Beningenuity**

Interestingly has a hint of cinnamon

Small Change Game

Benin suffers from a chronic small change problem.  Everyone hoards it, which means that when I go to the bank to get money out and they refuse to give me nothing but big bills, I have to strategically break my large bills into smaller ones to buy the things that I need.  This is much easier in a large city such as mine, but for volunteers living in small villages, breaking a bill is all but impossible.  Some volunteers can be fine eating out on less than 50 cents per day; we make all of our own food because prices are considerably steeper in our town.

We have developed strategies for breaking bills, and last week I won.  I broke 3 five mille (5,000 cfa or about $10) bills in the same day.  The best place to break a bill is to find someone selling phone credit, because they always have tons of bills on hand.  Instead, I was downtown so just bought a bunch of vegetables from our regular vegetable maman and she never has a problem breaking bills.  Then I went to a boutique and made a small purchase, then bought oatmeal inside the market.  Basically, if we want to break bills, we have to buy in bulk or purchase Yovo items (which cost more).  If that all fails, we can always give a big bill to our maman at the end of our street and whittle it down as credit as we get our essentials there.

Since COS conference, we have been laying low and gearing up for our last big project, Camp GLOW. This last week, we completed our camp, and it was amazing. Before the camp started, on Saturday, we had our usual crew in town early for a champagne brunch as a delayed 4th of July get-together. It was very delicious and fun. On Sunday, when everyone else arrived who was helping out with the camp, our water decided to go out. Our water rarely goes out for more than a couple hours at a time, but this time, it decided to break some records and go out for a few days. This is normally no problem for us, since we’re veteran bucket-showerers and can handle everything without running water. With 7 other people living in our house though, it was more than inconvenient, especially since we ran out of drinking water.

Day 1:

The first day of camp went really well. I had a lot of girls from last year’s camp show up again, this time with parents who wanted to meet us and put a face with the name that their girls had been talking about all year. One mother told me that her daughter, Emmanuella (whom I adore!), had so much fun last year that she said she wanted to work really hard so that she could come back this year and she did. Her mom said that her attitude and grades had a very positive improvement since the last camp. That made me feel good. Our first day was pretty easy since it was just getting the girls there, doing a ceremony, eating lunch and a snack, playing a game, and just one informational session on malaria. Last year, I invited the mayor and instead of coming himself, he sent a delegate of his, who arrived over two hours late. I didn’t want to deal with any of that, especially since the mayor has had no interest in supporting any of our activities for our entire two years in Bohicon, so I didn’t invite him. Because of that, the ceremony and everything went very smoothly and on time.

Day 2


After some Starbucks via coffee at my house with everyone in the morning (thanks, Mama Jamie!), we headed out for day 2. This also went really well. We taught the girls about Moringa, which one of my work partners, Isidore, led in collaboration with an Environment volunteer. He arrived decked out like he was going to a wedding. It was a really neat session and the girls got to plant their own moringa tree in a little bag to take home with them. We took our picture afterwards, which the photographer didn’t seem to be interest in arranging, so I did it for him. After the picture, we hit a snag. Pauline, who is Julien’s (the local artist who we’re friends with) wife, convinced me to add an art session into my program because she wanted to teach the girls how to make these coin purses out of plastic bags. She does this for camps that are led by Peace Corps volunteers every year, or nearly, and she really wanted to do it in Bohicon, where she lives. Well, she took off to Togo without saying anything to anyone, and we had to scramble at the last minute to figure something out, since Julien didn’t know how to do that particular art project, he came and improvised an art project himself, which the girls seemed to like.

At lunch, which was the most expensive plate all week, the girls were not getting enough food. I pulled my lunch lady aside to talk to her and found out some very disturbing news. She said that she knew it wasn’t a lot and she felt really bad and was embarrassed, but Sakina (my former supervisor who I thought was honest, trust-worthy and awesome), apparently said that since she introduced us, that she was in charge of making sure the lunches went ok. So Sakina demanded that Marie (my lunch lady) gave her the 150,000 ($300) advance so that she could buy all the food herself. Marie said that she insisted on buying it herself, but Sakina wouldn’t budge and Marie is very sweet and caved. Sakina also instructed her where she should prepare as well, which was much further away than her own restaurant. So Marie gave Sakina the 150,000, as Sakina demanded, and the food that Sakina brought back was not nearly sufficient. When Marie called her to complain, Sakina didn’t do anything, so Marie added to the small stock pile with her own resources. This probably means that the supervisor that I have trusted and depended on for 2 years is just as corrupt as anyone else in the country, and she probably took a big portion of that 150k for herself. I advised Marie to not listen to her anymore and to do things how she sees best and buy everything with the next payment herself. She assured me she would and that we would all eat very well for the rest of the week.

After the lunch drama, Amy and I led a fast-paced workout that was a bit like a circuit workout, with a focus on abs. Last year, the girls wanted to know how to have a flat stomach and we didn’t have time to teach them, so Amy and I designed a work out that they can do at home without any equipment that we taught them. It was really funny because they were freaking out a little at how fast things were. I doubt they all had good form, but at least they got the techniques down. We had a guest speaker talk to them about their rights as women in Benin and what a healthy relationship looks like vs. an unhealthy one. The day went really well overall.

Day 3

For me, Day 3 was an absolute train wreck. I think I did a decently good job at keeping the train wreck from affecting the high spirits of the girls or even the volunteers helping out, but for me, it was one of my worst days in Benin for many small reasons that just built up throughout the day. The day seemed to start ok, even though it started with a migraine, which was reoccurring throughout the day. I had an NGO scheduled to do the HIV session, which they did last year, and I confirmed with them a month out, two weeks out, a week out, no problem. When I confirmed a few days out, they suddenly cannot commit to doing the session because their contract expired and they don’t have funding anymore. I asked my work partner, Gisele, if she could organize our Amour et Vie team to do it instead. She agreed. The day before, she called me and said that all week long, the CPS (my host structure) and all other health workers in Bohicon would be in a seminar all week and that she could no longer do it. Luckily, Amy’s team, who lives in the next town, was able to make it. They arrived on time and did a great job, even if they ran a little late.

Meanwhile, all morning while they were talking about HIV, I was reconfirming all of my professional women that I invited to talk to the girls in a career panel. I started inviting these women months and months ago, and one by one, at the last minute, they were cancelling their commitment. The only person to arrive on time without any prompting was a language teacher that I had invited last year who was awesome. She talked to the girls for an hour while she waited for me to find someone else to show up and take over who was supposed to be there. An NGO who was supposed to send a woman to talk to the girls, and with whom Craig confirmed with just the day before, completely forgot. When I called them and reminded them, instead of sending the woman that they were supposed to send, two men showed up in her place. Men do not work on a career panel of how women can be successful, so they called the woman who was supposed to come, and luckily, she got there only an hour and a half late. She ended up being great though and talked to the girls for an hour as well about her work and how she got to where she is now. Out of seven women that I invited and confirmed with, only 2 showed up. Part of the reason is because they were doing the BAC (like the SATs for high school) the same week as camp, and the women who work with the schools couldn’t come. But the other reason is that I live in Benin and it’s a coin toss as to whether something is going to work out or not.

As soon as I would start to feel better about the day and my work, something else would happen, big or small, that would just shatter any hope of the day turning upwards. One of these little things was a girl insulting my French. Another is when Gisele showed up for her session on family planning. I asked her where her wooden penis and plastic vagina models were, as we have done many of these sessions together over the last two years and she has always brought them. She said that she didn’t bring them because I didn’t tell her to, even though I have never had to. If that wasn’t bad enough, she starts the session by apologizing to the girls for not bringing the models and then blaming me for it by saying that I invited her to do this session at the last minute, which wasn’t even true. After the session, I tried to talk to her about it, about how what she said wasn’t appropriate or professional or supportive and even if it were true, which it wasn’t, there was no reason for her to announce something like that. It was not constructive to the lesson. This being Benin, where no one ever wants to take blame for anything, she got very defensive and started yelling, then stormed off before anything else could be said. We haven’t really talked since. And since that was the last session of the day, I concluded that there was no more hope left for it to get better and just wanted it to be over already.

The day before, back at the house, we realized that someone who pooped in the latrine, missed very very badly, and just left it there. Craig made an announcement for whoever it was to clean it up, and people made jokes. But after day 3, the guilty party still didn’t clean up their mess and Craig ended up doing it. This made me upset. Although it was funny at first, it’s a complete and utter disrespect to us, the hosts, and absolutely ridiculous that Craig had to clean up someone’s mess like they were a child. I figured out who it was, based on certain known facts, and tried to prod the person to take care of it, but they didn’t.

Day 4

The forth day went much, much better than the previous day. It was actually really fun and we enjoyed all our sessions. The day started with a Yoga session that tied into Stress Management. The girls were really funny for that, especially since yoga is a completely foreign concept to them. Afterwards, we did goal making, which went really well and all of the volunteers were engaging their teams and helping them. Then we did a Self-Esteem session, and I had my tutrices (the girls who I invited back from the year before as junior leaders) do a couple skits, which were super funny. After lunch, we played Red Light-Green Light and then I hit another snag. The person from my CPS who was supposed to be the guest speaker for the session on sexual harassment in the school system wasn’t present like he should have been. I called him and he said that he couldn’t do it because he was sick. It sounded like he was in an office and he sure didn’t sound sick, nor did he seem to plan on calling me to cancel. So the volunteers had to lead that session too, which worked out fine in the end because two of the volunteers helping out are English teachers and knew a lot on the subject.

Day 5

In the morning on day 5, we realized that we had an extra girl in the camp who was not on our invite list, nor our nomination list. After some digging, I realized that she had come to the camp the year before. Since the location and dates of the camp from this year to last year are all different, that means that she intentionally planned on crashing the camp. We didn’t make a big deal about it since she showed up on time every day and participated and we caught the glitch so late, so we just let her be. In the morning, we had a session on healthy eating which went well. Afterwards, we led a session on study abroad opportunities, which they didn’t seem as interested in as they were last year. Maybe it’s because there were a lot of repeat campers and they had already received the information the year before, but it was very anti-climatic. Throughout the day, we were answering questions that people were putting in our anonymous question box, most of which seemed to be written by two girls. We still did our best to answer all of them since we’re probably the only adults that they can openly ask whatever questions they have ever been curious about. They day before, a teacher at the location of the camp pulled me aside to tell me that we should have a session on leadership next year, and since we were going to be talking about how to succeed in life on the last day, I invited him to speak for the first 15 minutes of the session on leadership, which he did. He did a good job and hit some good points and it’s always better to have a Beninese person who the girls respect and who also comes from their culture to advise on things too. Afterwards, we just had a quiz, an evaluation, and then the closing ceremony where we gave out the camp photo, certificate, and backpacks full of school supplies and fabric for them to make their school uniforms with. Afterwards, we took lots and lots of pictures with the different girls and our teams. It was really fun.

I pulled aside the three girls that we invited back to help lead the camp (the other two girls were our scholarship girls who were helping out as their community project for their scholarship) to give them their certificates, photos, and backpacks.  What they didn’t know they were getting in addition to that, was a receipt for next year’s school fees.  Craig and I ran around to the 3 different schools that they go to the week before the camp to pay for their school fees for next year.  Since all three of them are entering into Second (like high school), their fees more than doubled and during the week, one of the tutrices, Viviane, pulled me aside to tell me that she would probably be moving to Parakou to look for work because she couldn’t afford to pay for her school fees for the upcoming year.  I put a receipt for their school fees in the envelope with the photo, and at first, no one noticed what it actually was.  It wasn’t until Viviane asked about it, while sitting there waiting and watching their reactions, that they rest of the girls caught on.  I was afraid that their reaction would be a big letdown for me, since they all took out the receipt, looked at it, then put it back away without saying anything, but once Viviane asked about it, they looked closer and realized what we did.  Their reaction was to bombard me with hugs and thank yous, which I happily accepted.  Craig and I are considering continuing to sponsor them after we return to the States so they can continue their education.  We need jobs first though. 

Beningenuity*

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