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!