Ze Germans Are Coming!

Heather and I both traveled this past weekend, albeit in opposite directions.

Heather headed down to Cotonou to greet the new stagiares, or trainees, who arrived Saturday night, and to hobnob with Embassy staff at the Ambassador’s 4th of July party that was held on July 1. With the arrival of the new trainees, it means that we have now been here for an entire year! We are halfway there. We have not realized how far we have come until we met the new little “baby birds”—what do you mean you don’t know how to ride a zem or eat ignam pilé?—it is both eye-opening and humbling to see how much progress we have made since we arrived in Benin last July. We seem to have adapted nicely so far. Thank you all for your continued love and support.

I headed to Djougou, about 5 hours north, to play in an annual soccer game between German volunteers and American Peace Corps Volunteers dubbed “American Blitzkrieg”. It is a two-day competition, where we play European football on the first day and American football on the second day. The volunteer who hosted us and organized the event wrote up an announcement that was broadcasted on local radio in the area for two weeks prior to the match, and Beninese who live a few hours away knew about the match.

A few PCVs have German Volunteers in their cities/villages. The German Volunteers generally go to university after their volunteer service. They serve as volunteers as a “civilian option” to mandatory military conscription. They work with local Non-Governmental Organizations, just like we do, but they get a lot more money, can purchase and drive their own motorcycles, and are only here for a year rather than for two. And they all speak really good French and English. A few can also speak other languages.

We ended up with 12 volunteers playing, and the Germans unexpectedly showed up with at least 20. We arrived at the stadium in Djougou an hour early, and the stands were already mostly full and the Germans were taking team pictures and warming up. Both teams talked a lot of smack before the game. We made WWII jokes, and they wondered aloud where all the Americans were (the punch line: “Are they in Iraq?” “Ok, how many troops do we still have in your country?”). We had the makings of a classic encounter.

Before the game we lined up and walked out to the center of the field, single file, then faced the crowd and sang our respective national anthems. I lined up in center midfield in a playmaker role, tucked in nicely just behind our two forwards (one of whom, I would find out later, was 3 beers in when he arrived at the field, but he was wearing cleats so it evened out). The field, of course, was dirt, and we more or less estimated the touch and goal lines. The quality of the game was about the same as the field (overall, not so great). The Beninese showed up for a show and we didn’t disappoint, and they laughed at us as we slipped and clumsily mishit plenty of passes and shots. There were a few good give-and-go’s, and there was some quality here and there. We ended up winning 1-0 with a first-half goal, but three or four would have been more reasonable.

After the game we all went out to a bar where a concert was organized. I’m not sure if it was for us or not (there were about 40 of us and we far outnumbered the Beninese at the bar). We had a great time and made some new friends.

This week Heather and I are making the final preparations for our girl’s camp. I am in Cotonou for a meeting (I am our regional representative for the Volunteer Advisory Council, or VAC), and will take the PC shuttle up on Sunday with lots of necessary items for our camp, while Heather is at home working with her supervisor to hammer out the final details.

We have about 2 months to go until our much-needed vacation and 4 months until Brian and Dustin visit us for a few weeks! Can’t wait to see you guys!

Cheers!

Birthday Weekend

First, to back up a little bit, I had my IST (in-service training) two weeks ago. It went well. I learned a bit about how to request funding for projects, was able to get together with my work partner and formally make a work plan, got to see my fellow volunteers again who live nowhere near us, and I ate a lot of free food. We are hoping to be able to get our girl’s soccer team up and running over the next month at the local private school, and I have a lot of people to meet and monies to ask for to promote my worksite. I’m ever-so-slowly gaining weight back, and as soon as we are back in our normal routine at post (in two weeks), we will be able to work out regularly again so maybe that weight that I gain back will be muscle.

Now on to this weekend. My birthday was on Friday, so we came down to Cotonou on Thursday to celebrate and also to take the State Department Foreign Service Officer Test (FSOT). My birthday was basically perfect. We spared ourselves the hot West African sun and humidity by staying inside in the cool air conditioning all day, I was able to get some work done thanks to the lightning-fast internet connection in the workstation, and I ate a lot: buille, pizza, a cheeseburger, german chocolate cake, and ice cream.

On Saturday, we got up early to take the FSOT at the American Cultural Center here in Cotonou. We both took the test last year so we thought we knew what to study and what to expect but the test covers so much general information that it is difficult to study for. Despite the State Department adding an extra essay question on the end, we both are optimistic about our results (we will find out in “3-5 weeks” how we did). After the FSOT, we had a celebratory beer, then went swimming at the Ambassador’s house, played softball with the embassy staff (PC vs Embassy, the Embassy won, 1-0…we want a rematch!), then hung out with the embassy staff afterwards at a local restaurant. I was also fortunate enough to chat with my mom and friends over Facebook and received a birthday phone call from my best bud. Thanks again for all the birthday wishes. I understand that Brian partied enough for both of us this weekend!

Tonight we are going to a Super Bowl party (the game starts at 12:30am), and tomorrow we will try to get a spot in a PC vehicle that is heading north. If not, we will just take an early taxi up.

At the end of next week we will be traveling again, this time up north to Nikki, to work a PC booth at the Gaani Fete to promote PC’s 50th Anniversary and tourism in Benin. After that, we will be home for a while and unable to travel due to upcoming elections, but fortunately we have multiple cyber café’s in our town so we will be able to post updates.

Until then,

Cheers.

Back In Cotonou

I have been in Cotonou for the last 9 days and will be finally going home on Monday. I will not bore you with my medical details, but rest assured that it’s nothing serious. While I have been in Cotonou, Craig has been in Porto-Novo at his quarterly training (IST), which is what I had in December. There have been a few other volunteers with maladies in the med unit with me in Cotonou so we have been having a nice time all week making dinners and watching movies. I have been trying to get some work done here, but rather unsuccessfully since I have had appointments almost every day. One really exciting thing that I did get done is I have begun to help change someone’s life. Let me back up.


When I was working in property management in El Cajon, we had a lot of refugees from Iraq so therefore, we worked quite closely with Catholic Charities among other organizations who help them. I made a friend (Tim) towards the end of my two years there who works for Catholic Charities and used to live in Benin working for an NGO. When I found out we were being sent to Benin, he was one of the people that I talked to for insight. Before I left, he asked me if I could help him find his former chauffeur and friend that he had when he lived in Cotonou because he promised him that he would help him start his own chauffeur business by getting him money for a car. Since this is Africa, you can’t just send money like that because people find out about it very quickly and try to reap some of the benefits and Tim couldn’t fly out here and buy the car for him. Naturally, I said I would love to help. So I have taken on the role as the middleman. I have been trying to coordinate a time when I could look for him while I’ve been in Cotonou. I tried in December but had some mishaps and this week, I took another shot at it. I printed out all the information that Tim sent me along with a couple photos and headed out with two other volunteers to the area that the NGO is in.

I got to the NGO and talked to the head guy and asked him if he knew him. He said he did and called him up to tell him that friends of Tim were there at the NGO looking for him. He showed up on his moto about 20 minutes later. I quizzed him on some trivia to make sure that I had the right guy and then broke the good news to him that is surely going to change his life. Needless to say, he was thrilled and called it a miracle that Tim remembered him and that we were sitting down together talking about a promise that was made six years ago. When Craig gets back to Cotonou, we are meeting up with him and his wife/wives to give him the details on the process of completing this promise and to get to know each other better. When I left the office to go find him that afternoon, Tim had no idea that I would actually be conducting my search that day, so when I was successful, I couldn’t WAIT to get back to email him and tell him the good news. Clearly, he was ecstatic. I am thrilled to be a part of such a wonderfully good deed.

Craig comes back to Cotonou on Sunday and then we’re leaving for Bohicon with one of the Peace Corps staff members, which means a private air-conditioned car that isn’t crammed with marche mamas. I’m sure Craig will have an update about how his IST went. I cannot wait to get back to Bohicon and continue to work on all of our projects.  A bientot!

PO Box

Quick update: Our PO Box will remain in Cotonou. The Bohicon post office decided to raise the fee for the PO Box this year and we have decided not to pay for it, since we go to Cotonou on a somewhat regular basis and there is a monthly shuttle that comes through our little town, anyway.
Thank you for all of the packages and love!
Cheers