After some careful consideration, I decided that it'd be better to wait awhile and post when I had something more encouraging to write. So here we are!

First, the family update. I don't want to get into all the messy details, but things seem to have gotten worse and then better. And if not better, then at least...different. I went to IST and talked to Peace Corps about what was happening, and they did everything they could to try and help out. It's hard for me to trust Peace Corps after what happened in Benin, but the staff here in Senegal is really worthy of it; they are all very competent and extremely supportive. I came back from IST and had a very long, nervous bike ride back to post, hoping that the situation would be improved. My APCD actually said to me 'you have to go back on your own, but if anything else happens you get back on your bike immediately, go to Kedougou, and wait for me to get there.' Definitely confidence-inspiring, but Eric and I stopped about 7k from my site on the road and had a very necessary pep-talk about returning.

And things are...better. Honestly, what I was hoping for was just mutual respect and for home to be a place where I could eat, sleep, and hang out in peace. Upon returning I discovered that Vieux is definitely trying to start over; he's approaching me differently and more appropriately and that relationship seems to be workable. It's the kind of situation where we know we're not going to be super friends, but we can work together and respect each other better now. For whatever reason, his wife Ami does not yet appear to be on the same page, so I'm 1 out of 2 on that front. I don't want to get into specific examples, but the best way I can describe her behavior would be to remind female readers what the scarymean girls were like in high school; petty and really nasty. After the first day back I told myself that I needed to just not engage with her, and try really hard not to let her upset me. When I'm having a good day, that's pretty easy. But if I'm ever tired, discouraged, sick, or weaker in any way--it certainly gets harder. And it's the kind of thing that just tends to wear on me over periods of time. So for now, I'm trying to just stay as even-keeled and cheerful as possible, and making sure that I don't spend too much time at home, especially if I'm feeling the least bit vulnerable. We'll see how the situation evolves from there.

Other than that, my life here is looking up. We had IST, and while I wasn't particularly thrilled to attend IST for a second time, there was a lot of useful information and it was really nice to see everyone from my Senegal stage again. It's funny how different my relationships are with my stage in Benin and the stage here in Senegal. In Benin all of my relationships were impacted by the fact that we were all there, doing this seemingly crazy thing together, experiencing everything together for the first time. We had more similar experiences and emotions and those bonds with people are unique because of that. I think they would all agree that we, as a group, were also a little wild, and that's part of the reason I miss them so much--the volunteer culture was just different, and my place in it was different as well. But I love the Senegal stage as well. It's a very different group; they're all about playing camp games and having cuddle piles, but I can't imagine coming into a better group of people. Now that I'm more stable here I have a iittle more perspective on what a mess I was when I first came into country, and I feel indebted and attached to this group of people because they really did welcome me and support me hugely.

The other good news is that I'm a lot more comfortable in my region, I think all of the 'new stage' here in Kedougou feels better about being in the region. Right after IST we had a super-productive house clean-up and meeting, and we've all gotten more of an opportunity to spend time with people at the house. There's another stage of volunteers currently in training and I think we get something like 7 or 8 new volunteers, so we're all really excited about that. All in all, it's kind of a big transition time for the region--lots of changes and new people, and so far it's gone really well, I think.

We're also all working together on the leadership camp that happens at the end of September at my site. This camp got started three years ago and has gotten bigger every year. What's really encouraging though, is that it's not just a Peace Corps camp--there have been Senegalese counterparts involved from the beginning and they're taking over more and more of the responsability every year. This year they've been officially certified as counselors after completing some government training, and in our meetings with them they all seem to be very motivated and enthusiastic. So we're working to put together the activities and get everything ready--it should be a really stressful but fun two weeks, and it's great to have something big to work on at the moment.

So that's pretty much it. People keep telling me that the blog sounds like I'm still sort of on the fence about all of this, about staying, about the potential of being happy here. So it's nice to be able to finally update and say with some degree of certainty that I'm going to be able to make this work, which is at the very least how it feels right now.

I never know how to start these posts, it feels weird to write a greeting but I'm always tempted to start that way. Hay! Hi, readers!

Things here in Senegal are moving along. It's been a very bumpy couple of months but I've finally been at my new site long enough to feel comfortable and able to imagine finishing my service here, which is a huge relief. I will say, though, it's the kind of relief that comes with an edge of resignation--okay, I'm going to stay, I'm actually committed, am no longer on a very weird, very stressful kind of vacation.

So--what's happened in the last month: lots of things.

We as a region have all been working on mosquito net distribution, the Senegalese government, Malaria No More (a U.S. NGO) and NetLife have all been involved in organizing a census and distribution of mosquito nets. Here in Dindefello we did the census in an extremely tiring day and a half--the two health post matrons and I went to every single household in the village and counted people, sleeping places, and nets to figure out how many nets each household needed. The census was good for several reasons; I can now ask a lot of mosquito-net specific in Pulaar, I got to officially meet literally every single person in village, and I got to know the health workers much better. The two matrons at my health center are really awesome, very dedicated, hardworking, genuine people.

The actual distribution of nets was June 11th in Dindefello and happened this past week in the rest of the region. I have to be kind of obnoxious here, I really want to write about the distribution but I have to wait a few months, so look for that post in September.

Immediately following the census and distribution we had a language training here, so three other volunteers and a language teacher came out for three days. This is a really cool thing about peace corps Senegal--all new volunteers get an additional language training about a month after install, and then any time any three volunteers want the same language course (advanced pulaar, intermediate french, beginning wolof, etc), Peace Corps sends a teacher. Our language training here went really well--it was a much-needed and well-timed boost.

I wrote in my last entry about living with a family, and as I said, it definitely can make daily life and integration much easier. However, in the past couple of weeks, I've also experienced how it can make life more challenging. My family had a volunteer before me, which in some ways is good because they've been exposed to another American and they understand some of our weird cultural things better, but it can be hard for families who've previously had volunteers to understand that not all Americans are the same.

The biggest issue with my family so far has been gender-based. The volunteer before me was male, and so I suppose he fit into the family order differently. Fitting into the family is also always a challenge, you're supposed to be part of the family but at the same time, you're supposed to be an outsider who came here to work and do cultural exchange, which is such a neat, positive term for what is actually a very messy, complicated process. This is sort of the continuing difficulty of Peace Corps: accept and appreciate the culture you live in, but don't accept it so much that you lose sight of yourself or your ability to improve your community. And then it's different for every person--as volunteers we each struggle with questions daily--what can I accept? How far can something go before I have to set a boundary? Can I set this boundary and still be an effective volunteer? What from my culture am I not at all willing to let go? People often ask, "so what do you do, as a Peace Corps volunteer?" And I think we all struggle to answer that because we have our actual projects, but a lot of our work is figuring out how to be effective humans in a culture that is not our own, figuring out what we can and want to represent about America. But it's a lot easier to say, "I build gardens with womens groups" than it is to say "I pace around the inside fo my hut, muttering to myself about boundaries and cultural differences."

I've been doing a lot of that throughout the past few weeks. The head of my household here is also supposed to be one of my work partners. His name is Vieux and he's kind of like my host dad/brother. He, his wife Ami, their children, and his mother are the people I think of as my nuclear family in Senegal, even though there are many more people who live in my compound. Vieux is an interesting character and we'd had a few run-ins over the gender issue--a long discussion while biking when he told me men and women should never be equal, an incident where I was helping Ami cook dinner and he told me that it was only right that I, as a woman, was doing womans work. After that we sat down and had a long, polite discussion about how 'in my culture, that's insulting--if you said that at my house you would end up with dinner dumped over your head, I have the same job as the previous volunteer and you need to treat me the same, etc.

But little things kept happening--male volunteers who visited were treated differently than female volunteers, and the most alarming was that I realized he wasn't really ever speaking to me--he'd joke around with me occasionally but would never actually have a conversation with me. All of this came to a head during the language classes, when he started talking unfavorably about me to a male volunteer while I was sitting about a foot away from him on the porch. I raised my voice, told him that that was extremely rude, and walked away.

Obviously a normal human reaction for me to have, but it set off an unfortunate chain of events. Ami sat me down and told me that if I'm going to be a woman and live in their house that I have to "be silent and assume that Vieux is showing you the right way--he's the master of the house and so he's your master. And if you don't, I'll stop talking to you, I'll make sure nobody else talks to you, etc." It was a rough night, the kind of incident where you go back into your hut and say to yourself "F--k this, I don't know why I'm trying to live in this culture at all, I'm just going to pack it in and go home."

The next morning I talked to Ami and explained in the calmest way possible, that Vieux is not the master of my anything and of all the skills I possess, being silent is perhaps the least utilized--right up there with 'not being stubborn' and 'flying.' And thankfully, Peace Corps heartily backed me up. Adji, perhaps the most over-qualified and effective PC employee I've encountered yet, came to check in on all the new volunteers and had a conversation with both Ami and Vieux, during which she said, 'Il n'y a pas une probleme' upwards of 10 times. In West Africa, whenever anyone says 'there's not a problem' it means that there's absolutely a problem. But so far her talk seems to have been effective, and familial relations are improving.

In addition to the net distributions, community research, and Pulaar-learning, I've been exploring the region, which is ridiculously beautiful and full of people who like to camp and climb mountains and bike everywhere. Eric, who lives 7k from me, and I climbed a mountain at his site, and this week I went up the mountain that is literally in my backyard to Donde. There's caves and the sources of two waterfalls up on the plateau, and we spent the night up there as well. It's incredibly helpful, after a few rough days, to take in a mind-clearing view from the top of a mountain.

I do have consistent bad luck with regard to run-ins with dangerous African wildlife. It's kind of a running joke with one of my other neighbors, Tim, because every time I hang out with him there's some kind of incident. At his post, there's a really great spot for swimming in the Gambia River, and the first time I was there he was telling me that the villagers kep telling him there were crocodiles, but he'd never seen one. No sooner had he finished the sentence than we heard a splash and watched a crocodile enter the water. We swam anyway. The next time I was there, he sat on a huge snake, and while we were up in Donde we encountered five (yes, five) baby vipers. Babies, yes, but...vipers. So I either have really bad luck because I run into these things, or really good luck because I'm still alive.

I think that's about all of my news. Oh, except--the World Cup is happening. I'm guessing it isn't that big of a deal in the U.S. unless you accidentally turn on Telemundo, but it is a huge huge deal here, especially because an African country is hosting this year. Televisions and radios have come out of the woodwork, and been made functional by sketchy wiring and enthusiasm. Most of the African teams have already been knocked out, and people here in Senegal always cheer for whichever African team is playing. So the best and worst game so far was when America played Ghana. Eric and I watched it with what felt like the rest of my village at the health center. It was tied for awhile, and then when Ghana scored in overtime and the entire compound erupted, Eric and I realized that whether America won or lost, we were probably going to have to get out of there quick. When we lost, he and I were so close to the door that we slipped out before anyone could really rub it in our faces.

And that, my friends, is the news. This weekend our region has a huge 4th of July party which we're all really looking forward to as a nice break. And I know that everyone wants pictures: be patient. Our regional internet was destroyed by lightening and I haven't had a chance to charge my camera. I guess that's not all of it--for some reason it's hard for me to take pictures here. I think when you live somewhere it's hard to be good about documenting it until you're leaving. I don't have the pictures I wish I did from Benin, which you'd think would make me take more here and now, but it's inexplicably had the opposite effect. But I go to training in Mid July and will try to put some up then.

That's all for now, mail is arriving at the new address, so send me letters with your updates, please!

Look! Internets! Way before I said I'd have them!

I had to come into Kedougou for a training--we're doing a region-wide mosquito net distribution, so there's a training in the regional capital today, and then another training at my site on monday, followed by three days of census-taking, and then the actual distributions will happen at the end of the month.

So, site! I've finally seen it and lived there for two weeks. I'm think the best way for me to talk about this right now is to make a list, because otherwise things will get too scattered.

How my first two weeks at site in Senegal have been different than my first two weeks at site in Benin:

1. There are sandwiches.

I don't think anyone who knows me well really needs further explanation of that. I love sandwiches, and there was no food at my site in Benin, much less bread. In the morning in Dindefello I can go buy egg sandwiches, or tuna sandwiches. Tuna sandwiches!

2. I live with a family and it's way way way better than living alone.

For starters, they feed me. Which means that I don't have to spend most of my time worrying about how I will keep myself alive, like I did in Benin. I really like my family so far, there's a lot of people but they're all really great. It's also just way more culturally appropriate to be living with a family than not; in Benin people didn't really know how to classify me because I was a single female living alone, which culturally doesn't make sense to them. Here, because I live with a family and have their name, it's easier to explain to people who I am and what I'm doing here. So yeah, my new name at post is Aminata Sylla, which I have to say about a gzillion times a day. The Pulaar have this thing--there are only a few last names; Jallo, Ba, Barry, Camera, etc. And there are jokes between families, so because I'm a Sylla, I tell Cameras that they're liars, cheaters, my slave, etc. And it's all in good fun. It's a little bizarre.

3. Where I live is extremely, ridiculously, beautiful.

Not even sure where to start with this one. Mountains everywhere, trees. And the mountains are really right there, I can see them when I'm showering. If I don't have something to do for a day I can hike out to the waterfall, there's baboons and chimps and monkeys and huge monitor lizards in the woods and sometimes I'll just be walking and then out of nowhere: baboons! It's crazy. It's the start of rainy season here in Senegal now, so everything is turning really green, there's grass! It's the kind of thing that doesn't make or break your service but it's definitely a great perk. If I get in a bad mood sometimes I look around and then tell myself to shut up, and that works at my site. (Um yeah, all you people who weren't going to visit Benin...might want to reconsider.)

4. I'm busy.

This is maybe the biggest one, after the sandwiches. I have things to do everyday. I've visited my neighbor Tim's site down the road twice--he's an Agroforestry volunteer and so I've gotten to work in his gardens and swim in the Gambia River. And Dindefello is big, so it's taking me awhile to walk around and meet everyone. There's language practice, too, and I'm sitting in on women's group meetings every week. And this week there is the mosquito net training and census, and then we have a short language seminar at my post for 4 days, and then we're halfway through June! It's just really different; in Benin I would wake up and just have this whole long day with nothing in it stretching out in front of me, and sometimes that was the most discouraging thing about being there. I was kind of expecting that to happen here, too, and so this has been really great for me so far.

Okay so this is the last update for awhile, and its primary purpose is to say: hey look! Hannah has a new address! That means you can send things to me! Like letters! and food! and chocolate! and books!

I've been at the regional house in Kedougou for the last few days, waiting to get installed, and now that's happening tomorrow. eek! eek. I'm excited to live somewhere again, but what's kind of freaking me out is that this is....it. All of the chaos and the moving around between countries and host families and training centers and regional houses...in all of that it's been easy to say to myself, I'm unhappy but it's going to pass because things are going to change, this isn't permanent, etc. What's scary now is that I'm actually settling down somewhere and so the last few days have been nervewracking. Obviously in coming here I had to believe that things were going to be better, but there was kind of a lot of time to kill before I actually had to move by myself to another village and hope that it really is better than the last round.

It's been an interesting couple of days. This regional house is a hilariously accurate peace corps stereotype. It's not a house at all, it's actually a series of huts, porches, and pavilions with different purposes; some for cooking, sleeping, sitting, etc. Before coming down here, I'd heard that this region had all of the he-man beardy outdoorsy straight men, and so I was kind of prepared for the atmosphere, but man...that was not a joke. This compound is full of shirtless guys throwing things at each other and playing guitar and...scratching.

In all fairness, though, they've all been really great and welcoming and the few girls have been great too. But when we're all sitting around the communal kitchen arguing about agriculture techniques it starts to feel like a hippie commune, in a good way, I suppose. Last year my friend Kaitlin and I went on an epic roadtrip and we slept one night at a treehouse hostel in Georgia, and this place so far really reminds me of that. It's very calm and serene and there is a lot of quasi-outdoor space, which I really like.

We went to the market yesterday to buy all the things we needed for our huts, which was stressful. I'm not a good shopper on the best of days, and when it's hot and you're trying to figure out how many buckets you're going to need I can get really cranky. We also introduced ourselves on the radio--the peace corps volunteers down here do a weekly radio show in pulaar, where they play music and talk about health/environment/agriculture issues, and also just whatever they want to talk about. It was really inspiring and a little intimidating to hear a volunteer just talk into microphone in flawless, fluent pulaar. I also had my very first warthog sandwich, which is a speciality here in Kedougou--it was delicious. This is gross, but the burps are really similar to burps after I've eaten a barbacoa burrito at Chipotle, so I'm really happy about that.

I think that's about all for now, just wanted to check in before I head out to village for a few weeks. I know it's been chaotic and a lot of people have been worried, and with good reason! But I hope that now things will start to settle down again. I remember my first few weeks in village as being really difficult, but I know that things will be easier this time. There's food, first of all, and that'll make a big difference no matter what. The plan is to stay in Dindefello until the fourth of July, when there'll be a big party here in Kedougou.

So until then...call, send letters, or even just happy thoughts my way!

Okay.

I'm in Senegal, and I made it through the first week. It's been....unpleasant, and I didn't want to update until I had something more positive to say, and now I do, so in an effort to give you some kind of remotely accurate description of what's going on I've broken everything down into categories: the good, the bad, and the ugly.

The Good.

1. Senegal is waaaay more developed than Benin.

Obviously not all parts of it are, and I've only seen Dakar and Thies, but hooooooly cow. Unbelievable. Dakar is the biggest city in West Africa and it acts like it. My culture shock started pretty much as soon as the plane landed. Dakar is an actual city that has its own personality, as opposed to the 'generic dusty dirty west african city' feeling that you get most other places. That's not entirely fair, I know, but I find that I just keep saying over and over, "it's like a...real place."

2. My site is, to quote, "wicked awesome."

And I'm pretty sure it actually is. Every current volunteer I talk to has the same reaction when I say where I'm going, and it's always some combination of the following: that's the site everybody wants/all the cool people are down in Kedougou region/you get all the visitors/sputtersputter waterfallmonkeys sputter sputter. Basically, all sources agree that it's worth holding out through the rest of training to make it there.

3. Pullo Futa > Fon

Pullo Futa is the language that I'm learning. Yesterday someone compared it to an ewok language, and that's actually about right. It's really bizarre, but way more fun than Fon was. Fon was really rough and one-syllable word based, and the vocabulary was really small, so you had to just use the same almost-but-not-quite-right words over and over, which wasn't satisfying. Pulaar so far is way more whimsical, and it does sound really funny, kind of bouncy/beepy. And that brings me to another thing--the people here are quiet. In Benin I lived with the Fon, and to be perfectly honest with all of you, I've yet to find anybody who particularly enjoys living with the Fon, especially in the Bohicon region. It's just a lot of yelling all the time, and you learn to deal with it, but I find that I'm really loving the decrease in volume here in Senegal. It's kind of like not realizing how annoying the rain on your car roof is until you go under a bridge and it stops for a minute. Except this is a really long bridge.

4. My stage seems really cool.

Hi Benin people, I'm sure they're not as cool as our stage. But they are really nice and welcoming and so far I like them a lot.

5. I'm in a language class by myself.

This is probably the best way for me to learn language. Anyone who's ever been in a language class (or really any class, I guess) knows that I can be a little, erm...demanding. I should probably take this semi-public opportunity to apologize to people who have been in class with me/taught me in class. Sorry, I know that I can be really obnoxious.

And now....

The Bad.

1. I'm in a language class by myself.

To be honest, this would make anybody crazy after awhile. It's like being the only child, but worse and more intense. There's nobody to deflect some of the attention, so there's not ever even 30 seconds to space out and not pay attention. It's just exhausting, because I have to answer every single question and give every single example. Oh, and I've been doing that everyday this week for SEVEN HOURS A DAY. Seven. That's right. That horrified little shudder you just experienced was completely and totally appropriate.

2. Woah, isolation.

Part of the deal with me coming to Senegal was that I got to come in kind of with a training group and get to know them a little. Right now they go back and forth between the training center and villages where they are learning their languages. I was under the impression that they were in the center for about half the week and in the village for the other half of the week, so I didn't freak out when I was told that I had a homestay here in Thies. Then I looked at the schedule and saw that the other trainees will be gone for 3 of the next 4 weeks, which would leave me completely alone in Thies, having 7 hours of language class and nobody to hang out with afterwards. Not the best situation. Which brings me to...

The Ugly.

1. Me, this week.

The combination of everything above turned me into a real crazypants this week. When I realized that I'd have to be spending three weeks like how I spent this week, I just started doing a peace corps rendition of Girl, Interrupted...and I was not Winona Ryder, trust me. You know that scene with Angelina Jolie in the basement where she looks like a crazy creature from outer space? It was something like that. I've been riotously unstable, is all, and pretty overt about it. But my breaking point came on Wednesday, and eventually led to a productive discussion about how to make this better, and so I think we've worked out a plan for me to be in village with everyone else most of the time, even if it means teaching myself language. So, in the end, positive. But yeesh.

2. Grandma Senegal.

My homestay family is wonderfully nice--all the kids are polite, and everybody tries to help me learn language and puts up with my near-narcoleptic fits of exhaustion. I discovered Grandma Senegal on the first day because her room is right next to mine and every time I walked to my room I'd see her laying on the bed or sitting on the floor. She's this tiny, emaciated thing that coughs a lot. Then my third day with my family, I ran into her outside in the courtyard, which is when I figured out that she's blind, as she was edging along the wall, hitting it with her stick, and shouting at everyone. Then she started shouting at me, and of course I couldn't understand, but I assumed she was demanding who I was, so I said my Senegalese name, Binta. Um, Binta? Binta? Ko Binta mi innetee? She was understandably confused and reached out to grab me, and she did that old-person-vicegrip thing to my arm, dropped her stick, and then used both hands to feel my face. She was still confused, muttering to herself, and then she got to my hair. Obviously my nose just feels like a nose, but my hair pretty clearly identifies me as a white person. There was a weird moment where I was like, okay, how is this going to go over...and then she burst into a big smile (two teeth, I counted, I mean I was right there) and said, BINTA! Anyway, she's pretty hilarious. Sometimes I come home from school and find her backed into a corner in the hallway, swinging her stick around and yelling at everyone, her face all screwed-up and raisin-like. She doesn't really go in 'the ugly' category, but I thought I'd finish on a nicer note.

So there.

I haven't updated in a really really long time, and I'm sorry, but I have a looooot of good reasons.

So general timeline of events since the last update:

-got really scarily ill and had to come to Cotonou for a week. This was a fun time, and by fun time I mean...that I got e-coli and couldn't manage to get out of my latrine, and then ended up vomiting and passing out just outside of it, before eventually being discovered by the chief of my village who commandeered a moto to get me to the health center. Then I spent the entire next night at my health center, which did not have electricity or running water, with the peace corps doctor on the phone telling the nurses what to inject into me. It was rough, all around. The next day I had to go to Cotonou to see the doctors, and got really lucky because when I got to the paved road, there was a mini bus going directly to Cotonou. Then I got in and had to climb over the biggest and ooziest dead bushrat I've ever seen in my life, and promptly vomited out of the window. Anyway, I got better, e-coli was vanquished, etc.

-went back down to Cotonou to present at a meeting. It wasn't particularly exciting and also it's hard to follow the bushrat/vomit story so I'll just leave this.

-visited Sarah Binder's post for a mental health 48 hours. Sarah Binder rocks, we made burritos, good time all around.

-had my friend from Hopkins come and visit for 10 days, which was awesome. That's right. Michael Tanenbaum came to Africa. It was really fun to have someone from America come and react to everything in Benin. We spent a few days at Grand Popo, which is the only sort of beach-resort here, went back up to my post for a day, and then continued onto a safari up north in Park Pendjari with Sarah and Jeff. I have pictures, and will put them up as soon as my hard drive stops being angry and finicky with me.

-We had the Gender and Development program fundraiser up in Parakou, which is one of the only times all of the volunteers are together at one place and time. It was kind of a 'peace corps prom' type thing, everyone got dressed up and we had dinner/dancing/impromptu swimming in hotel pools. It was a fun weekend. We so rarely have any reason to even try to look pretty or even clean, so it was nice to remember what that felt like, and see everyone in 'real people' costume. It was almost hard to recognize people who put their hair down or really scrubbed the

And now for the hard part. There have been some recent developments in my life here in Benin that have been stressful and unexpected and have now been resolved enough to talk about here.

So let's just get right to it: I have to leave Benin. Merg. I can't put all of the details here, which is frustrating for everyone, but here is what I can say: there was a security issue at my post and it was no longer safe for me to stay. I'm completely fine, wasn't hurt, etc. It was more of a preventative measure, and so now I have to leave the country. In the end, I'm glad because I would not have felt safe returning to post, but it was a really terrible way to leave my post, and I'm still trying to deal with that.

The last two weeks or so I've been in Cotonou, trying to figure out if I wanted to go home or to another country and then if I wanted to go to another country, then where? So there have been a lot of pro and con lists and circular thinking and pacing and all of the elements that usually go into my decision making. Cut my losses and go home and apply for grad school? Grad school in what, where? Go to a new country and start over? Accept a third year position in Mali? Wait and see if Fiji makes an offer? (that was a real consideration, for a few days.)

In the end, I made the decision to accept a transfer to Senegal. There was a lot of back and forth, and it is certainly intimidating to think about starting over in another country. But in the end, what the decision came down to is this: my mind went all over the place in the last two weeks and as a result I'm a lot clearer on graduate school decisions. But my heart and my gut are still in West Africa. And so I'm going to Senegal.

I'll be leaving hopefully on Thursday, after I run around for a long time and get more papers signed in the correct order and pack and all of that. I'll be joining a group that arrived in Senegal 3 weeks ago for their training, so I do have to re-do training, but in a different country, and learning a new language (Pulaar). After training, I go to post, and they've already told me that my post will be Dindefelo. You should copy and paste that weird foreign word into google images, and then you should consider booking a ticket to come visit me. It's beautiful.

I know this is all a little jarring, and trust me, it's been a little jarring on my end, too. In the end, I'm just not done here, and so it's time to start over and try my luck in a new place. I'm sad to leave Benin, I'll miss motos and fanmilk and carrying my helmet everywhere. I will miss my friends here immensely. And so I'm sad to leave, and excited/nervous about starting over.

I'm going to update the address, and update as soon as I can after I get to Senegal!

Okay so just as an fyi, Kara just put up pictures on her blog (www.karainbenin.blogspot.com), and there are a lot from our christmas in Toweta. She would also like me to add that there are also pictures of her that are far more attractive than the one I posted. Go look at those, too!

Tony sporting his swear-in mustache

SED people

Jeff who lives in Bohicon and lets me stay at his house all the time

Kim and Katie

Kara

Lucien, who took me hunting

My nuns! To the left is Antionnette, to the right is Nadine.

Sarah Binder!

Jennifer

Hi, hi, hello.

So I haven't updated and I've been sort of debating with myself about how to update and what to say. The thing is, if I update and it's not all that cheery, and then I don't get to update for another 3 weeks, then I leave some depressing thing up on the blog for that long and that just doesn't work. But, you know, this is Africa, not everything can be cheery and I'm certainly not going to lie to you, nameless/faceless internet audience.

So, December has been a little rough. There have been good parts too, and I'm just going to try and relate news in general from the month.

West Africa is hot. Heat rash sucks. Thinking that you have heat rash and then finding out that it's just a horrendous, body-wide allergic reaction is a relief but also itchy and gross. If that was heat rash I was coming home, no joke. But yeah, it's hot, my clothes dry outside in less than 2 hours. Hot Christmas for a Clevelanders is like serving burritos at a nursing home; it doesn't work. So mostly I'm pretending Christmas isn't real, like those kind of lame Christmas in July parties that people have. Still a party! But not real Christmas. This strategy is working.

Errrr--I'm pretty sure that Peace Corps reads these blogs so I feel weird, like I can't say what I want to, and so instead of being prudent about that I'm....going to say what I want to. I've felt a little cooped up this past month. Peace Corps Benin has this rule that you're not allowed to spend the night away from post at all, ever, in the first three months, and I'm a pretty vocal opponent to that rule. So without getting into all the ins and outs of that, it's been really annoying, to be grounded by an employer when my mom never even grounded me in high school. So yeah, boo, hiss, etc. The good news is that as of yesterday, the fasten seat belt sign has been turned off and we are now free to move about the country (provided we fill out the required requests and forms and acquire several peoples' signatures and leave the form in the exact specific cubby and be sure to return exactly on the day we said we would and text to signify that we are not sleeping in our beds if it's less than 48 hours)! To be fair, I get why the rules exist, it's just not really in my nature to like them all that much (okay? don't shut down my blog, Peace Corps, thanks).

Ahem. So--post. There have been some news-worthy events. Not news-worthy in the larger worldwide sense, because I'm pretty sure nobody cares about whether that girl moved in with the chief's son or not, but blog-worthy events, anyway. (She did move in, by the way, oooooooo). I went hunting! My friend Lucien offered to take me hunting with him, because he was explaining that he goes out all night and hunts. It sounded like an adventure so I said yes without thinking about how I'm not a huge fan of watching animals die, so oops. But we went off into the bush at 8pm and came back at 1am. It was definitely an experience; I wasn't allowed to talk so we had worked out signals with our flashlights, and following a skinny black man dressed in all black through the black night was pretty difficult from the getgo. I was proud of myself though because he tested me twice by stopping suddenly and saying "where's the village?" and both times I knew, which made me feel better, too. There were no bows and arrows or anything, but he was using this civil-war era gun that could actually be in a museum. Seriously, how did people EVER fight a war with those things? They take so long to reload. Definitely one of my more surreal experiences so far. The next day I got to watch his wife prepare the wild chicken and the porcupine that he killed. Gross, but also really cool. And porcupine is tastier than you'd think.

I've gotten so used to the animals at my post that I forget sometimes how shocking it is at first. I've had a few visitors who've compared it to a petting zoo and it's a pretty fair comparison. My screen door is still not fixed, either, so sometimes I get really close encounters. Twice this month I've opened my outside door, used the latrine, and then closed just the screen door and laid back down in bed to doze a little, only to be woken up by an animal in my bedroom. Once it was a goat, and it's slanty eyes were right on the other side of my mosquito net. It panicked, of course, and then tried to butt its way through the screen door, which I did not appreciate. And then two weeks ago I was laying in bed staring at a lizard that was crawling on top of my net when I heard peeping, which isn't unusual. But the peeping just kept getting louder and louder and then I finally turned and looked and a momma chicken had led 5 of her fluffies into my house. They were harder to get out than the goat.

Oh, and speaking of animal motherhood! I have a favorite village dog, she's the dog of the kid who I tutor in English. She was pregnant and happened to have her babies on a day when I was away from post and when I came back she got really excited and then made me follow her behind a shed to show me the puppies. They were still kind of blind and gross and mole-rat-y, but I made sure to coo and tell her how cute they were. Just like what you tell human mothers, right? Babies take awhile to get cute.

So anyway, I am really glad that these first three months are over, and feel pretty good about how I've adjusted into my community. And I'm really looking forward to the next few weeks. A few volunteers are coming to my post for Christmas, which is going to involve goat, sodabi, and dancing nuns. Then one of my friends is visiting for New Year's, and then we all have IST down in Porto Novo for the first two weeks of January. I get to speak so much English! And then it's back to post and into projects, hopefully.

Pictures! Pictures will be uploaded while I am at IST. I have promised this individually to many of you and now to everyone who reads this. I prooomise. Pictures of my house and village and etc will go up in January.

Also--thank you thank you to people who have sent things. I know it's frustrating and icky sometimes but yesterday Nadine showed up with 7 envelopes for me from America and there was a moment where I wasn't sure if I was going to pee my pants from excitement or cry from happiness. (I cried, and went to the bathroom soon afterwards. Good call.) A Christmas miracle! So thank you.

Okay that's all I've got for right now. I hope everyone is having fun getting ready for Christmas, if you have snow try and love it a little extra for me, even though it's a pain to get off your car and your feet are cold.

I'm alive, all is well, and I do not have enough time to write or a blog post prepared. Sorry, all! I will be writing again soon, I promise, I just haven't been around the internets much.

I hope you're all having a good holiday, wherever you are in the world. Thanksgiving really doesn't translate well here, I keep trying to explain it but "pumpkins" and "pilgrims" ended up leading into a discussion about where America is and how the world is round, not flat.

On THAT note,

Happy Thanksgiving!

It's hard to say things in general about my post, so Ive organized some scraps and tidbits that I wrote at post and am now trying to hurredly type up in the barely-functioning internet café, so if there are typos, please excuse them.

The Shortwave Radio

I love love love my radio, and am very much a PC stereotype at night when I sit in my cement box, lit by a candle, sweating over my shortwave radio to find the news. I've developed a love affair with the BBC World Service, because I can always find them and so I get news, and sometimes other fun and dorky shows. My question, though, is this: where is America on the shortwave? We are nonexistent,-China, India, Pakistan, France, Germany, England, Canada, and a whole host of other countries make themselves known, but we don't have a station. China even has an english-language channel. Our only representation is this half-crazy man with a drawling voice who goes on and on about Jesus. I ask you--is this really the face we want to present to the shortwave community? Really? Write to your senators for me, I miss NPR.

The Poisonous Snake

I joked about how there were snakes at my post in the way that you sort of nervously joke about things that actually scare you in an annoying, high-pitched sort of way. But the first week and a half I didn't see one, even when I was walking alone en brousse, so I wasn't thinking about it too much. Then last week I was on my morning bike ride and I saw a fuss as I was coming down a hill-what looked like two men dancing with machetes. I pulled up in time to see them kill a snake that was about three feet long and thicker than my arm. A zoo animal. I asked if it was poisonous (what I actually did was universal sign language for "me, bite, kill?" I'll let you imagine the actual motions), and they nodded vigorously, and then picked up the snake to take it home and eat it. Welcome to my life, which has somehow turned into a National Geographic expose.

The Hidden Economy

My village is small-like really, really small. And initially I thought that it was literally impossible to spend money there, but slowly I'm discovering that that isn't entirely true. One woman sells warm bottles of beer and coke out of her hut, another sells phone credit, and lots of people sell prepared food, which has been a great discovery. I'm okay with feeding myself as long as when I'm hungry I can make food quickly: i.e. sandwiches. I can't really do that here, instead I have to plan and prepare meals, which I'm truly terrible at. I can do it for one meal a day, and I've never been much of a breakfast eater, and so the other big meal I have managed to find elsewhere. I've developed a rapport with a rice/sauce/fish lady in Setto, and now when I ride my bike out there every morning, I throw an empty tupperware in my saddlebag and bring it back full of lunch. My neighbor Solange also cooks and sells a lot, though we sometimes have language confusions. Yesterday morning I went over to buy some pate, and she didn't have any change. She said something in Fon that I took to mean "I'll give it to you later," so I went happily home, full of pate. Apparently what she actually said was "I'll bring you more, instead of giving you change," because she showed up at my door a few minutes later with a whole other plate of it. This was more pate than any normal human being could eat, but thankfully for all involved I am not a normal human being, and ate enough to put myself in a cornmeal coma.

The Silent Mountain

My homologue happened to be going to Dassa for a mass one Sunday, and I tagged alng ecause there's a volunteer posted in Dassa and I wanted to hang out and speak the Englishes for awhile. When I met back up with Nadine, she was with a group of pilgrims who had come to the grotto in Dassa, which is built into a very large hill. I called it a mountain, but the region is called "les collines" (the hills), so i guess technically it was just a hill--that just sounds horribly anti-climactic. Anyway, we at in the grotto for awhile and then Nadine asked if I wanted to climb the mountain. I said sure, and then a deaf woman sort of materialized and offered to take me up there. So I followed her, because why not? At first we got to a sort of landing that had the stations of the cross, and then the trail basically disappeared and turned into rocks and bush. I thought--okay, here I am, following an ancient deaf woman up a mountain in 70cent flip-flops. Immediately after I thought that, she grunted at me to leave my flipflops on a rock and then I was following a deaf woman up a mountain barefoot, which sounded even better and also was my real life at the time. We were actually climbing-like hand and footholds climbing. Finally we got to a plateau type place and I looked at one of the best views I've ever seen. It was late in the day and so everyting was all lit up and golden and we could see for miles. I exclaimed, which of course the woman couldn't hear, but she could see how elated I was and she grabbed my hand and held it and grinned. It was a life moment, as in--holy crap, this is my LIFE right now.

The Turning Point

I was getting along okay here in Toweta, I was learning language, hanging out at the health center, trying to work out how to feed and wash myself, etc. There were (and are) a lot of really drastic ups and downs, and I had a few days in a row that were mostly down for a variety of reasons. And then at the end of one of those days I forced myself to go outside and sit and talk, which ended up being a long, long discussion. Solange was explaining to two of my other neighbors that the women in the village are afraid to approach me because they can't speak French and some of the men can--the two other neighbors being amoung those who can. So I got to explain that I wanted to be able to talk to everyone and was learning Fon as fast as possible, but in the meantime people should feel free to come over and show me what they do, because I'm here to work with everybody. I had assumed (stupidly) that everyone knew I was here to work with the whole village, and not just the health center. The women, at least, did not know that--so it was this huge revelation. Solange went and spread the word, and about 50 women converged on my house--along with children, curious men, etc. We ended up having this impromptu meeting by flashlight in my front yard. They were all really excited--there was singing and dancing-and they immediately organized days and times to introduce their groups and what they do, so that I could get to know the community better. It was really great-it felt like progress, and attitudes toward me have changed considerably from distanced curiosity to a more active intrest and enthusiasm.

All in all, I'm doing well. I do get lonely and homesick out here--I missed Eileen Cooper's wedding and am SO not over it (ps-congratulations!), and there are definitely days when I can look at my pictures and days when I can't. Life is slower here, as well-I gues that's an understatement. SO there are times when I'm just deathly bored. I have been to see a few other volunteers who are in day-trip distance, and sometimes meeting for lunch and a beer chnges the whole week for the better. I do feel much steadier here now than I did the first two weeks, I've developed routines, I'm getting to know people bettr, and a lot of the tiny panic moments have disappeared. I did have my first Peace Corps sick experience, which grossly involved simultaneously expelling fluids into two buckets in my house, but that passed, thankfully.

My mailbox in Bohicon works! I got letters and packages there yesterday, so send me things! Here are suggestions!

--Tea (Earl Grey is my favorite, or any other flavor you can come up with)

--single serving drink powder

--CHEESE. parmesean, sauce mixes, etc.

--Packets of tuna and chicken

--any other spices or mixes that you think would taste delicious with the following ingredients: rice, beans, pasta, eggs, yams, onions, tomatoes, couscous. That's what I'm working with.

--good pens and notebooks

--candy/chocolate

--books and magazines---send me any written material you find interesting, even if it's outdated. I'm tearing through books and have a lot of time to think, so throw a good, complicated book into an envelope and I will love you forever.

PHEW. Made it with five minutes of internet time to spare!!

Just writing a quick post to let everyone know that I am alive. I had my one-week anniversary of being at post yesterday and then had to come into Bohicon for banking. I have no idea what to write, really---it's been really crazy. I think I'm doing well, my community seems to like me and I'm getting used to living there. But when I arrived my house wasn't finished so the first 5 days there were people in in all the time, which meant that I couldn't unpack, or cook, or have a place to hide for a minute and get myself together in the difficult moments. Annnnd my homologue left town for that whole week, so it was pretty stressful. One night I didn't have a door and there were goats and chickens just wandering in and out of my house. To be honest, I have a lot of cohabitants, though they're mostly lizards and they have mostly stopped crawling on the outside of my mosquito net. I'm still trying to figure things out; I saw my market and it is really small--not a lot of food happening there. So I'm working on figuring out what to buy where and how best to cook it. I've been spending my days learning as much Fon as possible, hanging out at the health center, talking to people. Because there sort of just isn't that much to do all day right now, I've been walking a lot in the fields, and biking way more than I expected I would be--I'm up to 10 miles a day already, which has been good for me.

I have discovered, also, that my phone reception isn't quite as reliable as I'd thought--I don't have reception in my house, I sort of have to climb a hill up to the road and then I can receive calls. So if you're trying to reach me and it's not going through-that's why. I know it's frustrating but if you keep trying the timing will eventually work out.

Okay I've got to get going, I only have a few hours and I have a lot of things to buy and people to see while I am somewhat connected to civilization. I just wanted to let everyone know that I'm doing well--it's crazy, there are a lot of really big ups and downs, but I'm working on getting used to living here. I'll try to update again soon!

Hi Hi Hi,

It’s been awhile since my last post….and everyone is kind of going to have to get used to that. Because I’m moving to post tomorrow!

It’s been a really really crazy week. We finished stage, and immediately everybody was in a way better mood than they had been. We swore in on Friday at the Bureau in Cotonou and while I generally get overwhelmed and sweaty and uncomfortable at ceremonies, it feels wonderful to be an official volunteer. After the ceremony a few of us, instead of going to buy things that we needed for post, went and had Lebanese food (priorities in order), and that was when it sunk in that I’m a real volunteer now. I didn’t have to tell anybody where I was going—I just went! It was great. I felt like a badass all day yesterday—I could go wherever I wanted, I could leave the city if I wanted to! It was cool.

I’ve spent the last two days hanging out with everyone and trying to get ready for post. The market is really stressful because everybody is screaming yovo at you the entire time and trying to physically pull you into stalls. Then of course when you decide that you want to buy something, you have to spend a small eternity bargaining for it, usually in a mixture of fon, French, and English. So I’ve haggled myself out the last two days but I’ve got everything I need, and it’s all packed and ready to go, which feels really nice.

Going to post is just a mix of interesting feelings; in some ways it feels like getting on the plane all over again, because we are starting over. We have all gotten used to life here in Porto Novo, and now our lives are going to be completely different and we’re going to have to figure things out all over again. But I am also really excited, because this is the real experience, and I do get to go out there alone and just figure it out myself. And I have a jolly nun, a puppy, a house with furniture, and a really excited community waiting for me.

I am going to be a little more out of touch, I do have to stay at post for three months which means that I’m not allowed to sleep anywhere else. I can, however, go into Bohicon for the day and I’ll be able to check internet then. I have a new address as well:

Hannah LaBerteaux

c/o Soeur Nadine

B.P. 81

Bohicon, Benin

Letters should be sent to that address because I’ll be checking it most often, and packages for right now can still be sent to Cotonou.

I’m sorry about the pictures not having captions, blogger is being really really difficult. The one of all the people is the people in my village, followed by some scenery there, and a picture of Nadine, my homologe. The next three are Afousa, the domestique at my house, and then our health group at swear in, followed by the environment group in their matching fabric at swear in.

I wish this was longer but I am really pressed for time and so it’s ending here. I miss you all a lot, and wish that it was easier for me to talk to everyone, but I do have phone reception (don’t forget that!). On post visit Nadine said that all I needed to bring with me to post was courage and joy, and so that’s what I’m trying to do. I will write again as soon as I can!

Post visit! Oh man, so much to tell. It was really great and also really overwhelming to see the place where I’ll be living for the next two years. I have been trying for the last hour and a half to upload pictures so that everyone could see it, but it really really isn’t working, so I’m going to write and explain it and then try to do a picture-post later this week. Sorry, developing country internets make it difficult, but I will get some up.

SO, my village is called Toweta Kpevi, which means “little Toweta.” There is a big Toweta down the road, which is why the distinction has to be made. I’m paired with a health center, which is run by three Catholic nuns. So my official work partner is this big, jolly African nun named Nadine, who is a really interesting and great character. She can outdrink everybody I know, which is really saying something, and she’s very deeply loved and respected by the village. She’s probably the most capable human being I’ve ever met; she moved out into the bush alone before there was even a health center, and has been there ever since. She says exactly what she thinks and feels, and though she’s usually laughing, she’s very determined and dedicated to her work. I like her a lot, and I can’t really imagine following anybody else into the bush.

And boy, am I ever en brousse. Once you leave the main highway and start on the dirt road to my village, there is really nothing, and it’s a long ride. Peace Corps demands that I write a detailed description with a bird’s eye view map of how to get to my village (preferably one that shows where helicopters could land), and I sort of had to laugh. There are literally no landmarks on the road, it’s a dirt road surrounded by bush—the only people who are even out there are Fulani nomads who herd cows, and they’ll only stay temporarily. I drew a river and just sort of gave up—okay Peace Corps, you can land a helicopter wherever you want, just watch out for the snakes (including POISONOUS VIPERS), scorpions, and apparently violent bush monkeys.

Anyway, I saw my house and my village and talked to people a little bit. My house is way nicer than I thought it’d be, it has three concrete rooms with a mat ceiling, and a latrine/shower area outside. My entire village is about 30 or 40 thatched mud huts, and my house is right in there with them. It’s physically extremely beautiful, everything is green and we are just at the start of the hilly region, so there is some hilly scenery in the distance. There’s no running water or electricity, and it is very isolated—really nobody except the nuns speak French. There’s no school, no market, no anything. When we got there the first night, the whole village showed up to dance and sing, and it was kind of like simultaneously being in an anthropology textbook and a planetarium. When it gets dark in Toweta, it gets full-on Africa dark, you literally can’t see your hand in front of your face. The health center does have electricity from a solar generator, so it works for an hour or two at night and I can charge my phone then, because I really do have phone reception, so that’s basically my only connection to the outside world. I can walk or bike the 7km to the nearest market every week, or take a zemi, and that’s how I get food.

So that’s all the common-sense-y information about where I’ll be and what the conditions are like. I really, really liked it there. It smells really great, and I felt really good about living there for two years. The people are really excited that I’m coming, and they understand Peace Corps really well—they know that I’m paired with the health center but that I can do any projects within the community, and they are all full of ideas already. There is a lot of work, and a lot of people who are anxious to get started on it. They understand that I don’t speak Fon yet, and they’ve already bought a blackboard so that they can teach me; they promised me that after the first three months I’d be able to speak it. Which is good, because right now it is really intimidating to not be able to understand anything people are saying. They also seem to be really invested in me being part of the community, I live next door to the political delegate who is kind of the chief of the village, and he told me numerous times that nothing bad would happen to me while I lived there, that the entire community was ready to accept and protect me. I got a really good feeling from the place and the people there. It’s also really interesting to be around people who are absolutely convinced that a higher power is watching over them always; these nuns literally aren’t afraid of anything. They are also dog-lovers, which is really unusual in this country. When I arrived at post, there were 12 puppies because the dogs had all just had babies, and so a good part of my visit was literally all sunshine and puppies. But I also got to work in the fields picking oranges, make Beninese food, and carry water on my head.

All in all, I feel like it’s going to be challenging to be so isolated and rural, but that I’m the exact right person for my post, which is a great way to feel about it. I do keep laughing about all the killer African reptiles and mammals that are out there, but if you’re going to do Peace Corps, you might as well do it all the way and get all mud-thatched and snake-weary, right?

Pictures to follow.

Wellllllll kids, it’s been a rough week here, and in an effort to honestly inform you of my activities while also trying not to depress and/or annoy you I’ve tried to make this one succinct.

I think a lot of the problem is that everybody is tired of being in stage. When everybody in your life is treating you like a middle schooler, sometimes you start to act like one, and that’s not a good idea for anybody’s life. When I first found out that we’d be in classes for the first two months I thought, Okay, you’ve done classes before, you can deal with that. Thing is, I was thinking of classes like college classes, which were of the “show up unless you can skip and still pass” variety, and for the past year the only classes I went to with any consistency were the ones I really liked. Here, I have to ask my Maman for lunch money in the morning, and if for some reason I don’t show up to a class the steps for Peace Corps Amber Alert are set into motion. (That’s not a real thing, fyi, that’s just me being snarky and obnoxious. Mostly there would just be a lot of phone calls and eventual yelling and guilt being thrown around.)

It’s just difficult to feel like I’ve completely lost my independence. And I haven’t, it’s mostly just me resenting the structure and having to play nice all day. I am sure that you, clever readers who know me well, can also correctly deduce that I’m having to watch my mouth. I’m doing pretty well on that front, really, and all of the venomous stuff is going directly into my journal. Which is funny, when I started the journal I thought, “Wow, maybe my grandchildren will read this one day.” That has now evolved (devolved?) into, “Holy crap, nobody can read this ever, they’ll think I’m a horrible person. Am I a horrible person? Can’t get into that right now, I have to go back to class.”

Anyhow, things are not that awful. We are all frustrated, and now that this group of people has been thrown together for a month and a half, I have sort of an overarching anticipation that at some point, reality TV show cameras are going to appear out of the bush and we’re going to be told that we didn’t actually join the Peace Corps, but instead will be featured in all our bucket-showered glory in a new prime-time MTV series about living in Africa. Like any good reality show, there are really good film-esque moments that happen personally and with other people, there are crappy human moments, and there are people who leave. One of my friends went home this week, and while he had really good reasons and I support his decision, in a completely selfish way I am really bummed that he’s not going to be around.

So here are the best things about this week. Firstly, it ended in burritos. Yesterday after class all the health people got together and made beef burritos that were delicious. I am of the opinion that a good burrito can fix almost anything, and so knowing that I can make them happen in Benin was stellar. Secondly, this coming week is really exciting. Monday and Tuesday we get to meet our Homologues, our work partners in each of our communities. We have a seminar with them for two days and then Wednesday we travel with them back to our individual posts. Which means that in three days I get to see my village and my house, meet my community, and finally have pictures in my head of what my actual, real-life life is going to be like in this country.

This didn’t end up being so succinct, but I’d like to just reassure everyone that despite the overall lame-ness of this week, I’m still a normal, stable Hannah (though I’m sure that came through in the biting humor, no?) so there’s nothing to worry about. I’ll be writing again after post visit, probably to gush all over the place and further propagate the “training is like a rollercoaster” analogy we hear every couple of hours here.

Oh P.S.---people are asking about pictures. They’re coming. If you were in the Peace Corps I could use this opening to tell you (again) that you needed to be patient and flexible. But you guys are normal humans, so I’m just going to have to tell you that I’ve taken an unacceptably small number of photos and am working on taking more and then planting myself in the internet café for hours while they upload. But they are coming, I promise.

Update: if you go to www.karainbenin.blogspot.com, you can see some yovophotos.

I’ve committed now to writing blog posts at home instead of when I’m actually using the internet, because it gets too stressful to do it that way. The keyboard thing is really messing me up, too: in the internet cafés the keyboards are all French keyboards, and so now when I try to type on mine I just have to switch it into French keyboard because there’s no point in trying to switch back and forth that often. I did this is France, too, and ended up just writing all of my English papers using French keyboard.

Okay anyway. It’s been a pretty good week here in Porto Novo. We got back from Tech visit and spent a lot of time talking to each other about it. Actually seeing how volunteers are living was a lot different than the kind of lives we’re leading now, and of course we’re all trying to picture what our lives are going to be like in this country for the next two years, so there was a lot invested in the trip for everybody. The TEFL kids (English teachers) actually got to see their posts and their houses, so it’s a little weird that they already know about their posts and we have to wait another week and a half to find out about ours.

It’s occurring to me that I may not have explained the setup here very well. We have four sectors of volunteers who are training together: SED (small enterprise development), TEFL, RCH (Rural Community Health), and EA (Environmental Action). SED and TEFL are at a different school in a different part of town, and RCH and EA are together everyday at our school. We still manage to see each other a lot, but it’s taken sort of a long time for us to figure out enough about the city and feel comfortable enough to start to feel like real-life humans again who can go places and see people without having to ask our parents for a ride.

It’s been an oddly religious week; I keep having all of these religious discussions with Beninese people. Every week we have to do these things called TDAs, or trainee directed activities, which are usually kind of tedious and homework-y, and it sort of feels like fate has given me some weirdly coordinated religious-based TDA. Ramadan started, and I’ve never really experienced Ramadan in any way so that has been interesting. Sunday night at 4 in the morning I woke up because there was a woman singing and a lot of drumming in the road outside, which happens sometimes for unexplained reasons, but then there were people banging on the metal door to the courtyard of my house. It kind of freaked me out, I’m the only person who sleeps on the first floor and people banging on your door and playing drums in the middle of the night unexpectedly can be a little alarming. The next morning I asked Maman what the deal was, and her immediate reaction was sort of “Eh, whatever, it was probably the Zangbeto, they go by at night all the time looking for people.” (Oh, sure, no big deal, just a giant haystack running around punishing people at night, whatevs). Then she thought about it for a minute and remembered that it was Ramadan, and explained that it was people coming to wake up Muslims to break the fast. My host Papa is Muslim, and that’s why they were banging on the door. So yeah, I think after 30 days of the 4am wakeup call I may even start to miss it.

I mentioned that my host Papa is Muslim, and my host Maman is Catholic. Their older son, Fiko, is sort of in the process of struggling with choosing a religion for himself. He goes to church with Mimi almost every morning, but he also gets all dressed up and goes to the Mosque by himself, even though he doesn’t really know how to pray there because his father is almost never home. It’s been interesting and also kind of painful to watch—the neighbors all laugh at him when he gets all dressed up to go pray with the Muslims, and he’ll really only talk to Mimi about any of it. Fiko is really, really smart and also a huge troublemaker, he’s almost always in trouble and when he gets hit for doing something bad he usually laughs during it, but people laughing at him over the prayer thing made him really upset. They told me that he doesn’t really understand now, and that he’s free to choose which religion he wants when he gets older. I think he’s just smart enough to be asking a lot of questions now, and I’ve managed to be around for a few of his conversations with Mimi about it, which have been really interesting and cool to participate in.

Last week they were sitting outside and talking about whether or not Jesus was white, and Mimi was telling him that Jesus wasn’t white, which totally blew his mind. They were originally talking about it in Goun (local language) and pointing to me as the example of “white,” and then Fiko asked me if it was true that Jesus wasn’t white like me, and I got to tell him that Jesus probably looked more like him than me, which led into a whole discussion about where Jesus lived and why we’re told that he’s white, etc. I got to tell him that my church at home has a non-white Jesus on the cross that we use for mass, which got an open-mouthed reaction (way to go, St. Dominics!)

Then one day this week I got home and only Fiko and Mimi were home and out back talking, and Fiko asked if Muslims and Catholics pray to the same God. I wrote down exactly what Mimi said back, because I thought it was really beautiful—she said, “Of course we pray to the same God. There’s only one God, one creator. It’s us humans, ourselves, who create the distinctions between the languages we use to speak to God.” I think Fiko is in good hands on the religious decision-making front, and I felt really privileged to be any part of their discussions about it.

Religion is a really big deal in this country, and there are many variations in religion here, as I’m just now starting to really appreciate. There are a lot of Catholics everywhere, a lot of Muslims in the North. In addition to that there is the Vodoo, which is pretty much everywhere, and separate from the Vodoo is sorcery, which isn’t religion, but often religious people believe in it; people will tell you that there is a lot of black magic and cursing going around, and you can buy some pretty gnarly things in the market for cursing people and warding off curses.

This week I got to talk to sort of a cross-section between religions because we split up in groups to talk to various people who are involved in everyday health and my group went to a Christian Celeste temple. The Christian Celestes are still really confusing for me, but the priest I talked to was saying that they have “visionnaires,” people who can see the future. So people come to them with a medical problem (or any other kind of problem), and then the visionnaire goes into a trance and divines what needs to be done to fix the problem, and they do it. The priest I talked to said that they work with modern medicine, and their role is to fix spiritually what medicine can’t fix scientifically. When we visited, we saw that the men and women sit on different sides of the temple to pray, they only wear white, their heads are covered and they’re barefoot. They use the same Bible that other Christians do, and they have various masses, but it was definitely an interesting hodge-podge of things. The priest we talked to was very welcoming and open to our questions, though, which was really great.

Man, this entry got long. The entire time I’ve been writing it, I’ve been watching a cockroach die from underneath my mosquito net. I’ve really become a total psycho about the mosquito net; at night you’d think I was securing the borders of a war bunker, and I sort of feel that way about it. This is the sacred space; bugs are not permitted to enter. Usually I kind of just shoo the cockroaches outside with a flipflop and kill or chase everything else out, but the one time a roach got under my mosquito net I went insane and really killed the crap out of it. Everybody has their limits, and mine are clearly defined by netting.

Ha, anyway—I’m learning a lot here, experiencing a lot, and getting more comfortable everyday. I’ll do my best to write again soon.

Hi Hi,

So this is not a pre-written blog post and I am really exhausted and I only have 18 minutes of internet left so you'll have to pardon the rush, but I feel guilty when I use the internet and then don't update my blog so I have to write a little of what's been going on.

Last week we went on Tech Visit, which was basically just visiting a volunteer at post for several days to better understand what our real lives are going to be like. I went to Takon, which was truly truly in the bush and really awesome. It's about the size of my village, and I loved it, so I feel like that bodes well for life at post. We did a few information sessions, walked all around the village and talked to people, I learned a lot of Fon, and the whole thing culminated with us rushing to the health center the last night so that we could hold flashlights while a baby was born. Insane. I'm not one for the blood and guts health stuff, and I'm not going to lie--there is a lot of really gross stuff about babies being born, but it was really amazing to see. I got to hold the baby while they were working on her mom and it was just---really awesome and impossible to describe. It was quite the experience, all around. We spent one night at a mud hut dance party, and the village itself was some seriously national geographic type stuff: breasts out, machetes in hand, etc. I loved it.

I'm sorry because this is such a truncated version of the visit, but everything is going well here, there are the usual ups and downs, frustrations and triumphs, but I feel really good about my life here so far, and promise to update in complete sentences sometime soon.

I miss you all and thank you for your emails and letters, i have yet to receive a single letter but that is not your fault, I know that there are letters on the way, I'm looking forward to them!

Hi all,

It's been a crazy week, but I feel pretty silly typing that because so far every week here is crazy and that probably isn't going to stop anytime soon.

On Thursday we went on another field trip during french class and went to meet the king of Porto Novo. We were sitting barefoot on the ground and the king came in and we had to do the whole bowing deal. Then a zambeto showed up and blocked the doorway and started to have a conversation with the king. Zambetos are part of the voodoo religion here, they basically look like giant haystacks and are used for various purposes. This one was part of the king's police of sorts, and so whenever anybody is acting up in the neighborhood he goes and intimidates/punishes them. Apparently two women had been getting in arguments and one threw boiling water on the other, and the zambeto was going to go punish her, and had to talk to the king about it first. Sometimes you just see them running down the street, which honestly just looks kind of awkward and hallucinatory.

Annnnnnd we found out our posts! I mentioned earlier that I'm going to be in the South, as it turns out I'm closer to the center of the country. Benin has a really lush south, then a series of hills in the middle of the country, and then the north. I'm in the Zou region, which is right before the hills start. I have a very, very, rural post. I've been joking with people by saying that my post is what you imagine Peace Corps is going to be like before you find out that a lot of people have running water and elecricity and are somewhere near civilization. I'm in a village of 1600 people; there's no running water, electricity, or any infrastructure of any kind. Pretty much nobody speaks French and I have to ride my bike several miles to get to the nearest market to buy food. I will have some access to amenities, though, because I'm paired with a health center that runs off a solar generator, so I will be able to use their electricity occasionally. I do also have cell phone coverage, which rocks. Those of you who want to WILL be able to talk to me throughout the next two years. I'm really, really excited. This village has had some interaction with Peace Corps, because two previous volunteers wrote grants for the funding of the health center, which is staffed by Catholic nuns, who are apparently really pumped about actually getting a volunteer for the village itself. My APCD talked a lot about how fantastic they are and how much they're looking forward to having me there.

So yeah. Putting the rural in rural community health, haha. It's just great to know where I'm going, it helps to diminish some of the summer-camp-y feelings of stage, since I already feel like I can't let them down. It definitely makes this whole thing much more real. Next week we have tech visit, which is when we basically go and shadow a volunteer for most of the week, and I'm going to be with a current volunteer who has a village that's about the same size as mine will be, so I'll be able to get a better feel for it. I laughed when I found out that our villages are the same size; throughout stage whenever anybody is referencing her post they roll their eyes and explain how "in the bush" she is.

Because nobody in my village speaks French except for my homologue at the health center, I've started to learn Fon the past two days. Oh man, you guys. Learning another language in French is kind of rough, first of all. Add to that the fact that Fon has a different alphabet and sounds that I don't even know how to make and you'll start to get a picture of what it's like. I'm enjoying it a lot, and it's nice to learn something and know the whole time how crucial it is, but I do kind of feel like I'm throwing up when I speak it because a lot of the words kind of need to start in your stomach and then accelerate out through your mouth. It's interesting.

Everything is still good, my host family still rocks, even though one day this week I woke up to my two year old brother being circumsized at 6:30 in the morning without any warning. The days have sort of eased into a routine, which is a good thing, though tedious sometimes. Every morning I wake up, have bread and tea for breakfast, bike through sand and trash to school while goats, chickens, and little kids run next to me; then school all day, avacado sandwiches at lunch, and usually we head to a buvette for a brief happy hour before heading home. Once I'm home, I'm usually exhausted. I do whatever chores they'll let me help with, hang out in the kitchen while dinner is being made, and then after we eat we all gather around the television to watch a mexican/spanish soap opera that I am already way too involved in, and then I'm in bed shortly after that.

That's what my life is like here. Also--a friendly reminder that if you love me at all, you will send me mail or email to tell me about your lives and perhaps also to send me chocolate or beef jerky or cotton tshirts.

So I wrote the previous post Sunday night because we were supposed to go to Cotonou on Monday, which didn't happen. And things have happened since then so I'm going to try and write a hurried post before I lose the internet.

Today has been probably the best day here. This morning my french class was supposed to go on a field trip--my french class is usually just me and one other girl, Colleen. But she was sick, so it ended up just being me, and we went to the Ethnographic museum, which was awesome. It was basically a crash-course in Beninese culture.

Before that, though, I found out that I get to start learning Fon, the local language of my post, really soon. That is especially awesome because my host family speaks Fon, and they've been dying to teach me since I got here. The faciliator who told me also told me where I'd be placed, sort of. He said it was a village outside of a specific city, so I know sort of where I'll be for the next two years. I don't know any other details about it, my house or how much contact I'll have or if there's electricity or not or anything, but I do know that I'll be in the south, which is cool. The soil is better so I can grow things, and I'm going to be close to Cotonou, which is the biggest city here. So that'll be my workstation, and (mom) you'll be glad to know that that's where we have to go if anything goes wrong, and that I'm close!

I know this is sort of hurried and rambly but at any second they're going to tell me that I have to go get on a bus back to Porto Novo, so I gotta go, I just wanted to share my excitement with you!

On Wednesday we drove to Porto Novo to meet our host families and move in, and I haven’t been able to update since then because my life has regressed to about elementary school level.

Let me back up and explain. I met my maman on Wednesday (she was shouting “ANNA!” because there are no H’s in French), and we made it back to her house. My host family rocks. Maman is intimidating and solidly in charge, Papa is away on business and I’m unclear on if/when he’ll be back while I’m here for the next two months. Maman’s mom (Mimi) lives here as well, and Maman has two kids: Fiko and Dodo, plus a niece who’s staying here (Shanique) and a domestique (Afousa). It’s kind of weird to just bust in on someone’s family, but it’s gone really well so far and I feel very comfortable here most of the time. Of course there are moments where I’m reminded of just white I am; Dodo is two and when I first got here he would scream and cry and run away from me because he didn’t know what I was, so when he fell asleep on my lap today I put a notch in the victory column.

Anyway, shortly after arriving and at least every hour since then, I’m reminded again of how little I know how to do on my own here. The first night we put together my water filter so that I could start to filter and boil my own water for drinking, because, as Maman says, I am too “weak” to drink their water. They do think that I’m very breakable; I can’t drink the water that they drink, and when I try to do anything or even expose my skin to sunlight they make a fuss and insist that I sit down or move into the shade. Despite this I’ve managed to elbow my way into the daily chores, even though I still get laughed at a good bit. I keep explaining to them that after these two months I’m going to have to live on my own and so I need to know how to cook and do dishes and laundry and etc. I did figure out what time the dishes get done everyday and so I help with that, and today they showed me how to do my laundry and then let me wash about three things before they took over. I spend most of my time with Shanique and Afousa because they’re around the most; the boys disappear, Mimi is usually sleeping, and Maman works at her little store.

Thursday and Friday we had classes all day; we’re in stage (training) right now, and most of the volunteers said it was the hardest part of their experience, because it’s so structured and there’s a lot of information and work to be done. I live in walking distance from my school, which is really good because I am terrified of riding my bike in this city. There are no street signs and no maps of Porto Novo exist, which is really really hard for me to accept. Beninese people just have ridiculous spatial memories, I guess. So last week I wasn’t allowed to walk to or from school alone because I didn’t know the way, so in the morning I’d wake up, eat breakfast, and Maman would moto me to school (Maman is not the kind of person who walks when she has a moto she can take), and then after school Fiko or Afousa or Shanique would come pick me up. That, I think, contributed the most to making me feel like a little kid, more than not knowing how to bathe or cook or eat politely or do dishes or anything else. At the end of the day there’d be this big group of people in their early to mid-twenties, waiting for their parents to come pick them up from school. There are few things more humbling than having an 8 year old come fetch you and walk you home because you don’t yet know the way.

Saturday was Independence Day here in Benin and Maman helped me buy a cell phone (if you’d like to call me, email me and I will respond with my number, or ask my mom for it. If you download skype you can call me for 22c/minute and I get incoming calls for free so I will answer!), and then she took me to her boutique, which is quite literally in the very center of the city. It’s directly across from the Assemblee Nationale, and so we sat and watched the parade from the porch. There were some things about the parade that were totally normal, like brass marching bands, and then there were things that were….not. There was a lot of voodoo stuff, which is kind of scary/fascinating in person. There was this woman with crazy eyes who was dancing with a pot of fire on her head and people from the crowd would run up and get blessed by her, and then this cousin-it thing—there was a person underneath what looked like a haystack. My family here is Catholic (except papa who is Muslim), and so they couldn’t explain any of it to me, but Fiko ran away from the haystack thing and Maman explained that in French they call it “a guardian of the night.” I definitely want to know more from a safe distance.

Things are going really well, there are ups and downs but it’s mostly ups at this point. There are times when I’m really lonely or worried, but any tiny thing going well makes a world of difference. The current volunteers are all settled, they seem happy with their lives---I think for right now the best thing to do is just keep my head down and make it through all the tumult of stage. I think of you all often—whenever I’m feeling down I imagine someone and just knowing that they think I can do this is enough to cheer me up.

I’ll try to write again soon but who knows how long it will take me to figure out how to get myself to an internet café in this town.

I feel obligated to write another post just because I'm actually sitting here and kind of bored on the internet. We're back at PC headquarters, we had interviews with our APCD (the supervisor for our programs), but mine was at 9 and now we're just sort of sitting around marveling at how hard the floor is and how luxurious the internet is.

I don't find out my post until the 4th week of stage (did I write that already? I can't remember), but my APCD said once I find out the local language I can start studying it here instead of french, which would be awesome. The other two girls in my language class both know where they're going because they're either married or masters students, so they might start learning local languages earlier, I'm not sure.

Host families tomorrow! We have host family orientation tonight so that we can try and embarass ourselves less often....yeahhh. This is a boring post but it's kind of a relief to be bored for once; every little thing here is more intense than usual. We drive this same main road from our dormy type place everyday and each day it might as well be a new road, there's always new things to see. We do look pretty ridiculous; people turn and stare at the three vans of yovos (foreigners). The sides of the roads are full of people and stores; everything is dusty. People sell gas smuggled from nigeria in these beautiful glass containers--the biggest ones are these huge, bulbous glass things, but you can buy gas in something as small as a pop bottle. The traffic is different everyday also; this morning we left earlier and it was rush hour traffic, which basically looks like a bunch of really old vehicles surrounded by little moto-nats all the way down the street. People don't drive as crazily as I thought, but I definitely will not be operating any vehicle besides my feet while I am on this continent. The other thing is that there's no street names or signs, so yesterday when we were doing zemi lessons we practiced saying things like "I'd like to go to the Peace Corps office. Do you know where it is? It's across from this pharmacy" etc. For a person who loves maps and directions, I'm still really stumped by how that works in practice.

Yesterday I talked about the zemis; the motocabs. We learned how to approach them and ride them with drivers PC handpicked, which I'm sure was loads easier than how it is in real life. Plus in Cotonou the drivers wear a yellow uniform, in Porto Novo they don't, and that's where we're moving tomorrow. Apparently we have to look for drivers who aren't wearing traditional clothing and look "kind of dusty." I guess we'll see how that goes. I'm excited for the drive to Porto Novo though; if there's this much going on in the half an hour drive we do every day in Cotonou, who knows what the hour-long drive to Porto Novo will hold.

Hey so I'm in Benin. Getting here was definitely hike, there was the 8 hour flight to Paris when I got to sit next to a very large but very nice romanian woman. Then the craziness of the Paris airport--in retrospect the idea of being able to leave the airport is totally laughable, we had to go back through security and then we all just felt really ill and sat very still for 5 hours in the airport. Then the 7 hour flight to Cotonou, through customs, and into luggage where we experienced our first Beninese "line" as everyone smushed into the conveyor belt waiting for their luggage. A lot of volunteers met us at the airport and that was really cool, and then we went to where we're staying here in Cotonou, which is a seminary-conferencey center type place.

We're here until wednesday when we move in with host families and start training in earnest. It's been really nuts so far, but I love it. Cotonou is like no city I could have possibly imagined; it smells like deisel and peanuts and woodsmoke and I feel like every 30 seconds I'm discovering something new. We're doing a lot of administrative stuff for Peace Corps, lots of shots and interviews. Today we learned how to ride a zemi, which is a motorcycle taxi, around the city. I was kinda scared but let me tell you: riding around Cotonou on the back of a zemi with my big dorky peace corps helmet is the best.thing.ever. I also went to catholic mass yesterday---this is not your gilmour's catholic mass, folks. It was 3.5 hours long, there was testimony, adoration, regular mass, a huge dance party where everybody scream-sang and danced, the works.

That's all I can write for now, we move in with our host families on wednesday morning, which is really exciting and also mildly terrifying, but it'll be really, really nice to actually unpack my bag and be able to find everything. As it is now, I'm afraid to move too many things because I know it won't all go back in. I hope you all are well and I'll try to write again soon!

I'm in Philly for staging. We all arrived yesterday, did a bunch of paperwork, had a long meeting-thing, and then had the night free to go to dinner and etc. Rachael mentioned that when she did staging it was three days and kind of tedious, and I can understand that now. The meeting yesterday was helpful, but if I really can't imagine doing that for three days.

There's 60 of us here, and so far everybody seems really cool. The group dynamics are kind of weird; there's clumps forming just because it's pretty impossible to have a sense of each person when there's 60 of us to start. We went this morning to a very blocky government building to get our yellow fever shots ("after your shot, wait 15 minutes in the hallway so we can make sure you aren't having side effects"), and we get the rest of our shots and start our antimalarials once we get to Benin.

So now it's naptime, and then lunchtime, and then planetime. I feel a little like I'm going to summer camp, I think it's just all the walking around in groups that's doing that. We leave Philly at 6:40, fly to Paris, have a 6 hour layover, and then another 6 hour flight to Benin. We're allowed to leave the airport in Paris but apparently if we miss the flight to Benin we're just fired completely. I still haven't decided. I know Paris so it's not like I'll get lost, it just seems risky. We'll see.

This is the last of reliable, accessible internets and I'll admit that I just watched grape stomp one last time.

I'm leaving tomorrow morning and decided I'd better write this before I lost interest/had a big dinner at 10pm with red wine/I guess that's kind of the same thing.

The past two months have been pretty hectic, but I'm really happy with how things have turned out. It's taken me up until the very last second to feel ready, but I'm ready. I originally thought that "getting ready for departure" was mostly about pulling together all of the stuff that I needed to bring with me, but I think the harder part was mental and emotional. I think no matter what I'd feel like I didn't quite get to see everyone I wanted to or do everything that I wanted to do before I left, so I guess that's a feeling I can't really shake. I'll say one thing though---I do not feel as though I could have possibly eaten one more burrito. mmmm.

Anyway, I've just about finished packing. This is what the packing process looked like before:

And this is the tiny miracle that is my weight-limit pack:

My flight to Philly for staging is tomorrow at 9:30, and then we leave for Benin Thursday evening. It's hard to describe what it feels like--I'm excited, nervous, tired, sad to leave my family and friends, etc etc etc. I'm also not sure how much contact I'll have, or how much I'll be able to post, but I will try to let you all know when I arrive. I'm putting my mailing address on the side as well; everything should be sent via airmail and letters should be numbered in case one doesn't reach me.

It is SO hard to believe that this is really happening. But ok! here I go!

I've been invited to serve in the Peace Corpsssssss! I'm going to Benin, West Africa in July. Here's how it happened:

On Monday I went to the thrift store to by some new work clothes, and was driving down Van Aken to the grocery store when my phone rang. I was assuming it was my mom and just sort of answered, turns out it was my Placement Officer. I ended up pulling into one of those parking spaces by the rapid so that I could talk to her, because I was shaking too badly to be able to drive. Here's the thing: it's just one phone call, yeah, but this is the phone call all PC applicants with medical clearance are waiting and waiting and waiting for. It means SOMETHING is going to happen, you just don't really know what. So I was kind of an embarassing, mumbly, shaking mess, but anyway...

Remember in the last post how I was told I was medically cleared for the program I was nominated for? lies. In retrospect it's kind of funny---the way the application process works is that you get nominated for a specific country, but you don't know what it is, and then you go through medical clearance and hope that you're cleared for the mystery country that's saving a spot for you. I'm cleared to go to everywhere but three countries in the entire PC world, and I was nominated for Togo, which was one of them.

My PO asked me how early I'd be able to leave, and explained that she had an opening in a program that was leaving at the end of July. I was nominated for an agriculture program, and this was a rural community health position, but it was still in Francophone Africa. I asked what would happen if I said I wasn't ready to leave so soon, and she was like "welllllll, then we have to start looking at other regions and job sectors, etc." So we had a little mini-interview, I was worried because I don't really have any HIV/AIDS volunteer experience, but she said that the position needed to be filled by someone with strong french skills and an interest in health. So French saves the day! I decided on the phone that if I was going for it, I might as well just go for it, and I told her I'd be ready to go in 8 weeks, and she said Congratulations and that I should check my email. Which means....invited!

I jumped around a lot, and called my mom, who freaked out "JULY?! you said SEPTEMBER. WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU ARE MOVING TO AFRICA IN JULY? I'M COMING HOME RIGHT NOW."

She also asked me to pick up milk on my way home, which I never would have agreed to except that I was a little afraid she was going to kill me. Which is how I ended up stumbling around Heinen's, the grocery store I've been going to for most of my life, unable to find milk, dropping things, and generally acting like a crazy person. When I finally made it home I opened my email and there it was:

Dear Hannah,Congratulations! It is with great pleasure that we invite you to begin training in Benin for Peace Corps service. You will be joining thousands of Americans who are building stronger communities around the world. This call to action gives you the opportunity to learn new skills and to find the best in yourself.The next step is up to you. Please carefully read the enclosed Volunteer Assignment Description, Welcome Book, and other important details about Peace Corps service. Please consider the project description and primary assignment duties very carefully when making your decision. In accepting this assignment, you are making a commitment to the project, the country, and the Peace Corps.Please call us within ten days regarding your decision to accept or decline our invitation. If we do not hear from you within this period, the assignment may be offered to another applicant.

So there it is! I spent the night reading through all the information that came in the email, and called the next day to accept the invitation. Of course I'm out of my mind with excitement, and some fear (you'd be stupid not to be a little afraid, right?) I'm a little upset about my time here being cut short, but I'm going to do my best to see everybody and do everything I planned before leaving. I want to thank everybody who has already been supportive of this decision, and invite all of you to keep reading!

Today I called Peace Corps because I finally came up with a good enough excuse to do so. When I was nominated, I was apparently supposed to receive a "nomination letter" with my placement officer's information, but I only had a nomination email with really basic information, and my recruiter has since left PC. So I called to say that I wanted to send in my updated transcript, hoping to get to my placement officer. It worked, I left a message, and then two days later was contacted by the Assistant Placement Officer who wanted me to send in an updated resume and transcript.

Not that exciting, I know. But any contact with the placement office is exciting when you've been waiting and are graduating in two days with no real solid plan for your future. The person on the phone looked me up and said that I was medically qualified for the country I was nominated for, which will prevent a lot of snags. So if everything goes well, I could maybe be finding out soon and getting into my original program!

Before I left for spring break I got the "Application Status Update" email, and went to my PC account where it said that "a decision has been reached regarding your medical status. Look for a letter in the mail."

I was assuming that meant I was cleared, as I hadn't heard ANYthing from the office about problems, but I was leaving the next day for Cleveland and the letter confirming that would be going to my apartment in Baltimore. Thankfully my roommate went back to check on Mooby (the cat) and confirmed yesterday that I was medically cleared.

I did freak out because it sounded like a had a restriction, the letter itself said "you're medically cleared for countries where your asthma will not be exacerbated by pollution." Restrictions limit the countries you can be sent to, and so I was worried about how extensive that list might be, but when I called the nurse told me that it just means I can't go to China, Togo, or Ghana. Togo is a francophone african country, so I do have to hope that I wasn't nominated for that country. Either way, it's only 1 country out of a good number so I'm still keeping a good thought. And I DO have my strong suspicions about what country I'm nominated for.

Now I go back to waiting. News from the Africa placement office seems to be that they're going to start dealing with our placements around mid-April. Another month of waiting, paper writing, nail biting.

I'm hoping that I get into Peace Corps. And if I DO get into Peace Corps, I know that I'm going to want to keep a blog, as it's easier to keep everybody updated this way (and I DO promise I'll be better about updating it--I know the French blog failure is fresh in people's minds still).

Thing is, getting into the Peace Corps is really a PROCESS. I figured, if it works out, then by the time I give everybody the address, there will already be posts explaining how everything happened. Like MAGIC.

And in real life, I need a place to document what's happening because everybody is realllllly tired of hearing me talk about it.

So welcome to my not-yet-peace-corps blog!

Let me explain what's happened so far, I'll try to make the timeline as accurate as possible, but I didn't record a lot of dates. When I first started researching Peace Corps stuff I remember being kind of weirded out by how everybody had these very accurate and detailed timelines of the application process up. Little did I know that in several months I would be scouring the internet to find these timelines, trying to reassure myself. So in the interest of providing information for people who are applying---here is the 'timeline' (did it come up in your google search? did it?)

Unknown date, unknown year: I decided I wanted to do Peace Corps. I had always thought of this as an option, but I made an official decision while I was in Paris and fretting about my future.

November 4: Submitted my application

Later that week: received a packet with toolkit information, forms to sign, legal clearance stuff, fingerprint forms.

November 20ish? I don't remember the exact date: had my interview with the recruiter.

Early December: sent in all my legal clearance stuff, was stupid and only did one fingerprint card, so I had to send in the second one separately. Ask me about the Baltimore City fingerprinting office sometime.

December 19: Nominated! I was nominated for an agriculture program in Francophone Africa leaving in September 2009. Began to scour the online information to guess and countries and prepare for medical stuff.

December 28: Received medical packet. Was extremely overwhelmed. Tried to make myself feel better by organizing everything into manila folders and making extensive lists. Went to New York for several days only to have a psychic tell me that she "saw me surrounded by important papers," a pretty accurate assessment.

January 4-28: A gzillion appointments. Physical, immunizations, blood work, dental work and exam, explanation letter about the little whoopsie that happened during the wisdom teeth surgery and subsequent numb tongue, eye exam, purchasing of glasses, mental exam. Whew.

February 5: Dental Clearance

February 6: Peace Corps acknowledges receipt of Medical packet and "my file is under consideration"

And that's where I'm at now. I'm waiting anxiously for medical clearance--there's nothing really wrong with me, but Peace Corps is extremely thorough and so sometimes unexpected issues arise. After medical clearance I hopefully hear from a placement officer, provide more information or have another interview, and hope for an official invitation.

It's a very nerve-wracking thing. Apparently there has been a major influx of applications this year, so there are way more horror stories about people being delayed/rejected/etc. It makes it hard to plan, because I may not know until very close to graduation or even after graduation if this is going to work out--not to mention that it's hard to make other plans when my heart is so set on Peace Corps!

SO, we will see. I will keep you (my currently phantom audience) updated as I hope for the best.