Football

Football is as ubiquitous to life in Africa as are music and dance, red dirt and poverty. It is possible to find rudimentary football pitches everywhere, with goals being as simple as two sticks in the ground with a stick “crossbar” along the top. Often, there is no crossbar at all and most of the players play in bare feet on the soft red dirt, and one can find small children everywhere kicking around a ball and emulating their favorite superstar, be it Messi, Ronaldo, or Drogba.
I am convinced that nearly everyone here in Benin owns at least one Chelsea jersey and one jersey for another team, probably Barcelona (I will occasionally see the odd Manchester United jersey, which makes me very proud). The fact that Chelsea has so many African players probably has a lot to do with this, which was a brilliant move because clubs generally receive more value for their money from African players and Africa offers a gigantic, largely untapped market for football teams; Manchester United recently partnered up with Glo Mobile, a Nigerian telecommunications company, to offer live updates and other club-related services to Glo customers, and there are billboards all over the place to advertise the recent partnership. Assuming that someday Africans will escape abject poverty and the corrupt political institutions that allows it to thrive, kudos to football clubs for tapping this market early. I can find decent-quality football jerseys anywhere--on the street, in the marche--for way less money than I would pay in the States or Europe. I have asked around and I have been told that I can get a jersey for around 4.000 CFA, which is about US$8 (at the current exchange rate of ~500CFA to $1). A really cool part about the knock-off jerseys here is that they come in colors that you can’t find anywhere else, such as a purple Chelsea jersey or a yellow Barcelona jersey with red vertical stripes and “Mesi” stenciled across the back.

I have played a few times here and the quality of football that I have encountered is quite good, though it seems to be lacking in organization and tactical knowledge, but then again, I have only played a pair of 4v4 pickup games or watched a few minutes at a time as I waited for a zem after school. On the whole, though, the players seem quick and technically sound, and it is clear that they admire the flair that the Brazilians bring to the game; I can’t help but wonder whether it is the Brazilians who inherit their creative flair from their African ancestors rather than the other way around?
I can’t walk more than a block anywhere without seeing at least a few soccer jerseys, and there are still billboards up advertising the World Cup, which is partly because MTN (the largest telecommunications company in Africa, which was a major World Cup sponsor) probably has not gotten around to taking them down, and partly due to the excitement that still reverberates here for the World Cup or anything football-related in general.
The Beninese national team, Les Ecureuils (The Squirrels), barely missed out on the last World Cup by being edged out of qualifying by Ghana by one point. Right now, they are in the midst of qualifying for the African Cup of Nations 2012 and have drawn Rwanda, Burundi, and Cote d’Ivoire in their qualifying group. This is an historic year because Rwanda has not fielded a team in years and it looks as if Benin has a good chance to advance to the tournament this year. Current volunteers here have said that workdays ended early during this past World Cup and people gathered around little community televisions which were powered by generators to watch games, and the Beninese playfully teased them for the American’s loss to Ghana, which is about 6 hours away (just on the other side of Togo).
To be continued… Cheers

Short Update Before Swear-In

Stage is coming to an end--we swear in on Friday the 17th--and we are excited to finish jumping through the prerequisite hoops and get to Bohicon and begin settling into what will become our home for the next two years, integrating into our community, figuring out the match schedule for the local professional footy team, and getting acquainted with our host organizations and doing research for our jobs. One of the first things that we plan on doing when we arrive in Bohicon is securing a reliable internet connection so that we can communicate with you all on a relatively regular basis.

Some quick updates:

A big thanks to Vashti, Johnny, and Erin for the sweet box of goodies! The candy, tortilla press, sandals, pictures, seeds, gloves, and love were all received intact and with no damage to the goods inside or the love that accompanied it.

We (finally) received Brian's postcard from Ireland, and we appreciate the kind words and beautiful prose.

We celebrated our 5th "dating-versary" on September 10th.  Since we're still in training and on training salaries, we couldn't do much but we had a half day that day, so we got to spend some quality time together, which was nice.

We both passed our final language interviews. Heather finished at the Advanced Low level, and I finished at the Intermediate High level. We both needed to score at Intermediate High to swear in, and we plan on looking for a language tutor (in French and/or Fon) shortly after arriving in Bohicon.

There has been a chorea outbreak in West Africa and as well as Benin, but it is mostly in Cotonou, which we will not be, so don't worry about us there if you see it on the news.  We have been well versed on how to prevent getting it. 

We all visited Ouidah on Saturday and saw a sacred forest with voodoo statues, the "Gate of No Return", which is on a very beautiful beach and the slave road whereby slaves that had been sold to European traders walked to the beach from where they would be taken to waiting ships and sent to the Americas. The Gate is a World Heritage site. We also saw a snake temple. Snakes are considered sacred here, especially the python, and there is a temple in Ouidah just for snakes. At "high season" there is said to be over 200 pythons that live there. We all got to try on a snake. One thing that was a bit traumatizing for Heather was a very cute grey baby goat that was tied up and very unhappy about it. They told us that the goat would become a sacrifice. What they didn't tell us is that they were doing the sacrifice right then and there so as we exited the temple and were on our way out, without knowing that they had just killed the very cute goat, we walked right through the crowd to the opening with bright goat blood and a lifeless goat. Heather gasped, turned around and hid. She had to have someone walk her out of the area with her eyes closed and face buried into our friend so that she could avoid seeing the very traumatizing scene. Needless to say, it was quite disturbing. Other than that unfortunate incident, the day was pretty good and we are seeing more and more of the country we will call home for the next 2 years. We are always learning something new too. That's all for now. Enjoy the pics!

Cheers!

Statue in the voodoo sacred forest

Me with a python in the snake temple

Snake Temple

On the old slave road

The "Gate of No Return" that slaves went through when they were put on ships

Us on the beach at Ouidah

Chaos

   Sometimes I wonder how I have made it this far, two whole months, in Benin without having some sort of bodily injury occur to me.  Today, I was almost hit by a moto who was going the opposite direction of traffic (and me) on the road to Nigeria as I peddled my bike away from the tailor’s shop.  That was my first mistake; being on the road to Nigeria on a bike.  What was their reaction?  They yelled at me to be more “doucement”, or careful, while the guy walking down the street laughed hysterically at me.  This happened all while I was trying to dodge the big old van with peeling blue paint that had stopped abruptly to pick up/drop off passengers whose manager hopped on and off the back bumper of the van.  He saw this and the next time his van stopped abruptly in front of me, he warned to me, “doucement”.  This goes on all the while, trying to ignore the kissing and hissing noises that everyone makes as a futile attempt to get my attention as I ride by.  I was almost hit by a moto about a month or so ago.  Maybe this will be the real task at hand with being in the Peace Corps.  When I have a close encounter with a moto-kind every month, maybe the real challenge of Peace Corps is to escape these moto accidents 27 times.  Two down, 25 to go!

   Let’s discuss something else that has caused for some extreme efforts in adjustment.  The schedules here for anything and everything are as erratic and frustrating as their traffic.  Last night, we were awoken, even with our earplugs in our ears, by the woman that is staying in our little mini house.  She fought with her bedroom door until she burst it open and woke us, then fought with the front door until that one burst open too, then shuffled around the living area until she decided to sit directly on the couch which is directly in front of our bedroom door and proceeded to chant something in local language over and over again 300 times.  Did I mention that this was all going on at 2:30am?  When we told our Grandpi about it this morning in an effort to avoid this unfortunate loss of sleep again, he asked if she was up doing her laundry.  What???  Now, let’s not forget about the lady that somehow has hot, fresh bread at 4:30am every single morning and feels the need to go up and down the street right outside our window shouting about it like she is selling the daily newspaper.  Then there is also the rooster that crows every morning starting at about 5:15am and doesn’t cease until every one within it’s vocal range has thrown in the towel and gotten out of bed.

    Right across the dirt path from our house is a haircut place that has long since decided to blare its music so loud that you can’t hear the person next to you without a sound barrier.  I couldn’t really figure out why a haircutter would need to blare music like that and the only logical explanation is to attract customers by getting their attention.  The only attention it seems to attract though are unemployed young adolescents and twenty-something men that just hang out around the shop all day.  I was talking to Granny one day and she said that it’s because of their religion that they blare music.  I don’t know what religion this is exactly but I have since noticed a significant amount of shops blaring music that sell nothing related to music.  To an unknowing eye, you may mistakenly think this place is a bar and try to order a beer, in which you would have no luck.  This hair cutter doesn’t close shop, or at least turn off its music, until about 10pm every night, if we’re lucky.  Even after that, they persist to loiter around their shop, which I guess wouldn’t even be considered loitering, and laugh, talk, argue, yell, sing, and cause ruckus until the wee hours of the night. 

    How about the kids, you ask??  Well I am sure glad you brought that up!  There is no such thing as bedtime here in Benin.  Nor is there a such thing as an after-school program, summer school, or anything else constructive to keep these rascals busy.  My theory about how they spend their day when school isn’t in session is this: they sit outside their mama’s fruit stand or house waiting for a yovo to walk/ride by so they can practice their yovo song, and while they wait, they play the ever-popular stick and tire game.  They compete as to who can roll an old tire the furthest with a stick.  I have almost been clothes-lined off of my bike by a sudden appearance of a tire that was hurdled down the road that I had the unfortunate timing of crossing at that instant.  You can think of it as the Beninese version of shuffleboard.  Of course, they pause all games to pee on the nearest wall that doesn’t have the threat of a fine written on it in chalk.  This cycle continues until late in to the night until their mama screams at them to go inside.  Once she starts screaming, they of course are not completely obedient, and therefore cause her to scream even louder and longer until the threat of physical harm becomes close enough to reality to frighten them inside. 

    The chorus of our neighborhood in Porto-Novo is some Beninese combination of goats bleating, roosters crowing, kids singing the yovo song, zems driving past, music blaring, guys arguing, big mamas screaming for their kids or a zem, bread lady announcing the arrival of her fresh hot bread, doors slamming, kissing/hissing noises, babies crying, with the occasional appearance of a band of screaming young men running down the street after a soccer game.  No wonder I have had a migraine for over 2 days now.  It absolutely amazes me that Granny and Grandpi have lived in this house for so many years, raising four children, and they still have their sanity.  Between my near-death experiences, the lady that can’t sleep, the bread lady, the rooster, the haircutter, the kids that chase us down the street, and just the normal noise from motos and cars driving by, I am counting down the seconds until we move to our quiet, peaceful, enclosed concession in Bohicon. 

Post Visit

This past week we met our homologues and took a taxi 4 hours northwest to Bohicon to visit our worksites, check out our house, and meet our work partners. I had been to Bohicon once before, on my way to Nati, where the bus stopped for a few frantic minutes at the bus gare. Though the bus gare was pretty frightening, I was excited to see what was beyond it and what was available in Bohicon proper. Bohicon has everything that we need. The marche operates every day, and every 4th day is a marche day when all of the vendors are there. Even on non-marche days, we can find anything and everything--pineapples and other fruit, yams, tomatoes, couscous, rice, onions, garlic, sugar, potatoes, oatmeal, knockoff soccer jerseys, jewelry, shoes, dried fish, chickens (alive or dead), goats (alive or dead), coffee (instant), plates, silverware, furniture, etc. It's like a dirty, open-air WalMart--awesome! If we ever need any specialty items (like cheese or ground cinnamon, for instance), there is a supermarche adjacent to the marche that we can utilize.
Our house is rumored to be among the best in PC Benin. We have tile floors, an inside, American-style bathroom with toilet and shower, and an outside kitchen. We also have 2 bedrooms and there is a bar 50 yards away from our house where we can sit on the breezy second story and drink the night away (note: a large beer costs a dollar). Bohicon also has an amazing chwarma restaurant that is run by some really nice Beninese guys who we have already befriended. We are looking forward to setting up our house with necessary furniture--coffee table, chairs, and bookshelves, in addition to the dining room table, chairs, and bedframe that the previous volunteer was nice enough to leave behind for us--and getting settled in.
My work site is really nice. The park has been around for 2 years and it primarily needs help with marketing and financing. I'm planning on setting up networks with hotels in the area and other tourist sites and websites, and need to get a meeting with the mayor to talk to him about financing brochures and to approve a business plan that the previous volunteer had already worked up. A long-term idea of mine is to set up a national tourist network to better advertise and market tourism abroad because Benin has a lot of interesting tourism sites but a lot of people have never heard of it and probably skip over it when looking at places to see in West Africa. I met most of my work partners and everyone is really nice and I'm looking forward to improving my French so that I can actually communicate properly with people and learning more about the park and the surrounding area so that I can get to work.
Heather was able to meet some of her work partners and her boss, and is gearing up to lead sensibilizations in the community. One of our neighbors works for UNICEF so she may be able to get a secondary project in with UNICEF and she will probably help me with her marketing expertise at the park. The good thing about Bohicon being such a large city is that it's relatively easy to find work if we look for it, which will keep us busy and let the next 2 years fly by. The drawback about Bohicon being such a large city (about 150,000-165,000 people--it is the 4th or 5th largest city in Benin), is that we don't have the intimacy of living in a village where everyone knows us, but we have already started networking and making friends to make the transition easier and Bohicon a little more bearable.
We basically have only a week or so left of training, then we swear in on the 17th and move up here around the 20th. We looked into getting a box at the post office so when we move up here and secure it we will share the address with everyone.
A la prochaine fois--until next time!

Almost Done With Training!

  Craig and I have officially hit our halfway mark through training.  Training is 2 months long and we hit our month mark on the 17^th of this month.  At times, it seems like time just drags on and on and the week never seems to end, but as I look back on when we arrived here, I can’t believe it’s been over a month already.  We are basically in our second to last week right now.  Next week, we have our post visit, which means no training because we’ll be getting everything set up at our post, and the week after that we have training and the following week after that, we just have a few days of processing and closing out training (final testing, interviews, etc.) then we have our swear in on the 17^th of September!  It’s coming up so fast! Everyone that we talk to who has been here for a year already said they don’t even know where the last year went because it went by so fast.  I am hoping that it doesn’t go by quite that fast, but I definitely don’t want it to drag on like the weeks sometimes seem to.

    So what’s new within the last month and a half that we haven’t already updated you on?  First, I have decided that I want to go to grad school when I’m done with the Peace Corps.  I have been looking into the different fellowships that are offered for Returned Peace Corps Volunteers and there are a few that are downright amazing.  The one that interests me the most is Fordham.  Fordham is in the Bronx and IF I can get accepted, I would get a full ride just for serving in the Peace Corps.  They also provide a living stipend while I do an internship.  Their programs are basically International Affairs with a business twist, so it’s perfect for me.  That being said, I have to take the GREs, which I have discovered that I can take here.  Ghana has the computer version and Niger has the paper version.  I am thinking that my scores could be higher on the paper version and I don’t plan on going to Niger otherwise, so my goal is to go to Niger this upcoming January to take the GRE.  We aren’t allowed to travel until December 18^th, so I figure January is a good time to do it and it gives me about 4 months or so to study and prepare.  The study materials are said to be floating around the different work stations throughout the country, but if anyone wants to send me a GRE prep book, I would not decline it since I don’t know how certain it is that I will be able to track one down here. 

      Craig recently has gotten over food poisoning.  We knew that it was bound to happen, and luckily for him, it only lasted a night, but it was not a very fun night, nonetheless.  He’s feeling much better and is his normal self again.  We still don’t know what it is that he ate.  We realized something in all that though.  In the very beginning when we first got to Cotonou, one of the volunteers there said that we would become each other’s family and get so comfortable with each other that we’d have lengthy, in-depth conversations about each other’s poop.  A month later, I have heard several poop stories and don’t feel awkward at all when the poop subject comes up.  It makes me wonder what we’re going to openly talk about a year from now.

     While I was on tech visit, I received a Fon name from some of the Fon people that we met during the tech visit.  I have decided that it is much easier for kids and other French-speaking people to pronounce my Fon name, not to mention they think it’s hilarious that I have a Fon name in the first place, so that is what I have started to go by.  It’s Cica, pronounced SEE-kah.  It means beautiful woman that is made of gold, or likes gold.  Either translation can work.  It has worked for all the kids in the neighborhood that sing the Yovo song to me.  At least they say Cica now and not Yovo.  Ha!

     We just recently had our second language interview, in which I moved from Intermediate Mid to Advanced Low and have started learning Fon in my language classes, which is super exciting.  Craig went from Intermediate Low to Intermediate Mid and just needs to go up one more level before he has passed through language training and can learn local language.  I’m sure that he is going to have no problem with it at all.  Learning Fon is very interesting because I feel all brand new again with language, which is a very strange feeling. 

     Other exciting news is that we discovered that the national stadium is open during the week to people who want to exercise there so we are starting to run to the stadium, run there a bit more, do stairs and other exercises and run back.  It’s pretty awesome!  With that being said, we also found out that every July, there is a marathon in Kenya.  Since Kenya is so far away and we would be shamed out of the country for finishing 7 hours after their slowest runner (it clearly must be the fastest marathon on the planet) we decided that we want to start training for a marathon that is less shameful and closer to Benin.  Our friend Elaina told us that every September, there is a marathon in Ghana.  Ghana is about 6 hours away (capital to capital), so we definitely want to try to train for that one.  It would be awesome if we could get someone to sponsor us so that we could raise money for something project-related that we are working on with the Peace Corps.  It’s just an idea now, but we are definitely looking into more details about it.

     We have talked to a few of our friends who have expressed interest in coming to visit us.  Yay!!!  We would LOVE us some visitors!  That being said, we want to make sure that if anyone is seriously considering visiting us, they are fully informed on when is the best time to come.  Since we accrue 2 days of vacation per month after we swear in as volunteers in September, we kind of have to wait a little bit to take it.  We are trying to meet up with some family in Greece next summer (but that is still in the works) so we won’t be in Benin to receive any guests.  During what we would call summer, it is the rainy season here, which isn’t a recommended time to come/travel around unless you don’t mind dealing with downpours here and there.  However, the following January (2012), we want to do a mini West African tour for 3 weeks or so.  We would like to go to Ghana, Mali, and Senegal and basically spend a week in each country.  If anyone would like to meet us along the way or fly out to Benin and go with us, it is going to be awesome!  If that doesn’t work for those who are interested in visiting, after we finish Peace Corps, we plan on doing some sightseeing/backpacking, including hiking Kilimanjaro and doing one or two camping safaris.  If you ever wanted to do any of that, we welcome you to come along with us at any point during our adventure and since we’re telling you about it now, you have plenty of time to plan/save. J

    The aforementioned are our vacation plans but we welcome any of our friends and family any other time that they can come if these things don’t quite fit into the schedule.  Keep in mind that since there would be a possibility that we wouldn’t have any other vacation days available other than those times mentioned above, that anything we do would have to be in-country.  Luckily for you, Benin has all the traits of West Africa in general, so you can spend a couple weeks here and legitimately say that you have seen West Africa.  Plus, it’s super cheap!  If you want to know any other info than what’s here, just ask!  

That’s all the news for now! 

Craig's Technical Visit

My Technical Visit took me to Boukoumbe, a small city 45k west of Nattitangou, neatly nestled up next to the Togo border in the Northwest of Benin. Our bus ride was about 8 hours long and we arrived in Nati around 5:30pm, just in time to jump into a bush taxi for the hour-long ride to Boukoumbe. Boukoumbe is beautiful. The Northwest of the country is home to lush green forest, Baobob trees, farmland, rolling hills, and Tata Sambas, which are traditional homes that look like little mud castles. Togo is only 4k away, and the nearest volunteer is actually 7k away and lives in Togo. The volunteer that we visited is finishing up service at the time that we swear in and my traveling companion, Josh, will take up her post when she leaves. Tata Sambas On the way from Nati to Boukoumbe

We met the mayor and all of Josh's future work partners, who are all really fun to be around. The main project that he will be working on involves the manufacture of "essential oils" from Morenga and Baobab which can be used in cosmetics or as food additives. We visited the marche and drank chouk (sp?) which is homemade beer made from sorghum (similar to Peruvian chicha). Josh learned a little bit of local language and is basically ready to start working right away, which is pretty exciting. Drinking chouk with Carlan and Josh at the marche

After leaving Boukoumbe, we spent the night at the Nati workstation, then got up early the next day to catch the 10-hour bus back to Cotonou. The bus broke down (or ran out of gas, I'm not sure) a few times and the last time that it broke down, this time in Cotonou, Josh and I just got off and paid for a Zem to get back to the Bureau to meet Heather and go back to Porto-Novo. Below are pictures of Heather and I in our new tissue! Look closely, mine is a koi fish pattern. Sweet! Bien integre! My "fish tish"

Heather's Technical Visit

     This week Craig and I had our tech visits.  It basically consisted of 4 days that we spent living with a current volunteer who is doing similar work to what we will be doing, therefore, we spent our week in different places staying with different volunteers.

     I spent mine in a small town/village called Zayanadou with a current volunteer named Ivy.  Her village is half an hour outside of Bohicon, which is the town that we’ll be living in permanently, so I got to scope out our digs as we went through there.  She works with a CPS (Centre Promotion Social), which does more social work to help people.  I will be working with a CPS as well, but my CPS just started a nutritional program with UNICEF, so that is what I will mainly be working on, which I am very excited about.  Having a branch of the UN as my work partner was the best-case scenario for me.  We went around to her different work partners, health centers, etc to meet everyone.  We also stopped by the local Gendarme (basically police) so that they knew we were there.  We made Mexican food one of the nights, which was awesome!  We even made our own tortillas and tortilla chips.  They weren’t quite like at home though, I must say. 

The river on the way to the village where Ivy lives

Statue in Abomey of a warrior who fought the French

Our Mexican food plates

     The last full day that we were there, we went to an island on the middle of a lake to do a sensibilization, which basically is a health lesson on a certain topic.  We had originally prepared to do it on how HIV is transmitted, but when we got there, we realized that our audience was mainly young kids, so we had to switch it up at the last second to the importance of hand washing.  It was really fun and the people were so happy to see us.  The boat ride that we took to get there was just amazing.  There were all these fishermen out on these little man-made boats reeling in nets and getting fish.  It was so remote and a place that a tourist would never venture out to.  There was a little girl in the crowd that appeared to be asleep and her little brother was trying to wake her up and she wouldn’t wake up.  She was completely limp, and I brought it to our volunteers attention and she told the village leader so her mother could be notified.  We suspected that she was probably suffering from malaria.  It was really the reality of their situation slapping me in the face.  When we started to leave the village to head back to the boat, all the kids were running and following us, all chanting in French, “Dance, Dance, Yovo, Dance”.  It was pretty cute.  They saw us off on the dock until we were out of sight.

Before getting on our little boat

the lake

the kids on the island

saying goodbye to us

Ivy and the locals

     The last day, we went back to Bohicon and I got to see our house where we will be living.  The current volunteer who lives there now said that he’s going to be leaving a lot of the furniture for us, which will help us a lot!  Our house is awesome!  It’s in a compound and our neighbors are another young couple with two kids.  The compound has a well that we can use, but we have running water.  We have a REAL porcelain toilet and a shower.  To get to our kitchen, we have to go outside to our backyard/washing area first and then into the kitchen, which is pretty cool.  There are animals and other things carved into the ceiling.  The rooms are huge and the house is painted all these colorful colors.  After visiting the house, we got lunch (I had scwarma, which is like kabob, and it was incredible!) and then got our taxi back to Cotonou.  Our taxi had a million serious looking cracks in it’s windshield, but luckily, we made it there ok without any windshield issues.  I stayed overnight in Cotonou so that I could meet up with Craig the next day and go back with him.  For dinner, I went out with the two volunteers that were here and had Italian food.  It was definitely the most expensive meal that I have had here, but it was worth it! Today, while waiting for Craig to get to Cotonou, we went to a mega-store called Erevan which is basically like Target.  It was jaw-dropping!  I can’t believe something like that exists in Benin.  I bought some long-craved things like Snickers and Bonne Maman jam.  Aside from that, everything was pretty expensive so I don’t anticipate shopping there a lot.  

      Once Craig gets some down time, he’ll post a blog on his Tech Visit week with some pictures.  Until then, a bientot!

baby weighing in a village a week ago

Me with the kids that were watching the baby weighing