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