Dogon Country, Part II

March 14: Tireli & Yaye

It was really hot.

Also, no more bread for breakfast.  Instead, we ate a sort of pancake made from millet flour that has been mixed with water and sugar, than fried.  We still have coffee and toppings, though, which helps out with the pancake’s flavor.  It is better to eat them quickly and drink some coffee because they’re a little sour.

The walk to Tireli was though deep sand that made our calves burn…and did I mention it was hot?

There’s nothing special to say about Tireli, but we ate lunch there at left at about 4pm to begin the 5km walk to Yaye.  It was still really, punishingly hot but, thankfully, there was less deep sand.  Erin got tired of dumping sand out of her shoes so she switched to her sandals.

We passed through the village of Amani where there is a sacred crocodile pond.  The villagers there make sure the crocodiles’ pond never goes dry and keep them fed.  Crocodiles, snakes, and lizards are all sacred in Dogon animist beliefs.



This photo was free

After the village of Amani, we walked through 1 or 2 kilometers of empty Sahel with no one around, just us and the bush and baobabs as far as we could see, but always with the escarpment to our left.  We randomly came upon a pair of dromedary camels just hanging out in the shade and got some pictures.

Heather (l) and Erin (r) under a massive baobab

We were greeted at the edge of the town of Yaye by one of the guys from our hotel, and he took Oumar’s pack and walked us the final 5-10 minutes to the hotel.  Yaye is one of the very few villages whose inhabitants have not yet moved off the escarpment.  The area below the village is still relatively forested, not like the mostly deforested Endé where we stayed the first night.  On the other side of the forest is the Sahara, so there is no other space that is available because the riverbed fills up in the wet season.  Thus, the villagers live in similar houses to the ones that were first built in the 14^th or 15^th century, and since not much expansion is possible along the cliff face (because of a large outcrop of boulders on either side), the population stays steadily small. 



Carved wooden drainage pipe at our hotel in Yaye

We ate some rockin’ barbeque chicken with our cous cous and sauce.  Probably the best chicken that I’ve had since we left Americaland.  Heather, Erin and I played some cards and we gave Erin her birthday present (chocolate candy) then went to bed for our 5:45am wakeup call so we could have breakfast and leave by 6:30am to get to Sanga early to catch public transportation back to Bandiagara.

March 15: To Sanga and Mopti

I slept alone on the roof last night, and it was the best nights’ sleep that I had in Dogon.  It was warm with a warm breeze, and the ¾ moon finally came out around midnight.  I woke up a few times and got cold at 4am and went downstairs to find a blanket but there were none to be found, so I just grabbed my scarf and used it as a makeshift blanket and hunkered down until 5:45am came around.

Last picture of some traditional graneries before leaving Dogon Country

We got up and had breakfast and left Yaye by 6:45am.  We hiked through the village and up through a cleft in the escarpment, climbing over and around rocks that would make a really cool waterfall in the wet season.  At the top of the escarpment we continued through the rocky plain to Sanga (sometimes spelled “Sangha”), the largest of Dogon villages that is really a small city, by 7:30am.



Panoramic picture of Tellem caves on the escarpment

Oumar had told us that there would be public transport available there back to Sevare.  Well, there definitely is…usually.  Lonely Planet West Africa 2006 says that public transport is available only on market day, which was the previous day.  So we sat and waited for 3 hours while Oumar called a friend of his to come and get us.  We had to rent out the entire car, but, to Oumar’s credit, we only paid what we would have paid for the public transport option and he covered the rest.

The hilly, rocky road from Sanga to Bandiagara was pretty terrible and it took what seemed like forever to traverse the 35km between the two cities.  Our car overheated at one point and we were stuck next to a random house in the middle of nowhere, but the people living there brought out a bucket of cloudy, muddy water that the driver poured into the radiator, which had just finished depositing all of its water beneath the car.  We were only stuck for about 10 minutes and then we could continue on. 

Dogon herder with some of his flock

When we got to Bandiagara, Oumar bought us lunch at a restaurant and we paid him for the rest of the his fees that we owed him, took us to get a taxi, and we said good-bye.  The taxi stand/lean-to next to the road had a few people already there and the chef told us that a taxi would be there really soon. 

When the taxi showed up, the driver tried to charge us an extra 500 cfa for our big backpacks, so we refused and argued with him and ended with Erin and Heather clutching their bags in the backseat, refusing to cooperate.  In the end we won (!) and didn’t have to pay any extra.  We were determined not to pay and everyone else was determined to leave, so everyone just piled in and we took off.  The driver stopped a few times on the side of the road to buy wood (which is why he wanted us to pay for our bags—to subsidize his firewood!—and we finally got to Mopti, bought some bananas and water, and headed to our hotel.

Our hotel, Ya Pas De Problem, was an oasis at this point.  We stayed in a dorm room by ourselves with two ceiling fans and comfy beds.  The real toilets had real seats (and they flushed!) and the hotel had wi-fi (which, it turns out, only worked for 2 hours of the 3 days we stayed there) and a pool.  Basically heaven for us, and we could charge up our electronics and shower!  I don’t know how volunteers live in the bush with no running water and electricity.  We are so thankful for our nice house in our big city.



We made lots of friends!



Where the Hell Are We? Part II, March 11-15: Dogon Country

March 11: Powana! Oumar, Teli & Endé

We met our guide, Oumar, at our hotel at 7:30am, after 18 hours of travel and about 3 hours of sleep.  We had planned on the 4-day Dogon trek (4d/3n) but after realizing that our roundtrip travel to Mopti was not covered, we decided to do the 5-day, 4-night trek instead, because onward travel from the end point of the 5-day trek was significantly cheaper  to the point where it would not cost much more to do an extra day. 



On our way to Dogon from Bandiagara!





We took a short taxi (10 km) to Sevare, where we then piled into a tro-tro to Bandiagara and rented a vehicle to go the 30 km to the first Dogon village, Teli, where we had lunch, cous cous with vegetable sauce and chicken.  Awesome!

After lunch we took a nap for about 2 hours and set out at 2:50pm to hike up to the escarpment to check out the old Dogon houses on the cliff face, and where Oumar gave us some background information about the Dogon people:

The Dogon originated near Bamako, but were chased out to the east in the 13^th or 14^th century to the rocky escarpment where they now live, which was formerly inhabited by the Tellem people since at least the 7^th century.  Both the Dogon and Tellem were peaceful farmers and herders, and when the Dogon arrived, the Tellem decided to move further east into the Sahel rather than stay and share space with the Dogon.  The land now is all Sahel but was formerly forest—thus, the Dogon built mud houses on and into the rocky escarpment/cliff face to protect themselves from enemies and animals lurking in the forest, where they lived until as recently as 50 years ago (when they moved down from the cliff).

Big baobab by the trail

All of the Dogon from the bottom of the cliff face now live, farm, and herd animals at the bottom of the escarpment by the river, but those at the top still live as they originally have for centuries, in their rock-and-mud houses.  You can still see most of the original Dogon mud houses below the Tellem “houses” that once held jewelry and other random stuff.

After we checked out the “old” village of Teli, we hiked 5 km to Oumar’s hometown of Endé.  It was market day in Endé so we put our stuff down at our hotel, ran by Oumar’s brother Mikey, and took off with Mikey to see the small market and various artisan’s houses to see locally-made jewelry, indigo-dyed fabrics, masks, and wood carvings.

Heather and her new friends

When we got back to Mikey’s house, we showered and had dinner, rice with vegetable sauce, and contemplated sleeping on the roof under the stars, but later decided to cram into a room.  Oumar spent the first night at his house with his family and met us the next morning at 7:30am for breakfast. 

Mud mosque in Ende

March 12: Yaba-Talu, Doundouru/Ndeli, Begnimato

We got up early and met Oumar at 7:30am for breakfast.  We had bread and Nutella/Vache Qui Rit/Guava jam and tea/coffee.  After breakfast, we met the rest of Oumar’s family at his house, then took a horse cart to Yaba-Talu for lunch.  We passed a lot of people herding goats/sheep/cattle and people working gardens, growing tomatoes, lettuce, eggplant, and lots of dry rows ready to grow millet and sorghum when the rains are due to start around June.

We arrived in Yaba-Talu around 10:30am and walked to the escarpment to watch and learn from two elderly Dogon men who were weaving traditional baskets.  Yaba-Talu is known as the place to get baskets. They’re made from sorghum stalks, baobab bark and palm fronds, and are lightweight and very sturdy.

Lunch was macaroni with vegetable sauce and chicken, but Oumar opted for the more traditional pâte made from millet with a sauce. 

After lunch we napped through the hottest part of the day and then left for Ndeli, located high atop the escarpment.  We hiked past the basket-weaving men and up a path through a large crack in the escarpment to get to the top.  We had to zig-zag and climb two traditional ladders to get to the top, which took about 30 minutes, from which we could see the village of Doundouru below.
 

Dogon ladder

We hiked through the village of Ndeli and saw some traditional blacksmiths working away at the bellows.  The views of the Sahel below were amazing and the rock formations at the top were breathtaking.  We ended the day at the village of Begnimato.  To get there, we hiked through a narrow channel that opened up to a vast plateau.  We could see a well next to a school where a mass of girls were busy pulling water.  From there we hiked about 10 minutes up a gently-sloping rock face to our hotel, in which the mud-and-brick buildings and village were perched on top of a gigantic, sprawling, terraced rock face.  Definitely the coolest and most beautiful village that we saw on our trip.



Heather showing off just outside Begnimato



As we entered the village we were met with swarms of children who took our hands and asked, “Ça va?  Comment tu t’appelle?” and giggled as they tried to repeat our names back to us.

Heather with her new friends in Begnimato

It was dark by the time we all showered and laundered a few items, and Oumar invited us to check out a local celebration and drink tchouk (home-brewed millet beer) with the locals who were celebrating a baptism, before dinner was served.  Everyone was really nice and welcoming and Erin, Heather, and I shared a gigantic calabash of tchouk before going back to the hotel to eat.  After dinner we slept on the roof, but it was really cold and windy so Heather escaped to the warm room at about 2am and finished the night out there.


Craig and his big bowl of tchouk



 March 13: Konsogou, Gourou (aka “shit village”), and Nombori

Another 7:30am breakfast of bread and tea/coffee, then we visited the village of Begnimato before departing.  We walked to a rocky outcrop near the edge of the cliff to a sacred spot where traditional masks are stored for celebrations and visited a local hunter’s compound that he decorated with skins of animals that he has shot and killed: monkeys, snakes, and lynx-like cats that live on the rocky escarpment.

We left town and passed through the village of Konsogou, so small that it isn’t even on the map of Dogon country.  We stopped to fill up our water bottles (it was HOT) and sit in the shade for a minute before continuing on.  The path was lines with plot after plot of dried rows ready to be planted in the upcoming rainy season, and sometimes we would stumble upon a fertile garden with a well in the middle or just off to the side, the gardener busy watering his/her crops.

We had lunch in Gourou, aka “shit village” (because there were lots of flies).  Oumar explained that there were lots of flies because there were only a few latrines for the few thousand people who lived there and people just pooped wherever there was space available, so the place smelled like pee and poop.  Our lunch of cous cous and sauce wasn’t that great but we ate it really fast and napped straight away.  We were not too sad to leave after our naps were finished and it was time to go. 

As we walked out of town, we could see another neighborhood of the town on the other side of a mini canyon, and Oumar explained that the animists, Muslims, and Christians all live together in this village, unlike in the others that we had visited where each religion had segregated themselves in different quartiers.  Either way, the place smelled like shit.  On to Nombori!

Resting on the trail

To get to Nombori from shit village, we had to cross a vast expanse of the rocky escarpment plateau—deep sand littered with large rocky outcroppings—to a large cleft in the rock face that the rainy season’s river has carved out for us, to traverse down to the Sahel below.  When we finally made it to the bottom of the canyon, we were astonished to be gazing at a sort of garden of Eden that the Dogon has somehow eked out of the Sahel, meandering between baobab trees and in spite of the encroaching Sahara Desert.


The encroaching Sahara, no doubt hastened by massive deforestation



Just before descending to Nombori, in the background

Nombori is situated on the escarpment side of the river that resurrects itself every rainy season but now lies dry and dormant.  Nombori offered great sunset and sunrise views of the cliffs and clever silhouettes of Dogon granaries and leafless baobabs.  Showers were warmish and we got to bed late—about 10:30pm.

Sunset in Nombori

Granery silhouetted by the sunrise

Where the Hell Are We? Part I, March 8-10: Travel in West Africa is HELL

March 8: Getting to Burkina Faso

Benin à Burkina Faso à Mali

Tanguieta  à Ouagadougou à Bobo à Mopti

The tro-tro (overloaded van) picks us up in Tanguieta at 3 am and we are on our way.

After a few stops in town we head north-west toward the Benin-Burkina border.  We had already purchased our Burkina visas so the border crossing was quick and easy, and we arrived in Ouagadougou around 11 am, then decided to continue to Bobo, where we were told that onward transport to Mopti (in Mali) would not be a problem. 

Arrived in Bobo before nightfall and got a taxi (no zemijans outside of Benin) to our hotel, Casafrica.  We ate dinner near our hotel and decided to spend the next day in Bobo, because we were promised by friends that Bobo was a cool town to hang out in.

March 9: Day in Bobo

We set out early to check out the marché and search out some strawberries.  Burkina folks (Burkinabé) are a lot more relaxed than the Beninese.  Nobody in the marché tried to grab us or get really aggressive, though there were a few creepy guys who followed us for a little bit at one point.

After the marché we went looking around for bus tickets for our onward travel the next day.  Unfortunately Bobo does not have a central bus station so we ended up walking all over the city to go check out all the different bus companies, but nobody went to Mopti.  We could not find a tro-tro and got really frustrated, but then we were saved by an adorable little old French man who moved to Burkina in 1976 when he worked on a Moringa project with the World Bank and just kind of stayed there.  He drove us around in his ancient, busted-up Peugeot 505 to a few different places to secure our bus tickets to Mopti; we were promised that the bus would leave at 9 am the next morning and go direct to Mopti, no problem.

Our savior in Bobo, with Erin

We met an interesting French guy at our hotel who works 4 months a year driving trucks and spends the rest of the year split between Cuba and Burkina Faso, and a very interesting family who live in Germany in the Spring/Summer and spend the Fall/Winter traveling around the world in a van.  The couple have two small children and are able to finance their trips through a combination of some rental properties they have and the money that the German government gives them for their small children. 

They have traveled from Germany to India and back again, and are currently on their way to Ouagadougou to fly back after driving from Germany and visiting places in West Africa.  They have a website, www.ourvan.de.

March 10: Travel in Africa is HELL

We got tickets yesterday but didn’t pay for them, just in case something better came up.  That the bus direct to Mopti would leave at 9:00am seemed too good to be true so we had a sinking feeling that something would go wrong.  Oh yes.

We arrived at the bus station where we had made our bus reservation at 8:30am and reluctantly paid for our tickets.  Now they had us locked in.

We were directed to a different bus station, where we were told that we would be the first folks on the bus and avoid the crush of folks getting on at later stops. 

Note: the buses in Burkina Faso and Mali are basically big bush taxis.  They strap luggage to the roof, overfill the inside of the buses, and stop every few minutes to let people on and off.  They are also in HORRIBLE condition.  Grâce à Dieu for Benin’s reliable, modern-ish buses!

Inside the "bush taxi" bus

It was there that we were told by different employees that the bus leaves at 10am; wait, no, it leaves at 12pm; actually, it’s not going to Mopti at all…it goes to Bamako but it’s ok, the road to Bamako and the road to Mopti are the same road, and the bus will let you out at Bla (a town between Bamako and Mopti), and you can catch a bus to Mopti from Bla, no problem.  And the bus will arrive in Bla by 5:00pm at the latest.

We were flexible; we didn’t have to be in Mopti until the next day, so we waited.  And waited.  One hour passed, then two.  Then three.  At noon they began loading the bus, strapping all sorts of luggage (and a bicycle) to the roof, since the undercarriage was already full.  At about 1:15pm the bus finally filled up with people and even more baggage, and we are off.

Burkina has relatively good roads but terrible transportation options.  We would learn that Mali is the same way.  Our bus was probably 40 years old and when it sits stationary and idles, the inside fills up with clouds of smoke and fumes.  As it kicked and sputtered down the road, most of the fumes exited out the windows, but we were always breathing in those fumes.

Large-scale garden projects on the side of the road

Every 10 minutes the bus stopped to pick people up.  Fortunately, we had no problems crossing the Mali border.  We tried (and failed) to purchase Mali visas at the border, which almost caused us problems later in the trip.  The officials at the border had us fill out a visa application, then took them and stamped an entry stamp in our passports, sans visa.

As day turned into night we started to wonder if we had missed our stop in Bla and were blindingly hurtling towards Bamako.  We made a nice Togolese friend on the bus who explained that Bla was not far away.  We finally (at 9:00pm) arrived in Bla and were dropped off at a Carrefour in the middle of town.  This was the crossroads between Bamako and Mopti, and where we would have to catch our next bus.

Their “bus station” is just the road next to the crossroads where we were dropped off.  A few guys tried to hustle us into overpaying for a private car, but we were saved by a bus that pulled up after only a few minutes and, lo and behold, it had just 3 places available, so we piled in.  A few hours later we FINALLY arrived in Mopti, at 3:00am.

Total travel time (including the wait at the bus station): 18 hours.  Total distance covered: about 500 kilometers (about 310 miles). 

We took a quick (and expensive) cab ride to our hotel to sleep for 3-4 hours before we were to meet our guide, Oumar, at 7:30am.

Makin' Babies Fat

    

I started planning a nutritional recuperation program back at the end of October with two of my work partners.  One of my work partners was supposed to scope out the malnourished babies during her normal 9 baby weighings that she does all over the community and in December, we would invite 50 malnourished kids with their mothers to a program that would recuperate them in January.  I planned the program like this as kind of a test to see how I would do working with these two without the help of my supervisor because after she leaves to continue her education, I wouldn’t have that option anyway.  Well, Gisele, the baby weighing woman, did not do her part at all and I originally cancelled the entire program because after all, if we don’t have any malnourished babies to recuperate, then it’s pretty impossible to continue with the program.  I didn’t want all of Isidore (my other work partner) and my hard work to go to waste though, so I enlisted the help of my supervisor and we got the program back on track with a postponed date. 

February 6^th is when the program started.  Each day, the women and their malnourished kids came at 9am (theoretically) to prepare the food (peeling potatoes, dicing fruit, grinding onions) together that we’d be using that day.  Then we’d weigh all the babies and I would keep track on my form that I made how each one is doing each day to see if there are improvements, then we’d discuss what we were making that day and why it’s good for the baby and how much the ingredients are, and then right before the food finished cooking, we would teach them about something that is related to preventing their malnourished children from becoming malnourished again.  The topic was different every day and they usually coincided with what we were already doing. 

Overall, the program was a great success and the majority of babies gained weight, although not as much as I would have liked.  The biggest problem that we had was that about half of the women took the program very seriously and came on time every day and participated during the cooking sessions and listened to the lesson and were active all week.  The other have did not.  They came late (sometimes by more than 2 hours), did not participate or seem to be following what was going on, and one women actually was force-feeding her baby right after we talked about force-feeding and why it’s bad.  These women were just in it for the free meal and probably lived close by so they could walk and didn’t have to invest anything in attending the program.  These women also didn’t seem to give their kids any other meal that day.  It was obvious when each day their child was actually loosing more weight and most of them admitted that they weren’t feeding them breakfast or dinner. 

This was incredibly frustrating for me because I really wanted to help them and definitely put a lot of effort into making the program happen, but it’s not possible to make the women care about their children and I can’t care double for their children in hopes that they would take it seriously.  One woman who came from an hour away had a really malnourished child.  He was a year and 4 months old but he didn’t look any older than 4 months.  She couldn’t afford to come to the program every day and when I talked to my supervisor about her situation, she gave her a voucher to go to the hospital that specializes in malnourished children to recuperate her child for free.  When I asked her if she was going to come back and take her baby to the hospital, she said she had to think about it because of the costs of coming back.  I found out from my supervisor that a lot of women here do not get attached to their kids like we do in America and think of them as replaceable.  They say, “Well, if this one dies, I’ll just have another one”. 

I also had an issue with one of the mothers who, not only thought this way and didn’t seem to care about her child, but who thought it was funny to cause trouble in the program.  She was one of the ones who lived nearby and came for the free meal and never helped out and every day she would ask me for money for herself to buy food or for an empty jar or for clothes.  After a few days of this, on top of her having no respect for myself or the program, I took her to see Sakina, my supervisor, so that she could translate into local language that I was going to kick her out if she didn’t shape up.  That seemed to help, but the last day of the program, a Saturday when all staff were gone, lightening struck twice.  Her and another woman got into a blow-out fight because the other woman was feeding one of her kids who wasn’t malnourished and they were insulting each other.  Then, when I was literally in the middle of my last lesson of the program, a grown man strolled into our area, interrupted me to tell me that he was hungry and to give him some food.  I politely explained the program and that it was for 0-5 year olds, then he decided that it’d be funny to say that he was 4 ½ and also malnourished.  When he wouldn’t leave, I started to get upset and basically threw him out of the area. 

I’m glad I did the program and it definitely helped the children whose mother’s took it seriously, but I do not ever want to work with adults again.  They are difficult!  I am going to stick out the last bit of our contract working with kids in our clubs and camps and leave it at that.  There is hope with the kids.  It’s not too late to try behavior modification and to mold them to have better life habits, but I can’t say the same for the adults. 

The Great Beninese Gas Crisis [UPDATE]

The Great Beninese Gas Crisis of 2012 is over--mostly.  In the face of protests that nearly shut down the country, the government of Nigeria decided to partially reinstate its gas subsidies, which ended the general strike and resumed illegal gas exports to Benin.

Gas stations are back to empty, and roadside gas stands are back up.  Rather than up to 1,400cfa (about $3!) a liter, gas is back down to a more manageable 475cfa per liter, though still more than the 300-350cfa per liter that gas was going for before the crisis.

Zem prices are still slightly inflated, but we have found that if we travel in packs and gang up on zem drivers we can get a better price, though taxi prices are still quite inflated.  To wit: the price from Bohicon to Cotonou used to cost 1500-1800cfa, but now costs a minimum of 2500cfa each person, each way.  We do not travel much between town and we generally ride our bikes within our city so this has not impacted us too much, but it was quite a shock to pay so much to get down to Cotonou last week to take the FSOT!

Heather has her Nutritional Recuperation project going on this week and I am getting started on creating a Beninese-friendly Excel training course for budding entrepreneurs who already have some computer knowledge (I am not reinventing the wheel, mind).

It is still hot.  Harmattan is about over, which means that chaleur is about here.  Mango season is almost upon us.  Rainy season will commence in a few months, and we are anxiously waiting the relief that it brings.

Cheers.

The Great Beninese Gas Crisis of 2012

Benin does not produce any oil.  Nigeria, our neighbor and biggest trading partner, however, does.  In fact, Nigeria is the largest oil producer in West Africa and Benin imports close to 100% of its petroleum from its large, overpopulated neighbor.  Talk about being addicted to foreign oil!  Much of Benin’s economy is concentrated in what is called the “informal sector”, which means that most people who work do not get a paycheck like we do in the United States with taxes taken out.  Instead, employers (and employees) in the informal sector get paid in cash only.  Examples are women who walk around and sell food, men who grill meat on the side of the road, women who sell vegetables at the market, and people who sell gas on the side of the road.

Wait, gas?  Yes, every city has a thriving informal gas market, brought over illegally from Nigeria and sold in stands on the side of the road.  Well, that is until last week when the Nigerian government ended its domestic oil subsidy that kept the price of oil down and affordable for everyone.  Protests have erupted in the streets of Nigeria and illegal roadside gas stations have disappeared in Benin since the end of the subsidy last week.  Roadside gas in Benin is no longer affordable; long lines are popping up at the few legal gas stations in the country.   Roadside gas used to be 300 cfa per liter (about 60 cents), but has now skyrocketed to more than 1,000 cfa per liter (about 2 dollars), almost triple the price of legal gas offered at (likely state-subsidized) gas stations. 

You can see how the end of the gas subsidy not only affects Nigerians but Beninese, as well.  Add to that rumors of a rumored 35% devaluation in the price of the franc cfa used by 13 countries in the West African Economic Union, and there is a possible disaster on the horizon.  My work partner, Arimi, makes 30,000 cfa (or about 60 dollars) each month which supports him, his wife, and small child (his wife also works and makes 20,000 cfa per month, so together they make $100 each month).  Gas prices have just tripled, and soon he will make essentially 10,500 cfa less each month if the rumored devaluation happens.  The local mayor’s office pays his salary and since the mayor’s office refuses to even give us a $400 marketing budget for this year, I would be surprised if they would increase salaries to make up for the devaluation, if it happens. 

So, what will happen to Arimi if the cfa is devalued?  Well, with the gas issue I have heard other volunteers complain that their work partners will not go to work until they can afford gas for their motorcycles.  Arimi would have to find some way to cut back on expenses, which would be a stretch for a guy who already essentially lives on $1 per day (the other dollar he makes per day goes towards recurring expenses, such as rent, electricity, water, motorcycle upkeep, and, of course, gas).  What will it mean for us?  The price of transportation has already massively increased.  Zemijohn prices have doubled, bush taxi prices have gone up 20%-50%, and it seems as if bus service has declined.  Rumors abound that buses are now installing a bench in the aisle of the bus to pack more people in, plus slightly increasing the price of fares, to make up for the difference in gas prices.  With more people on the bus, the bus is heavier and more difficult to navigate through the slalom of potholes that litter the main north-south corridor and can cripple a vehicle.  I imagine that we will see more bus accidents as they continue to become more and more overloaded with passengers and more difficult to maneuver.  

Higher gas prices have also driven zemijohn drivers to literally fight for business: zem drivers have been pushing volunteers off of the back of other zem’s motorcycles to try to literally steal their business.  It is not difficult to see the social and economic consequences of the new gas prices and we cannot imagine what will happen if the cfa franc is devalued, as well.

Travel is less safe and more expensive.  Crowds swarm to legal gas stations while the thousands of people who once made a little money selling illegal gas now must find another profession.  There are no jobs here, no craigslist or monster.com to search for jobs, a poor education system, and shoddy, crumbling infrastructure.  It feels like the country is literally falling apart in front of our eyes.  But people will find a way to get through it.  The roadside sellers of gas might make and sell charcoal instead, or grill meat.  People may ride bicycles instead of motorcycles.  Without any help from the government, everyone will need to find a way to scrape and save and find money for their next meal.  As Arimi is fond of saying to me, “C’est l’Afrique.”  That’s Africa.

**Update: Nigeria reinstated their fuel subsidy last week, albeit at a lower rate than it was previously.  There are still problems with zem and food prices, but they are becoming part of "normal" life now.  Check out this line at the gas station!

click me to see me larger

Fête de Vodoun, 2012 edition

We passed the holidays at home in Bohicon with local volunteer pals.  Big thanks to Kev & Danielle, Tim, and Cherise for the Christmas packages!  We are so fortunate to have great friends and family that supply us we goodies from Americaland.

On 10 January, Benin has a state holiday for Vodoun (Voodoo).  Minutes and untold minutes of research have led me to believe that Benin is not only the only country in the world that has an official state holiday for Vodoun, but also the only one that has state holidays for three different religions (Christian, Muslim, Vodoun).  Technically referred to as "Traditional Religions Day", the Vodoun fête day is celebrated with dancing, drinking (heavily), offerings to vodoun spirits and/or deities, singing, dancing, having fun with vodoun characters (such as Egunguns and Zangbetos), and dancing and drinking.

We are in the beginning stages of planning our girls' camp for this year which will take place in June and we have also recently found out that new volunteers who will arrive in July (or maybe June?) are already receiving invitations to come here and have a facebook group already.  Many volunteers are busy facebook stalking them already.

We will try to post pictures from the fete the next time that we have a fast internet connection.  Tried to post a video + pictures here today but it wasn't working out.  Sorry!

Cheers