Not-So-Quick Update

It’s been a really busy quarter with all kinds of things going on.  We’re really reaching an earmark in our service and we have a lot of really exciting things going on.  The biggest thing that has been keeping us really busy is the camp preparations. 

Our camp is in 2 weeks and we’re slowly but surely getting things done and things are coming together.  We had a big hang up when my supervisor told me that the khaki (used for school uniforms) that we were going to give to the girls at the end of the camp was given away at this event that they had for other Beninese kids.  Normally, it wouldn’t have been a problem, but since the cost of that khaki was part of the community contribution that I put in our budget that I have to stick to, it made things really hairy.  According to Sakina, she’s going to find someone to donate it.  We’ll see how that goes.  The other main problem that we ran into is our mayor.  We have the worst mayor in Benin (this claim is backed by all volunteers) and we asked him to help finance the t-shirts for the camp (it can’t be an official event if we don’t all have event-official t-shirts) and money to pay for the bus rides for two girls that we’re taking to another camp in Parakou.  Well, we’ve been asking for this financing since April and he still hasn’t given us anything and he probably won’t.  Sakina is helping me figure out what else we can do.   The other big stressor for me is that I have to give a little speech for the opening and closing ceremonies in French and I don’t know what I’m going to say yet and I was just informed that Sakina is getting all the tv channels and radio stations to come and record it in Bohicon history.  Which did not help my stress levels at all!  Next week, I am headed to Cotonou to get camp manuals printed and bound for the camp.

During the whole circus of this girls’ empowerment camp, Sakina gave me my first validation as a volunteer.  She said that I’m a real volunteer and that when I leave, people will be able to see that I was here and did something in Bohicon.  You can’t imagine how much that made my day.  It also made the headache of everything all worth it.  It was really nice. 

Another random and weird thing that has been happening to us is that we’re constantly getting confused with French people.  I mean, I know we’re white and they’re white, but our French is nowhere near a French person’s French and they don’t like the French here, so that complicates things.  In fact, I was walking home from work one day and a grown ass man called me yovo, so I politely asked him not to call me that and gave him other options for names instead of yovo then after he asked why I care so much, I explained to him that chez moi, it’s racists to call someone, “Hey, white person!”  And his reply was, “Well, when we noires go to chez toi, you’re racists to us, so it’s the same thing”.  So I asked him where he thought chez moi was, and his response was en France.  Well, no, in fact, I’m American and from the United States.  “Oh, that’s different.  You’re right, that would be racists there.  You have Obama.  You aren’t racists to us noires”.  These are conversations that we have on a somewhat regular basis.  No joke.

Our postmate, Katie, had a going-away party in Bohicon the other weekend where she shed a lot of tears and said a lot of goodbyes.  It was really sad and at the same time, very weird.  She’s been in and out of Bohicon for most of the time we’ve been here and I guess in my head, she’s just going away for a bit again and will come back.  But she’s going home to the magical land of America come the beginning of the month.  Our neighbor actually cried when she said goodbye to her, which is huge here since they think that you’re a baby and can’t control your emotions if you cry in public.  When we returned home after going out for a bit, I knocked on her door to see if she was ok and she said that she kept thinking when she was saying goodbye to Katie that she’d have to say goodbye to us in a year and that it’s going to be really hard for her.  That made me realize how fast time is going here and how much I’m going to miss her.  She’s by far my best friend in Bohicon.  I don’t know what I would do without her.  It’s just so sobering to think that I may not ever see her again after we leave Peace Corps. 

More news is that I was chosen for a volunteer-ran organization named PSN (Peer Support Network) which basically exists to help volunteers adjust to life in Benin and help them through any difficulties that they may have while we’re here.  It gets used a lot, especially since most people have a death in the family while in Peace Corps and life is just so different here that there is no way that you can prepare yourself completely before you get here.  I went down to Cotonou last weekend for the training for the group, which was actually really pleasant and helpful.  A big perk for me in being part of PSN is that I get to be there when the new group of volunteers arrive, which is July 2^nd.  When we arrived, everyone was there to welcome us with such enthusiasm and it really made us feel welcomed and like we didn’t just make a huge mistake by just moving to West Africa.  So at the beginning of July, I’m headed down to Cotonou to do the manuals for the camp, go to the Ambassador’s 4^th of July party, and welcome the new volunteers to Benin.  I’m really excited too! 

The day that I got home from PSN training, my PC boss, Christian, asked me to do some site developments with him in Zagnanado (the place where I did my tech visit) which was interesting.  I went with him to meet the work partners and see the house and offer feedback.  Apparently there will be a male volunteer there, one of the only 2 male health volunteers that we’ll have, so I think he’ll be fine, but it was an interesting experience to help out with.  It really showed various cultural differences because his house is next to a primary school and Christian’s reaction to that is that volunteers like to be around kids.  My reaction to that is that he’s going to have hoards of kids screaming the yovo song at him every day.  It’s things like this why he asked me to go with him. 

While I’m down in Cotonou to welcome the new group of volunteers, Craig is going up to Djougou for an annual soccer/American football tournament against the Germans.  There are a lot of German volunteers in Benin on a consistent basis like there are Americans and every year there is mad smack-talking between the two nationalities on who is going to beat whom in soccer and American football.  Since it’s the same weekend that the new group of volunteers arrives, Craig is going alone up there to play with the other volunteers and I’ll be in the opposite end of the country welcoming the new stage.  He’s really excited to play.  It’s supposed to be really fun and next year, I am for sure going to go and watch. 

The following weekend, Craig is going down to Cotonou for a national VAC meeting (quarterly meeting to tell representatives what’s up in Benin that concerns Peace Corps and then they pass it on to the rest of us) and that same weekend, it’s Amanda’s birthday (the little girl that lives next door) so I’m helping Alice make a birthday cake.  She’s pretty excited to have an American cake.  She is basically American and would do really well over there.  Ha!  Right after that weekend, we have our camp and the day after our camp ends, I am hosting 3 health volunteers from the new group of trainees for a “demystification weekend”.  It’s basically to give them a break and let them see a little more of the country while letting them see how a real health volunteer lives.  The following weekend, Craig is hosting 3 business volunteers from the new group for the same thing.  Then he leaves for training and after his week of training, I have a presentation to do on PSN coping methods in Porto-Novo.  So as you can see, it’s going to be an extremely busy summer for us!  We don’t have a free weekend until the end of August.  And we’re hoping to use that weekend to go hiking with a volunteer who’s leaving soon. 

I also recently started a team called, “Amour et Vie”.  Volunteers are encouraged to get about 3 locals between the ages of 18-26 or so, and one of them being an older community leader.  With these people, we go out into the “bush” to teach villagers about HIV and AIDS and other health-related things since most villagers don’t have the money to go into town for educational events like those.  We have our training in October before we can start any actual work, but once that is done and my team is trained, we’re going to start going out into the village once a month or so to teach people about AIDS.  It’s a really good program and at the end of the year, the organization called PSI who is responsible for these teams gives each volunteer about $100 for each of the two younger participants to pay for school fees, technical training, or anything else that can better their lives and help them have a steady income.  So everyone benefits from it.  It’s a really great project. 

On a side note…the other day when we were babysitting our neighbor kid, Emeric, while Alice ran to the marche real quick, he went into our bathroom and just peed on the floor.  We’re not sure why he did that since we have a toilet and their house is exactly like ours, but there he was, peeing on our tiled bathroom floor.  It gave us a little preview of what parenting may bring for us later on in life.  It was funny but I didn’t really know what to do with him since he was probably just too shy to ask about the toilet, so we just cleaned it up and didn’t make a big deal about it.  Another comical thing that happens here I guess!

Our last bit of exciting news is that Brian bought his ticket to come out and visit!  He’s coming out over Thanksgiving and staying for 3 weeks.  We’re really excited and are already putting together a list of activities that we can do with him.  We’ll be spending part of the time he’s here in Ghana since he’s flying in and out of there.  Very exciting!!! 

Special thanks to the Wiricks for our awesome care package!  Thanks guys!!  We love you!  And you make us feel very loved over here. 

Sidenote: We tried to upload pictures to go with this blog but the internet is way too slow here.  Sorry!  They're on facebook though! 

A Perfect Storm?

June 8th...

Chaleur is over. No more sleeping with the fan on full blast. No more sweating through the day and night. No more trudging through the heat down the street to our local bar to sit out on the breezy second story with an ice cold drink (though that’s still a good idea any time, regardless of the weather). La saison, they say, est fini. It has been replaced, though, with la saison des pluies. The rainy season. And it came with a vengeance.


We have actually been saying for weeks now that the long, hot, dry season was coming to a close. The days have cooled off and become a little more humid. Clouds have been dotting the skies. Some rain has come down here and there. But not like today.


We were fortunate and blessed to come here from San Diego, which sees more than 300 days of sunshine each year. Rain was always an enigma to me. Sometimes when it rained in San Diego, I would just curl up on the couch and watch out the window as the rain would be illuminated as it came down through the glow of the streetlight. For part of our honeymoon in Miami we were entranced as South Beach flooded so massively that patio furniture outside the hotel began floating down the street. A lone biker slowly made his way down the street, his feet submerged completely under the water as he cranked the pedal downwards. That was me today.


I went to my girls’ soccer practice at 4pm at our local school, and saw some dark, ominous clouds on the horizon and coming my way, but didn’t think anything of them, even though they brought with them thunder and lightning. In my naivety, I thought it would pass. It didn’t. I decided to call an early end to practice, and as we were on our way out of the school, Heather called.


“Craig, are you coming home soon?”


“Yeah, we’re finishing up and on our way out.”


“It’s going to pour!”


As soon as she hung up, it started pouring at our house, about a mile away to the east. Less than a minute after that it would get to me and I had to ride into the storm. I was just at the front of the school when I was smacked in the face by a blinding, sideways rain. I literally could not see more than 20 yards ahead of me. The dirt road I was riding down was a river a few inches deep and I was pedaling against it. For some strange reason, some people were still outside! I pedaled past men pushing rickshaws full of wood as well as quite a few children whose parents had sent them outside to get water, balancing the full bassines on their heads while waiting for someone to open the door to their concession so they could enter. Our concession was under a few inches of water when I arrived. Our welcome mat was not, in fact, welcoming. Electricity was out (though it came on soon thereafter). Heather was taking a video of our concession as I tramped in, soaking wet.


I watched the video later. I looked like a wet dog. My hair was matted and my clothes stuck to me as I trudged through the concession, high-stepping through a few inches of water with my bike in tow, trying to keep my sandals from sliding off of my feet.


The storm kept up for a solid two hours. By nightfall the storm was on its way out. Over the next few days, we discovered that some trees in a rare pretty shaded area had fallen over, their exposed, gnarled trunks shredded from the high winds; roofs had been ripped off houses; some dirt roads will need to be re-graded from the rivers that ran down them just a few days before.


The rainy season is here, and I learned an important lesson this time: Whenever I go out, in addition to bringing a book, always pack a poncho. At least until chaleur rears its ugly head again.