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!