (normally when you buy a pineapple they cut it up and put it in a little black plastic sachet manufactured en masse in Nigeria to go for you without even asking) and this was the response that we got.

The man looked at us and replied “There aren’t any women here right now.” That was followed by a brief pause in which I believe Heidi and I were contemplating how to proceed while focusing on not dropping our jaws in utter disbelief. The men handed us the pineapple again, indicating that WE were women and should just take it. We explained to them that we didn’t have any knives at our house and that really threw them for a loop and they started talking in local language about what to do. Heidi jokingly but also seriously asked “Quoi, tu n’est pas capable?” (What, you aren’t capable?) to which they repeated the fairly obvious observation that they were in fact men, not women. Finally the seemingly more competent of the 2 walked away, in what I assumed, would be an effort to go find a knife. Then we stood around in fairly typical awkward Beninese silence waiting for him to return and what had he found? Not a knife….nope, he went and found a woman to cut up our pineapples for us.

The woman had the less competent of the 2 hold a plate with a black sachet wrapped around it so that she could cut the pineapple onto it and pick up the sachet to hand us after she had finished. But it was really amusing to watch her scold the man for putting the sachet on it the wrong way and she finally just took it from him to do it herself completely. Oh, Benin.

I actually had a really interesting conversation with one of the facilitators (Host country national contract workers hired to train trainees during stage) who was my first language teacher last summer. I was running a session for the trainees about how to make soy cheese in village and we were waiting for the water to boil when I recounted to him the pineapple story and he laughed. He admitted that he, himself could not cut pineapples because he always cut his hand and his wife had to do it for him (she is a midwife). But then we got into a more serious discussion about the role of women here and it was really powerful to hear him concede that the women of this country walk around with “Benin’s economy held in a basket on their heads.”

Working stage was a really good experience for me, I think. Seeing all of the new arrivals made me realize how far I have come here in my French, my coping with daily trials, interrelations with other people both Beninese and American, and in just knowing Benin in general. I had started to take for granted how much I already knew here and how comfortable I was in my daily life and I think it was good to be reminded of when I first arrived here and hadn’t a clue what was going on. I am kind of hoping this group will breathe new life into PC Benin because we could use it, I think. They officially swear in as volunteers on September 25th.

It was really nice also seeing my host family while I was down in Porto Novo. They are hosting another stagiere this year and had a little shrine to America up in their house when I came in. Maman and I spent the afternoon cooking together and it was really nice just talking with her and hanging out with the kids.

So far only one of the new group has decided to ET (early terminate) and leave Benin, which is pretty impressive compared to my group at the same time. Unfortunately, another health volunteer that came in with me has decided to leave country and so it’s sad to see her go, and hard to lose another one of our own.

It is however, incredible to realize that I have been here now for almost 14 months and pretty soon am officially more than halfway done, no matter how I slice it with departure dates. Talking to the new trainees made me see that too. They are talking about how 2 years is so long and it is…I remember freaking out about that prospect when I got here last year. And it is crazy to think that after I have been home for almost a year they will still be in Benin. It is so exciting to think of how far we’ve come—that I only have one more chaleur and harmattan left in Benin (thank god), one more Christmas and Voodoo Day, that within 8-9 months I will be attending my COS conference (Close of Service Conference) together with the rest of my training group—the first time we will all be together since having sworn in as volunteers nearly a year ago.

Only 12 more months or so until I can meet my new cousin, Ella--I am so excited. Congratulations Aunt Annie and Uncle Tom!!! I’m glad we took the picture with all the girl cousins and A. Annie!

Until next time!

August 1st 2009 means it is officially my second Independence Day in Benin. It is strange to realize that I am hitting “round 2” of my life here. Strange to think that I already blogged about Independence Day in Benin one time before: granted I was knocked out with a 102 degree fever last Independence Day so it wasn’t overly memorable, but it did happen. I’m coming up on my second and last Holiday season in Benin, Voodoo Day, long dry season…etc. It is exciting and still a little sad at the same time.

Still slightly bitter about my experience last year, I decided to fete it up this time around for Le Premier Aout to make up for it. Benin gained its Independence in 1960, making this its 49th anniversary. Every year the government puts on one big national celebration or fete and the location changes on a yearly basis. This year they chose to have it in Lokossa, the regional capitol conveniently located approximately 30 minutes away from Dogbo via bush taxi.

Several friends of mine were heading down here yesterday for the celebration and I decided to meet up with them so I taxied over this morning. Being a Beninese occasion, the fete involved much standing around waiting for things to happen. But when they did, it was interesting to see. The government had been putting in a lot of work to get ready for the past year so it was really cool to see the final culmination of their efforts, especially since I pass through Lokossa each time I go to Cotonou. They really “beautified” a park in the city, constructing cement benches, walkways with lights, and even a fountain of tiles in the Beninese flag colors. There is this thing in the center of the “park” in Lokossa that I am pretty sure is supposed to be the base for an as of yet unfinished monument. Pretty drab since my being here, the government had it retiled in red, green, and yellow for the occasion.

Today tons of flags were flying all over Lokossa and there was an extreme military presence (unfortunately the uniform doesn’t deter some tenacious gents and I had to walk in front of a line of soldiers and listen to “tu es jolie, non?” to which I now flatly reply, “oui, je sais.” –“you are pretty, eh?/ yes, I know”). It was pretty amazing to me to see such a sense of national pride, actually. Everyone that I came across in Dogbo and Lokossa were really excited that the fete was here. My maman in Porto Novo called me to wish me a bonne fete (She is excited because next year for the country’s 50th anniversary the national fete will be in Porto Novo meme) and was telling me that this was the 49th anniversary. She asked me what year we had just celebrated in the states and I had to pause and admit that I didn’t even know off the top of my head. I’d be willing to wager that most Americans don’t. So I guess I was really pleasantly surprised. It was fun to feel the charged excitement of all the Beninese in the air.

Pictures: The car with President Boni Yayi (he's the one all the way to the right, waving; battalion of women

There was a parade that included all branches of the Beninese military (very impressive to see them all in their uniforms and I was surprised to see several large battalions of women as well). The highlight of the parade was definitely when a truck came by containing a standing President Dr. Boni Yayi waving to the clapping crowds (he looked a lot younger that I thought he would from pictures—granted—mostly pictures printed on Tissu here that people wear for political events). I guess coming from an experience where I have seen the measures used to protect our President it was surprising and interesting to see the Beninese President just sashay out in public like that. I mean, I suppose he was technically surrounded by the military, but still. The women across from me were holding wooden guns…doesn’t exactly inspire fear.

After he passed, our little yovo contingent turned back toward the park where there were 2 helicopters making a show of turning on and off. It seemed like most Beninese people were pretty enthralled with the display. Personally I was just happy to see that they existed because I had thought that I saw them a few days back and thought maybe I was losing it It’s not like you see planes and helicopters ever here unlike at home where my house is under a flight path. That was actually something to get used to again. When I got back to Benin I kept thinking a plane was flying overhead when I had to remind myself that it was thunder because no planes ever fly overhead here. This past week when I heard them, I was really thrown.

Picture: The helicopters

There was a lot of music and dancing, and a voodoo day like display of national themed zangbetto dancing. Once again a lifting of the zangbetto revealed nothing underneath and we are still speculating how they pull it off each time to do that. It is maddening! Afterwards we went out for delicious igame pilee with sauce d’arachide and “fromage”—that is pounded igame with peanut sauce and wagasi (igame is kind of like a potato—this bland root that is the staple of Northern cuisine in Benin. Igame pile is actually a northern thing, and thus northern volunteers tend to whine about how much it costs to eat it down south, along with the wagasi since cows are much more plentiful with the Fulani people in Northern Benin. Wagasi costs about 100CFA down by me for one piece and up north can cost about 25CFA). All in all, I’d say I had a pretty swanky Independence Day the second time around and am very happy about it. Tomorrow Michele and Angelina are coming over to spend the night so we can start planning out our Christmas trip to Mali—trekking in Dogon Country and mayyyyyyybe visiting Timbuktu if Al Qaeda stops kidnapping westerners in the general vicinity by that time.

Oh, I almost forgot. Today marks the first time since July 5th that I rode on a moto. I wouldn’t really call it a great first ride since the streets in lokossa were crazy during the fete but I live to tell the tale for today. I decided to ride the high (huh, pun not intended) and took a zem back from my marche as well just to see how it felt zemming around Dogbo again. I was sure to wear my helmet. It was interesting to see the meat in my marche for the fete. Normally I can find meat only on marche days (except for like Christmas and stuff, apparently like Independence Day) at one place—the meat section where whole cows are hung off large butcher hooks and they honk off pieces for you when you order. Today though there was chicken already killed and plucked sitting out partout with flies in the marche. I probably should have bought some but I wasn’t in the mood to cook it. Wound status. Apparently wicked moto burns and post accidental cuts all over my feet are nothing. It is apparently a blister and a mosquito bite that are currently threatening to take me out. Frankly, I’m getting tired of having to walk like a putz. I had this bite on my lower leg that I scratched and it is now quite infected. I woke up this morning and it was throbbing, oozing pus, and flies kept landing on it at the fete—that can’t be good. Then I had these monster blisters…and when I say monster I mean HUGE…like take a ping pong ball, cut it in half, and stick each on the back of my ankles (it was from going out for a walk in my sneakers for the first time since being back here). Unfortunately, one of them popped and was looking red and oozing quite a bit. And then there is my toenail, a continued malodorous and oozing source of pain that also attracts flies like meat in my marche. Fortunately, my own wound care skills have really improved since coming to Benin and with a little conseil from my mom, I think it’s going to be juuuust fine. On va voir. A bientot!

So I am officially out of the medical unit., which is good considering that it was driving me crazy. I am used to being alone most of the time here and I spent over 2 weeks constantly surrounded by a flurry of volunteers passing through Cotonou on their way to vacations or ending their service. I love seeing other volunteers but that was just too much. I couldn’t really walk for the majority of my stay there because my feet were so cut up and I wasn’t ready to get back on a zem so my movement for those two weeks was confined to hobbling around (because I swear, being a yovo in Benin doesn't draw enough attention to me...i need to add bandages and a limp) in about a 2 block radius away from headquarters. The only thing to do during the day was read, watch movies, or sit on the computer…all a novelty when you visit Cotonou maybe once a month but not after day 4 nevermind 14. After a few days the intensity of what happened seemed to diminish. I stopped replaying it every few minutes in my head. But then every time that I thought I was doing just fine something would remind me about the accident. The following Sunday, for example, I put on the dress I wore that day for the first time since the accident and realized the whole skirt section of it was entirely shredded from dragging along the road. I had a cut on my thumb also that wasn’t healing and was surprisingly irritating considering its small size. A few days after that (about a week and a half after my accident) I finally was able to pull out a small shard of glass that had been jammed in there. I’m still shaken up enough that I haven’t zemmed yet still. It is inevitable if I am going to stay here so I should probably just bite the bullet and try it out in Dogbo before I’ll have to in Cotonou or Porto Novo. But anyways...

I’m fairly certain that the nail on my left big toe is destined to fall off. I think it was just too damaged after the impact. It keeps oozing blood and well….ooze… from underneath and is an opaque white color. Every time there is pressure on it, it hurts and yet it feels oddly detached. So I am sure it is only a matter of time before my feet look like my grandpa’s, which for those of you who haven't seen them...well...just be grateful. :)

At any rate, coming back to Dogbo for some reason seems to have snapped me out of the funk I was in when I got back to Benin. All of a sudden I was really happy to be in my house in my town. It was great to see everyone, especially my neighbor, Rosine. I was surprised at how many people in my neighborhood had heard that I was in an accident. They were all pretty glad to hear that I was okay and that I was back. Most of my marche mamans just thought that I had been traveling though and when I told them what happened they all dropped their jaws and made this little sound of exclamation and tongue clucking that only exists in Benin…well, maybe in West Africa. Rainy season is in full swing here (a fact that I was lamenting since I spent most of rainy season in the states and the medical unit and it happens to be the coolest time of year in Southern Benin...it seems like a missed opportunity) and I am starting to realize that the grass really IS always greener on the other side. Of course trite punning aside, it’s actually amazingly green here right now. Southern Benin never gets too brown because it is a tropical climate and perpetually humid as opposed to up north, which is far more arid. But by the end of dry season all greenery flanking roadsides was covered in a thick layer of reddish brown dust and plants were much smaller. As soon as the first rains fell here everything started growing back in full force. But anyways, when I was in the height of dry season here I really was hating the heat and the constant layers of dust that covered everything in my house. All I wanted was one cool rainy day. I’m not sick of the rain. I think it could rain almost every day and I would never get tired of it. But with constant extreme humidity and persistent rainfall come several annoying issues.

1. Mud…oh, the mud is partout. 2. My laundry takes about 3 days to dry and at that point smells kind of funky. 3. Mildew. The mildew is aussi partout. My whole bedroom reeks of mildew. I stripped my bed and washed my sheets only to realize that it is actually my mattress that still smells. My wall hanging in my room gets wet when it rains since there is a leak in my roof above that wall, so it too is starting to smell fairly awful. But the worst is my clothes. All the clothes in my drawers are starting to smell and it isn’t as if washing clothes here is a piece of cake. And they smell all mildewy by the time they dry now anyway. But apart from the mildew's acerbic attack on my nose every day, I’ve been having a pretty good time since being back in Dogbo. I took a lot of pictures of people in Dogbo before I left for vacation. While I was home, I had them printed and brought them back to give to people, a job hadn't finished before my little sejour in Cotonou. So i went out the other day to give the girls that I worked with at the cyber their pictures. They started shrieking with excitement when they saw them and were SO happy to have copies (there was a group shot for each of them and then each of them struck a pose as well in an individual shot). They invited me to a ceremony Saturday to celebrate their finishing up their "apprenticeship" with computers at the cyber, which had me really excited--not the ceremony...honestly after a year here I can officially say that beninese ceremonies tend to be boring and extremely awkward, especially as the lone yovo...but to be invited to participate with them and included in their celebration made me really happy.

I arrived Saturday morning at 9am like the invitation said, though only God knows why. I mean, really...i've lived here long enough that I should have known that the ceremony wouldn't start until well after 11AM. I got there and the girls were all in meme tissu outfits, looking very shnazzy. They were going to a buvette to get chairs to set up and I went with them to help, lifting some chairs against their protests that "madame" shouldn't be doing that. It's like doing all my own handy work around my house...i think it sends a positive message. But anyways, i was sitting in the cyber lamenting the fact that after over a year of living here i was foolish enough to leave my house for a Beninese function without a book when my bored fiddling with my phone was interrupted by one of the men who works at the cyber. I know him and said hi and then I noticed that he was standing with another man, considerably older than him who I did not know. The older man didn't speak at all except to say bonjour. I guess I don't always...or ever...exude any sort of friendliness that would encourage conversation when a man comes up to me in this country though. The guy that I did know held out an envelope and said that the second man had wanted to talk to me when I had some time. I looked at the envelope and he was pointing at the man's name which was written on it. I was a little confused and thought maybe he was just showing me that so I'd know his name. I thought maybe he didn't speak French and wanted this guy to translate for us...and I figured that it had something to do with money because in Benin...it usually does. I looked around the room that still had no guests in it and told him I had time then to talk if he wanted and the second man looked a little flustered. The first man said no, I should take the letter, and I looked at the older guy and told him if he wanted i could take it, read it later, and get back to him, and he nodded. The girls were sitting next to me and he didn't seem to want to talk in front of them. Again, I thought, prooooooooobably money. So i took the envelope and went back to playing a game on my phone.

Curiosity ever being a weakness of mine that was at the time encouraged by being bored waiting for the ceremony, I opened up the envelope a few minutes later just to see what it was about. My eyes stopped over the "objet" section which is the french equivalent of "Re:" What was his object you ask?

Proposition de Marriage.

Andddd the envelope got re-shut. As most of my friends and mom know...any sort of unwanted male attention tends to send me into hyperactive irrational panic mode. I felt my heartbeat skip a beat and this sick feeling settled into my stomach. When I first came to Benin, I did not do very well with the sexual harassement. Every time a man made a lewd comment, or I got "ma cheried" I would kind of squirm up inside and feel really uncomfortable and vulnerable. Over time I got over it. I learned how to come up with quick quips to shut men up and put them in their place, and stand up for myself here. I also learned when it wasn't worth it to even bother and to instead just ignore them. For the most part now, if a man starts hitting on me I walk away and maybe tell them to shut up and respect themselves. I don't however feel physically ill when it happens.

This situation however, brought that feeling back because while I've gotten marriage proposals before from men and their mothers I've never gotten such an official one. I mean, this man wrote out his qualifications to be my husband and was telling me how much he loved me....a girl whose name he doesn't even know. For me, coming from my culture in the States, it was beyond absurd. I felt a lot better when I left the cyber and felt in control again. I reminded myself that it doesn't mean anything because it takes two to tango, and if i have my way I will never see him again, nor will I respond to his request--I will merely tuck it into my journal for safekeeping in case I end up a spinster so that i can remind myself that at one time someone did want to marry me...even if he was at least twice my age and didn't know me at all.

Anyways, other than that, the ceremony was very nice and I was still happy to celebrate with the girls! A la prochaine!

...and everything can change. In an instant; The blink of an eye; the second it takes to make a decision--the decision to sleep outside for a night, to go to a beach with your host family, to go out in Cotonou alone, to get on a zem, whether or not to put on your helmet; to take your eyes off a road. That's all it takes. If one single thing has really hit me in the past few months it has been the realization of how very true this fact is.

I feel as though when that reality hits you, when you begin to understand how serendipitous life really is--a mingling of singular instances, choices, and decisions--nothing becomes easier than playing the game of "what if"? It's just so tempting. How could I rewrite the past few months with only a few crucial moments of change. It's like those books I read as a kid with the "pick you own ending" theme. EVery few pages you arrived at a choice and whatever choice you made would change the ending of the story. I was never really good at reading those books because when I didn't like if they were turning out badly I would get annoyed, go back, and pick again. I just wouldn't accept the ending. I am a little bit anal retentive like that. I need to be in control. And how I wish I could have that same kind of power in life...but life just doesn't work like that, I've learned. So maybe I should stop playing what if for this past weekend.

Kristin, my postmate, had her mother with her in Benin this past week and she told me her Mom had brought a 4th of July "surprise" so I should maybe hang around Dogbo to celebrate. What's not to celebrate. It was my one year anniversary in Benin! I made it...I was jumping up and down congratulating myself and my friends on what we had accomplished. I wanted to be with my friends so I decided to come down to Cotonou instead for a soiree at the US Ambassador's house--a potluck where we were all bringing something (For the record...i blew everyone away with my supreme culinary prowess in managing to whip up pigs in blankets with a honey mustard dipping sauce--used vienna sausage from a can and made the dough from scratch. They didn't even last on the table 5 minutes...it was awesome). So Saturday was fun. Sunday I could have just packed up and gone home. But i didn't. I hung out with my friends for the morning and went to the new supermarche that just opened with them to check out all of the bonnes choses that we can never in a million years afford. Then I decided to extend my afternoon in Cotonou and stay for lunch. Some people decided to spend the night in Cotonou since it was 4 and I almost made the call to get permission to stay a third night away from post as well, when i decided to forget it and just get back to Dogbo. ANd that's what did it...but no point in thinking about it I guess. So i got my bags, and my full gas tank, and I went out to catch a zem. I hadn't been away from the bureau for more than 2 minutes when I felt it. This huge slam out of nowhere.

I have come so close to getting creamed when I have been on motos so many times here that I have lost count. I have seen a lot of accidents, several bodies on the side of the road as well, during my time here. But every time it almost happend I thought that it could never ACTUALLY happen to me. I mean really...what are the odds, right? But it did...and as opposed to THINKING that this could never happen, here is what I know now.

I know that it can happen. I know that when a car hits you at full speed straight on from behind and makes contact with your body, it hurts. I fell back onto the hood of the car and felt my head slam down as it rolled over to my right side and i realized that I was riding the hood of the car. Then I knew that i was in the air...perfectly aware of it happening as fast as it was. I could feel my skirt flutter up and was vaguely mortified. But that went away because then i hit face first, palms down, legs splayed on the ground and could feel my skin tearing at my feet and my palms and my arms and my legs as i slid forward across the road. It burned. I waited for it to be over. When i finally slowed to a stop I had to will myself to look over my left shoulder; to see if the car had stopped. Because if it didn't, i knew that was it...i had landed several feet in front of it, right in its trajectory. But it did stop. When the car hit, in that very first instant, i remember this split second of confusion as to what it was, and then anger at how anyone could be so stupid as to ram into me directly from behind when we were going straight, not cutting people off, and being completely cautious. But that passed. When I realized I was on the hood of the car and we were still moving, all i wanted was to stay on the hood of the car because I was alive, and i was safer up there. If i fell to the ground, I thought, all bets were off. As i hit the ground and was sliding, every second i just kept thinking this hurts so much, but I am alive in this second, for now. I am alive, I am alive, I am alive, please let the car stop. I was actually disconcerted to see how much clarity someone can have in such a distressing situation. It made me think of Kate.

I pulled my helmet off and pulled my skirt down over my legs and then i got up but my whole body was shaking. I saw the zem driver splayed out face down and felt relieved when i saw him lift his head. And then I was surrounded by people taking my things, taking me, to the divide in the road, telling me to sit, yelling about as they do here. I lost sight of the zem and couldn't recognize him. I took my bag to find my phone, shocked, but singularly obsessed with doing the one thing I remember Peace Corps telling us to in this situation. Call the medical duty officer. My hands were shaking and it was hard to find the phone and press the buttons. And then my thumb was sticky on the number pad with blood as I scrolled through to find his number. I remember calling people ridiculously. I couldn't breathe well...I shouldn't have called. I wasn't in a mind to talk. I needed to make sure someone would feed scout. I knew I wouldn't go back to dogbo tonight and was annoyed. THen I remembered the gas tank because someone put it down next to me. So it didn't explode. That's lucky. I had lost sight of that while the accident happened. Then my bookbag. How did that even come off of my back? And Shit...my computer is inside. Then my bag that Carie gave me for my birthday. The strap was ripped. How can someone ever remember French in a situation like this. I look down at my feet and they are covered with blood and dirt, and stinging. Where are my shoes? What/Quoi? Mes chaussures. Ou sont mes chaussures? They ran back to look for them...they were several feet behind the car. Flip flops don't stay on well and they were hell to slide back on over the cuts. I looked at the car. THere was a dent on the hood where I landed and no one was inside. Who was the driver? I didn't want to be surrounded by people so I took the ambulance back to Peace Corps headquarters and was met by my AO and Security officer and we waited for the doctor to come. Shock started to wear off a little and pain started to settle in more.

And that is where I am now. In Cotonou in the med unit. You can not imagine the bruise on my butt where the car hit me. It is perfectly violet...ther is no variation in color. Large and painful, and one of my right ribs hurts, but it isn't broken. The pain in my neck is diminishing and the sting of the cuts isn't as bad as it was the first day or two even though it still hurts. I don't cry every 5 minutes or so like i did for the first 2 days. But the reality of what happened is still there. I haven't left my American bubble of headquarters surrounded by volunteers who make me smile and feel a little better, except for getting xrays and ultrasound appts. When i have left it has been in a PC SUV, a little tank that makes me feel safe. But even pulling out of the bureau and driving in the streets of Cotonou, all i think is "Ugh."

I've gotten into car accidents before...ironically the day i got accepted into Peace Corps I remember a car ramming into my passenger side door at Holy Cross. I have fallen off a horse before as i was getting on, but i got back on that horse. And i got back into a car again. So what is the difference here is what I have been asking myself. Can I get on a zem again? A very large part of me thinks "no." But not "can't"...just "don't want to." And it is all about control. When i got back on that horse I had other people there to take the reigns and ensure he stayed put. When i get in a car at home I am driving and in control or I trust the driver I am getting into a car with because I know them. In Benin, getting on a zem is tantamount to surrendering any and all control I have over my life. THe only choice I have is whether or not to put on my helmet, and if I were to be entirely honest, I would have to admit that there have been times at post, when I have chosen to not be bothered with even that. But when I get on zem, that is ALL the control I have, because he is driving, and I can't control the people around me. Nor can I control the roads--whether it is mud in the rainy season, or sand patches in the dry season, or just gravel strewn across a paved road in Cotonou that a moto can catch an edge on and spill over. I can only pick the zem, and THAT will lead me to my ending...good or bad, who knows? All i know now is that I can no longer be cavalier about zemming here in Benin. Subconsciously I always knew on some level that every time i got on a zem or into a taxi that it would possibly be my last ride. It sounds melodramatic but it is true...but like i said...it was so deep in the back of my mind...a kind of "what are the odds?" thought. I just don't know if that is something that I want to keep doing to myself every day here. I had already done the 'moto accident thing.' In february, before life in Benin seemingly went to seed, maybe ominously so, my moto spun out of control in mud with my homologue and i burned my leg and the moto came down on top of me. It freaked me out enough so that every time i got on a moto again i felt nervous especially on nonpaved roads. Now I don't know if i can imagine getting back on and i can't be a PCV in Benin without zemming. that is just a simple fact. I got in a car again, I got on the horse again, but I just have to wait and see how this will play out.

Like lack of control, I don't do regret well either. I think that everything that happens in life brings you to the next starting point and that there is no point regretting that. If I choose to finish my time here in Benin, I do not want to have regrets about it. So I am taking my life one day at a time and seeing where that takes me. I have lots of reasons to stay. I made lists; stay lists and go lists. I have a lot more sitting on the "Why to stay in Benin" side. The day before this happened I was talking to Duffy about plans maybe to meet up in Senegal. Life just gets so derailed sometimes. The fact that my stay list is longer might not matter at all if I can't feel comfortable getting back on a zem again. Because if there is something i know now...it's that I CAN get creamed again. There is nothing to stop it from happening again, and who is to say it wouldn't be worse next time if it did happen?

I don't like quitting...i don't think I've ever gone back on a big committment. ANd there is a part of me that thought for a long time that calling it now would be cowardly--I don't want to leave here on a sour note, that would just confirm peoples' worst predispositions towards life in Africa, because at the end of the day I still like Benin. EVeryone from work has called to see how I am, and both the man who hit me and the zem have stopped by here several times and called to see me and how I am doing. EVeryone around headquarters is asking how I am, and Basil in an instant without question, came to take scout and while he has absolutely no money and always "Beeps" Kristin or me (call, let ring once, and hang up so that you don't use credit and we call him back) actually called and texted me to see if i was okay. But I guess there is merit to knowing when you've had enough, and setting a level of risk that you are willing to accept. I just haven't figured out what that is yet for me. So day at a time for now...and I guess I will see where I end up.

Despite the difficulty in saying goodbye to people (especially knowing I'll miss my new cousin and Jen being the most gorgeous bride ever) leaving home was surprisingly easier the second time around. Because of that, I have to admit I am surprised at what a hard time I am having now being back in Benin and adjusting to life here again.

Things that I miss from home:

1. The ability to just go out at night, whether with my friends or just for a walk around the block with my dog and have streetlights and not feel unsafe. The fact that there IS a nightlife in the States

2. The ability to just run out to a store to buy a quick but delicious cup of coffee for a pick me up.

3. Hot showers and feeling remarkably clean ALL of the time

4. temperate climate

5. Not being a minority or hearing the yovo song, not being sexually harassed and touched, and not being asked for things every five minutes

6. The feeling of cool crisp sheets and my really comfortable bed with so many pillows that i can just recline into

7. Lighting that is not flourescent

8. Not breathing in massive amounts of smog constantly and the remarkable ease of transportation and close proximity of stores and things.

Those are just the highlights of an extremely long list in my journal here and does not include the obvious like my family and friends. I think I just have to give myself some time to get used to Benin again and start repressing the things I love from home like I must have done last year but in the meantime it is very hard being back for me. Really, it fluctuates...one instant I am fine and the next I'll have this sick feeling in my stomach willing every part of me to put in the call to COtonou that says I've decided to call it in and ET.

I went straight from COtonou to Porto Novo to work at Camp GLOW (Girls Leading Our World, ou bien, LEs filles guident notre monde) for the week. It was a good experience but was hard for me because camp started on sunday and i got there on tuesday and was on guard duty all day so I never really got to know a lot of the girls there (it is volunteers who picked girls who show promise and potential in 6ième or 5ième--young teens). The week is geared to share information with the girls on women's empowerment and rights, health information, studying tips, career panel with beninese women, etc. IT is also just a time for the girls to hang out with other girls their age and be kids and do fun activities like necklace making, art stuff, etc. Seeing the girls progress over the week and make friends with each other was really nice, even though I know thye'll never be able to maintain the friendship...no real affordable communication for them so it isn't possible. I don't think they've ever had the opportunity to just cut loose and have fun playing with sports balls, and each other, etc....just being girls. Certainly, their brothers do...but they'll naturally be occupied with housework at home. In fact it took some effort to get them to stop trying to do the dishes after meals and let volunteers do them (the man who was working on the grounds of where we were staying was shocked to see white people doing dishes 'Why don't you just hvae the girls do it?' he asked us and we had to tell him that we were perfectly capable and that the girls could go play 'And yesterday,' he continued 'I saw a man doing dishes,' referring to another volunteer, Christopher. Well now, astute observation, Holmes...in OUR country...men tend to make themselves more useful with stuff like that.

I saw my host family while in POrto Novo and that was fun...Especially giving them souvenirs from the states! They are getting ready to host a new stagiere (trainee) for PEace Corps who will be coming at the end of July, and it made me realize how much work they put into getting the house ready for me. They popped a bottle of really sweet and not so great tasting champagne and made a toast to my return which was a very sweet gesture.

I thought I would be really happy to get back to Dogbo and just get settled but it has been an up and down affair actually. I was in a bad mood on the trip back because I had 2 difficult moments along the way.

1. During campl glow we had explained to the girls why it is important to not throw garbage on the ground like they are accustomed to doing and so for the week they threw stuff in garbage cans we provided. If a girl was found picking up trash she earned points for her team. Saturday afternoon after all the other groups left and it was just Kristin and I with our girls we looked out and saw the ground was COVERED in garbage. As soon as the camp ended it was like everything they learned didn't matter anymore because you took away their incentive. That sounds so small but I was SO SO very frustrated and discouraged and just plain angry as i went around picking up their trash. 'What's the point; why do we bother, who cares, what difference are we making, why am i here?' was the littany of questions running through my head. Kristin reminded me that we can't expect to change the world but if even one girl doesn't throw her trash like that anymore than we have succeeded. I used to think like that too but now I guess I have to work to get that perspective back.

2. WHen stopped at a light in Cotonou a man selling phone credit took my hand in his as it rested on the window. I pushed him off and took my hand inside the car and he reached in and touched me again so I yelled at him and Kristin hit him. he did it again and then I had to hit him and he still wouldn't leave me alone so finally the light turned green and we left. I was at least glad our camp glow girls from dogbo were with us so that they could see they can stand up for themselves and not have to deal with that kind of behavior here.

When I got home, outside of my house was a mess because the rain had knocked over a tree and I was really stressed about that on top of everything else. THen within minutes, Basil came over to say hi and welcome me back. He saw the tree and ran off to grab a machete, came back, and cleaned up everything for me before getting me water. THat really made a difference in my mood and I was really grateful to him. It was really nice getting Scout back too. My return has been pretty awesome in terms of people welcoming me back and noting i had been gone for so long.

BUt in general, being here is just hard right now. Our country director has been forced to resign and we are currently with only an interim acting country director. Our training staff is severely impacted by resignations amongst other things. One of my closer friends ETed (early terminated) her service while I Was home so she is not here anymore as did another volunteer. MOst of the training group ahead of us is leaving and some are suggesting that the new training group not be brought in at the end of july. WHile I understand where they are coming from I believe that to not bring them would be extremely demoralizing to us and that that will never happen.

I guess I never stopped and thought about how Kate's murder was affecting my work here, but it is. I don't do anything no without stopping to think, 'Well what does this mean for me...could doing this somehow put me in danger or make my community angry?' I've especially had to think of this regarding some articles i wanted to write for Bisou BIsou that i now think might be too controversial, and it proved extremely salient my last night of camp glow when a girl came to me and 2 other volunteers to solicit our help in dealing with her lousy home situation with her dad. Her dad never wanted her because he was divorcing her mother and wanted her to have an abortion so he hates this girl and doesn't support her like the 13 other kids he has with 7 different women. When we suggested living with her mother (or about 7 other suggestions that she found not workable) she told us she couldn't because her belief in Voodoo. HEr father sold her soul to one of the 3 voudons of the water. THe fetishers will use gris gris to kill her if she should go live with her mother, she believes and there is no convincing her otherwise. IT would be extremely inappropriate to suggest that those beliefs are not true to her. As much as i was moved to REALLY REALLY want to help her I can't possibly because I don't want to get involved with something like that and maybe put myself at risk with her family. The other PCVs feel the same way. We decided to contact the PC facilitator I often work with in Lokossa to have him help and speak to the girl since he is more culturally aware, but I do not want anything to happen to him either, and he IS connected to PC so that comes back to us anyway since we are the volunteers who live nearby.

I worry about all of the facilitators we have training new volunteers not because I think they are out to hurt us but because I think that they are friends with each other and giving events of the last several months, I think it casts a shadow on this coming stage. All in all, it just feels very constricted in terms of work here so I have to see how that progresses and if it gets better.

So at this point it is really one day at a time while I readjust here. Going to Cotonou on Friday for the weekend because there is a dinner at the ambassadors home that I will be going to, so I am looking forward to that. Will write again soon! Miss everyone from home!

Home was amazing...Really no words to adequately describe just how amazing actually. I loved packing up my house here for the trip, and going down to Cotonou was one of the more comfortable taxi rides I"ve ever had in Benin. Naturally all of the zems at etoile rouge were being fairly evil and refused to give me the right price, or first addressed me as 'ma cherie.' So I was really happy to be getting the heck out of Benin when one zem finally drove up next to me and agreed to take me to the bureau for 150 CFA, as it should have been...NOT 200CFA. Naturally the other zems that i rejected were all following me to tell whatever zem i DID find not to take me for less than 200 but this guy was nice. WHen he dropped me off he told me all the others were angry at him for taking me for 150CFA. I told him I knew but that that was the right price and so they were being unfair and dishonest just because i was white, and he agreed saying that he knew we came to this country to help them and that we shouldn't be treated like that by people. 'Oh,' I thought, 'a bright shining light in Benin that makes me think it will be okay coming back here afterwards.'

Going to the Cotonou airport to check in felt so surreal...seeing where it all started. The airport, while small, was bigger than I remembered...and there was an actual western advertising poster with Hilary Swank on it, which was so bizarre to see. I have to say that after a year in Benin plane food was pretty fantastic and I was thrilled that I could speak with the flight attendents in French! Paris left me just enough time to be completely overwhelmed by the smells and the stores of the airport and the intense security, and of course, le plus importante, to find myself a deliciously warm and flaky pain au chocolat the likes of which have never existed in Benin. SInce the croissant itself cost me more than I spend on food over the course of several days here, i decided to abandon the original plan of buying an accompanying coffee. In flight entertainment...FANNNNNNtastic. I LOVED watching music videos and some movies i missed while here the past year. I was so excited and wired for the trip that I didn't sleep for more than 2 hours, and I started to tear up as we descended over New York. Stepping off the plane and touching American soil felt great, but not nearly as good as when i saw my dad and then my Aunts and brother right after customs. Then my mom...walked into her office and she screamed a little and came running over to hug me while we both started to cry. She even wore her sunflower scrubs for me!

Seeing everyone from home...family, friends, neighbors, colleagues, was all so great and exciting and I ate amazing food (and bien grossied as everyone here has informed me...thanks a bundle, Bénin...American women just love being told how fat they got) and drank WONDERFUL margaritas. I forgot how much I love being home and in my house. Walking in for the first time was incredible...Everything looked SO beautiful and smelled fantastic. By the end of my stay home walking into the house felt just normal and regular so I am grateful to have the opportunity to see my home this way again. My room was redone by my dad and was a spectacular surprise and welcome. My dog was a putz who didn't recognize me at first but wasted no time making himself comfortable in our new digs once he realized who I was. And the giz aussi was taken by surprise and had to warm up to me before relaxing.

Going to a supermarket didn't overwhelm me like I thought it would. Some volunteers said they cried first time they were back in a supermarket but I was just excited to pick out bonnes choses to bring for myself and other volunteers. WHat really got me was walking into Lord and Taylors in NYC: THe shoe department first, and then seeing the clothes. THat was when i felt overwhelmed. Certainly not to the point of tears, mind you...but definitely stressed out and just overwhelmed by the sheer number and variety of really obnoxiously expensive things available for purchase there. I have clothes made here and see little shoe stands in the marche and that is it, so I was taken by surprise by that feeling.

A lot of people told me I appearred to have readjusted super quick and well to being back in the US but I don't really know how to respond to that. I mean...what was I supposed to do...dig a hole in my backyard for the bathroom? I fell back into my life there because that is my life and that is what i do in the U.S. It is not possible or practical to live how i do in Benin at home. BUt I don't think I looked at ANYthing the same way as I had before, ESPECIALLY the ease with which I could turn on a faucet and have hot and cold water that didn't have to be treated...I could just brush my teeth with it or drink it without boiling and filtering it first. Ice on hand and ready to go...a HUGE refrigerator...Scratch that...2 HUGE refrigerators and 3 freezers stocked with food to eat and no worry that the power is going to cut out every 10 minutes and maybe spoil your food. OH, and the glory of the washing machine. I like doing my clothes here most of the time but they just feel so much cleaner when they come out of a wash and dry cycle. I have to admit I was not equally enamored with the dishwasher. I couldn't help but not really see the point aside from when we all ate together and had a lot of dishes. But when it was just me putting in my breakfast dishes I couldn't help but think "this is so stupid...letting this barely dirty dish sit in here for afew days before washing it when I could just do it now." and so i did wash those by hand most of the time. THe feel of a good quality sponge in my hand that i knew was so easily replaceable by going to a store down the block (as opposed to a 3 hour trip to Cotonou to find a worser version) and washing a dish with soap and hot running water was a great feeling though i felt often at home that i was really wasting water. ALso using dishwear that was not plastic was pretty cool as well.

Toilets...my verdict??? ça va un peu. Loved using my toilet at home...When it came to using a public restroom at the restaurant near the mall or in the Penn station, well, to be entirely honest...I'd take me latrine any day as opposed to dealing with nastyness and urine on the seats, etc. But in short, home was incredible, and I have to thank my friends, family, and especiall my parents for making my 3 weeks there so memorable and enjoyable. I love and miss you!

So a lot has gone on I suppose since the last time i wrote. But to start off, here is a picture of one of the bonne choses that I inherited...my bench/couch thing! Like I said last time, i re-varnished it, had a cushion made for it (and only I could find tissu THAT pink in Benin...a few PCVs have already asked me if I got that fabric sent from America...no my friends, i just keep my eyes peeled on dogbo marche days with a natural gravity toward obnoxiously bright colored things and anything pink, especially), and now my little salon is looking very shnazzy and I can actually have people over and offer them a place to sit. Ironically, I still spend quite a bit of time on the floor because I got so used to sitting on the floor my first several months at post. oh well. So Benin has been going well lately with the exception of a few minor snafoos. Par example...electricity. I have gotten ripped off on my electric bill since i moved in in September. The best thing if you don't have your own counter is to have a subcounter in your house so that you know exactly how much electricity YOU are using yourself but there wasn't one in my house when I moved in and I decided to not put one in because they are kind of expensive (for volunteers...especially with the small amt of Money you had to buy everything you needed when you first move in) and I thought I would just see how it goes for a few months...most volunteers, depending on where they live though, spend between 1,500CFA to 3,000CFA per month for a few light bulbs, computers, fan, etc. A brief word about electricity in Benin. Since there aren't addresses on the dirt roads or anything, factures (bills) are kind of done by family compounds and the chefs of the households (aka...the main man). Factures are delivered by SB--the electric company--to the heads of households by hand and several months (usually 3-4) after the fact. SO...when in started out, my proprietors son (not the proprietor himself because he doesn't really speak french and i don't really speak aja beyond greetings and random words like egbo--that means goat and won't help me discuss electricity bills) would come to my house with the facture that was for 3 households including mine. He told me I owed him 2,000 and it seemed reasonable so I paid it. Next month he came and told me it was 3,000 and I started to question it just because i wasn't using any MORE electricity than the previous month ( i have a few lights and a fan). But I let it go because the price fluctuates. Then...at the end of December, he comes over with the facture for november/December (unusually timely, it was for the last 2 weeks in November and first 3 in December--that's another thing...the periods in the factures are annoyingly random) and as usual i asked him how much I was responsible for and he told me 6,000CFA. Well, frankly...i flipped out. Mani and Carie were there and I made quite the stink about how he was ripping me off seeing as how for the first 3 weeks of december I was in porto novo and hadn't used a single bit of electricity, and shouldn't owe 6,000CFA for 2 weeks. That, apparently, required way too much critical thinking for his peanut sized brain, and we butted heads, leaving me with no choice but to pay because i didn't have any way of proving how little electricity I used. Next month, he ripped me off again and I became so incensed that i handed him my money, walked down to the marche, bought the dumb subcounter, and used HIS electrician to install it that day. Problem solved right? haha, no, silly...this is Benin. So...for MONTHS i heard nothing about electricity until 2 sundays ago when he came to my door with his brother and 2 factures that SB had just done. They handed me the facture and started to make as if to enter my house when i firmly told them that they would not be entering (inappropriate to have a man in my house, never mind 2). I had been marking down how many KWh i used at the first of each month and went to grab the paper with my notes so we could calculate my contribution. I told them i wanted to take the factures to SB to figure out how much one KWh costs and they were just like "No...it's 150CFA." So i said that's fine and calculated that i used about 14 KWh in February so I owed 2100CFA. Since the other facture was during a time when i didn't have the subcounter in my house i couldn't calculate it but told them i refused to pay more since i use approximately the same amount of electricity per month unless i am traveling and i use less. Well he was outraged and told me I couldn't possibly be right (and im sure he was genuinely surprised at how little i had to actually pay since he'd been jacking up MY share every month). Well, I have a temper....and i got a little out of control with him so that we were reduced to a shouting match. This was probably extremely exacerbated by how I've been feeling in Benin lately in light of several recent events and my overall exhaustion with being treated as inferior and with disrespect because I am a woman. He didn't believe the numbers I wrote down at the end of every month and told me he wanted to come into my house to look at the counter himself. 1.-this is an ABSOLUTE no since the counter is in my bedroom and this is beyond inappropriate. 2.-he couldn't seem to wrap his mind around the fact that if he saw it himself it would make absolutely NO difference since the facture was for FEbruary and we are now in May and THEREFORE...the number on the counter had changed. His second line of attack was to ask me how i calculated that i used 14KWh and i explained it to him and he just blatantly refused to believe me. He laughed at me like i was a stupid moron when i told him that every 10 turns of the last number in the red decimal point zone of the counter equals 1KWh and tried to tell me that every turn was actually one KWh itself. All i could think of was that i graduated at the top of my class from one of the most competetive liberal arts schools in america and here i was trying to explain myself to this man who thinks that I am an idiot and who doesn't even have a highschool education. I know that some of the most valuable education isn't ever even from the classroom, and I know that it's pompous and arrogant of me to have been thinking like that--I KNOW--but at the time, in the moment, I couldn't help it because I was just so angry. I tried to explain to him that if he stopped for one minute to think about this and do the math for what he just said, that i would owe more than the entire facture is worth and that doesn't even include the other 2 houses on the bill. So anyways, he refused to accept the number i told him and i refused to pay more and i just kind of shoved the money in his arms which is one step away from throwing it on the floor...a beninese insult...and i told him he could take it or he could have nothing and take it up with the director of my ong. At this point he told me he was just going to cut my power and he gave me back my money as I dialled my director and had him speak to the propietors son directly--who, as it happens, wore this snivelling little grin the entire time that i felt quite compelled to just slap right off violently. I mean, i could literally feel my face flushing and my blood pressure rising because i was just so stressed and incensed. Very very continued long story short, the comptable for my ONG came over to sit down with me and the proprietor's son to work it out and the comptable knows entirely that he was trying to cheat me because he was pulling some shenanigans during our mtg for the month when i didn't have a counter. My comptable called him out on it as being dishonest but we just kind of settled and have arrived at a new system. I will mark down how many KWh i use per month at the first of every month like i was already doing and pay 150CFA per KWh every month regardless of the facture, and now my ong will help me regulate it. You'd think that would make me feel better, and it does...a little. But in general i still feel really angry and bitter about it because the proprietor's son accepted as true exactly what i said when it came from the mouth of another beninese man. Just not the white woman. On top of everything else that has happened here recently...i just really am discovering an awesome respect and appreciation for women's rights and the ability to walk down the street and NOT be sexually harassed or 'ma cheried'. Like today for exampe. I am in Cotonou working on my session plans for when I have to do training for new trainees this summer. I stepped out of the office to find some streetfood and was talking to a maman. I heard this hissing noise behind me from a man sitting in a car trying to get my attention (they doing hissing like trying to get a cat's attention and then they do the kissing noise too normally). I ignored him and walked on to the next maman with some beignets and a young girl came up next to me and tapped my arm to tell me that the man in the car wanted to talk to me. I turned around to look at him and told her 'i don't know him, he can leave.' The maman in front of me told me "Il vous aime--he likes you" and i told her i didn't care. SO he drove away kind of embarassed (at least I think so since all of the mamans were kind of having a loud chuckle at his expense). And honestly, i think that is where female volunteers in Benin make a huge difference. Every time we tell off a man here acting like a pig, it sets an amazing example for girls here. It says that maybe after all they don't have to put up with cat calls, subordination, or sleep with their teachers to get good grades, or respond no matter what whenever a guy gives them some sort of positive attention. They aren't used to seeing women stand up for themselves and shut men down. It's why every time i hear "ma cherie" i whip around to berate them, telling them i am not their cherie, and to shut their mouths and respect themselves if they continue. Public humiliation goes a long way, i find, in getting men here to shut up and leave you alone. But anyways, other than all that, work has been going well and really picking up lately. Like I said, I've been in Cotonou since monday working on my session plans with another volunteer for this summer. It's been a lot of work but is coming along really well, and I think that this year's stage (training) will be great. I also started baby-weighing in the nearby village of Koutime (koo-chee-may)...it took us long enough to find a scale but we finally did and it went pretty well for our first time. I think that the three of us (kantos, the other pcv nearby and i) will get better with more and more practice. I didn't get peed on even one time, though i did make several babies cry at the mere sight of my white skin. Some of them have never seen white people before. It's heartbreaking to see, but their mom's think that it is hysterical. I was really excited that the women were so into it because they practically weighed the babies themselves often enough. That's great because it means that when volunteers leave they can carry it on themselves if they have a scale (and we're trying to figure out a way for women's groups to get UNICEF baby-weighing scales and harnesses). Baby-weighing can get complicated in Benin because mothers are supposed to have their carnet de sante for their child (health book) but often don't or have lost it, etc. Even if they do have the book a lot of times it is filled out incorrectly or birth date and weight information, or name or parental information is missing. The carnets also have a section for vaccinations so it is useful to see if the mom is taking her child to national vaccination days. The center of the carnet is the growth chart where you plot the age and weight of babies up until 3 years of age in order to make sure they are healthy. The growth chart is really a great indicator of child development and can help you see trends that might be going on in the child's life (ie--during june and july their weight drops, maybe because of diarhea or other illness brought on by rainy season; 6 months in, the weight drops, maybe because weaning has started and with water consumption the baby has got diarhea; or maybe 11 months into the babies life his weight drops because his mother has had another child and is not continuing breastfeeding of her first child, etc.) It is all really interesting to see. It is also interesting to note that most mothers in village haven't a clue as to when their children are born. You have to ask them if it was hot or raining when they were born, etc. because if they don't know AND don't have the carnet de sante with that info then you are at a loss. SOmetimes we plot a baby and freak out because we think it must be really malnourished and then look up at the baby to see it's a little chubster--the problem is just that the mom probably gave us the wrong date of birth so on the chart it looks as though it is very underweight for its age. Pictures: Baby-weighing in Koutime. Not the most flattering shots of me, but how much of a cutie patootie is that baby!?

In addition, i am almost done with my first issue of Bisou Bisou!!! When the french is finalized (it could use some more correcting) I'll see if there is any way I can link it to the blog because I am really excited about it and think it came out really well! I met with a student the other day so she can help me out with some of the nuances in my french and she really liked it a lot...have an article on healthy relationships, contraception, a condom true or false quiz with explained answers, and a word search and riddle...all in all, it's looking good. Other than that there isn't too much big news going on. Spent Saturday afternoon at Grand Popo to celebrate the French and Dutch womens' birthdays and that was a fun little yovo shindig--well, with the exception of the trip TO grand popo but I'm not going to get into it because i spent the first half of this entry being rather negative and really the day was quite fun in general. I'm heading back to Dogbo tomorrow and am SO excited that 2 weeks from now i will be sitting in my house with my family and my dog, and my gizmo. This weekend we are having the next installment of the Dogbo cooking sessions--breakfast for dinner...everyone is coming up and it should be fun. Anyways, until next time! Pictures: The port in Cotonou (doesn't look very promising, does it, what with sunken ships and all), flowers outside of my door, blowing out the cake at the b-day soiree (chocolate cake, peanut butter frosting courtesy of the peanut butter grandma sent me. It was a HUGE hit), picture in the marche at Lokossa (that one's for you, mom and dad--I'm working on it little by little)

I know it's been awhile since I wrote, so, apologies. Plus I don't have any pictures today, so...apologies again.

I spent Easter here with my host family in Porto Novo and it was really nice to see them all, but 48 hours was definitely all I could take. It is interesting to see how far I've come in Benin since in September I didn't want to even leave Porto Novo at all and after one weekend with them now I was very ready to get back to Dogbo. Maman had matching dresses made in meme tissu for us and Papa a shirt in the same tissu too so we looked really cute.

Recent happenings in Dogbo...a new expat arrived. She is french and a nurse at the hospital but I still haven't met her since I have been traveling to and from post so much since the beginning of March. The French family (Doctor and Teacher in Dogbo) is heading back to France at the end of June since their 2 years are up. I met a Japanese volunteer when I was at Easter in Porto Novo and she has two other Japanese friends in Dogbo as well. It was one of those small world in Benin moments because she lives across the street from my host family and knows Carie who also lives in Porto Novo so we were thinking maybe sometime they could arrange a trip up to Dogbo together.

I'm also inheriting a bunch of bonnes choses recently, which is nice since I'm of a rather foul disposition as of late and getting new things seems to make it feel ever so slightly less depressing. Chalk up that mindset to growing up in a culture of rampant American materialism. Everyone is leaving. Pretty much all of the training group ahead of me is leaving early. They were all due to leave at the end of the summer but most of them will all be out of country by June or early July now since no one wants to stick around after Kate. My closest friend in country made the really hard decision to go home as well. It just got to a point where she needed to go home, and as much as I support her in her decision, it is really upsetting. I am getting the fridge that doesn't really actually work too well from a PCV that was posted in Azove nearby and is flying out tonight. Also the dutch couple in Dogbo gave me this old couch that they didn't want anymore (and when I say couch I mean an old wooden bench with a back on it that reminds me sort of like something that would be sitting outside a ski lodge...god, i miss skiing). Since it was a little beaten up and dirty I decided to refinish it and have a cushion made for it. This required a trip to my hardware boutique again where everyone thought i was crazy once again for buying sandpaper, varnish, and paintbrushes to do the work myself instead of hiring a menusier to do it. Well it looks pretty good, menusier be damned, and I will take a picture of it for next time. And Carie gave me her coffee press and spices before she left, which which was very nice of her ;).

I just finished up a 2 week stint in Cotonou and Porto Novo for more training, world malaria day, and programming session for the upcoming summer training (i have to help out 2 weeks in August training new stagieres). I also just got my grant application approved for GAD (remember that post about the GAD dinner and how it raises money for small projects like this)so I am starting a newsletter for the schools in DOgbo about relationships and sexual health. Wish me luck. Anyway, realize this was sort of anticlimatic but I'll be in Dogbo for most of may and make a sincere effort to be better about posting. Home in less than a month...can't wait.

So Saturday night we had the next installment of the Dogbo cooking sessions. On the menu?? Freshly decapitated lizard.

Haha...just kidding. That was on Scout's menu. After eating an entire lizard, she caught a second one and was apparently just too full to eat more than the head. Slightly reminiscent of biting off the head of the chocolate easter bunny, if i do say so myself. Anyway. She left this for me as a little cadeau to clean up.

For OUR menu...we went with an American BBQ theme. A lot of people from our region came up and after sickness and lack of cell phone reseau kept her away from the last 2 dinners, Carie finally made it up to dogbo in one piece for our delicious feast. All because of Dennis's amazing meat-grinding efforts, we had hamburgers, potato salad, and cole slaw. Courtesy of the Dutch couple's refrigerator in Dogbo, we also managed to have jello and Angelina whipped us up a delicious chocolate cake with amazing betty crocker frosting someone sent her from home. Oh, boy...it was amazing. There was even Heinz ketchup.

Pictures: Burgers!!! Angelina with her yummy cake!!

WORKING HARD...

...and hardly working (just kidding...Dennis was pretty clutch to making the burgers...ie..he is the only reason we were able to make the burgers and happens to be our head chef)

Afterwards we went out to a buvette to have some drinks and hang out. The buvette nearby is pretty swanky and even has a really old school disco ball hanging up from the ceiling, and a black light as well. It is set up in a way that reminds me of a dance studio because one wall is floor to ceiling mirrors. We were the only people there until two women finally came and danced point blank in front of the mirrors just watching themselves. It was actually, really funny/interesting. We got out of there though since it is much to hot to stay indoors. We ended up sitting outside and missing most of the show as a result. C'est la vie.

So the next day Carie and I had been in the marche and when we were walking back to my house, maybe about 100 feet away from my door, we all of a sudden heard this scraping noise from them moto that just passed us by. I instinctively turned around and saw the moto flounder a little. the driver had taken his feet of the rests and I was wondering if it was going to tip over when I then noticed a child was hooked onto the side and being dragged--that was the noise. The driver finally stopped and the woman got off the back and stood off to the side. The driver unhooked the child and picked him up by one arm and kind of dragged him to the side of the road, placing him flat on his back on the dirt. Carie and I doubled back to see if the kid was alright, and when i saw that the jackass of a driver was smiling I reproached him vehemently. Upon first looking at the boy, I thought something had exploded inside his body...his stomach was so terribly swollen. When I realized that that was either because he had worms or was suffering from Kwashiokor (severe malnutrition due to lack of protein), I actually felt a little bit better about it. The boy (Anthony was his name as I learned later) didn't speak any French. He lay there, not crying or screaming but rocking back and forth slightly clucking his tongue furiously in obvious extreme pain. When the zem driver touched him he was moaning. Within a minute a circle of at least 30 people and kids had surrounded him to stare and gawk and be entirely useless. The one good thign I heard in the shuffle of it all was one man who said the boy should go to the health center because we didn't know if there was itnernal bleeding. He said we shouldn't wait for the parents because he could die. While I agreed, I didn't think he was going to die, and I can't begin to imagine the fear a mother would feel if this random white person ran off with her kid, so I demanded to know where his parents were. The kids in the circle were pressing in so close and really overwhelming so Carie and I started to yell at them to leave. His mom came, and I thought that she didn't understand french at all because she wasn't saying anything. She looked at her soon and walked over to him, grabbed his left wrist and dragged him to his feet until he cried out in pain. I told her to leave him and she dropped him back down and walked away to drop off the child that was strapped to her back at home. At that point about 5 minutes had lapsed by and Carie and I made the decision to take him out of the circle of a useless audience. I handed her my bag, picked him up, and hopped on a zem to take us immediately to the health center, and the mom came back just in time to hop on a second zem with Carie and follow us.

I know that no matter what i say, my words will not be able to express the frustration that we felt at the health center, but I guess I will try anyway. We got there and the doctor wasn't in, just an arrogant, egotistical, thinks he is 'God'-type nurse, who I've dealt with before. Anthoney's mom took him from me and brought him into the room and the nurse gave him a shot for pain...because God knows if you are sick in this country, it is ALWAYS malaria, and if you get into an accident you ALWAYS get unnecessary shots for pain that are supposed to magically cure everything. And how is this for encouraging. When Carie asked the nurse if anything was broken, his response was "not for the moment." And we know that the man thought we were a bunch of high-strung, crazy overreacting yovos. He left anthony on the table and handed his mother a bill for the shot and service. Anthony's mom looked at me and made as if to hand me the bill until i shook my head no and said I didn't have money for it...which, is technically true. At the time I did not have the cash on me to pay it. The nurse spoke in local language but i heard him laugh obnoxiously and say yovo so I asked him what he had said. And when he came over and put his hand on my shoulder i told him never ever to touch me in a tone which, as Carie pointed out, was probably unwisely vindictive. But here is where it gets fuzzy.

Should we have paid? Why? Just because we were there, we found him? we're white? at the end of the day we do have the money? What are the implications of that if we did? Would we have to pay for every medical issue for every kid that we come across? Is that our responsibility or why we came here? Anthony's mother seemed so furious and she wasn't speaking to us so we were under the impression that she was angry with us, which confused the issue further. SHould we have brought him to the health center at all? What would have happened if we left him there. Something could be seriously wrong, but if there wasn't anything really wrong with him at all, would he just be taken home and beaten later for causing his family a bill? Because that DOES happen here. Had we done more harm than good? Would his family begrudge us for what we did? And if she really absolutely couldn't pay for him at the end of the day, which seemed likely judging from the state of his belly, do we pay?

The thing is, people here find the money for what they see as truly important. They might "not have" the 15.000CFA it takes to send their child to school for the year, but if their parent dies, all of a suddent they'll be able to scrounge over 100.000CFA for the funeral parties and ceremonies--to buy sodas, and a DJ, and meme tissue, and death photographs...because THAT is what is important in the culture here. Give a kid some money and he'll use internet time to visit love chat rooms or solicit money from people abroad. It's just that their priorities for the most part are so askew. So I waited, and didn't pay the hospital bill, because I figured they'd be able to get the money...and they did. Eventually the dad brought the money, and it turned out the mother had been furious at the zem driver who hit him for not paying the bill. But in the meantime, the mother was squabbling with the zem and he was claiming that he hadn't hit the child and it wasn't his fault. I flipped out again, and told him he was lying, which, as Carie pointed out again, was probably a little unwise as well. I just have a problem controling my temper in situations that are that frustrating...just as I seem to lose all french speaking capability when I am that angry. Probably for the better...i don't even think I could express what I really wanted to say in French anyway.

While Anthony's mom was out working out how to get the money, several women (maybe family?) from my street had finally made it (walking) to the health center and when they saw Carie and I, came up to us and said thank you over an over again. It felt really odd because we really hadn't done anything that made the decision to stop lallygagging comme les beninoise and take him. And like I said, we weren't even sure at the time if his mom was angry at us. We called our APCD lauren, to ask her advice on the situation since anthony told his brother he was having trouble breathing. Lauren told us basically that she didn't have clinical experience so didn't know what to tell us and that in terms of paying, it was surely "a moral dilemma, but ultimately not our responsibility." That did nothing to make the issue any less grey for us as we sat there though.

Anthony's brother, Marius, looks so much like him, and was really good about answering our questions. We wanted to know about the belly...so we asked him what kinds of things Anthony ate (because Marius looked relatively healthy...his belly was not at all swollen like anthony's). They eat, like most Beninese people i guess a lot of pate (cooked corn flour and water), akassa (fermented cooked corn flour and water), rice, sauce, etc. Never meat or fish...too expensive. So Kwashiokor was looking like a distinct possibility. But then Marius told us that Anthony eats dirt a lot, especially after it rains. And there you had it...he's anaemic. Severely. And in eating dirt to get iron, he probably developed worms. Then Marius told us that he himself had been sent to Cotonou when he was younger by Klaus because he had Marasmus. Klaus is the German man who runs the orphanage in Dogbo and visits there occasionally, and Marasmus is another form of malnutrition that means a general lack of caloric intake and can lead to stunting. So clearly proper nutrition is a significant problem in their family, but how to deal with it. We talked to Marius about foods his brother should be eating because his mother just seemed so angry still at that point. But eventually when she came back she seemed much more calm and thanked us for taking. Since she seemed receptive, Carie and I pulled her over to the side away from all of her neighbors and talked to her about adding more iron and protein to Anthony's diet. She took in the information and was engaged, asking us about different types of food etc. It wasn't like she didn't care or what we said was flying over her head so that was encouraging and I hope that he gets well. And, as Carie pointed out...hopefully I didn't annoy anyone too much with my flying temper that day to regret it later on.

Later that night, walking down my street, Anthony's sister stopped Carie and I and thanked us again. All seemed ok, until approximately 3am or so when the throwing up commenced and didn't stop for all of the next morning. I threw up 8 times, ever sip of water, everything, until finally i emptied out everything and the dry heaving began, amongst other things. When I finally had it under more control, I got in a taxi with Carie to Cotonou and have been in the med unit since then. Apparently it is not amoebas have some bacterial infection and am on Cipro. I still don't feel great and am not really eating much because every time i do I feel sick, but at least I am not throwing up anymore and feel like I can funtion. Plus I don't have a fever anymore so that's an improvement. Well anyways, a la prochaine, I suppose. 55 days and counting...

Happy Easter!!!

So after Kate's official memorial Wednesday, I headed off to my friend's village about an hour or so north of Cotonou to spend few days painting an HIV/AIDS (VIH/SIDA, in French) mural. Her post was really nice, and the people there were awesome. We started working late on Wednesday, going to the health center where she works to put on a prime coat of paint on the wall for the mural. The next day we went back and painted all day Thursday and Friday. I'm pretty sure I either had sun poisoning or just got really dehydrated on Friday because Friday night through Saturday morning I felt absolutely terrible. My whole body ached, my head was pounding, and i was in severe gastrointestinal distress (that might have been unrelated to dehydratin though...I'll get to that later). I woke up Saturday morning with a fever (only 100.1...not too bad, I guess) but drank some very disgusting ORS and water (Oral rehydration salt...possibly the most disgusting thing ever invented but really gets the job done when you are dehydrated) and felt better a few hours later. It's pretty annoying because I Actually put SPF 70 sunscreen on that morning but i sweat and wiped it off i guess, within about 5 minutes of applying it. You can't win.

Pictures: Painting the mural, the little boy who we think might have skipped school to help us paint a little (he was so cute and was so excited to help us...he didn't speak french, and was on crutches because his legs were so severely burned. Actually, one of his legs was resting in a fake mold of a leg because I guess it was so badly damaged though I ahve no idea how)

Saturday morning we did finishing touches on the mural (kids kept smudging the paint after we would leave each night) and went to the school where we were hostig a HUGE sensibilisation on HIV/AIDS, including a discussion on the myths and realities and condom demonstrations. A guest speaker from PSI (Population Services International) came and did a whole talk in local language (Fon) which was amazing and there was a DJ, a little marching band to parade around town and announce the event, etc. Afterwards we marched over all together to the health center to unveil the mural and offer free depistage (HIV/AIDS testing). I just found out today that 108 people got tested yesterday, which is pretty awesome. So it was a successful event.

Pictures: Kaili showing the men who think they are "too large" for condoms that the condom can stretch down her hand and arm, the children who were watching the sensibilisation (if you look closely to the little girl sitting on the right hand side, you can see her hair is blondish, which means she is pretty damn malnourised with Kwashiokor--severe lack of protein in her diet), the marching band who announced the event throughout the village, all of us doing condom demonstrations, march to the health center to see the mural, and the audience at the health center.

My friend lives in a concession with a family that is practically her family. She never cooks for herself...just buys food and gives it to the family so that they prepare it and she eats with them every night. Sometimes to say thank you she cooks one big meal for them and we decided since they had been cooking for us since we got there that Friday night we would cook for them. Apparently word traveled that i make good lentils (i do, actually) so she asked me if we could make them since it is pretty easy. I have never bough lentils in a marche here...I have only ever gotten them in a supermarche in Cotonou. So i was surprised when she said she had them in her marche. So we went out Friday to the marche to get ingredients and passed her usual bean lady. Nothing there looked remotely lentil-like so we moved on to anotehr bean lady. There was this big bin of stuff that i thought didn't look exactly like lentils because they were round. But they were the same size and color as the regular lentils that I buy. THe difference is that the ones from the supermarche are split. Anyway, everyone was a little iffy on whether or not these were really lentils, myself included, but none of us said anything, and admittedly, i was the one in the end who said "let's get them, they're lentils."

Pictures: Nat and me in the Marche, Zul being adorable, Zul Cami and Me

So we take them back to her house and her maman asks her "did you mean to buy these?" and we said yes thinking that preparing lentils would be such a treat for them if they weren't used to it. So we crushed up piment, sauteed garlic and onions, added the lentils, covered it with water and bouillion and let it simmer...normally when i make them they are done in about 20 minutes. 2 hours of boiling at high heat later, the lentils were still hard and chewy, the rice was long done, and the family was hungry. The maman came in to see our progress and asked us "Do you usually prepare that like that? Really?" THe entire time they were cooking we told ourselves "give it another 20 minutes...they're getting softer." As good as the sauce they were in tasted, they weren't really getting any softer. Eventually we asked the maman to come back in and taste them to see if they would eat it like that (Beninese are SUCH picky eaters when it comes to us trying to make them our style food). She took one bite, looked at us and said "jut give me rice," which was actually less offensive than we thought it would be...her expression of disgust was just to priceless. Long story short, we found out that we bought not lentils, but millet. Millet can not be digested easily and is usually just ground into flour and used for making porridge in the morning here. The whole family thought we were some crazy yovos. We all admitted to kind of having our doubts about whether or not they were actually lentils when we bought them, and as it turns out, you can't get lentils in the marche here. So THAT (not over-sun exposure) might have been what contributed to my 2:41am latrine run, during which time, there were approximately 14 mutant cockroaches running around the walls and floor making me want to cry.

I'd have felt a lot worse about my millet faux pas if this hadn't happened the following morning: We made pancakes...it's really hard to screw up pancakes, and gave it to her family, and their faces were so disgusted when they tasted it. They actually spit it out or didn't finish the piece and gave it all to the one kid that would eat it. So there...tough crowd to please. When my post mate made her host family a cake, they were grossed out by that too because they thought it was too sweet. They really liked unsweetened cornbread though...corn flour is such a staple of their diet anyway so i imagine that is partly why. 'Tis all for now...i am in Cotonou and have to be getting back to Dogbo. Not looking forward to a hot taxi ride. 'Till next time.

Probably most of you reading this by now know that one of our volunteers in Benin, Kate Puzey, was murdered last week. Even after the short amount of time that I spent with her, I can say with complete confidence that Kate was one of the friendliest people I have ever met. I will never forget her smile. This world is a sadder place for having lost her. It's been really hard for all of the volunteers here, and especially those in her training group who have been with her in-country all along.

I very much understand and even appreciate everyone's concern at home. But as far as we know, this was a tragic but isolated incident. I do not feel any more unsafe now than I ever have since coming to Benin. I knew when I left home that Peace Corps could not launch me into my post with a protective bubble around me for 2 years. I signed onto living in a West African country as a single white woman alone. I know the risks that that brings, and so do my parents. And I understand better than most from home what that actually entails. That is why I always do what I can do to be safe. As much as I understand peoples' concerns for my safety, I just wanted to say that suggesting I come home, or emphasizing the danger of being here isn't what I necessarily need to hear right now. I am staying in Benin. If I left now, I would only ever look back at it with regret. That is a decision that might not be right for everyone right now, but it is what is right for me. This has been really hard for everyone here. What I need right now is support, like I've always been fortunate enough to receive, from my friends and family at home. If or when I ever feel as though enough is enough here in terms of incidents against volunteers, I will know. And I will make the decision to go for myself.

Please keep Kate, her family and friends, and the Peace Corps Benin community in your prayers.

So GAD-- "Gender and Development"-- is this fund that is here in PC Benin to offer $$ for volunteer projects. GAD Small projects are the easiest grant to apply for because it is all internally done within Benin and doesn't involve processing from DC or any of that bureaucratic stuff. The most you can get for a GAD project is 50.000CFA, and applications for GAD grants are reviewed every month so there is a quick turn-around on getting money to work on a project. Every project using GAD funds has to in some way impact the gender development and equality, etc.

Pic: Weihow, Carie, and Christopher at GAD Dinner

Normally every year there is an All Volunteer Conference in Cotonou, where the Peace Corps picks up the tab to spoil PCVs in one of the nicer hotels here and host a bunch of different activities, etc. This year, unfortunately for us, with our stellar economy at home, All-Vol was cancelled. The real snaffoo about that though is that All-Vol was the event where funds were replenished every year for GAD small Projects Fund, because we always hosted a dinner for volunteers and expats who would pay for a ticket and take part in a silent auction to benefit GAD. Since that wasn't happening, we hosted our own Volunteer weekend up in Parakou with a more low key dinner, silent auction, and the tab picked up by...ourselves.

I got to Parakou Friday and checked into my room with Carie and Kaili and hung out until the talent show and date auction that night. The whole night was a ton of fun, and the dates were outrageously funny to watch being pitched and bid on. I was really impressed how people ponied up for GAD and the price that some dates went for. I won a date with 3 other people with our friend Tim, so he better show us a good time. When this blessed date will occur, I haven't the foggiest because we are scattered all across Benin.

Pictures: Friday Night at the date auction and dinner. First there is me and Heidi, then a pic with Jeremey, and my 'meillieur ami' in-country...Weihow. We were trying to make a BFF sign with our fingers but it was backwards and entirely unsuccessful. Since we had a bidding war at the auction saturday night (which he won) maybe this was just a foreshadowing...haha.

Pictures encore: First you have a group shot of all of the RCH (Rurual community Health) volunteers that came to GAD Weekend with Chadsey...honorary RCH volunteer, right up front (he really is an environment volunteer but clocked far more hours with us all through training and In service training, because RCH is clearly awesome, and really...who wouldn't want to come hang out with us?). Next you have, Nathaniel, Mani, Carie, et moi.

Saturday...to be entirely honest, Saturday we did absolutely nothing but lounge in bed in our air conditioned room and attempt to watch a movie before giving up on the sound from the computer without speakers. It was a fantastically lazy day, but it was just nice being with other volunteers...especially my RCHers, some of whom I hadn't seen since IST in December.

Saturday night was the GAD Dinner and auction. It is kind of like Peace Corps prom, for lack of a better comparison. Volunteers go all out and get nice dresses made, or even have them sent from home. You almost feel like a human being and not a bucket of grunge for a few hours. The auction was really nice. There were a lot of things sent from home and donated (all my extra toiletries, etc. are going to GAD next year for their auction). Also, a lot of artisans and little restaurants donated thigns to the auction for volunteers and I ended up bidding on these wine bottles some artist doctors up with paint and paper machee. They look much nicer than I just described them. Anyway...comme j'ai dit deja, i was in a bidding war with Weihow and he beat me out, paying 11.000CFA for the ones i really wanted (I got my second choice for 4.000). I would have kept going but i know the artist lives in Bohicon across from the marche there and I just couldn't do it. The dinner was at a hotel run by a french couple in Parakou and so the food was decent and the ambience was nice. There was also a pool, and quite a number or people were jumping in in full fancy attire. It was really nice just being with everyone. I think it was good that the dinner went on and we were all there with our friends and for each other. We did a dance for Kate and took a moment in her memory the night before too. It would have been a lot more fun with her there in person but I'm pretty sure she was there in spirit and would have wanted us to party on.

Pictures: Carie and I being ridiculous, dennis and the severed arm touching mariana inappropriately, Rut and Heidi suiting up to head off to GAD on the moto (there really is NO way to have good hair in Benin, ever, when you add in the moto helmet), our table, meg and carie being ridiculous, Rut and Heidi; a shot of Rut, Kaili, Meg and Jeremy; Me and Carie.

This morning it was up and out at an obnoxious hour and now i am in cotonou until wednesday. After I am going to a friend's village to work on and HIV/AIDS mural painting and sensibilisation project until Saturday. Kate's more official open to the greater public memorial service is on Wednesday morning.

It is hard to believe that Burkina Faso was only 2 weeks ago because it feels like life has completely flipped upside down since then. But the trip was a ton of fun, quand-meme. I left Friday morning the 27th for Natitingou in Northern Benin because I was going to spend a few days with my friend Mariana doing some work stuff. It was nice to finally get to see the North a little. It is far drier up there and was strange to see. I guess i took for granted the lush jungle all around my post where I go walking every night because our climate is so much more tropical in the south. It was way more brown and dusty once you got away from the South. People wash their clothes much more in the rivers up there and lay them out to dry on the dirt, grass, and bushes whereas, i don't really see that too much by my post except for by the Mono river near Athieme. In Dogbo, meme, people just use pump water. There are also cows in LARGE quantity up North because, i Believe, the Fulani people raise them (and make yummy wagasi--cheese, but not like what you're thinking when you hear 'cheese'). Everyone in Benin has serious regional pride and so if you are in the collines you'll say the collines are the best if you are in the Couffo (comme moi) you'll say no place is better than the Couffo, etc, etc. So I was expecting this sort of paradise when i arrived in Nati because I had heard from SOOOO many Northern volunteers that it is the most amazing laid back place where you don't get hasseled, etc. I definitely did NOT expect to get called yovo there, or to have to discuter prices like i do in Dogbo. And actually, I was asked by my zemi driver if I had a husband because he wanted to marry me and I can honestly say i have NEVER gotten that from any zem in Dogbo (not that I zem a lot at post anyway). But Nati was definitely a nice place in general, and a fairly large regional hub. It is pretty much where you stay on your way to do safari, if you are coming here as a tourist...or to see the Tata Samba, or visit the waterfalls at Tanagou.

There are three workstations in Benin for volunteers to stay at in transit, etc--in Nati, kandi, and Parakou. So I stayed in the workstation for a few nights and it was so fun and cozy and there were a lot of volunteers there hanging out. Having a TV and DVDs was such a novelty while i was there. We watched so many episodes of friends and greys...eesh. It is also way hotter up North. I can't figure out which is worse...my humidity or the sheer harshness of Northern heat. It wasn't bad during the day under a fan but i sweat all through the night...gross. It is also much higher concentrations of Muslims up North as opposed to Voodoo by me. Over the wknd, more and more people started arriving and there were about 15 of us who rented a 'bus' to get to Burkina. The trip was a long hot hassle and our driver on the Benin side of the trip screwed us out of money, but border crossing went smoothly. We got in that night and got to our hotel quickly. It was a pain that we aren't allowed to take zems outside of Benin (Benin is one of the only PC countries.[..maybe the only?] where volunteers are allowed to ride motos because we have training for it during stage and are issued helmets. But other volunteers who visit Benin aren't allowed to zem here since they haven't been trained and we can not zem outside of Benin...not even in Togo). Instead you take taxis to get around Ouagadougou (Wa-ga-doo-goo, the capitol of Burkina Faso and an hour behind Benin...who knew?) It turned out to be more expensive this way especially since we weren't familiar with Ouaga and prices there, but whatever. Actually, not being able to zem really wasn't the end of the world because all in all Ouaga was a much more pedestrian friendly city than Cotonou.

We were in Burkina for the FESPACO film festival...a pan african affair held every other year there. I didn't see TOOOO many movies but I saw a fair number or Moroccan, Algerian, Egyptian, and South African films, both long and short. My favorite was this South African film called "When we Were Black" about the events leading up to the Soweto uprising there. I hope it caught someone's attention enough to eventually be distributed.

Everyone was ridiculously excited because Ouaga is relatively well known for having FABULOUS strawberries. Good Lord, did we gorge ourselves on fresh sweet strawberries. They were amazing. I miss them. They also had a vrai supermarche that felt like one from home...it was amazing. Burkina was even more Muslim than Northern Benin (which is why i was surprised at what some Burkinan volunteers were wearing when we saw them). The Grand Mosque was really quite beautiful and it was interesting to see that there were stations all over the city on the streets with mats and water where Muslims could go to pray and do their ablutions beforehand at the specified times during the day. The marches had a lot more Qu'rans and prayer beads, etc. as well.

Picture: FESPACO sign, Me, Grand Mosque in Ouaga

We stopped in this great artisan's market where we were able to see the artists in the middle of their work, and I really appreciated getting to talk to them and see how they did their projects,etc. Also, we ate in this restaurant that according to the Lonely Planet guidebook has the "BEST" lasagna in all of Africa. I didn't get the lasagna though, i only tasted a bite of a friend's. It was good, but i'm still partial to our own dogbo-style italian night fare.

Pictures: Carie and Nathaniel outside of one of the movie theatres, artisan in the middle of making blankets (I bought the little one on the left side when he was done, and calabash art and paintings (I bought the finished elephant calabash for my house)

I have to say, if you're going to hop around West Africa for traveling...do it as a peace corps volunteer because you are covered in every peace corps country should any problems arise. My friend got really sick in Ouaga and I had a very bad burn on my leg because my homologue knocked over our moto after it rained when we were in the mud on the Thursday before leaving. So we just hopped on over to the Burkina headquarters to let them know a group of Beninese volunteers were in Burkina for a few days and to see their doctor. It was far more convenient than visiting the doctor in cotonou--that would have been entirely out of the way. I thought the Burkina office was pretty sweet until I saw our own brand spanking new office newly constructed in the ritzy non-red light district of Cotonou. Pas Grave.

Pictures: My burn. It looks great now. brand new pink skin and no chance of infection. I'm thinking i won't even get a conversation starter of a scar.

What interested me about Burkina was that it seemed like there was practically nothing until you hit Ouagadougou. I mean, driving through Benin i pass through very obvious regional cities that are bigger and have more to offer than dogbo or smaller villages (Dogbo itself though, is considered Urban) Through the Burkina countryside though we only ever passed small groups of mud huts connected in circles by walls so that each unit consisted of about 5 huts. There would be several units together. But we never saw any big towns or anything. The countryside was so dry and there were several dried up river beds...I can't imagine how it must be during rainy season, but it hasn't rained in months.

Anyway, the trip home was uneventful...just very long. Since my mom has asked me for a picture of a bush taxi forever now, i finally snapped what I think is a good about average bush taxi below. Just imagine 10 or so people jammed in there. I don't think I'll ever complain about traveling or long car trips in the states EVER again...hell, i'll have a WHOLE seat to myself. What's to complain about?

Picture: Rut and Carie with the first municipal garbage can I have noticed during my time in West Africa. I have NO idea who comes and clears out the garbage periodically. Then you have the bush taxi. a la prochaine.

Pictures: the 'Lion Bar' Rasta bar hostel at Grand popo; the beach on Valentine's Day; Yovo b-day party with the French family and Dutch couple in Dogbo

So while I never really hated valentines day--I mean, who would complain about getting boxes of chocolate, even if they are from your dad and grandpa?-- I can't say anything too spectacular has ever made me just LOVEEEEE the holiday either, until I decided to be proactive about it and treat myself to an amazing Valentine's here in Benin.

SO Saturday I headed down to Grand Popo, our beautiful beach conveniently located only about an hour and a half away from Dogbo, with some friends, and it was an amazing time. We stayed overnight in this little Rasta themed hostel type place called Lion Bar, where the rooms were clean, simple, and only the equivalant of five bucks per person, US$. I was in the 'Peter Tosh' room. Unfortunately my camera battery is dead so I'll have to come back to upload pictures. There's one communal shower and toilet there for all the rooms and its funny to think that that would have probably horrified me this time last year, while now i was just excited that there was actual running water. THe Lion Bar is right on the beach, just walk down a bit to sit under their little palm paillot things for shade. It was an absolutely magnificent day and definitely the first time I'd been to a beach in February in my life. SOme other volunteers came down for the day and some stayed over and so we had a really great time just hanging out. A group of fun German tourists were staying there on their way to Ghana the next day and actually, we ran into an RPCV who served in Cameroon about 10 years ago and hung out with us so that was pretty fun. Plus she treated us to breakfast the next day, which was equally amazing and much appreciated.

One volunteer was down with a family friend visiting from the U.S. too so we walked along the beach to the Auberge where they were staying to visit for a bit. Plus, the woman brought chocolates from the US, which the other PCV was nice enough to offer us so i did get a piece of v-day russell stover after all, even in benin. It was so much fun seeing a tourist here and it made me realize just how badly I want someone to come visit me, and not just to get spoiled. I really want to see Benin again through the eyes of someone who's never been here before and who doesn't just take women walking around with baskets on their heads and babies strapped to their backs with a pagne as normal. THis lady, bless her, wanted to take a picture of every goat she saw. While I admittedly have a strange affinity for the the goats here and think that they are rather adorable, if I took a pic of every one that I saw, my camera would be dead in 5 minutes.

Lion Bar was hopping at night with Reggae music and extremely cheap cocktails served in coconuts. Power cutting out? no problem. Snag a bottle of smuggled nigerian gas and power up that generator for some more good times. Fortunately because of my larium induced insomnia the night before I was able to actually sleep through the music sans probleme.

WHile we are in the dry season still, we are hitting that strange interim btw the weather patterns and it rains very occasionally and very briefly. Saturday night, a BEAUTIFUL lightning storm rolled in over the ocean and it was amazing to see (I'll post pics next time). Plus the rain was so refreshing and it actually felt 'cool' for the evening. We slept without a fan and didn't even break a sweat.

Sunday the PCV i was sharing a room with left early but I hung around Gpopo for the day to enjoy the beach. I was walking down the road and saw this little artisan shack to the side and stopped over to see what they were working on. The workshop belongs to these two guys from Burkina Faso, actually, David and Frederick. THey did a lot of calabash carving--like a huge gourd type thing used in a million different artistic ways here. I actually ended up getting a hand carved calabash lamp (I bargained the price down to a PCV friendly fare pretty well, if i do say so myself. Though I'm worried i'm going to go home, walk into a retail store and try to start bargaining, declaring that something is obscenely overpriced and walk away with a huff waiting for the vendor to lower the price for me. I'm pretty sure I'll be sorely disappointed when that doesn't happen at home and people will instead just think that i am crazy.) These guys kept the calabash natural (as opposed to the more touristy place down the street that charged way more and painted the calabash with different pictures and use machines for the work) and I watched the two of them carving meticulously with a leatherman. I honestly almost felt bad for paying so little for the lamp since to do that all by hand must take forever. And while I was waiting for them to finish polishing it off the other who had me in conversation, asked me off-handedly my name. In retrospect I'm glad I told the truth because he carved it into a calabash without my noticing while we were talking and cadeaued me with it before i left. It was pretty awesome. Plus they said that Fespaco is a great time and so I am even more excited to go.

Fespaco is this French and African film festical in BUrkina Faso they have every 2 years and I got my vacation request approved to go, so I'm heading up there next week and spending a week of the festival with a group of volunteers. I'm so excited for that and to just see Northern Benin in general. Don't know if I'll post again before the trip but I'll take lots of pictures!

Kind of random: People often ask me if there is any way they can support my service here by donating or what have you. Unfortunately the answer for right now is no since any monetary donations from home have to be done through a PCPP-Peace COrps Partnership Program--where I submit a project proposal to headquarters in DC, get it approved, and have a site put up with my project so that I can begin fundraising for it. Since that is mostly second year volunteers, I don't have a PCPP going yet. However, the school that I did some work and started an on-campus organization for during my time at holy cross, The Beverly School of Kenya (www.beverlyschoolofkenya.com) , is in need of funding right now to continue with construction work. It is a boarding school that will be largely consistent of orphan children, and is located an hour or so outside of Nairobi. The school will be free for the children, provide them with homes and healthcare, and be largely self sustaining with a farm, etc. Especially after the post-election violence that rocked Kenya in January 2008, the need for such opportunities for Kenya's youth is evident, and I very much believe in the potential for this project. The school is aiming to open in July, but is struggling with donations and budget in light of the global financial crisis. Right now there are opportunities for buying windows for $140, doors for $100, sinks for $110 ea, toilets $110 ea (which I am slightly bitter about since even I don't have a toilet...haha...just kidding), a bag of cement $20 ea. and padlock $25ea. But actually, any amount is appreciated and if you are interested, checks can be made out to the Beverly School

Beverly school of Kenya

206 Boston Road

Sutton Ma. 01590

It is 501 c 3 non-profit organization so donations are tax deductable. If you're interested at all and you want more information about the school, to see pictures of construction and students, or to talk to its founder, Abdi Lidonde, who is currently working at Holy Cross for more details, etc. Please don' hesitate to email me and I can get you more info or a contact for Abdi.

I'll be back soon!!

Pictures: First we have a hippo...if you zoom in like 8 times you can actually see it but it missed when its mouth was open for pictures; next is us getting ready to go out to see the hippos; Italian night--feteing with Kristin's neighbors and fostering cross cultural exchange by making him a birthday cake...well...a birthday cornbread since the Beninese don't really seem to enjoy cakes and sweets; preparing the italian feast; my friend the black widow

Oh, what clever culinary punning. So all of the volunteers from my PSL group (Pre Service Learning/training, aka--all first year volunteers) in the Mono Couffo regions and a few from Atlantique/Littoral and Oueme/Plateau (also in the South) came up to Dogbo on Friday for an "Italian Night." Friday was our marché day so people started getting here around noon and hit up the marché for ingredients, most important being MEAT!! I love cooking sessions because it means we eat meat which is rare (not the meat, the amount of times you eat meat here) and I personally, to be entirely honest, don't have to do too much for it. Dennis, our resident chef, always takes care of the meat. Tender meat does not exist in benin so you either have to boil it for 3 hours (that gets hot in Benin), or pound it with a hammer to tenderize it (that also gets hot). In this case, Dennis brought up his little meat grinder and ground up all the beef to put in homemade lasagna. I was actually stuck chez moi for the morning because I was on fresh bread making duty, and there are only 2 burners on our stoves so it would have been too much to do at my post mate's house, which is where we were having our little soirée. So i made a loaf of fresh onion bread and another with fresh roasted whole garlic cloves...they were delicious and evvvvvvvveryone loved it. Meanwhile, Chez Kristen, everyone else was busy working on making homemade lasagna noodles and rolling out the dough with nalgene bottles, making tomato sauce, and bruschetta, and salad. Vache Qui Rit is all we have here in terms of cheese so we put some of that on the first one but decided to leave it off the other pans of lasagna because it wasn't looking too good. We made about 5 trays of lasagna (one was vegetarian. THey are all small because you have to stick it in a dutch oven to bake, which is just a large pot with tomato paste cans inside) and gave one to Kristin's neighbors since it was his birthday and we were fête-ing with them to celebrate. The buvette was fuuuully stocked with COLD drinks and all in all, we had an amazing time just cooking together and hanging out.

When I first got to post I NEVER bought meat in the marche because, frankly, seeing a dead cow hanging from a hook in the Beninese heat for an entire day, uncovered, with flies all over it and a pile of its tail, skin, and skull sitting right next to it really grossed me out. Plus i was pretty sure it violated about 1,000 FDA regulations for food consumption that I was programmed into revering since forever. But it's interesting how I've kind of gotten over it. I actually have bought meat twice recently just because I wanted protein. And i have to say...sitting on my cement floor hammering it for 40 minutes in a plastic bag was totally worth it when it was all said and done. There are a lot of things in the U.S. that just seem laughable to me now after living here for awhile. Meat for one, traffic and seatbelt laws for another. I mean...you should SEE the clown cars i get shoved into with other people. Shattered windshields, non existent side and rearview mirrors...have to give it a push to get a rolling start. ANd seatbelts?? what's that? Who knew eggs, and mayonnaise don't REALLY need to be refrigerated at all...that's just a neurotic habit we've picked up at home. I just finished a jar of mayo i bought in september and it was fine until the end...i don't have a fridge in my house. Eggs i keep for 2 weeks and they're always fine. Had I not known that Bonnemaman never refrigerated butter that probably would have really disusted me when i got here. NOt that I find butter in dogbo...haha. that's only in COtonou. You can find little sachets of margarine in the marché that keep forever unrefrigerated. It works fine for baking (though I do look forward to butter, real butter, when I visit home...on a perfectly toasted english muffin...along with all other dairy goodness like cheese and yogurt.)

So there is ONE maman in the marche that sells vegetables. Well, everyone sells tomatoes...They are ubiquitous, along with onions, and piment (chili peppers). But they aren't like tomatoes from home: they are little with a different taste and texture so when i find 'real tomatoes' in Cotonou I always buy a few. But anyway, this maman sells other vegetables and she used to cadeau Kristin and me with veggies after we bought a lot from her. BUt whether by logic of supply and demand or by sheer getting used to the yovos, Maman DOra became really stubborn when it came to discutering the prices. We kept getting less and less for the same or more money and it was getting really annoying. THen...we found her supplier. A man from Lokossa who brings DOra her veggies every week to sell, and agreed that he would deliver our veggies to the door if we ordered a minimum of 2000CFA. So its worked out great...we split 1000 and 1000 (thats about US$2 each) and it buys us a TON more than with Dora. It's been great! However, I'm pretty sure Dora has found out because I went to her in the marché yesterday to get some veggies since we forgot to call the other guy and she was sickeningly sweet and suddenly much more agreeable with discutering, and she gave me 2 extra carrots when I was done buying. On va voir. Now that we're really getting into the dry season vegetables are getting huge and are so much more plentiful again. It is amazing. Carrots, peppers, avocadoes, cucumber, green beans!! there's even eggplant again!! Squash and radish just finished up but apparently will be back in a few months. I'm really excited because for about 2 months all you could get were some really expensive and puny carrots and wilted lettuce. So it is really nice to be able to cook with good fresh veggies again. ANd it was great to have the last of the squash for our vegetarians on friday for the veggie lasagna. The man from Lokossa has a much bigger variety than you can find in our marché, so hopefully it will continue to work out so well.

Well Anyway, so you can't travel at night in Benin because it isn't too safe and is technically not allowed or 'strongly discouraged' by Peace Corps, so all the volunteers stayed over at our houses on Friday. Saturday we met up for fresh pineapple and yummy fresh baked coffee cake and then most people were on their way. A bunch of us headed down to Lokossa though, with an ONG from Dogbo, AVPN, to see the 2 hippos that live in the lake right outside of the town. You get into a little pirogue (canoe-type boat), which, considering how dangerous hippos are, seems less than ideal in terms of safety and pushed (I'd say row but you use a long palm branch to push off the bottom of the lake...like gondalas in Venice) out into the middle of the lake. IT was beautiful out and cool on the water. When we first got into the boat we were wondering why there were so many plates inside, and shortly after leaving, realized it was to bail out water which continued to rise through our ride out. So we got to see the hippos from afar--don't want to anger them-- and they did the whole opening their mouth and swimming around thing. It was fun, and worth it to get to see it so nearby to where i live. I spent the night at another volunteers house since it was dark when we were done and it was amazing to actually watch some TV since she brought her computer and has tons of DVDs with her. We went out to a little buvette for igname pilée with sauce d'arachide...a beninese specialty actually more famous in the north. You pound ignames (like potatoes) until they are a fluffy chewy texture, and serve it with peanut sauce and wagasi...i don't know how to describe wagasi. It is cheese but not like cheese from home. It is hard, doesn't melt, has a very distinct taste, and you have to boil it for at least 20 minutes to kill off the bacteria and tuberculosis inside it.

What else has been going one??? it feels like forever since I posted last. OH! Well...so I was really nervous to have people stay over and sleep on my floor because as if scorpions weren't enough, I found a black widow spider in my house last week. It was only one, dieu merci, and i killed it toute suite, after a 20 second shot of bugspray didn't get the job done. BUt since I only have one bug net I was nervous about people on the floor. THankfully nothing happened and I was told Scout was making the rounds and did eat something by one of the girls' mats (probably just a cockroach) in the middle of the night. Speaking of Scout making the rounds...she's been catching a lot of lizards lately, and I actually feel bad. I personally think that lizards are kind of cute and she tortures them for a good 10 minutes at least before finally eating the poor things. It's kind of gross to watch.

I also started up work with another women's group nearby in Amahoue. THey are amazing, and they are THRILLED that i remembered all of their names. Actually, i saw one of the women from the group at Kpodaha in the marché on Friday and she was SOOOOO excited when she saw me and that i knew her name! It made me feel really great to run into her there. We went back and did Moringa with them last week and they LOVED these little food flashcard things i made up for them. they are great because you can do so many activities with the women with them. We had them divide all the cards up into the three african food groups (protectors, aka vitamins and minerals; growth, aka proteins; and 'la force' aka carbs and fats) and then had them construct complete meals with the foods they would use from the cards. It went really well.

As for my homologue. I sent him that txt telling him to call me when he wanted to work and yesterday made it officially 2 weeks with no word from him. It's fine because I've been doing my own thing with the PEace Corps facilitator from Lokossa, planning lifeskills classes for the orphanage in DOgbo, etc. BUt i felt bad bailing on my ONG since they pay for my housing so I went to go talk to my supervisor today about it. I told him everything, and that I no longer want to work with Innocent because he treats me like a child and does not respect me, etc. He was completely upset that it had been like that and is going to talk to him and the director. He was originally supposed to be my homologue and is very supportive of the PEace COrps, and he felt terrible when he found out that Innocent ahd been calling me yovo out in village, and wouldn't let me do anything. So we'll see what happens now. I hope it pans out ok because I really like the other people in my ONG. I just detest my homologue and his arrogant, dismissive attitude, and unless he does a 180 turn around, I don't think we can work together, since i'm pretty sure the dislike is entirely mutual.

But those are all of the highlights for now, especially since my credit is about to run out, and I have to add more time for next time. I tried to post pictures but they wouldn't go up so I'll try again next time!!

So January 10th was National Voodoo Day in Benin...a final culmination in the triumverate of Beninese fetes (Christmas, New Years, Voodoo Day). I am glad that Voodoo Day is over and done simply because for the week leading up to it, Dogbo was going crazy. We have a pretty large Vodoun population here, and every evening for the week before they were gathering for ceremonies of considerable volume conveniently located right near chez moi. Sleeping was nearly impossible, and it reminded me a little of all through the night fete-ing that goes on for Beninese funerals. But Voodoo Day itself was actually pretty cool to see and I am glad I got to fete. I was bouncing around and not too sure of what exactly I wanted to do (local thing, or go to Ouidah for the big national fetes there). Ouidah got too complicated in the end to throw together at the last minute because we would probably not have been able to get back to post the same night and didn't have a place to crash close by. SO instead I went to Lokossa--conveniently only a half hour away--for the regional fete there with 2 other volunteers and the Beninese friends of one of the volunteers. The fete was huge and I have to say...events like that are pretty much the only time it is fun to be white in Benin. We were the only white people in attendence so everyone was really excited to have us there (most tourists go to Ouidah) and our Carte Blanche got us pulled up to sit next to the King and Mayor of Lokossa, and the President of all the Vodoun for the Mono-Couffo regions in Benin to see the unveiling of the zembetto. Picture: One of the zembettos

The zembetto is this dancing hay-stack like object. There are some sects of Vodoun that don't have it at all but generally it represents the specific vodoun deity that that sect worships. Ok--so there are definitely people walking around under this little zembetto costume, I am sure...but the official word is "there is no one under the haystack...it is moving all on its own because it is the deity moving it." Goodness, where's your faith? In some sects of vodoun the zembetto is dangerous for women, and not so much for others. THere is so much variety in Voodoo, and it also depends how out in village you are. If you are really out in the bush, a lot of the time women just have to stay in the house, lock the doors, and sometimes shut the lights so that the zembetto does not know you are there or it is baaaaaad news. It's not really a problem by me in Dogbo at all, but my friend has to stay indoors at her post whenever the zembetto is out. SO anyways, we're all pretty convinced that there are people under this haystack so I was pretty excited to hear that they were going to be lifting up the zembettos so we could see at Lokossa. We were standing in the back of the crowd trying to get a look--3 zembettos were lined up to be lifted--and that is when some people noticed that these strange yovos wearing Beninese tissue (clothing) couldn't see what was happening, and they immediately grabbed us and brought us up front to sit with the king, etc.

Pictures: PCVs with the King, Mayor, and President for the VOdoun; Voodoo Day Security--Because you know that when the supernaturaly forces go all willy-nilly, guns are the way to go.

I don't know HOW they did it...Never ask a magician to reveal his tricks, right? but when they lifted up the zembettos...the first one had 2 guinea pig like things that crawled out and the second one, had this massive pink blob underneath, and the third had this thumping phallus (I don't get it...but I'm sure it had to have some kind of significance...talking about Voodoo can be a delicate subject. Taking pics is also interesting--sometimes okay and sometimes not, so we gave our camera to the beninese some times to take pictures for us). No people. I don't entirely buy it (i hope that doesn't bring bad gris gris upon me). I got some great videos of the zembettos but haven't been able to post them for some reason...maybe that's just Beninese Internet cafés for you. Picture: Unveiling of the pink blob zembetto

So after the unveiling--or the lifting of the skirts, if you will--of the zembettos, every group of Vodoun came before the King and gave a little performance of either dancing, singing, la deux ensemble, or zembetto antics etc. There had to have been about 10 different sects that came out, each with their own sign, traditional outfits, and dances, etc. It was completely awesome to see. The place publique of of Lokossa was filled to bursting with people.

Pictures: 2 of the performances for Voodoo Day. You might notice the woman front and center in the second picture is wrapped in an old "Rugrats" bedsheet...yup...that is Tommy, there. I thought it was pretty awesome.

Afterward, the grand public fete ended and everyone went home for their own fetes, etc. Thomas, one of the friends of the Volunteers with us from Lokossa, brought us to the house of a friend so we could fete with them for awhile. By the time we slowly sauntered over like the bunch of yovos who can't take equatorial Beninese midday sun that we were, the hoopla was already well underway, with dancing, music, etc. We were brought into the house of the Vodoun man there, and offered Sodabe (local alcohol that tastes remarkably like rubbing alcohol and im sure can not be safe for consumption) and beans with oil. I went out into the bush to use the bathroom (no latrines there) and ran into my first snake since coming to Benin, which freaked me out. But in general the time there was really interesting, and I was grateful to get a small scale view of a local celebration for Voodoo day. THis group was VERY excited to have us take pictures and the one man wanted us to take them with him in it all the time...it was kind of cute. We got in on some dancing with them, had oil and baby-powder thrown on us (i have no diea why)...it was all very bien integré.

Pictures: Celebrating in village. FIrst is a woman being possessed by a vodoun and the others are dancing and music. YOu can see Mami Watta paited on the wall in the background. It is a Voodoo myth (looks like a mermaid). I went out yesterday with the Peace Corps facilitator who lives nearby to meet up with a new women's group in Amahoue, nearby. The meeting went great and there were only 10 women so I'll most likely remember all of their names, and we set up a time next thursday to go back and do some moringa work. Unfortunately I am currently at the cyber because my homologue stood me up on the one day he reserved to work with me this week. I went to the NGO at the time we agreed to meet and he wasn't there and I tried calling him but he never picked up. SO i sat--and since i never leave my house in Benin without a book--it was fine and I just read but after an hour I was annoyed so I sent him a txt (txting is main communication tool here since phone calls are so expensive) telling him that I had waited for him for over an hour and he can call me when he really wants to work. I'm just sick of his antics and have firmly decided that I will have none of it anymore. So I guess we'll see what happens. But anyway, yesterday, like i said, was really great. After meeting up with the women's group I came back to Dogbo même with the facilitator and worked on French for 2 hours. It wasn't so much an outright tutoring session as it was just a conversation from which he would analyze my many weaknesses in speaking (ie--the past conditional and the ever damning subjunctive...ugh). So he asked me my major and when it came out I had done poli sci we got into a really great discussion about U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, Israel/PAlestine, Hamas, Hezbollah, our previous support of the muhajideen during the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, etc. It felt great to talk to someone about those things in general (and learn how to say bomb, suicide bomber, world power, etc. in French). It was especially nice to have this conversation with a Beninese since prior to that, the only political savvy I could glean from the Beninese population around election time was that Barak Obama was black, young, and democrat (all admirable qualities) and that John McCain was white, old, and republican (all apparently damning qualities, which always interested me since the culture here has great respect for elders and since President BUsh, who is also Republican, was the only president in U.S. history to ever take the time to come and visit Benin, as well as his pumping considerably large sums of money into Africa compared to any other president in recent memory for AIDS/HIV relief through PEPFAR--albeit with a perhaps unrealistic over-emphasis on abstince education instead of condoms, etc-- and the high number of mosquito nets provided to Benin through the President's MAlaria Initiative). But anyway, so it was really amazing to just talk about something meaningful and beyond the basic line-up of formal greetings in Benin with a Beninese person. This man, who I'm not going to name for his own privacy, was actually a Beninese political activist during Benin's communist era . In 1986 he was imprisoned for his activities and remained in prison for 2 years--pretty good, considering that all of his friends were in for about 5 or longer. He had already been working with Peace Corps at the time and 2 volunteers, a couple in Klikamé (nearby village) were so disgusted with his imprisonment that they ETed (early terminated--ended their service) and petitioned Amnesty International when they were back home on his behalf. Benin kept popping him around to different prisons--ie, if they said he was in Cotonou in prison they would move him to Parakou so when Amnesty came to look for him there there was no one by that name...but eventually it worked and he got out. So he is really interested in politics too and liked learning about some of the things he only had vague ideas about as much as I liked hearing his own story. My high following the conversation was deflated minorly by the assigning of exercises for the subjunctive, but all in all, it was a great afternoon. Afterwards I headed out to the hardware boutique where everyone kind of loves me because I spend a lot of money there but also thinks i'm kind of crazy because I'm this weird yovo woman buying all this stuff to do work on a house when any self respecting person would hire a professional. SO yesterday I was out for metal screening since scout, my cat with apparent chimpanzee lineage, has ripped to shreds my non-metal screening when she climbs up to the top of my back door every day (she can also climb my cement wall out back about half way). TO be entirely honest, it might just be worth it for me to pay someone to come and do the things that I end up doing myself around my house because it takes me awhile to get it done. Last night putting up the screen took me well over an hour on account of me having to stop and put bandaids on my fingers every few minutes as I cut them up, one after another, on the rough edges. Plus my neighbors always run over to look in my front door whenever I whip out the hammer and start making a lot of noise in the house. Between that, my one-sided conversations with Scout and BBCnewscasters, I'd really love to know what they think about me. Of course I hear them next door singing the yovo song quietly to themselves sometimes so we've all got our issues. BUt I think, at the end of the day, I like doing those kinds of things myself because when it is done, it is a pretty good feeling of accomplishment to know that i did that work myself and I feel like i'm being given the opportunity to learn a lot about myself. I never thought I would use a leatherman as much as I have in the past 6 months in my entire life.

Picture: Scout playing with her mouse in her diva coller. Speaking of Scout, she is looking pretty jazzy in the little diva collar A. Loretta and U. Mike have sent over her way. It has been quite the point of cross cultural exchange with Basil and Filomene when they come over. While they both think it is pretty amazing with all of its fake little diamonds, they don't really get it, since even dogs here don't wear the most basic of collars and cats are more often dinner than pets (Basil was also pretty enamored by my mechanical pencil that Cathy sent me and I can't wait to go home and load up on some stuff that he would just love for when I get back as a souvenir/thank you for watching Scout). But I had the vet come over the other day to give her her rabies shot and i felt sooooo terrible. The vet here comes to the house since he doesn't really have an office (It's not like you're going to take your cow to the Dr. though you can actually strap a goat onto the back of a moto--they scream like children being hit...it is terrible to hear). We chatted for a few and I told him I had worked in a vets office for a few years and he was really excited because I could help hold the cat. I had told him that back home, we generally prefer working with dogs because they are usually a lot less finicky with shots and medication and I was surprised to learn that it was the exact opposite here. Beninese people most of the time strongly dislike dogs and do NOT trust them. They aren't bred for temperment and they get hit a lot, or kicked, or rocks thrown at them so they generally aren't too nice (i've had a few follow me around out in village and nip my heel). My post mate's neighbor HATES her puppy (who is actually really nice since we have a different approach to raising them) and thinks even if he seems nice that sorcerers can use the dog to attack her by sending evil spirits into it soooo....yeah. But I was surprised to learn that even the vet felt such a distrust for dogs, and Scout was still pretty squirmy. Turns out they poke the needle in the side by the ribcage here instead of by the extra skin you can bunch up at the neck or haunches, which seemed unsavvy to me, and i will DEFINITELY be bringing back a small syringe for her for next year, because I felt so terrible. What he used HAD to have been for farm animals the tip was so big and she was howling. It took forever, and a lot of forceful jabbing for that needle to pierce her skin. ugh...not fun to hold her, anyways, but at least it is done for this year. So, yeah..that is all the news that's fit to print for now. I'll be back soon. Hope you enjoyed the pictures!!

Resolution 1: Actually remember to put on sunscreen when leaving the house on a regular basis

Resolution 2: Do not catch amoebas or any other gastrointestinal distress-inducing parasites (*note—this may be too late. I guess we’ll see when my MIF kit comes back, but if I ingested them in 2008 I am not counting their unpleasant manifestation against this year)

Resolution 3: Be more patient in waiting for mango season to come

Resolution 4: Limit fanmilk consumption to 2 per week (if possible)

But seriously, I’ve been taking the start of the new year to try to redefine my role with my ONG (NGO in French). So for the first 3 months at post, we weren’t really supposed to be ‘working’ per se. We were supposed to be focusing on community integration which would theoretically facilitate our work here in the long term. No use jumping in blind in our new communities when we didn’t have the trust and respect of community members (not that I am entirely convinced that 3 months of twiddling around here accomplishes that either, or that at the end of the two years I will have even achieved that seeing as how I am still called yovo by a majority of the community that does not live on my street. I’m pretty sure that even if I lived here for years and years, I would always be seen as an outsider). So instead of turning in our quarterly report for the first 3 months, Peace Corps had us do an ‘etude de milieu’—community study—in which we went around our villages and towns and found out all different information on the social, religious, and political (local and traditional leaders, etc.) norms, as well as info on the schools in our communities, water and electricity situations, medical facilities, etc.

I wouldn’t exactly say that I did no work since coming to Dogbo, since I tend to be a chronic overachiever and have severe problems with not working (most volunteers are the same and also have started going out and doing activities, though not big projects within their neighbourhoods as well). But my work in the first 3 months was not really so much with my host country partner organization. I’m fortunate enough that one of the Peace Corps facilitators who worked in training health volunteers during summer training lives a half an hour away from me in Lokossa and I have been able to go out and do a lot of activities with him. It has been great because he actually understands volunteers and what our role in our communities is supposed to be (NOT a source of money, but rather a technical asset), and how hard it is operating under the conditions we are in. It is with him that I have gone out and done my sensibilizations on moringa and making soy cheese in Kpodaha and talked to the girls at the school in Hoedogli, or visiting the orphanage in Lokossa, etc. He translates for me between French and Aja with the women who can’t speak French and actually has convinced them to call me ‘Caterine’ (the “th” sound apparently does not exist here) instead of yovo. All in all, going out to villages with him is largely what kept me sane in my first 3 months. I think we might even start up French tutoring together, because while I can function perfectly fine in French here now, I definitely am not fluent and would like to take advantage of Peace Corps willingness to pay for a tutor for your first year of service.

But in the meantime, the time I spent with my ONG the first three months I found utterly stressful and kind of morale-killing. All volunteers in Benin (I think what has surprised me most about Peace Corps is how radically different it is run from country to country) are partnered with a ‘homologue’ or ‘work partner’ who is a host country national of your community (and normally, in the case of health volunteers, who works with your ONG or health center). Their role is supposed to be collaborative and supportive of your work in your community. Since they are already supposed to have contacts within the community they are supposed to be able to help you get going with your work, arrange meetings and activities, help with translation when necessary, etc. My homologue, for the first three months anyway (hopefully it will change now), has pretty much only made me want to tear my hair out (which is bad, since weekly Larium medication for malaria in addition to its penchant for inducing psychotic effects and dreams actually makes my hair fall out in considerable quantity already).

I found that he usually just toted me around with him to villages to see what he was already doing kind of as his token yovo. I don’t think he respects me fully as a volunteer or as a woman (just a vibe I get from little things he says like I should do this or that with the secretary for the ONG since she is a woman too). He never let me talk when we went out to village because I don’t really speak Aja beyond the greetings. Also, he calls me yovo to people all of the time even though I have told him countless times to refer to me as madame (mademoiselle, which he has also been known to refer to me as in a room full of men, is just an invitation to unwanted male attention and marriage proposals…Hence, the wedding band I wear here) and scold him publicly when he does call me yovo now. And as much as I thought ‘maybe it is just me’ for awhile, ALL of the other volunteers thought he was equally obnoxious and arrogant at our December IST in Porto Novo, and the Dutch woman in Dogbo who works with my ONG and also dislikes my homologue had me over for dinner one night and started off conversation with ‘How do you stand the way he treats you like a child?’. My job, pretty much, when I was with him was to tape up the posters he brought on the walls. He also just seems to think that he knows EVERYTHING under the sun and has NOTHING to learn from ANYbody, in which case I couldn’t help but wonder, what is the point of our partnering together if we are supposed to be learning from each other. But then again, I think that goes back to the me being much younger and female issue.

I’m truly ashamed to admit that sometimes when he really frustrated me in the first three months, I just wanted to shout at him “I don’t care if I am younger than you, or if I am a woman! I am so much smarter than you!!! You can shut me down all you want, but at the end of 2 years I am going home and will achieve something more than you can even begin to imagine, and you will still be here forever, doing this exact same damn thing!!” I never did. When it got that bad I would walk away from the moment and try to file the situation under the cultural adjustment folder. And please, don’t feel the need to point out how terrible that sounds because I am perfectly well aware of just how terrible it is. I actually went home that one night crying because I was so angry and frustrated, and I couldn’t help but wonder if I really thought that, then why am I here at all? What the hell am I doing? I had a similar problem the day that I did the HIV AIDS talks at the school here. The students were SO unbelievably disrespectful to me and their peers that I wanted to just leave. Fine, I thought; Get AIDS—If you don’t want to listen, I certainly can’t make you, and I am at my wits end. Please, again, don’t say anything. I know it sounds like I am a terrible person but I truly believe it is impossible to understand if you have not been in the situation to feel how overwhelmingly discouraged you can get. I never knew it was possible for me to feel so frustrated and useless at any given moment.

I actually stopped the talk to tell the students that we (I had worked with a group of kids from the school to do the presentations) came there for them and that this was all for them; that if they didn’t care about their own health we would leave. I told them that AIDS in Benin is the worst in the Mono –Couffo regions, and there is no cure—if they get it, they will die…it’s really just a matter of time. Contrary to popular belief, sleeping with a virgin won’t cure it. Maybe it wasn’t the wisest approach but I didn’t know what else to do. Brutal truth, I thought in a last ditch effort, might hit the point home. It didn’t. Finally the group of students I was working with and I did actually walk out of one of the classrooms and the saving grace for the day was the one boy who ran up to me afterwards asking if I could give him some information to read on HIV since he couldn’t hear anything in the classroom and he wanted to know more. Good, I thought. We got to one. And it might only be one, but on any given day in Benin, it is that one person that keeps me here because even one is worth it. That’s pretty hard to see and to realize and it takes my blood boiling over and me calming myself down considerably enough to objectively understand the situation from the cultural context in order to try to stay sane here. And I remember in those moments that that is why I am here. Because at the end of the day I do believe that we can work from the ground up to change, even though I am prepared to admit that I will likely never see the change that I want to see within my lifetime. That doesn’t mean I can’t do my part to help.

But anyway, back to my homologue. So I didn’t cross the Atlantic and settle down in Benin to become a little yovo assistant. I think part of the problem is that my ONG already works with some Dutch people, and the role of a PCV is so radically different from any other western development work. I get the vibe that even though they requested a volunteer, my ONG doesn’t really know what to do with me. The role of the yovos working with the ONG now is to find financing for their projects and then help in the management of projects. So they don’t ever really go out and DO stuff in the field with the animateurs of the ONG, like I am supposed to. And I am not here at all to locate funding for the ONG. I guess something I am struggling with myself is my point in being here. Benin is different from a lot of other peace corps countries (but certainly not all) in that there is so much local language. We are taught French because that is the national language and because it is impossible to learn over 50 local languages, but in the smaller villages where this is the first generation of kids going to school and learning French, and especially up north where there is very little French spoken, PCVs have to operate through the homologue as translator system, and my homologue does not seem interested in bothering with this at all. I’m pretty sure he sees what I sometimes can’t help but think—that I have no credibility or legitimacy for lack of a better word, going out to villages and working in French when people don’t understand. Another side note. Part of what is also difficult is that I am a Rural community health volunteer but am not posted in an itty bitty rural village, so it is a challenge to mold my type of work to my community and a lot of my work with my ONG is out in the smaller villages in the grander commune of Dogbo where I am not a direct community member. Yet as much as I see this as a barrier when I am with him that can’t be all true because when I work with the Peace Corps facilitator, it really isn’t a problem at all. I think we just have a misunderstanding of my function here and the support a homologue is supposed to give a volunteer.

That is why today, I arranged a meeting with him to sit down and talk about how we are going to proceed now for 2009. I thought being assertive might be a good approach to commanding some respect from him so I told him I didn’t leave all of my family and friends in the US to come here and do nothing when I go out to villages with him; that from now on he would not be toting me around with him to just sit there stupidly. We would schedule different activities and plan them together, and then execute them together. I am not coming to my ONG every day anymore (no volunteer is supposed to do that but he seemed to think I should be there 9-5 M-F) because I have other work partners (women’s groups, student groups, the other Peace Corps employee etc) that I have work with too so it is necessary to plan in advance what he wants to work on. He has his work, I have mine, and then we have some things we can do together. It would be foolish and naïve of me to think that I have nothing to learn from him, just as it is equally foolish for him to think he has nothing to learn from me since apparently he didn’t even know women should technically keep breast-feeding after 6 months or how to conduct a baby-weighing. This is his country, his community, and he is bien integré here already. He understands the cultural norms and nuances that can trip me up. That is why PCVs and homologues work together…ideally. Most situations, I have heard however, are less than ideal. Before totally brushing off my ONG and doing my own thing here in terms of work here though, I am determined to take action and do what I can to redefine my role here and try my hardest to make it work. He seemed receptive in our conversation today (we arranged a meeting this Monday with the head of the Dogbo health center to see if we can use a scale to go out and do baby weighings and we are going to meet up next week to make a schedule for what villages we are going to go out and see, etc, even though he still doesn’t want to let me do sensibilizations in places where there is no French because he doesn’t want to translate), but I don’t know if he was just placating me. So I will give it a chance to see how work seems to develop over the next few weeks and if it does not seem to improve at all, I will distance myself from my ONG and continue searching out more partners for work independently. In other PC countries, the role of the homologue is not emphasized NEARLY as much as it is in PC Benin rhetoric (maybe it is because in PC Benin, the host country agency pays for volunteer housing, but I don’t really know why), so I don’t think that is the end of the world.

Anyway, that has been a struggle for me here and hopefully it will change now with 2009! On va voir, as they say in French. Wish me luck. On a random note, yesterday in cotonou, it turned out that repose there actually goes until 4:00 which in my mind is truly obnoxious…we’re talking like a 5-6 hour work day, people—how much nappage do you need? Especially when it is in air conditioning. At least out in village, I understand not wanting to be out in the hottest part of the day, but come on. Something that made me really really happy was finding a bottle of balsamic vinegar AND the olive oil that my mom uses at home--Philip Berrio. Sounds stupid, maybe, but definitely is nice to have some things like that that are familiar, even if it was wicked expensive. They say you shouldn’t go grocery shopping when you are hungry. Well PCVs probably shouldn’t be let into the supermarchés in Cotonou with more than 10.000CFA, because it is just dangerous to see so many tasty and familiar snacks that one cannot really afford (and does not REALLLLY need).

I ran into these two PCVs from Gambia at etoile rouge (throwback to Benin’s days of communism) in cotonou when I was getting a taxi home and they were on vacation on their way to Grand Popo, asking me for some info. It’s a small PCV West African World. They are heading to the voodoo fete in Ouidah on Saturday, so I might go meet up with them. Part of me doesn’t want to spend the money to leave post again and then part of me can’t help but think I am only in Benin for 2 voodoo days in my entire life (probably), I should just go and see what it is about, so I guess I shall see. Alright, this is ridiculously long now, so I shall leave for now but will post again soon!

Happy New Year everyone and Meilleurs voeux pour la nouvelle anee (figures I am on an American keyboard and can't find the accents). Also, if i putz up typing it is because of the American keyboard too so my apologies in advance.

I am in Cotonou today for a little break from post and to do some business at Headquarters and the med unit. Nothing too exciting has been going on because the weeks of 'the fete' no one worked and everyone partied it up all the time. Hopefully the ball will get rolling again because I tend to go stir crazy. I have a meeting with my homologue tomorrow to start planning out some work so I am looking forward to that.

I had just gotten back to post for New Years and did not feel particularly compelled to hop back in a brush taxi and travel so it was a pretty boring affair, and then the next day I ended up getting sick so it was probably better that I was at home anyway. So I pretty much spent the weekend in bed and then it was starting to hit me how much I was in Yovo withdrawal after my month of constant contact in December, coupled with my missing home for the holidays, so I decided to come to Cotonou to do some stuff that had to be done anyway (ie-clear out my locker since the headquarters office is moving from the Cotonou red light district to the jazzy too-expensive-for-volunteers expat district in a few days) and spend the night in Porto Novo with a friend there. Hanging out was great but I'm pretty sure that it might make it worse if I do it again soon so I am forcing myself to stay at post for the next few weeks and just get used to being alone again. I did get to see my host family for a few before heading out this morning which was great, especially Marianne and Matthieu who had just gotten back from school for lunch and freaked out when they saw me.

So now I am just waiting for repose (the hours between 12 and 3 when life in benin--or at least all of the supermarches in cotonou shuts down) to end so that I can pick up some stuff that I can't get back at post, and then head off to Dogbo so I can hopefully make it back before dark. I won't be back down here I don't think until February.

Saturday is National Voodoo Day, and I am pretty curious to see how that manifests itself. Part of me wants to head down to Ouidah for the day since that is like the Vodun capital of Benin, but my area has a lot of voodoo as well adn I've heard it is sometimes better to stick to the smaller villages because Ouidah can get to touristy. I guess I have a very few days to plan...we'll see. Either way I'll be back soon for a longer update. Hope all is well stateside.

So I can't believe I've already been in Dogbo for 2 weeks...and I can't believe it's only been 2 weeks at the same time. Time is funny like that here. My house still is really rudimentary because I haven't really had the money to paint or anything but Peace COrps finally paid us so tomorrow I am taking the taxi to Lakossa to meet up with 2 volunteers there and go to the bank. Finally I will be able to get a fan which I think will significantly boost my quality of life here...or at least just my overall happiness.

On a completely random note entirely unrelated to anything 'My Heart Will Go On' is playing right now in this Cyber on a loop and I think it is funny because the last time I experienced that was on my last night in Shanghai at the all vegetarian tofu restaurant I was in and I had the exact same reaction then as now, which is the first time it plays I think 'Oh nice, I haven't heard this in a long time' and by the second or twentieth I want to break the speakers. I do NOT understand the fascination of Celine Dion here but I guess now and then it is nice to hear familiar music.

So things are going pretty well here. I am starting to find my niche and still finding new stuff evey day which I am sure will be the case for the next 2 years, actually. I have started carrying a notebook around with me so I can write down peoples names and Adja words as I come across them and it is really great because kids especially respond really well when you take the time to learn their names because no one really does. So i stop and talk with them now and they have started to call me Catherine as I walk by instead of Yovo, which is really nice...and sometimes they cadeau me with oranges (a cadeau is the french for present and is kind of used as a verb here). Some days it is a struggle to get myself to venture out of my house. I can hide away for the morning and pretend I'm not an ocean away from my friends and family in Benin where hardly anyone speaks English (though I did find a Nigerian clock vendor in the marché who spêaks English and it was SO weird to talk to someone from here not in French) but it is nice when I finally get out for the day and talk to people. It is just sometimes overwhelming because you can never just walk down the street...you have to stop and saluer (greet) everyone otherwise you are seen as rude and it just takes forever and we come from this culture of 'get to where you need to be and do what you need to do ASAP' so sometimes I have to stop and calm myself and tell myself that stopping to talk to this person is not going to totally throw off my day. It is afterall part of what I was looking for in doing this--that person to person connection. I do however mostly brush off men entirely because I have ZERO tolerance for the forceful in your face 'madame ou madamoiselle?' and telling me you love me or asking for my phone number after talking for 2 seconds. And often when you tell them off they pull out the 'What...are you racist?' card and all I can really think is...'yeah because the number one destination for racist yovos is Africa'...that makes sense.

So in addition to getting harassed like that yesterday afternoon in particular, I also had a machete swung at my by a village fou. There are three Fous (crazies) in Dogbo and I have so far come across 2 of them. One crawls around on his hands and legs but belly up all day and the other is just a little old man who harasses me at least a few times a week, yesterday being the worst with the machete. To make up for it I guess in some cosmic sense, I got cadeaued with limes when I went out to find them for mexican night. 2 other volunteers came up to Dogbo for our marché day and stayed for dinner so we bought some miscellaneous meat (though judging from the carcass I am pretty sure it was a cow), and had like a mexican meat with pico de gallo (cabbage with tomatoes and limes, piment, etc) and our own refried bean (sorta) invention. It was delicious and so nice to eat actual meat since my protein intake here is usually eggs or beans. It is just hard to go out and get and cook chicken and meat for one person because marche day is only every 5 days and there really isn't storage. I think my post mate and I might meet up a few times a month to split chicken or something. We didn't make tortillas because we didn't have flour and we did't find avocados in the marché yesterday so no guacamole either but it was still just an amazing night. It's hard to describe stuff like that because the littlest things here start to make you so happy that wouldn't even phase you at home so I feel like some of the things I describe here are sounding really boring but they are like the highlight of my life here for the week. LIke finding avocados in the marché last week had me flying on cloud nine for days but at home it's just whatever...go to the 24 hour grocery store and buy some avocados if you want, big whoop. ANd I was unpacking some care package food that also probably wouldn't even phase me at home like tuna and chicken and it is like gold here. I actually stared at it for quite a bit and feel like I am hording it because one day I will break down and need to eat Western food. I'm trying to get over it and actually opened one of them the other day...Delish. This morning I actually made crepes just pour moi and they were AMAZING and reminded me of being home because my little house smelled like when my dad makes them. ANd i feel I am actually cooking now because my menusier finished my amazing kitchen table and shelves so I actually have room to move around and cook and put my stuff. The computers here are so old that there are no USB ports to even attempt uploading pics so I have to figure something out. Well I am actually out of time and i have no more money to buy credit here until I go to the bank so I will write more some time this week...when it is open here since it closes for reposé and les choses comme ca. à la prochaine!

So there IS internet in Dogbo...absolutely delightful. This has entirely made my day. I have to budget my time because It is pretty expensive here compared to other cybers, but it is worth it for at least once a week I guess.

So I got to Dogbo last monday. Our taxi came 2 hours late and it broke down and caught fire on the way but we did make it eventually. Unfortunately, we got in at about 5 and I had to find a menusier to change the locks on my door, get my stuff in the house, take care of the cat, etc. So I missed the marché and couldn't get any food--good thing maman had sent me out here with chicken since she didn't want me to have to cook my first night. First night was definitely stressful. The electricity didn't work so I had to go digging for my headlamp and I didn't have a key to the latrine since my proprietor wasn't home--don't ask what i did to get by. Also, the NGO of the volunteer who lived here before me came and took ALL the furniture, books, etc that she left behind even though they had no right too so I had nothing and slept with the mattress on the floor and hing up my net around it. FInally my homologue (in country work partner) was able to arrange to have the furniture brought back so now i have a tiny table, bed, and a bookshelf. I just put in a big order at the menusier (furniture maker) for a bunch of stuff so hopefully it will be done before November, because it is hard to get around in the house with barely anything.

Also, my cat has a name--Scout--as in boyscout, except in this case, bugscout. And she does not disappoint. All of a sudden she'll get up and run across the room to eat a bug. SHe doesn't eat cockroaches yet because cockroaches are about the size of her head but so far (knock on wood) i've only found 2 in my house and have killed them both promptly. There are a lot that hang outside in my back area. Having a cat here is weird--I go to the marche every few days to buy her fish to eat and i have a little litter box with sand in it for her, but like all things in Benin, it is a little more of a pain to take care of her here.

So my house has 3 rooms. You walk into one big room that will one day be an eating area and 'living room' area. then there are 2 rooms in the back that is my bedroom and kitchen. THe walls are cement and one day I aspire to paint them because they are really grungy and depressing. The floor is a mess too and decidedly impossible to keep clean with the dirt and dust so I bought some mats to throw down which makes me feel a little better about walking around on it. I have a tin roof, but you can't see it because there is a plafond 'fake ceiling' made of bamboo so that is nice looking. there are pro's and cons to the plafond, including for example that last night at 4am or so I was woken up by a huge lizard that was walking around in between the plafond and ceiling because they live there which is gross. Thank god for bug nets. In my back area I have two little cement rooms without ceilings lined with broken glass for security and a little hallway which is all private. I hung up a laundry line out there and I take my bucket showers by moonlight out there before bed--by far my favorite part of the day. In the morning i take out buckets of water to do my dishes and laundry out back as well and i drag out a mat to sit outside and read or eat breakfast in the cooler air since my house is so hot. Everything takes forever here with the water situation. Thankfully I have located BBC news on my shortwave (thanks, dad) which keeps me sane while working comme ca.

So this is all superficial skimming the surface stuff since there is so much to say--sorry about that! Marché day is every 5 days so you kind of have to plan what you want to cook, etc. I was so excited to find avocados in the marché and i also got a beet, some carrots, and cucumber. I realize that sounds boring but it MADE my day to be able to eat veggies how I wanted and when i wanted. I found some marché mama friends who seem nice so far and have given me the good prices for things. One is named Madeline and she always knocks ten CFA off of my eggs. I bought a big garbage can in which I store water. THere is a little petite named Basil who comes and fills it for me every few days and it isn't too expensive. My 2 neighbors Rosine and Rosaline are really sweet also and it is nice to strike up conversations with them. It is definitely overwhelming being here and I have to force myself out everyday to greet people and explore but hopefully it will feel like home eventually, and I think my host family might come visit this week. My maman and I were crying when I left and they were going to come already but my host brother and sister are in the hospital sick, so it had to wait.

It is hard being away from all of the other volunteers but it is nice that there is another in Dogbo. We hung out the other day for a bit and went to a fete saturday night with a french doctor who works at the hospital here. We don't want to be together ALL the time because that isn't good for integration so we don't see each other TOO much but if we need to talk it is nice to know she is there. Another volunteer also rode his bike into Dogbo for lunch the other day which was fun, but it is hard since all of my friends are scattered around the country and I don't know when I will see them next--In service training is around my birthday but that is only for health volunteers so who knows. ALright, well I am going to leave it for now since I know I can come back next week and update some more. Later gators.

I'm a volunteer...whoo hoo!!

Training is OVER and we swore in at a grand fete at the palais du congress with President Yayi Boni in attendance, which was a pretty amazing experience. The last time I came to the Cyber the power cut out after I sent my first email and I didn't feel like sticking around for it to come back on so my apologies for the delay in the posting...though...this is probably my last time posting for awhile since I leave for Dogbo tomorrow and there are no cybers in Dogobo. I have to take a taxi to Lokossa though to get to the bank and I believe there is internet there so hopefully I'll be able to update at least twice a month or something comme ça. Ps-I hope you all enjoy the use of franglais.

So the other week was like Christmas! Thank you so much everyone for the packages! The peace corps was apparently holding them all for awhile and brought them all out one day! I gave the stuff to my host family who were blown away and overwhelmingly thankful for everything...They asked me a million times over to thank my family in the U.S. for thinking of them! And thank you for the stuff for me too! lol. I have secured foodstuffs to the best of my ability to keep them away from the ants...i hope it works. One day, i will come back to the United states and I will not have to worry about ants crawling on me all the time or my food, and it will be glorious...until then...well I guess it is protein, right?

Speaking of protein, i got a cat today! What is the association peut etre you wonder? Well...cats are eaten here. hence, i will be leaving my thus far un-named chaton dans ma maison where he can feast his little heart out on lizards and cockroaches, if he wants. I don't want my neighbors to think it is dinner. My brother came home today from the marche with him in this teeny tiny box and he was just sleeping. He was pretty gross and smelled like fish but i gave him a bath, which he did not like... and now he smells a little better and is looking pretty cute. Transporting him in a cardboard box to dogbo for a 3 hour brush taxi ride should be just delightful. He is calico--white, blackish brown and orange and since I just got my wonderully pink Razr phone from the U.S. unlocked for use in Benin I am going to see if I can send a picture text message to someone with him. Officially I have gotten all of my accessories in Benin to be pink too, which-- frankly-- amuses me. It seems like owning a pink solar powered ipod charger is contrary to the idea of a Peace Corps Volunteer, but I have to say...if that is so wrong then I don't want to be right because my iPod Might just be what keeps me sane on some days. Like when I am riding my bike and I just think I will run over the next kid who sings the Yovo song at me, I turn on the iPod and drown it out.

Speaking of being run over (yes, i know, my connectors are wonderful today) I came face to face with the harsh reality of driving in Benin yesterday. It is REALLY dangerous here in cars and on zems which is why we always have to wear a helmet. And they tell us in all of our sessions if we have a serious problem with the possibility of bleeding out on the side of a road while waiting for an ambulance to come for 3 or more hours than Peace Corps Benin is not for us...you might think I am kidding about that...but I am not. We actually HAVE gotten THAT EXACT speech several times here. They want to emphasize that we can't get the same kind of medical attention here nor should we expect it. So I was on a zem yesterday and passed by this really congested area where I saw a dead man on the ground covered in tissue except for his feet--he had just been killed in an accident. I don't know if it was zem or car because it had already really dispersed by the time i passed by but I have to say it definitely shook me a little and prompted me to readjust my helmet. Good thing too, because I definitely fell right off my zem last night. It wasn't even moving so don't worry. My skirt got caught in the back apparatus and i fell right off into the road when i was dismounting, as a million people shouted doucement, as if i didn' t already know to doucement. Doucement, i've discovered is becoming an amusing pet peeve of mine. I love when people spill things on me and say doucement. All i can think is...you're the one spilling this on me...YOU doucement! The first time my little sister did it it was KIND OF cute how she said doucement but now i think it would be cuter if it didn't take me an hour to wash 4 shirts by hand in caustic soap after l'huile rouge (palm nut oil) gets all over it.

So anyway, Grand Popo last week was BEAUTIFUL!!!!! It rained in the morning when we left and we were all upset but by the afternoon when we were there it was a gorgeous afternoon and sunny...we stayed for the day at 'the auberge' on the beach which had the little tiki hut type things to lie out on and hammocks and coconut trees. There were some other yovos around because it is a tourist spot...they were mostly french. And I actually got to have ice cream in the auberge even though it was chère. It was interesting--mint, made with actual mint leaves, and was really refreshing. You can't really swim in the water here because the tides are just too dangerous. When I heard that I thought 'yeah yeah yeah, whatever you say' and then I stood out looking at the water and knew i had no desire to go in past my knees. The waves are incredible. It was just a wonderful and peaceful day...for most of us. We squeezed 60 of us onto 3 tiny buses and one of them broke down just outside of Porto Novo so they got there really late and peut etre it wasn't AS relaxing for them. But it felt really nice to just be at the beach and is still odd to think that it feels like I should be back at school writing papers and les choses comme ça that habitually elevated my blood pressure every september through may.

Today has been weird because my fam is trying to send me out in style, making big meals and having us eat as a family (usually the kids eat in the kitchen and i eat with mama and papa alone), but I don't know why, my mama seems really angry and is yelling a TON at the kids today. It is really awkward to be around and I don't like it because at one point she was beating my brother and I am so unaccustomed to seeing that that i find it really disturbing even if it IS normal here. She smacked him hard in the face repeatedly and one time when I walked by she had his neck in both of her hands and was shaking him violently...i don't even know what he did. That's not to make my maman sound mean...she's not...that's just how disciplining children is here, and in 2 years, I don't know if I will EVER get used to seeing it.

So tomorrow I leave for Dogbo...I am pretty nervous and am completely stepping outside of my comfort zone again. But that's okay because I generally think that the most worthwhile things I have done or found in life have been outside of my comfort zone. I just have to brace myself for it and acknowledge that it is going to be really awkward for a really long time, but alllll the other volunteers are doing it too. And, I can just speak english to my cat...pas de problème, even if my neighbors DO think I am a folle. Plus, there is fanmilk in dogbo, which makes any day a better day for only 150CFA.

I don't know when I can write again here but I will commence with my letter writing to everyone as i get settled. Thanks again for letters and packages and thinking of me!!

PS - got a new phone number 93 26 00 77. Don't forget to type in the country code and calling out of US code that I mentioned in an earlier post. I have 2 phones now so if you call the other number I'll still get it but I am trying to phase it out because I think this company is better at my post, is cheaper for international calls for me, and then I can sell the other phone since I got to unlock the one I brought with me. A tout a l'heure!!!

Who passed their French oral exam (yeah, Janet, I said it)?! This girl did...amaaaaaaaazingly!! I don't know how because I am most definitely NOT fluent in French but I came in at Novice/Mid and after 2 more tests have officially been bumped up to Advanced/Mid. So now I can officially swear in as a volunteer next friday, the 5th.

So to answer your question A. Loretta, we came in with 64 and now have 55 in my training class because another person left. It's so funny that you mention Elliot's blog. He's a health volunteer like me so we train together every day. Plus...he has a friend in Cape Verde with the Peace Corps who knows my friend Cathryn who's in Cape Verde with Peace Corps now too...small world, even in Africa. I'm excited for pictures! Though I have to be honest, I haven't gotten any packages yet though I heard that that is more because Peace Corps mail delivery is unreliable during training and gets better afterward (like they might have just not gotten to the post office to pick up packages because it isn't just me not getting mail, really they drop off some letters like once a week.) Plus I actually have a post office in Dogbo, so I might consider opening a boite postale when i get to Dogbo if I hear that other people are having luck with it--at least for getting letters.

This week we've been doing a lot of HIV/AIDS work which I am happy about because I will be working with HIV and AIDS a lot with my ONG (NGO in french, and HIV is VIH, and AIDS is SIDA). It is really interesting to talk about the topic here and when I say interesting what I man is extremely frustrating at times. Even our trainers--some of the most educated people in Venin who operate in the upper echelons of the health ministries here just don't know some things that we take for granted, or are operating under the myths that perpetuate the terrible stigma surrounding AIDS in Africa. For example, yesterday we were talking about HIV, and the head of our health training explained to us how she was invited to go swimmng with a man she knew who was HIV positive. She wouldn't go because he knew that she knew he was HIV positive and so she thought it was innappropriate that he would ask her to go with him, and she didn't understand what he was up to. We at first thought she meant that she said she wouldn't go and he took it offensively in the wrong way, but she clarified for us that indeed, she didn't go with him because he was HIV positive and we need to be careful around HIV positive people and not trust them because they can act erratically. Sometimes they are so angry that they are sick that they want to infect everyone she said, but she didn't quite seem to get that you can't get AIDS from swimming with an HIV positive person. It was, needless to say, a really awkward moment in training. And clearly some of the other trainers didn't agree with her but also kept mute because of social heirarchy here, since she was the superior. Some other things that our trainers didn't know was the concept of what defined body fluids--semen, vaginal, blood, and breast milk--and some didn't know that breastfeeding was a means of transmission of HIV from mother to child. So I can't help but wonder how this will be out au village when we are seeing this in the capital.

Actually, today we went to a secondary school to do sensibilizations with the classes there. We split up into 3 groups about transmission, prevention, and myths and realities. I was in the class talking about prevention and doing condom demonstrations. So we have these wooden penises in bulk...and i have to say, I am really happy that my ONG in Dogbo already ahs them too because I would imagine that getting to village and having to go request the fashioning of a wooden falice would be an awkward means of introduction to the local menusier (furniture maker/carver). Even hearing what kids already knew or didn't in the class was eye-opening. Some thought having sex with a virgin was a cure, that you could get HIV from a mosquito bite, and even that White people can't get AIDS. But the kids here are pretty composed because I think that condom demonstrations in the U.S. would be extremely awkward. I worked with about 7 children and when I asked for a boy and a girl to both try to put the condom on after me at first nop one wanted to and everyone was really reserved, but by the end, everyone in my group had done it properly, listed the steps along the way, and had a ton of questions. They asked why there was no cure for AIDS, why do you have to pinch the tip when putting it on, why do you have to tie it up when you are done, why are they so greasy (they don't understand the concept of the body's natural lubrication and there is a myth that the lubricant on condoms is in fact HIV in a ploy to disseminate the disease), and also why it is necessary to thow it away in the latrine or dig a hole and bury it (if you're wondering it is because little kids here play in garbage and will see them as fun things to blow in like balloons, amongst other sanitation reasons).

So a few nights ago we were invited to dinner with the mayor of Porto Noco which was fabulous and included an amawing show of local dance and music by local artisan troupes of Porto Novo. Also, I got to go to a great fete in Cotonou last sunday with my family in celebrating the death anniversary of a family member. Birthdays here really aren't a big deal--yesterday was my host brother's b-day and I was the only one who did anything for him. But dying...well dying here is pretty fantastic for everyone except the concerned party. There is a huge fete for the death itself and the important anniversaries. Also there is a show for the dead here every night to commemorate anniversaries of death to religious music for an hour. At the fete though I was annoyed because the DJ found out my name and spent the afternoon asking me over the microphone for money and telling me he would take my bag and wallet. Finally when he said to me in English "Catherine...i need CFA" i turned around and shouted "MOI AUSSI" (me too) because I am not a freaking bank and I just wanted to enjoy my fizzy pamplemousse in peace. It was just one of those days when the harrassement was getting old.

Tomorrow I get to to go Grand Popo for a relaxing day with the trainees, and I am excited for that. I am anxious about going to post though because Porto Novo and my host family are definitely my comfort zone in Benin now. They want to louer a taxi and take me up to Dogbo to settle me in which is pretty awesome..like moving into college...except not really.

Off the top of my head, those are the highlights. I've retyped this entire thing because the internet died on the first computer i was using so i am sufficiently annoyed maintenant.

Wishlist: A french press for coffee (i have a teeny one that make only 1 small cup) and actual non instant coffee since they really don't have it here and instant is trés chère.

cheapo ipod speakers from like a wallmart that can just plug into the ipod

secret clinical strength deoderant, shampoo and conditioner (there is NO conditioner here)

PS to anyone having trouble calling, i really have heard AMAZING things from other trainees whose families are using www.keepcalling.com. It is 12 cents a minute for Benin and you can use your CELL OR HOUSE phone because you are given a pin code to type in that they just charges the call. It is supposed to be working really well and a lot of peoples' families are using it...cheaper than phone cards too? i think...and skype.

Anywhoo...thanks for all the comments and support. It is definitely amazing to get to a computer and read what everyone says, and receiving letters is great--i read them over and over. ANd that occasional phone call really keeps me smiling for hours if not days afterwards...just ask my host maman. I definitely couldn't keep sane here without your support, so really, thank you!! Bonne chance for an amazing semester to everyone starting up again at the Cross and everywhere else!

So I got back to Porto Novo on Saturday from my post visit to Dogbo, and I can officially say that I will miss my toilet and shower. But really, Dogbo is pretty nice and I didn't spend enough time there to get the full picture of it, but I definitely enjoyed the town. I am fortunate enough to have some measure of infrastructure in the town and am not all the way out in the brush like some of my friends. It was however, definitely mostly mud houses once you get off the main road from what I could see, which is a far cry from Porto Novo. I didn't stay in my house because it wasn't ready so I stayed with the director of my NGO's wife in her concession. But I did get to see my house and it is pretty nice. It is 3 rooms-bedroom, kitchen, and living area. It is flanked by 3 other houses though I didn't really get the chance to meet my neighbors in the short time that I visited. The area around the house seems pretty nice and the concession behind me where my proprietor lives is really beautiful. I'm hoping to hang out there with some of the mama's because they all seem to be pretty nice. Behind my house I have a tiny little private outdoor area with my douche and an area that my homologue (work partner) told me was my cuisine (kitchen). In Benin, most people cook outside because they use coals and it gets extremely hot cooking in tiny spaces inside, but i plan to use that area to burn garbage and hang up a laundry line. At first I was admittedly shocked because the shower area has no roof, but I've decided that I like that better and let me tell you why.

So at the house where I was staying I had my own latrine and next to it, a douche as well. But I have to tell you that opening the door to the douche was like a little surprise each time...ie-what kind of creepy crawlies will be invading my shower this time? Usually it was just daddy longlegs and I decided I would leave them alone if they stayed put and didn't look like they were going to drop down from the ceiling on me when I least expected it. But my third night I opened up the door and there on the wall was a huge 2 1/2" long (at least) cockroach. Now I have to say I really don't appreciate cockroaches when they are teeny tiny ones walking around New York, never mind mutant African ones hanging out in my shower. It was a stare-down. Paralyzed with my fear/disgust at bugs, I stood there, literally for about 10 minutes pondering how to handle the situation, and he just stood there not moving as if I couldn't see him. So I found this gigantic pole, and don't ask me why but holding that pole actually made me feel inexplicably safer. From a distance I poked the roach's antennaes to see if it would have the good sense to just leave on it's own before meeting it's imminent doom, but it didn't. So I attempted to poke it a few times with the pole in Olympian javelin-like thrusts from outside of the douche but it was too elusive for me. So after about another 5 minutes I finally just sucked it up and walked into the room slowly and cautiously and heaved my foot at the wall as I kind of seized up at the same time. I got the damn thing but only slightly so it fell to the floor spastically on it's back and started sputtering around, when i walked over and put the Kabbash (aka my shoe) on the roach for good--THAT is a disgusting crunch. My problem with killing bugs here is that they are SO fast that I have this non-sensical fear that if I try to kill them and miss that they will come back with a vengeance...especially spiders. There is this spider here that is really really flat and moves like lightning (truly disgusting) and the same for the roaches. Ugh, it makes me shudder just to think of them. So anyway, the point is, at least my douche at my house is not in a small enclosed closet-like space with the threat of bugs falling down on me--just the stars, which-- by the way--are beautiful here. I don't have running water or anything in my house so we'll see how that goes, and my latrine is around the back and is for me only--it has a lock and is pretty secure. And the wall built around my "backyard" where my douche and cuisine are is lined with broken glass shards from bottles, etc. set into the cement to discourage anyone from jumping over.

I'm also pretty lucky because even though the language of the Couffo region where Dogbo is is Adja, mostly everyone I came across understood French, which is EXTREMELY nice to know. I also had a few other Yovo sightings when I was there, though they are mostly French--but it is good to know that Dogbo is used to having Yovos pass in and out because sometimes it is difficult if you are in the smaller villages where there has never been one before. The marché is every 5 days but I can still find mostly everything that I need when it isn't marché day either in little vendor stalls or on women's heads as they walk around selling stuff which is nice because Dogbo is a big enough town.

I didn't spend enough time with my work partner or ONG (NGO in French) to formulate a definite opinion of either, but they seem really nice and I guess I will be getting to know the organization and my work partner better eventually no matter what. I made the rounds with my homologue to visit the police, gendarmerie , mayor, hospital, health center, PTT (post office), and all of the other important people in Dogbo so that I could start to get to know them, and kind of just as a security precaution that is required by Peace Corps. And perhaps most importantly (except not really) I found the FanMilk Depot in Dogbo on the main road just a 10 minute walk away from chez moi. FanMilk, I've discovered, really has the power to make even the worst of days just that much better.

I was in Dogbo from Weds to Saturday and there were definitely times when I was by myself and it can get lonely. So I walked out to the marché and made my first marché mama friend. She was this little old woman who was really sweet and asking me all about why I was there etc. and did the whole saluer-ing thing with me. I also went to this 'Cafeteria' which reminded me of one of the diners in Worcester (the bully) in a way and the stuff there was pretty tasty. Plus when I passed by it later the woman who worked there waved and smiled at me, and salué-ed so it was that kind of stuff that made me feel okay there and like I would be able to make this whole living in Africa thing work. And it will be nice when I go back in September because I will have another Peace Corps Volunteer in Dogbo with me and there are a bunch of volunteers nearby in neighboring villages only like a half hour or so away.

When I left, I took the brush taxi by myself for the first time--even though my homologue discuter-ed the bonne prix for me before I got in. I have to say, traveling in Benin really puts a new meaning to the phrase 'Bon Voyage' for me. Whenever someone (ie- my work partner) says 'Bon Voyage' to me as I descend into a brush taxi, I say my obligatory "merci" but I really can't help thinking "fat chance" considering there are already 12 other people in this clown car you call a taxi and you want me to put my grosses fesses where? At least there were no animals in the car.

Coming home was awesome. It was great to see my host family and I think my 'maman' was surprised when i gave her a big hug--I was surprised how much i missed them after a few days of being away. They want to take me up to Dogbo when I move to help me settle in, but I don't know if that could work logistically since Peace Corps is getting me a car to take all of my stuff--It would be nice though, and my fam doesn't have a car or anything so they would have to louer a taxi. We went to this great fete saturday night at a museum in Porto Novo. It was a beautiful cool evening and my 'papa' had invitations to this cultural festival. An evening of Beninese dance and song, under the stars when the power cut out (twice--again...infrastructure), and I had a really amazing time...especially when my little sister who really likes to dance decided to march up on stage randomly and dance away much to the delight of everyone in attendance including the Mayor and King of Porto Novo. Well anyway, I could go on but I've been here for an hour and should prob get going. I will come back later in the week and write more! I miss you all!

Remember how I said the chicken was the best thing I had had in Benin? I take it back. Today we had another cooking session this time with western food and we made pizza. That's right...Pizza. But not only pizza, we made cookies too. Some of the PCVs took a taxi to cotonou to search out mozarella cheese and we all made these little personal pizzas with delicious fresh vegetables from the marché. We even baked the crusts ourselves. It was honestly better than a lot of pizza I've had at home because it was SO fresh and not processed. You can find the yeast packets and baking sodas and all that jazz in the little marchés and stores around, and they bought chocolate in cotonou to chop up and toss in the cookie dough. Plus I thought that when I left that I wouldn't be able to bake for 2 years but they showed us how to make a little dutch oven by propping up tomato paste cans in the bottom of a pot and baking in a pan over a low flame with the lid closed. You just have to doucement with your hands because it is tricky to get the pan out at the end. It was pretty exciting for everyone, to be entirely honest. Especially after this week because pretty much everyone is getting worn out from training and all the french and the cultural overload. Post visit is this week so it should be good to have a slight break from the routine and get out of Porto Novo for a few days.

Yesterday we went to a school to teach a class for kids on diarrhea and hand washing. It actually went really well. The kids were really well behaved except for when you ask for someone to answer a question because they all jump up raising their hands, smacking their lips in a kissing noise, and repeat ad nauseum "Ici, ici" (here, here). It might not sound annoying...but it is. And it is just generally not tolerated by TEFL volunteers so they tell us not to tolerate it either, even if it is how Beninese instructors run their classrooms. I think it can be avoided if you lay down your ground rules when you walk into a classroom and say that you will not call on students who conduct themselves that way but we didn't do that so it was our own faux pas. So the demonstration was a little difficult because there wer five of us ranging in french levels from the highly proficient to the barely proficient and non-engaging. Some parts were great and the kids were really engaged and answering, but in the beginning it took a few minutes for them to get going. The teacher also pretty much repeated everything we said anyway because even with high proficiency the kids didn't understand us all of the time. Now, I don't know if that is due to our bad accents or if they are just thrown by the fact that yovos are speaking french, because I've had this problem before (some of the younger children don't actually speak french though, and only know local languages like Fon and Goun).

But for example, a few weeks ago I went to a little boutique to buy credit for my phone and said to the woman sitting there (after saluer-ing her, naturally) "Je voudrais une carte de recharge pour glo." (I'd like a recharge card for glo--my company). She looked at me with a blank expression and said to me "Je ne parle pas anglais." (I don't speak english). Well, frankly I was a little thrown off because I hadn't spoken a word of english so I thought I'd give it another try and spoke a little slower, saying "Je veux acheter une carte de recharge pour glo." (I want to buy a recharge card for glow). Well...if you could only see the look of yovo frustration that I got at that moment when she responded...in perfect and slowly articulated english, mind you, "I do not speak English very well." I'm pretty sure that after a few seconds of surprise at hearing her speak English, I threw her a look of equal exasperation as i whipped out my phone and a 2,000CFA bill, and started gesturing at the sign for glo, but that seemed to get the message across, and there wasn't really a problem after that. Money talks, right? haha. And if all else fails, gesture wildly with props. But yea...it definitely can be frustrating sometimes, as amusing as it is in retrospect.

But anyway, so the school was a great experience and the children are very energetic but intense. I have to go for now (this is just a short post on my way home) but I will talk more about the school systems here some other time because it is definitely interesting. Ta-ta for now.

PS-Aunt Loretta...better get on this...you didn't beat my mom and dad AND i beat you with a second post...uh oh. :) Miss you all

Oh...and yeah, there is definitely a cholera outbreak in Southern Benin right now that has already killed one person and has over 100 people sick. How delightful is that? Ou est l'eau de javel?

So I told myself when I got back from Tanzania that I was going to do my best to not complain when I was stuck in traffic because of construction on the roads. After having our car get stuck on several occasions in massive amounts of mud during the rainy season there, forcing us to hop out and trek through it up to our bomba in our sneakers (prompting me to buy galoshes for benin) I thought to myself...well, at least we have the infrastructure to fix our roads when we really need them in the U.S.. I'll be honest, when I got home I still complained a little, but maybe after 2 years of this I'll stop. Getting around Benin in rainy season is not fun. The road that I take to the school where I train every day is dirt for the most part, and there is a lot of sand too. So even when it is dry my bike gets stuck in these massive sand pits all of the time which completely throws of my balance. About 3 weeks after I got here the rain had finally washed away a part of my road...it was a completely disgusting, muddy mess and EVERY day when i got there I would have to dismount and walk my bike through this crooked little offroad path to get around it with way too many Beninese shouting "Yovo, doucement" (watch out, whitey). I was however, pleasantly surprised one day on my way to school when after about 2 weeks the road was repaired. Now, mind you...when I say repaired, I mean that there was dirt/sand brought in and dumped into the mud pit and packed down to raise the road back up. Since we're entering the little dry season it has been pretty well maintained too since they fixed it. So I don't know WHO fixed the road or when exactly, but the hint of mild infrastructure had me mildly surprised. I know that with the road that gave us so much trouble in Tanzania, at the end of rainy season all of the villagers came out and fixed it together, but optherwise they just dealt with it during the rains. I had the same level of surprise when a tree fell and blocked about 3/4 of the road one day but by that afternoon it was cleared. Maybe it is because we are in the capital...I really don't know.

Another infrastructure issue--Trash collection...in the sense that...there IS none. Stuff gets chucked to the side of the road and c'est tout. There is garbage everywhere and I see people all of the time carting big wheelbarrows to the teeny crossbridge by my house and deposit their garbage into the marsh below. It is pretty gross. My host family actually has a person come every so often and take the garbage away but I haven't exactly figured out what happens to it after that. Au village IF there are latrines, a lot of people throw things down the latrines. When I was on my tech visit, the volunteer showed us how to burn our trash safely, but it doesn't seem like burning garbage is une bonne idée. At the school we just kind of formed a pile of garbage that gets bigger every day and I guess over time will decompose (fingers crossed). But everything here is given in plastic bags (sachets) so I am going to start using my tote bag when i go to the marché at post in order to cut down on stuff like that. TO burn the garbage we need to use petrol from the marchés. And really, some of the marchés are like little wonderlands and you'd be SO surprised what you can find there, like Lipton tea...it's just that Nothing is ever garaunteed. Très bizarre.

So earlier this week we went to visit a traditional healing woman, a practicer of vodun or voodoo. She talked to us about her "fetish" which is a thing (don't ask what the thing is...you're not allowed to actually view it, and it is wrapped up and hidden in the corner of the room) used for practicing voodoo. Many families have familial fetishes. And a little aside about voodoo...if you cut your toenails or hair here burn or dispose of your clippings because it is BAD gris gris and you do not want it used in voodoo, if you leave it lying out for the taking. But anyway, She inherited hers from her father because she was the oldest girl in her family who survived and there were no boys. So when people go to her, she will try to heal them, and she will consult the fetish for permission to heal the person and for it to bestow its power on the treatment that she will use (various natural medications from leaves, etc.) She said she can not heal tuberculosis, and often she treats 'crazyness'--the village fou's. For yovos it takes a much longer time to help because usually they don't actually believe in the vodun but she said she has worked with yovos in the past with great success. I was surprised to learn how long it takes for treatment via local medicine to work because she said the person would have to come back several times over a period of a few months until they were healed. AND i was also surprised at her price tag. I thought that people would go the traditional route because they couldn't afford it but she charges 25,000CFA up front for a first consultation and 100,000CFA at the end for the actual healing, usually. I mean, granted she admitted that there is nothing to stop someone from getting treated and then not paying but it still seemed très chère. The fetish will go to her daughter when she dies who is now studying medicine also. The hospitals and traditional healers here seem to work together sometimes. For example if she can not heal a person she sometimes sends them to a hospital and visa versa, she said--which I found particularly interesting. A lot of the time here, people hate and don't trust the hospitals because they associate it with people dying. But it is a truly painful cycle because the reason that so many people die is because they avoid going for so long that by the time they do when they are really sick it is already too late to help. It is a HUGE problem in Benin, especially with Malaria.

Okay, so yeah...despite all that I still ate the chicken last week...only a little though. It was really tough and I didn't love it too much. But going off of the traditional practices idea, it was really cool because I had been cutting onions and crying my eyes out (the onions here are truly potent and if I am even in the room when they are being cut by someone else i start tearing up). So one of the facilitators handed me a leaf...i need to get the name...and told me to put it in my mouth and I literally stopped crying immediately. It really worked extremely well and I found that to be amazing.

So I am having a really difficult week here in terms of high frustration levels with the men of Benin. It's really difficult to get through a day here without a marraige proposal or some other kind of harassement from someone, and for some of the other female trainees and I, it's becoming a huge cultural barrier to overcome. I've definitely found myself in a few situations where I am just not comfortable and end up leaving. I just have to take a deep breath I think, and find a coping mechanism that will keep me sane. But other than that, life is good. I'm enjoying the little dry season so far because it is cooler, usually, and I get to go to visit my post next week, so that is pretty exciting. Thanks for the info on the Oueme river...I did not, in fact, know all of that. I don't know the exact name of the petite village either...mon faux pas.

I'm glad you got my letter, Cath. As much as it is disappointing and a morale killer when people early terminate their service (and two more people did this week...) I at least know that they will be heading back to the states within a few days or week and will be dropping off my letters in the U.S. post...haha. :) Well that is all for now. Hope all is well with everyone over on the other side of the Atlantic. I hope I start getting your snail mail soon, if you sent something (I just got a letter from the start of July that took a little va-cay in Uganda before meandering over to Benin despite the fact that the envelope clearly said WEST AFRICA on it...oh well...c'est la vie.) Miss you all a lot.

OK--so I am a little frustrated because I just got kicked off the internet 5 times and if this post gets erased I will officially be annoyed. But I am otherwise in a good mood because of 2 events in particular that happened this week. Firstly...there is this store near where I have class that I and some trainees sometimes go to to just to get out for a bit. Every time we went the little kids there would break out into song--the Yovo song that is. "Yovo Yovo Bonsoir. ça va bien, merci..." and it goes on. Usually it is more tolerable when the kids call me yovo than adults, but finally one day I had enough and took a leaf out of the other volunteers' books and said to the little girl "Ce n'est pas yovo. Yovo n'est pas gentile. Je suis Madame." It's not yovo, yovo isn't nice. Call me madame, pretty much, en anglais. So the other day I went back there and the girl came up behind me and said "Bonsoir madame." I have to say, it was pretty amazing and felt like a major breakthrough. one down...lots to go.

Second, yesterday I went out to catch a zemijahn, and i got the vrai prix without a problem. Usually there is a beninese price for things and a yovo price for things. It is not simple to buy ANYthing here--you have to bargain for everything, including rides on zems. So yesterday when I greeted the zem driver and asked him how much the price was to where I was going, I knew it should have been about 200CFA and my host dad said it might even be 250CFA so I was expecting to have to discuter for that, figuring he would have started at like 300CFA or something. But when i asked the zem the price he didn't try to jack it up for the yovo, and he told me 200CFA flat out. I was pretty excited. It's an interesting dynamic here because with our carte blanche we get the best and the worst treatment at the same time. Like we could be charged way more for a ride on a brush taxi...but we might get the best seat in the house because the driver would save it for the yovo. It's really interesting. Tourists definitely don't help because tourists don't discuter (bargain) the prix. They just pay it because it is still so cheap to them. That's why everyone thinks we are rich and are always asking us to give them things...when you're on a volunteer salary...it's a bit more problematic, and the idea of the white man just giving stuff out is a overarching problematic social issue. That's what I liked about Peace Corps to begin with --is that it followed the whole self sufficiency idea of teach a man to fish so that the communities could help themselves as opposed to just throwing money at a social issue, but I've so far found that it is still a hard mindset to overcome here, because that's largely just how it has been done for a long time, by a lot of people.

Friday we went au village again to do a demonstration on cooking enriched food for the village, and to talk to them about pre and post natal care as well as family planning. It's better each time we go because we start to recogniwe the women and visa versa so we are able to build a rapport with them little by little. Each time we go they seem more engaged and willing to participate, and they clearly seem more at ease with us now than the first time when we were just a bunch of yovos. But it is still hard because our french is not that good and we do the presentations in french and then have some one else come and translate our french into the local language-- so you can imagine it is quite the process.

Saturday we had a beninese cooking session and we killed a chicken...so scratch what i said the other day about not feeling bad about killing chickens because they are delicious. Maybe if it was the rooster outside my room that wakes me up at 5:30 every morning I wouldn't have felt as bad but I couldn't stand watching the chicken being killed. It wasn't very big, and to be humane the facilitators gave it a last drink of water. Then one of the trainees stood on the wings in a way while another held the feet so that it cuoldn't squirm, but it was making a terrible noise. Then another trainee cut it's throat but it was really terrible because the knife was so dull and she didn't know how hard she would have to press so it was more or less hacking away and it took awhile for the chicken to die. Ugh...I don't think I will ever do that. You can pay people in the marchés and extra 100CFA to kill and pluck them for you and that seems totally worth it. After we let the blood drain we dunk it in a pot of boiling water and pluck outthe feathers...the feathers that you can't get you burn off over a fire. I mean, in general it was still a really interesting thing to do...just sad.

And yesterday definitely had to have been my favorite day in Benin. I was invited to go "promenading" with my friend Heidi and her family and another trainee. But promenading really turned out to be a boat trip, which was fabulous. We went out to this village that floods during the rainy season so we got in a little pirogue (canoe type boat) and met up with the river Oueme and took it to her papa's old village. It was incredible to see these little huts built above the water. The cows, pigs, chickens, etc were all kept in these built up cages. They were made of sticks and just piled up grass on the water and were extremely small. I guess they always have to add more grass and stuff because the animals were eating it too...that could be a problem. Everyone is riding around in little boats, and even the school and the hospital (it was actually closed when we were there to use its latrines because the doctor was on strike since there is no medicine) were like little islands. It's hard to believe when rainy season is over it is all dry land. We took the little pirogue up to a house and went in to visit the friend of the man who took us and it is definitely a whole other world from Porto Novo...little mud floor and thatched roofs. The whole house was a little bigger than my bedroom at home, and the door was reaaaaaaaally tiny. But the whole day was just amazing--gorgeous and sunny, and being on the water was great. Of course we all forgot sunscreen on the first completely sunny day in Benin, but that's okay...next time. Well I have a lot more to report but I will save some for later this week.

That is pretty exciting about the Beninese Olympic athletes...i hope that they do well. Also, apologies aunt beth...i should not have ASSumed. my faux pas.

I'll try to come back here some time between weds and friday...It's so wierd to think that I normally would be getting ready to go back to school in 2 weeks and summer should be ending because it is just like summer here allll the time and now we are starting to enter the short dry season until september so the humidity has dropped off A LITTLE. Haven't gotten any mail yet, but I'll let you know when it comes in. Lies, i actually did get a letter from grandma if you could tell her. Love and miss you all.

I'd like to take a minute to sing the praises of the wonder that is Secret Clincal Strength Deoderant. That stuff is AMAZING. I mean, really...every single inch of your body can be sweating profusely but your arms are good to go. If I come back for a visit next year I would consider filling a suitcase with it for the return trip so I could slather it on all over...haha...that might not be a good idea though.

Thanks to everyone for the well wishes...i am DEFINTELY feeling better though we have a few people in the med Unit right now with amoebas and what i had seems to have gone around for a lmot of trainees. Glad thats over...for now. So the pictures at the cyber are not working out (sorry U. mike...and A. Annie...i know YOU would have wanted to see the spider picture too, wink wink) and I have to find another way to get some up...maybe when I get back to headquarters. We went to the marché today to do some price checking as a group and that was a really interesting experience. I had already gone a few time but not really gotten to see some of the stuff I saw today--it is a BIG marché. So we went over to the meat section and saw this big slab of meat hanging from a hook (it smells really bad there) and all of a sudden i notice on the floor next to me half in half out of this big metal bowl is the entire skin in one giant piece of the cow that is hanging up...It's hooves were attached and everything. I honestly have never seen ANYthing like it and it turned my stomach a little to see it. I mean the meat looked okay but seeing that was just unexpected. The vendor had his money sitting out on a pile of intestines which really makes me wonder about how dirty the money that i have is. The piles and piles of chickens sitting out in the marche are interesting too. They are all so sad looking and tied together. I don't feel THAT bad about the chickens though...they are the most delicious thing in Benin so far. If i eat any more unidentified fish pulled from a dirty river I might freak out...but sundays chez moi so far appears to be chicken day and it is the most delicious day of the week. I don't know how Ill be able to keep that up at post because you cant really buy and store chicken without a fridge. Its expenisive in supermarchés to buy chicken like how we have it in the US and to buy a chicken in the market and have them kill it for you means you have to eat the thing that day pretty much. Plus there ARE no supermarchés in Dogbo because they are so a yovo thing and are mostly in the big cities. I guess I will find out. They also have little puppies and kittens in the marché for a little over 1,000CFA and I definitely plan on getting a kitten--they are good for eating lizards and bugs in your house and I would be saving it from being dinner since they eat cats,dogs, and bushrat here. I haven't eaten any of that yet...Though i hear that bushrat is actually really good.

My family here actually does have a frig and freezer which is really unusual and they make ice and sell it to people all the time for 25CFA (about 400CFA per US dollar and dropping daily, as you know better than I, I am sure...how much is gas in NY now?). And yeah...its pretty normal for us to call our host families "mama" and "papa" and "mama" is a general sign of respect here. Like any volunteer who comes to my house calls my "mama" that and that is how you greet women in the marché too.

This is an entirely random observation that I forgot to mention earlier...belly buttons. Kids belly buttons here are often very deformed and in discussing it with volunteers it seems unsure why, though possibly having to do with innapropriate cutting of the umbilical chord at birth. It seems more common out in au village, but the other day this kid pulled his shirt up and it literally looked like a baseball was attached to his stomach it was so big.

Second random observation: Cement. The value of cement here is really interesting...it is a huge symbol of status...Like to have a cement floor is pretty amazing. So often times, people will not invest their money in the bank but will instead invest money in cement, buying bags and or bricks of it. THey store it in their yards for when they have enough to build something or add onto their house. THere are so many unfinished buildings here because they start them, money runs out, and then they wait for more to continue. It's really kind of fascinating. On ly tech visit last week before I got sick we drove by the cement factory and the driver of the bus was pointing it out with A LOT of pride and it turns out that it manufactures ALL of the cement for the area and is tres important because of that fact.

C'est tout pour maintenant, je pense. (that's all for now, I think). But i will try to come back some time early next week when there is some stuff to report. There is a bday fete for a trainee on sunday which should be fun. There is also a trainee here who extended her 2 years of service with Peace COrps in Ukraine who just turned 30 so we already had a little partay for her too. Its a nice bit of normalcy every now and then to have it. I am pretty spoiled with internet in Porto Novo, because I will definitely not be able to post this much (probably only 2-3 times a month) when i get to Dogbo. THAT will be interesting.

Im sad about the tums too though I still have some for now...i think I might finally win aganist the ants...sneaky little insects...I devised a plan. I have this little pack of crackers double wrapped in ziplock bags and put in a plastic bag suspended midair from my mosquito net. I'd like to see those ants figure THAT out...though with my luck I'll get home now and there will be ants all over my crackers...(sigh).

I am IMPRESSED by the research A. Loretta. Yes i DID make a wish at the tree, lol. I wish I could get my pics up from Ouidah...I have to figure something out with that. I can't wait to go to Grand Popo.

Hope all is well with you...yeah...Aidan is a saint compared to my little brother here, aunt beth. lol. he just swings open the door and starts slamming it or throws himself on the ground screaming. Sorry the mail was très chère, but I promise I'll appreciate it more than you know (exclamation point), lol. Miss you all a lot and am steadily working on my letter writing.

1. The cover of your hard cover book has actually begun to curl up

2. The envelopes that you brought have begun to inconveniently seal themselves

3. One can sit perfectly still while expending little to no energy and STILL be sweating.

Yes...it IS as delightful as it sounds...haha. It's actually not THAT hot out today because there is a nice breeze. Okay, so I just got back from my technical visit with a volunteer in Pobé (an hour or so away from Porto Novo). Wednesday we went "au village" to do a sensibilization (teaching session) about cooking. We basically teach how to work within the parameters of what is available within their community to build on and enhance what they already do. So for example, the women were there cooking these beignets, and what we taught them was how to find, ecrisée (crush or grind) and add soy for protein in them. So they were the same thing, but healthier. We also made a moringa sauce with it which is that really nutritionally dense plant. The men of the village came too and they dont really do much but apparently they make sure the women do what they learned at home later on. The men and the women always work seperately and the men always get served first--I don't know if I am ever REALLY going to embrace that aspect of this culture.

So, Friday August 1st was Benin's Independence Day. I wish I could regale you with some spectacular tale of how it is celebrated here. As it is, I myself spent the day lying in the volunteers house with a 102 degree fever, throbbing head, and a stomach so bloated it hurt to even touch it with a finger. C'est la vie, right? Thus, having left the United States on July 3, this brings the tally to 2 independence day celebrations that I have missed this summer. Apparently there was a fete and parade and a lot of dancing, etc. but I guess I will have to wait until NEXT August to tell you.

Something that I did not know was that the actor Djimon Hounsou from Gladiator and Blood Diamond is Beninoise, and he was here yesterday. My "papa" met him and if i had been a home a little earlier, I would have gotten to go with him, but oh well.

Training is going well even though it feels like it is taking forever! I am pretty excited to see my post and I think my post visit is coming up on August 20...I go for 5 days there with my work partner to see the village, my house, my ONG (NGO en francais) that I will be working with, etc. It will be good, though I am nervous too. Another trainee decided to leave after the technical visit so we are down another one and usually a few more duck out after the post visit too. It tends to be RCH and EA (health and environment) over SED and TEFL (Small enterprise development and teaching english as a foreign language) who tend to early terminate and no one really knows why except that those two programs lack as much structure as the other two. So it actually felt nice to get back "home" in Porto Novo and my fam was pretty excited...especially Mariane and Matthew. Apparently being away broke some kind of barrier, and now they are all over me all the time to play and hang out. It's kind of cute...exhausting...but cute. But I am struck by how badly the littlest boy acts sometimes because his siblings are so well behaved. So I don't know if it is that he is spoiled and can get away with throwing tantrums or if he will just grow out of it and more like his brothers. Kids in this culture generally do EVERYthing for their parents...they are the go getters-definitely different from the U.S.

But yes mom and dad, I help out in the kitchen cooking and doing the dishes and it makes my 'mama' really happy because most of the other trainees aren't when she speaks to their families (you think you're soooooooo funny writing in french). But then again a lot of families don't want us to help out of they have domestiques to do the cooking because we are in the city so a lot of families here are pretty well off. I think that is really going to be a rough transition when we get out to post. I usually eat bread for breakfast with some hot cocoa or tea and butter or confiture, and lunch and dinner consist of eggs, pate (a pretty much nutritionally defunct mix of flour and water that is the staple of the diet here and many AFrican countries by different names) pasta, fish (i swear the fish is getting to be a bit much) etc. It is pretty repetetive. Cant wait to get more fruits and veggies when i get to post...I am definitely craving it.

Kuehn!!! I plead the fifth on that one but you MAY be right. lol. ask her. Zildlife so far actually hasn't been THAT extensive except for farm animals alllllll the time. Seen some interesting birds with these really long tails flying around. They are pretty and blue colored. I have an awesome picture of a spider to post so I will try to bring my camera later this week to the cyber.

Thanks for all your comments! Sometimes I start to feel reaaaaaally lonely here and then I get online and read your stuff and it makes me smile again. If there was a printer here, I would print it out and bring it back with me but there isn't so i can't wait for snail mail. lol. Alright. THat's all for now! à teut à l'heure! Miss you all!

So clearly yesterday was not enough time here even though I could write for hours and still not have enough time to say everything I want to say or everything that I have been doing. My next goal is to figure out how to post some pics here and I will try to bring my camera so you can see my host family, etc.

Ok random things. So what I was saying yesterday about the Pallu here--really everyone thinks every sickness is the pallu but i am the only one in my house with a mosquito net. President Bush has reserved a large sum of money for mosquito nets for benin but with essence being so cher maintenant, the boat with the nets (and, as it is, all of our new SAFE zemijahn helmets and bikes) has been long overdo and stuck out at sea until AFTER the rainy season is over. Because, you know, they will be most useful then. Disease goes up a lot in Benin during the rainy season.

To answer some questions, etc. For facial and body scarring, it really differs from family to family and tribe to tribe, and is too hard to keep track of all of it. I think my oldest brother in my fam has it because he is the oldest and it is three lines on the cheeks. Lots of little babies au village have it too but I think that the people have finally been largely taught here to use clean razors and needles for it, Dieu, merci. But there is all sorts of scarring all over the body and a lot of times on the back, breast and chest, it will be for healing purposes and traditional medicine will be rubbed into the wounds. For exampàle though, there is a tribe here who worships the python and they have their own special facial markings to identify that fact.

Saturday we went to Ouida all the way on the Western coast and actually visited the Python temple there. I wore a python on my neck and they are pretty heavy, i must say. Anyway, Benin is the voodoo capital of the world, pretty much, and Ouida is like the voodoo capital of Benin. We were taken on a tour of the sacred forest...part of it is portioned off for tourism, which in a way seems kind of beside the point and slightly sad to me. Anyway, walking into the sacred forest on your own is just NOT done...you will definitely come into trouble. As a woman especially. During the Aura fetishes and festivals in August as far as I , know, in the voodoo areas need to be indoors at dark because if one of the dancing haystacks (auras-NEVER say there is a person in there...he is a gaurdian) sees you they have every right to attack you and cut off your breasts.

What else...In Ouida we also visited the Point of No Return on the beach where slaves were sent off which was really interesting and sad as well. Thieves here are NOT tolerated by communites and the people here hold honor in high esteem. Like if you are bargaining at the market and know you are being lied to about the price and walk away from the deal, that person will be looked down upon by the other vendors. If you are caught stealing...well another trainee saw on hist street a man attacked by a crowd and beaten.

I have to say, Uncle Mike totally wins THIS round...I have seen more topless women than I anticipated, though mostly very deep au village and not in the city. Plus I think that is because we are in the South too. Though largely, if people here are poorly dressed, it is because there is no money and they are pretty ashamed of it. Like we cant really wear shorts but some Beninese will if it is all they can afford- still it doesnt mean it would be wise for us to do. Breast feeding is WAY more open here too and not seen at all as embarrasiing as it sometimes is in the US. Kids will walk up to their mom, grab their breast and the mom will just let them go to town. It Astounds me how the moms here and even little kids carry children strapped to their back with nothing but a piece of fabric. It really makes you wonder about all of our high tech strollers and what is REALLY necessary to raise kids. Also...pretty impressive what even the smallest person can carry on their heads. I"ve seen logs go on heads balanced on a littleclump of fabric to act like a cushion. It seems like a really useful way to carry stuff as the wieght is evenly apportioned throughout your whole body and it leaves your hands free. Maybe some day I will master that trick.

So I have been doing some cool stuff in training. You want an interesting read, look up Moringa. It is an AMAZING tree that has so much nutritional and medicinal value it would blow your mind. And it grows in pretty much all of the areas of the world that need it most. you dry it and crush it to eat straight or add to porridges for kids and it can literally bring them back to the green zone on the "growth charts" we use within 2 weeks. And the plant grows ridiculously fast. you can eat the leaves as is as well--it has vita,ins, nutrients, protein...it really is just incredible and i think my post will have potential to work with moringa in the community. Yesterday we went "au village" to work on PACA (participatory analysis for community action) in which you asses community needs before trying to assert yourself in the area. It helps you attain some letitimacy and more importantly has the community-separated into men women, and children, naturally--figure out for THEMSELVES the resources that THEY have that can be utilized within their own areas. Its about self empowerment, and while we"ve only been training with it and practicing, Im really excited to work with it in my community. Its pretty much a much more intense and extended version of what I was working on for community organizing my last semester at school. So yesterday I worked with another trainee and this group of women to have them map out their day and what they do each day for different times of year--its imp because then YOU know when are good times to have meetings, work with the community etc. the women are so much fun to work with and the men don"t know what to do with themselvezs...they kept coming over to see what the women were drawing for THEIR sheet. Its really funny. And it is so strange how we have to operate. When you are out in the bush you cant really say "the meeting is at 9am" ...you have to say, the meeting is when the sun is this high, and gesture because they don"t know time, etc. Its just a lot of things you wouldnt normally think of or consider....at least for me anyway.

So tomorrow I go spend a few days with a volunteer "on the ground" to see their projects and how they live, and at the end of august I spend a long weekend at my post to check it out. Our swear in is scheduled for September 5th and is going to be a huge fete celebrating 40 years in Benin. PResident Yayi Boni is even coming I believe. Actually...Yayi Boni was just in the USA. Anyone see that in the news? It was prety big news here but I didnt see it in when I was trying to search an article for it.

Cross cultural traning has definitely been interesting. We did this exercise where we wrote down our stereotypes of Beninoise and they wrote down their stereotypes of us, and ironically, often they think that we are givers of AIDS and HIV in vaccinations etc. in order to get rid of them, and that AIDS is a "white man" disease...that we started it. They often think that Americans smell and are dirty and I am AMAZED at how much people shower here...2 or3 times a day especially in Chaleur when it is so hot. They are always asking me to shower and its odd because we all came in with the idea of having to conserve water. Hauling water for 3 showers a day will not be fun. At least bucket showers are really good for conserving water though.

Well anyway...think I covered enough for today? I actually made a list of things to talk about before coming here. So...mom and dad. hahaha for the post in french. Do you have any idea how long it takes me to read that? give it a few months at least. this is 300 francs per hour (haha...Thats really only like seventy five cents in US money), people...peace corps doesnt Pay that much. I love you anyway though.

Aunt Nancy--It is my hope that one day you get to respond first since A.Linda and Aunt Loretta always beat you...maybe today is your day, since i doubt people expected a double whammy back to back post. And I hope emily is feeling better soon even though mono lasts FOREVER (who"ve you been kissing? haha)

Thanks for all the comments--your support is amazing and keeps me smiling on the most trying of days. I am pretty excited for the crystal light and packages too... thank you SOOOOO much. if i knew how to make an exclamation point i would insert one here. But really? Im holding out for a pic of an annie outfit. haha. I miss you all a ton and it was great getting to talk to some of you the other day. I found ANOTHER cheap calling option... www.keepcalling.com. Another girl here uses it and said her family talks for like twelve cents a minute. If you call and havent gotten through, im sorry but dont know what to say. I leave my phone on here every night from 6pm on (1pm your time on the eastern seaboard)

PS, cathy...what happened with dora and molly???

Miss you all and cant wait to post again and write more letters after training is over. (insert exclamation point here again).

Hey Again

Back in the cyber at Porto Novo but I dont have a ton of time so will trytosqueeze as much as possible for now. Thanks for all the comments and support. Training is exhausting but going well. It is split into technical, cross cultural, and language training. I bumped up to levels in french not that that now entirely matters as i just found out my post and will be in a village that spêaks ADJA.

So I am going to be in DOGBO in the mono couffo region of southwestern Benin. I have a "post mate" aka another volunteer (tefl=teaching english foreign language) in my village with me. and several other PCVs are in the region. Im the only health volunteer but it leaves open opportunities for cross sectoral work. The area Im in tends to be more aggressive in terms of being yovoed and harassed by men, etc. but I guess you just have to develop a thicker skin. Ill be working with an NGO and my primary projects will tend to focus on HIV AIDS or SIDA as it is called here. The Couffo region has the highest concentration of AIDS infected Beninese. But as it is, HIV / AIDS really is not as bad for Benin as for many african countries. Malaria is without a doubt the WORST health issue in Benin. Its also frustrating because no one in my host family sleeps with mosquito nets even though they are considerably well off and know the risks, etc. Plus pretty much everyone here thinks they have the Pallu here (paladisme or malaria) EVERY time they are sick. Case in point, yesterday my "papa" woke up sick and says to me "Oh, cathi...its the pallu." Doubtful, but okay. It doesnt help that the health centers will treat for mallaria along with everything else because it is easier than testing what is wrong so people always have the idea that they have malaria.

Okay...so my house. Peace corps Benin actually has the highest housing standards for Peace Corps in West Africa because its been here for 40 years. We all have to AT LEAST have our own private latrine with a cover, private shower room, cement floors and walls (no mud huts for benin) windows and doors with screens and locks, tin roofs, and at least é though preferably " rooms. It kind of depends where you are. So Im pretty happy about that. I have electricity when i get to post for a few hours a day but my nearest source of water will be 200meters away. Thats a long way to haul buckets but what can you do? I think a lot of volunteers hire local kids to do it. While Being in the south unfotunately means that all my papers will continue to be soggy for the next to years perpetually with this nasty humidity, the odds of me having scorpions in my house like in the north has significantly decreased, which pleases me. The town has a pretty big marche, and is closer to Lokassa, another town with pretty much anything you could need in it i am told. My region has grand popo in it==the Big beninese beach resort and the ONLY safe beach to swim at here since the riptides are VERY Deadly. Also apparently there are some hippos who live by me and you can take a little canoe out to check them out which seems interesting since hippos are apparently kind of mean and I would NOT want to be in a little canoe like boat near one. Oh, another fun fact about my spot is that there is a fanmilk depot. Fanmilk just might be the most delicious snack in all of benin. its a togolese product and its kind of like icecream in a capri sun like pouch. Men walk around honking horns with little carts of fanmilk and during chaleur and pretty much every day here, when the fanmilk horn blows all the yovos in the area go running. They have us in the bag for anything cold here. My area will have 4 seasons, a long dry, long rainy, short dry, and short rainy season, which seems better than the norths 2 season year with the harmattan sandstorm winds. Well my time here is running out and i have to get ready to go au village today to practice some sensibilizations. I will try to get back for a longer time later this week to post more and respond to emails. Thanks everyone. I miss you all a ton. PS = I still havent figured out apostrophes or exclamation points etc on french keyboards. major bummer.