Almost Done With Training!

  Craig and I have officially hit our halfway mark through training.  Training is 2 months long and we hit our month mark on the 17^th of this month.  At times, it seems like time just drags on and on and the week never seems to end, but as I look back on when we arrived here, I can’t believe it’s been over a month already.  We are basically in our second to last week right now.  Next week, we have our post visit, which means no training because we’ll be getting everything set up at our post, and the week after that we have training and the following week after that, we just have a few days of processing and closing out training (final testing, interviews, etc.) then we have our swear in on the 17^th of September!  It’s coming up so fast! Everyone that we talk to who has been here for a year already said they don’t even know where the last year went because it went by so fast.  I am hoping that it doesn’t go by quite that fast, but I definitely don’t want it to drag on like the weeks sometimes seem to.

    So what’s new within the last month and a half that we haven’t already updated you on?  First, I have decided that I want to go to grad school when I’m done with the Peace Corps.  I have been looking into the different fellowships that are offered for Returned Peace Corps Volunteers and there are a few that are downright amazing.  The one that interests me the most is Fordham.  Fordham is in the Bronx and IF I can get accepted, I would get a full ride just for serving in the Peace Corps.  They also provide a living stipend while I do an internship.  Their programs are basically International Affairs with a business twist, so it’s perfect for me.  That being said, I have to take the GREs, which I have discovered that I can take here.  Ghana has the computer version and Niger has the paper version.  I am thinking that my scores could be higher on the paper version and I don’t plan on going to Niger otherwise, so my goal is to go to Niger this upcoming January to take the GRE.  We aren’t allowed to travel until December 18^th, so I figure January is a good time to do it and it gives me about 4 months or so to study and prepare.  The study materials are said to be floating around the different work stations throughout the country, but if anyone wants to send me a GRE prep book, I would not decline it since I don’t know how certain it is that I will be able to track one down here. 

      Craig recently has gotten over food poisoning.  We knew that it was bound to happen, and luckily for him, it only lasted a night, but it was not a very fun night, nonetheless.  He’s feeling much better and is his normal self again.  We still don’t know what it is that he ate.  We realized something in all that though.  In the very beginning when we first got to Cotonou, one of the volunteers there said that we would become each other’s family and get so comfortable with each other that we’d have lengthy, in-depth conversations about each other’s poop.  A month later, I have heard several poop stories and don’t feel awkward at all when the poop subject comes up.  It makes me wonder what we’re going to openly talk about a year from now.

     While I was on tech visit, I received a Fon name from some of the Fon people that we met during the tech visit.  I have decided that it is much easier for kids and other French-speaking people to pronounce my Fon name, not to mention they think it’s hilarious that I have a Fon name in the first place, so that is what I have started to go by.  It’s Cica, pronounced SEE-kah.  It means beautiful woman that is made of gold, or likes gold.  Either translation can work.  It has worked for all the kids in the neighborhood that sing the Yovo song to me.  At least they say Cica now and not Yovo.  Ha!

     We just recently had our second language interview, in which I moved from Intermediate Mid to Advanced Low and have started learning Fon in my language classes, which is super exciting.  Craig went from Intermediate Low to Intermediate Mid and just needs to go up one more level before he has passed through language training and can learn local language.  I’m sure that he is going to have no problem with it at all.  Learning Fon is very interesting because I feel all brand new again with language, which is a very strange feeling. 

     Other exciting news is that we discovered that the national stadium is open during the week to people who want to exercise there so we are starting to run to the stadium, run there a bit more, do stairs and other exercises and run back.  It’s pretty awesome!  With that being said, we also found out that every July, there is a marathon in Kenya.  Since Kenya is so far away and we would be shamed out of the country for finishing 7 hours after their slowest runner (it clearly must be the fastest marathon on the planet) we decided that we want to start training for a marathon that is less shameful and closer to Benin.  Our friend Elaina told us that every September, there is a marathon in Ghana.  Ghana is about 6 hours away (capital to capital), so we definitely want to try to train for that one.  It would be awesome if we could get someone to sponsor us so that we could raise money for something project-related that we are working on with the Peace Corps.  It’s just an idea now, but we are definitely looking into more details about it.

     We have talked to a few of our friends who have expressed interest in coming to visit us.  Yay!!!  We would LOVE us some visitors!  That being said, we want to make sure that if anyone is seriously considering visiting us, they are fully informed on when is the best time to come.  Since we accrue 2 days of vacation per month after we swear in as volunteers in September, we kind of have to wait a little bit to take it.  We are trying to meet up with some family in Greece next summer (but that is still in the works) so we won’t be in Benin to receive any guests.  During what we would call summer, it is the rainy season here, which isn’t a recommended time to come/travel around unless you don’t mind dealing with downpours here and there.  However, the following January (2012), we want to do a mini West African tour for 3 weeks or so.  We would like to go to Ghana, Mali, and Senegal and basically spend a week in each country.  If anyone would like to meet us along the way or fly out to Benin and go with us, it is going to be awesome!  If that doesn’t work for those who are interested in visiting, after we finish Peace Corps, we plan on doing some sightseeing/backpacking, including hiking Kilimanjaro and doing one or two camping safaris.  If you ever wanted to do any of that, we welcome you to come along with us at any point during our adventure and since we’re telling you about it now, you have plenty of time to plan/save. J

    The aforementioned are our vacation plans but we welcome any of our friends and family any other time that they can come if these things don’t quite fit into the schedule.  Keep in mind that since there would be a possibility that we wouldn’t have any other vacation days available other than those times mentioned above, that anything we do would have to be in-country.  Luckily for you, Benin has all the traits of West Africa in general, so you can spend a couple weeks here and legitimately say that you have seen West Africa.  Plus, it’s super cheap!  If you want to know any other info than what’s here, just ask!  

That’s all the news for now! 

Craig's Technical Visit

My Technical Visit took me to Boukoumbe, a small city 45k west of Nattitangou, neatly nestled up next to the Togo border in the Northwest of Benin. Our bus ride was about 8 hours long and we arrived in Nati around 5:30pm, just in time to jump into a bush taxi for the hour-long ride to Boukoumbe. Boukoumbe is beautiful. The Northwest of the country is home to lush green forest, Baobob trees, farmland, rolling hills, and Tata Sambas, which are traditional homes that look like little mud castles. Togo is only 4k away, and the nearest volunteer is actually 7k away and lives in Togo. The volunteer that we visited is finishing up service at the time that we swear in and my traveling companion, Josh, will take up her post when she leaves. Tata Sambas On the way from Nati to Boukoumbe

We met the mayor and all of Josh's future work partners, who are all really fun to be around. The main project that he will be working on involves the manufacture of "essential oils" from Morenga and Baobab which can be used in cosmetics or as food additives. We visited the marche and drank chouk (sp?) which is homemade beer made from sorghum (similar to Peruvian chicha). Josh learned a little bit of local language and is basically ready to start working right away, which is pretty exciting. Drinking chouk with Carlan and Josh at the marche

After leaving Boukoumbe, we spent the night at the Nati workstation, then got up early the next day to catch the 10-hour bus back to Cotonou. The bus broke down (or ran out of gas, I'm not sure) a few times and the last time that it broke down, this time in Cotonou, Josh and I just got off and paid for a Zem to get back to the Bureau to meet Heather and go back to Porto-Novo. Below are pictures of Heather and I in our new tissue! Look closely, mine is a koi fish pattern. Sweet! Bien integre! My "fish tish"

Heather's Technical Visit

     This week Craig and I had our tech visits.  It basically consisted of 4 days that we spent living with a current volunteer who is doing similar work to what we will be doing, therefore, we spent our week in different places staying with different volunteers.

     I spent mine in a small town/village called Zayanadou with a current volunteer named Ivy.  Her village is half an hour outside of Bohicon, which is the town that we’ll be living in permanently, so I got to scope out our digs as we went through there.  She works with a CPS (Centre Promotion Social), which does more social work to help people.  I will be working with a CPS as well, but my CPS just started a nutritional program with UNICEF, so that is what I will mainly be working on, which I am very excited about.  Having a branch of the UN as my work partner was the best-case scenario for me.  We went around to her different work partners, health centers, etc to meet everyone.  We also stopped by the local Gendarme (basically police) so that they knew we were there.  We made Mexican food one of the nights, which was awesome!  We even made our own tortillas and tortilla chips.  They weren’t quite like at home though, I must say. 

The river on the way to the village where Ivy lives

Statue in Abomey of a warrior who fought the French

Our Mexican food plates

     The last full day that we were there, we went to an island on the middle of a lake to do a sensibilization, which basically is a health lesson on a certain topic.  We had originally prepared to do it on how HIV is transmitted, but when we got there, we realized that our audience was mainly young kids, so we had to switch it up at the last second to the importance of hand washing.  It was really fun and the people were so happy to see us.  The boat ride that we took to get there was just amazing.  There were all these fishermen out on these little man-made boats reeling in nets and getting fish.  It was so remote and a place that a tourist would never venture out to.  There was a little girl in the crowd that appeared to be asleep and her little brother was trying to wake her up and she wouldn’t wake up.  She was completely limp, and I brought it to our volunteers attention and she told the village leader so her mother could be notified.  We suspected that she was probably suffering from malaria.  It was really the reality of their situation slapping me in the face.  When we started to leave the village to head back to the boat, all the kids were running and following us, all chanting in French, “Dance, Dance, Yovo, Dance”.  It was pretty cute.  They saw us off on the dock until we were out of sight.

Before getting on our little boat

the lake

the kids on the island

saying goodbye to us

Ivy and the locals

     The last day, we went back to Bohicon and I got to see our house where we will be living.  The current volunteer who lives there now said that he’s going to be leaving a lot of the furniture for us, which will help us a lot!  Our house is awesome!  It’s in a compound and our neighbors are another young couple with two kids.  The compound has a well that we can use, but we have running water.  We have a REAL porcelain toilet and a shower.  To get to our kitchen, we have to go outside to our backyard/washing area first and then into the kitchen, which is pretty cool.  There are animals and other things carved into the ceiling.  The rooms are huge and the house is painted all these colorful colors.  After visiting the house, we got lunch (I had scwarma, which is like kabob, and it was incredible!) and then got our taxi back to Cotonou.  Our taxi had a million serious looking cracks in it’s windshield, but luckily, we made it there ok without any windshield issues.  I stayed overnight in Cotonou so that I could meet up with Craig the next day and go back with him.  For dinner, I went out with the two volunteers that were here and had Italian food.  It was definitely the most expensive meal that I have had here, but it was worth it! Today, while waiting for Craig to get to Cotonou, we went to a mega-store called Erevan which is basically like Target.  It was jaw-dropping!  I can’t believe something like that exists in Benin.  I bought some long-craved things like Snickers and Bonne Maman jam.  Aside from that, everything was pretty expensive so I don’t anticipate shopping there a lot.  

      Once Craig gets some down time, he’ll post a blog on his Tech Visit week with some pictures.  Until then, a bientot!

baby weighing in a village a week ago

Me with the kids that were watching the baby weighing

Post Announcement!

We found out on Friday that we will be living in Bohicon, which is a larger city north of here with about 60-70,000 people in the Zou region. It is just south of the “Collines” region where all the hiking and rolling lush hills are in the country. They say that the
Collines area is the most beautiful region of Benin, next to the North-West where they have waterfalls. We are super happy. The area that we’re going to be living in is also considered the breadbasket of Benin and has lots of fresh fruits and veggies readily available to consume.
We’re taking over the house of a current volunteer who is taking a different position up north and he supposedly has the best volunteer house in Benin. There are carved out African animals on the ceiling, a covered outdoor kitchen with real stainless steel sinks, and a real porcelain toilet. We have running water, electricity, and INTERNET! It is also inside of a compound, which means there is a high brick gate that goes around all the land and we share the land with two other houses in the compound. That means that we’re going to have privacy and more security than the average joe, which is nice.
We’re very happy with the outcome. There are a couple volunteers who already live in the same city or nearby and we will be about an hour from the other married couple that we’re training with. We’re also about an hour taxi ride from all the hiking, which a current volunteer leads tourists on hikes throughout this region and has already told us that he would take us out. He definitely has one of the best jobs! So we will definitely be doing a lot of hiking, especially since in the first three months of living there, we can’t spend the night away, so it’ll be a good weekend, daytime activity.
Craig leaves for his technical visit tomorrow for the rest of the week. He’s going to be doing his up in the north in Nattitangou. I am going to be about 4 hours north and don’t leave until Wednesday morning. We’re going to be back on Sunday and will update everyone with pictures next week. A Bientot!

What's New In Benin?

We have been doing a lot of interesting things lately and have some interesting news. I have been getting some hands on training with the health care sector. Last week, we went to a village to visit a “Centre de Sante”, or Health Center, to see what it would be like and what kind of facilities we may be working with. The one that I visited was a bigger one and had a maternity wing, a lab, among other things that are not common among the other Centres. A couple days later, we went into a different village to practice one of our tools that we learned in class called a Community Map. It is basically when you hold a town meeting with your village to get to know the village and what they have there and see and you have little pictures of things that you think would be in your village and you have all the villagers decide on where each thing goes to form a sort of map. It is especially useful when, for example, there is a river and the people wash their clothes in the river, go to the bathroom in the river, and get their drinking water from the river. Then we know that we have an issue that we need to work on solving and that may be causing a lot of sickness that the village may be experiencing. Craig went into a village and did a daily activity schedule with them, which is basically writing down what a normal day consists of for the people in the village.

Our Community Map

the village

We have some exciting things coming up. I am going to learn gardening techniques and have started my own garden at the school, while Craig is learning more about business and financial matters. We are also going to have a guest speaker from WHO come and speak to us about health issues. It is exciting times! We also find out on Friday where we will be living for the next 2 years, which will be interesting. Next Wednesday, we leave for our “Technical Visits”, which is when we spend 4 days living with a current volunteer in our sector to shadow them and see what their life is like and what their work schedules are like. Craig and I will be spending these 4 days apart because he is in a different sector.
Saturday, July 31st was the 28th anniversary of our Granni’s mother’s death and they had a mass at their house followed by a big feast to celebrate. After mass, they had everyone that wasn’t from Benin stand up and say a few words, and to our surprise, we were one of those people who got to stand up in front of all these people that we didn’t know and speak French about something that we came up with on the fly. I basically just introduced myself and said that we were happy to be there and thank you for having us and Craig basically said thank you. Surprise!!!
This past Sunday, August 1st, was Benin’s 50th anniversary of independence from France. It was a big celebration, so we decided that we wanted to get outfits made with the special “50th Anniversary” cloth that they had floating around. After we paid half of the price to have our outfits made, our Granny told us that the tissue that we picked, which had the president’s face on it, represented the party that she opposed. Taboo number one. Two days later, Peace Corps made an announcement that since we’re supposed to be A-Political, we were not allowed to wear any tissue that represented any political party with the upcoming elections in March. Therefore, we overpaid for outfits that simply are souvenirs. We did not wear them for any anniversary event. The only anniversary event that we attended was a parade. The parade started 3 hours late for reasons I have yet to figure out, and since it started so late, they cut it short at the end. Although it was pretty cool, and we got to see the President of Benin during the parade, it was pretty much all military stuff. Military marching down the street, tanks driving down the street, etc. After it was finally over, we were starving, so we went to the house to eat and then took a nap but little did we know that we were sleeping through a football match that we were invited to that we didn’t know about until it was over. That would have been super cool to go to, but oh well. Better luck next time. Later that night after all the festivities, we tried to teach Beatrice, our host sister, UNO, but she wasn’t very interested in learning how to play, so we just played the two of us, which made us miss our awesome card-playing family that would have loved to play with us.

Us and Beatrice, our host sister that was visiting from Burkina Faso

President Yayi

We have been trying to change money for almost a week now. We really want to buy tissue and have clothes made, but the Peace Corps living stipend as of right now doesn’t allow enough extra cash to do so. Therefore, we have been trying to change money at banks for almost a week. The first problem that we had was that they were closed when we wanted to go, then they wouldn’t take dollars. Then they referred us to a bank that did take dollars and they were closed. Then there was a holiday, which closed everything. We’re hoping that tomorrow we can change our money and go to the market and get some tissue. Finding a good tailor will be another story. My Granni said that she knows someone, but I have yet to meet this person. We will keep you posted on our clothing-making progress.
A couple little interesting things that we found out this week is that if you extend and do a third year with the Peace Corps, you can apply to do the third year in a different country, as long as you qualified for the position. There is someone right now who is in the process of applying to do their 3rd year in Madagascar, which would be awesome! If Craig and I feel up to doing a 3rd year at the end of all this, I definitely would want to change it up a bit and see a new country for a while. Another thing we have figured out is that the saying that they have here is true, which is if you wait long enough, whatever you want to buy will walk by on top of someone’s head. There are people who sell absolutely anything that you need and they usually transport them in baskets, which they carry on top of their head and walk until people buy everything. It is one of the coolest things about Benin.
I found an internet café by my school that has a decent connection and isn’t too overpriced, so hopefully we can communicate with everyone back west more. That’s it for now! Thanks for all the support like always, and Tracey and Cheryl, we received our glasses last week. Thank you! You guys are the best!

Enjoy the pics from the past couple weeks.  The video is just to show you how crowded our transportation can get and we're not even traveling with the locals yet! 

A Bientot!

A Trainee Life

  So we thought that we would give you a little insight into what our lives are like since we moved to Benin.  To start, we wake up at 6:30am every morning, which is about 45 minutes earlier than what I was used to.  We get ready and eat breakfast, which usually consists of French pressing our coffee, and some fresh fruit for me, and if there are bananas, I put peanut butter on them.  For Craig, it consists of a piece or two of fruit and bread with jam and/or peanut butter.  They make peanut butter here from peanuts only, so it’s the most organic form of peanut butter that you’ll ever find and it’s pretty good.   After breakfast, we leave for our schools.  We walk with each other to the main road before I jump on my bike and head to school while Craig tries to negotiate a zem ride to class (on a motorcycle taxi).  When it’s Tuesday, we have class together at a different place, so we ride our bikes there together.  Once at school, we usually have language training in the morning and then the rest of the day is full of a plethora of things from learning how to change a flat tire on our bikes to training within our specific field, to learning about the culture and history.  

 

     During lunch time, Craig gets a bag of rice and beans with this red oil hot sauce thing, which costs about 200F (.40 cents).  I usually get a mélange of beans, rice, avocado, sauce (which is a tomato and onion mixture), and the same red hot sauce stuff for about 300F (.60 cents).  After lunch, we have more classes and usually inbetween the time that we have lunch and the time that we finish school, you can bet that we will find the Fan Milk guy and get some Fan Milk.  Fan Milk is this wonderful “ice cream” thing.  It’s taste more like a popcycle, but it’s in a plastic container, which an ice cream thing may come in, and you rip of the corner with your teeth and suck the wonderful icey vanilla-coconut tasting frozen icey stuff out and it’s amazing.  It’s usually between 100-150F (.20-.30 cents), depending on what flavor you get.  After class, we usually go home, but sometimes there is some activity that we do, such as going to the local buvette (bar) for a cold one, or playing a friendly soccer game.  If we just go straight home, we usually go for a run, which is a whole other experience in itself.  

     Running in Porto Novo is a very delicate balance of things.  First, since the majority of the roads that we run on are dirt roads, we have to pay attention to pot holes and rocks that may roll or sprain our ankles if step wrongly into them, all the while basically running as fast as we can to get away from all the kids that come running towards us singing the Yovo song and wanting high fives (which would take 10 minutes in itself and we would never start running).  Meanwhile, we still have to say “Bonsoir” to all of the adults that we run by because we live in the neighborhood and it would be rude of us not to acknowledge them, all the while trying to avoid being hit by a zemi driver or a car that is frantically honking at us to get out of the way.  To top things off, there is no trash system here, so everyone burns their trash in the evenings/mornings, so when we run, we try to hold our breath when we pass a burning pile of trash to try to avoid polluting our lungs as little as possible, and to avoid breathing in exhaust from the cars or motos that aren’t regulated on their emissions.  It’s a tricky feat!

    After our run, we usually do something productive, like filter and boil water that we will drink the following day, do laundry by hand, or study.  At about 8pm, we head upstairs to join the rest of our family in a lovely dinner that usually consists of a starch of some sort, such as rice, cous cous, yams, potatoes, or pasta with the jus (onion and tomato mixture), some vegetables that usually are sautéed in oil, and some sort of fish or chicken.  It almost always is a very tasty meal, but since nearly everything is cooked in palm oil here, I try to portion myself to very small portions, but the domestiques (maids) insists on piling my plate up with food because it is a compliment to them if someone gains weight while they are eating that person’s cooking and they tend to try to show them off to their friends.  Luckily for us, we ride our bikes everywhere and have started a running routine, so the evil plot to make us fat hasn’t worked yet.  We’re hoping to hold out on that until we at least get to post and can cook for ourselves.  Olive oil supposedly exists here, but I have yet to see it.  Once I do, I will be stocking up on some healthy versions of oil.  Enjoy these pictures! 

A Bientot!