Football, Part Deux

It has been far too long since my last football update. I thought that these would be much more frequent.

A few highlights from the past month or so:

•I played for the first time in a long, long time with my neighbor’s team. It was kind of silly how this all came about, since I had been bothering the guy for six months about playing football with his weekend buddies. Heather and I will be running a week-long girls’ camp in June and are soliciting local schools for lists of their girls with the top grades so we can invite them. Our neighbor is the equivalent of a Vice Principal at our local school, and one day he came by to drop off his list of girls for us to formally invite to the camp. While he dropped it off, he started gloating that he would get to play soccer the next day (a Wednesday) because, since it was the day of the presidential inauguration, the president gave all state employees the next day off. Heather suggested that he take me along and, with his back to the wall, caught between a rock and a hard place, he was forced and coerced into inviting me. I woke up early the next morning and went with him to our neighboring city of Abomey and we played for 2 straight hours without a break. I have been busy the past few weeks but apparently everyone asks about me. Can’t wait to get back to post to show off some more Yovo skills.

•After I wowed Gilles and his friends with my skills, he invited me to play in a soccer game at his school. The school was having an end-of-the-semester party and part of the week-long festivities, of course, was a Teacher-Student football match, presumably so the teachers could literally kick the crap out of their students. Long story short, I started the game and scored the opening goal of the game (with a header, no less!) on a brilliant front-post run. The crowd went bezerk. Not bad considering I don't have cleats (I've been wearing my flats and everyone else has real cleats). We tied, 1-1. See the “Photo Mélange” page for pictures of my triumphant debut.

•I have started a girls’ soccer team at said school (CEG 2, in case you were wondering), and it has started off well. Actually, when I went to the school to make the announcement that I wanted to start a girl’s soccer team, I was literally—literally!—laughed out of the school, then of course nobody came to my meeting that I scheduled. Out of nowhere, my neighbor told me that girls had been asking him where I was because they wanted to play (apparently everyone already knows that he’s my neighbor, or that I’m his neighbor—whatever). We had our first practice and I just let them play. We had 9 girls show up and more are on the way when word gets out about it. I am working on getting a soccer ball for each girl (and some for the boy’s team, as well). We will practice on Wednesdays where I will lead a formal training session, and probably Saturdays as well (on their own to mess around).

•My neighbor is quickly becoming one of my best friends at post. We get together to watch all Champion’s League matches. He calls me when the game is about to start to let me know that there is a game on, which is hilarious because 1. I can hear him shouting into his phone from the other side of the wall and 2. We always discuss our “game plans” the afternoon of the game. “Of course I know there’s a game on! I’ll finish my dinner and I will be right over!” Heather gets some peace and quiet out of it, and since Manchester United is in such great form, she doesn’t have to deal with me sulking around when we lose. I just finished watching the first leg of the Man Utd-Schalke match up here in Parakou. We went to a bar to watch the game but the TVs kept going out (weird because the lights stayed on…most of the time). At halftime Heather and I went back to the workstation and just streamed the game live and used the in-house projector to watch the game on the wall. Two-nil and advantage Manchester to take back to the Theatre of Dreams!

Life is good. Football is here and it is plentiful.

Cheers!

Peace Corps Cribs: Bohicon

A long time in the making...Chez Wirick!

It's Been A While...

We realized that it has been awhile since we posted a blog with substantial updates so we're planning on fixing that today!  Since Gaani Fete, we have been busy running around doing stuff.  This blog is just to give an update on random things that have been going on in our lives.  There is no flow or transitions between paragraphs, so if something doesn’t make sense, or it seems like I’m jumping subjects out of nowhere, it’s because I am.  J  So bear with me! 

Craig and I started an English club back in October and it was one of the first real things that we did here as volunteers and each week or every other week we had been meeting with the kids to go over English words in preparation for a Spelling Bee.  The last couple weeks before the Bee, we had like a “dress rehearsal” where we pretended to be judges and went through the process exactly how the real judges would to better prepare them.  The day of the Spelling Bee, March 16^th, came and as I predicted, the girls were killing it and the boys were dropping like flies.  The final two girls each spelled at least 15 words and the runner up for the girls was very upset that she lost and didn’t even want to take my “thanks for playing” candy that I was handing out at the end.  The boys were dropping like flies but eventually, they got down to the two last boys and they had a respectable battle—though nowhere near the same as the last two girls.  The boy that ended up winning had started coming to our sessions after Craig and I made a list of students that we had our neighbor and their vice principal verify to make sure they had the average gpa to be qualified to participate.  That means that we had no way of knowing for sure if our winner for the boys was even qualified to win.  Oops!  At the end, I asked him if he had the average (which is 10) and he said that he had 17 (which is super high!).  Naturally, I thought he was full of it and became even more worried about whether he was qualified.  About a week later, we found out from our neighbor that he had a 16.5 and was the top boy in his grade.  Wow!  Good for him!  So we were able to breathe a sigh of relief.  The next step for the Spelling Bee is that these two winners will get to travel with us for a few days up to Nattitangou (the north of the country, to where most kids from down here have never been) to battle all the other winners of participating schools where there are participating PCVs.  So it’s a pretty big deal for the winners. 

Before the start of the Spelling Bee

With the winners....too bad the flash wasn't working!

The other major development that has sucked us dry of free time is our grant application for our girls camp that we’re doing this summer.  While we were hanging out with one of our Spelling Bee judges, Erik, I found out that it took him 4 months to get his money for his project from when he submitted his grant application because he kept having to go back and make changes and get contracts signed before it would be approved.  So Craig and I diligently worked from the time we woke up to the time we went to bed, often foregoing our usual movie that we watch every night, to finish writing up the project.  During the day, I was running around, literally, everywhere getting contracts signed.  Any price we have in our budget has to be backed up with a contract, whether it’s a donation (like a NGO coming to teach about a topic for free that would normally cost money) or a service.  It was very tiring and time consuming but we were able to finish everything over the weekend before we left for Cotonou.  Once we were in Cotonou, I was able to nag at the lady that looks over them for approval to get remarks back right away and to fix things right away.  It took us 3 days from when we submitted our application to when it was approved.  I think that’s a new Peace Corps record!  It was also a HUGE weight off of our shoulders.  Now we’ll have money to actually host this camp.  Whoohooo!

While we were in her office, getting the good news about our grant application, our Country Director, Bob, invited us to his house for dinner.  Bob reminds me of home in so many ways.  He has that laid-back surfer attitude, he talks like a surfer, and he’s from the West Coast.  He’s from Seattle but has land out in Montana.  Dinner at his house was amazing.  Their personal chef made us fresh tortillas, fajitas, salsa, and guacamole followed by a dessert of home made ice-cream and espresso.  We got to talk a lot about Madagascar, his last post, so I got some good tips for when we do our big trip and hit Madagascar. 

Recently, my CPS opened up a “cyber”, where people can go to use the internet, as part of the CPS and we accidentally, while we were there working on grant stuff, found out that they had wifi also.  This is really good news because our house is about a 7 minute walk from the CPS, whereas our other cyber was at least a 10-minute bike ride (not bad) and I can use this wifi for free!  Of course, as soon as I pointed out to my supervisor that I was getting wifi, she had someone come in and protect it so other people couldn’t mooch off of it, which ultimately screwed everything up and I can’t get on it anymore.  The technician is supposed to come back out this week to fix it again.  That is another reason why we haven’t been online in a while.  We’ve been really busy + the closest wifi to us doesn’t work = we’re not online as often as we’d like to be.

So we have 3 neighbors and the neighbors whom we share a wall with are the closest to us and are a younger couple that is in probably their mid-thirties and they have two kids.  One of them is about 4 or so and his name is Emeric, and the other one is less than 2 years old and her name is Amanda.  Amanda has started saying my Fon name (Sikah) and both kids have warmed up to us so what they do now is put their faces against our screen door and call my name, then tell me to come in Fon (wa-wa).  It’s really cute.  Just yesterday, Amanda was peering into our house looking for me and when she saw me, she started calling me name and telling me to wa-wa, which is funny because usually it is the adults that “wa” the kids, not the other way around.  We have fun with them though.  We play soccer with them and stuff, which they like because here adults don’t play with kids.

Craig playing soccer with Emeric

They don't smile here, so we told him to smile with his teeth showing and this is what we got!  Ha!

Emeric and Amanda playing with us

Today, Craig and I had an appointment in a little village just north of us named Dan and we decided that it would be a good bike ride.  So this morning, we got on our bikes and rode…and rode…and rode.  Turns out, it was 20 km each way (about 12.4 miles each way) and the longest bike ride I have done here.  It took us an hour of road at a slight incline to get there and once we got there, we were beat.  The meeting was supposed to be a needs assessment of the village because the nun that I have worked with before wants to build a maternity ward and a nutritional recuperation center there.  We quickly realized that we were not there to really assess any needs but to talk about how we were going to help them get their buildings financed.  After an hour bike ride uphill, this was very annoying.  We are willing to help and think that they are both good projects, but they could have told us that over the phone.  We didn’t exactly have to go up there for that.  The meeting lasted an hour and a half and then we were back on the rode in the middle of the afternoon sun riding home.  Needless to say, I was completely exhausted by the time we got home.  And starving!!  Since I had only eaten a little oatmeal before our ride.  It’s good practice though to get ready for the upcoming bike tour in which we’re participating in May.

Craig with Father Cesar and Soeur Nadine

Coming up in our near future (this month), is Craig’s quarterly In-Service Training followed by our GAD dinner/auction, both in Parakou.  We will also be celebrating our 9-month PC anniversary!  We have almost been here 9 months already…unbelievable!  Craig is leaving here on the 17^th for training and I will meet him in Parakou a couple days before the dinner/after his training is over because we’re meeting with the person who is in charge of the girl’s camp in Parakou to get pointers and ideas from her since we have no clue what we’re doing yet for some of the activities for our girl’s camp.  The dinner/auction should be fun.  From how I understand it, the first night (Friday night) is informal and there is a “date” auction.  Craig and I have talked about auctioning off a “Dinner with the Wiricks”, but we’ll see what happens.  On the informal night, there will also be a wrestling match with all the boys.  Craig is paired up with the other married guy from our group, Andrew.  The second night, Saturday, is formal and consists of a fancy dinner and a silent auction of stuff, most of which are enticing luxuries from America.  All money that is raised from auctions, wrestling, etc. goes towards supporting GAD (Gender And Development), which funds small projects for volunteers all over Benin.  So it’s a good cause and it should be a lot of fun.   

We hope all is well in everyone’s lives over there and we are always thinking of all of you.  Thank you Brandy and Brian for your sponsorships for our marathon!  You guys are wonderful!  Thank you Mama Joyce for the care package!  And a delayed thank you to Vashti and my dad for their giant care package and for Mama Jamie’s two packages.  You guys are awesome and you make us the envy of all the volunteers with the wonderful goodies from America that you send!  We love you!

Photos have been updated

That is all.

Cheers!

Dog Days of Chaleur

We are in the long, hot dry season, and it is turning out to be everything that we were promised: hot, steamy, humid, and hot. When we sit in our concrete house with tin roof we feel like we are sitting in an oven (with electricity and running water). It feels like South Florida without the ocean breeze.

I try to do my important stuff in the morning before it gets too hot. After riding the 5-7 km to work or into town in the middle of the day makes me sweat so much that my fingers pucker up like I just spent too much time in the bathtub (if I had one). We try to run a few times a week but if we sleep too late (every time), we have to wait until it’s almost dark and the heat is down to bearable levels.

Beninese people do not sweat. Maybe it’s just because I’m new in town, but my hyperactive sweat glands were never much of a problem until I moved here to the near-tropics. Fortunately we have a bar a stone’s throw away from our house with a breezy second story, plenty of music, and cold drinks. Beers are only a dollar!

Other than the oppressive heat and humidity, things are going well. I’m starting to work on a website for my park, and Heather has been running around like mad applying for grants and organizing a girl’s camp for this summer and our marathon team for September. Our mamá down the road sells ice and cold bisap (a sweet, sugary, dark-purple hibiscus drink; think: Kool-Aid).

Thank you all for the care packages, love, prayers, and support. It’s almost rainy season again! Yay!

Cheers.

Sponsor Us For The Marathon!

As most of you know, Craig and I, along with 2 other PCVs, are planning on running a marathon in Ghana in September as a team to raise money for Camp GLOWs in Benin.  Camp GLOW is a girls’ camp that Peace Corps does every summer vacation that focuses on empowering girls to stay in school, promotes self esteem, teaches them about reproductive health, staying healthy, sexual harassment, and gives them the opportunity to speak with other successful women from the community.  It is a great camp with a lot of positive feedback in respect to supporting and encouraging girls and is one of the most memorable parts of most volunteers’ service in the Peace Corps.  Craig and I are putting on a Camp GLOW in Bohicon, the first one here, this summer vacation.

We will not be asking our family and friends to donate towards Camp GLOW, unless you want to of course, given the fact that the economy has affected many people we know.  Instead, we are asking for our friends and family to cover our fees and costs to participate in the marathon.  We do not want any of the money that we raise for Camp GLOW to go towards our costs, so we are asking for your sponsorships to cover those fees.  These sponsorships will not be tax-deductible since they are not going towards Camp GLOW, but if you did want to donate towards Camp GLOW, which IS tax-deductible, we will have information on how you can do that soon.  

Every member of our team of four will be petitioning their family and friends as well to sponsor us as a team.  Our team costs to take part in the marathon are:

--Team Registration Fee                                    $130                                   

     *Must be paid by April 30^th

--Visas for Togo                                                100,000cfa  (about $200)

     *by July 31^st 

--Visas for Ghana                                                60,000cfa  (about $120)

     *by July 31^st

--Transportation Costs                                       120,000cfa  (about $240)

    *Cotonou to Accra, round trip

    *by September 1^st            

--Lodging Costs                                                120,000cfa  (about $240)

    *10,000cfa fee each to stay in

      PC office in Ghana for 3 nights

    *by September 1^st

Total                                                                        $930

Again, this is for our entire team, so Craig and I will be responsible coming up with about half of that.  The most important amount that we need now is our registration fee.  This fee goes up if not paid by April 30^th, which obviously increases our costs.  If our closest family and friends, or about 10 people, all pitch in $50, then our costs are easily covered.  As soon as all of the costs are met, we will post a blog immediately to inform everyone to avoid additional sponsorships.

If you are interested in sponsoring us, you can mail a check to Craig’s parents, the Wiricks, and they can deposit it into our account for us.  Send us an email or a message on Facebook for their address.  

Thank you for all of your support: emotional, mental, and financial!  We are lucky to have every one of you in our lives. 

Jasmine Revolutions

As most of you have probably seen on the news, North Africa and parts of the Middle East are in the midst of revolutions.  I am not sure what is being reported over there, but I have gotten several comments that those crazy “Islamic radicals” are the ones responsible for all the chaos.  This blog is to clear up any confusion regarding the revolutions that are happening in (sort of) our part of the world. 

A couple months ago, a young, unemployed, and economically frustrated man in Tunisia set himself on fire to end his life in protest of the lack of economic opportunities and years of hopelessness in Tunisia.  That brought a lot of attention to the economic problems that the majority of the population suffered from and sparked the first revolution in Tunisia.  These first protestors, most of whom had a lot in common with the young man who set himself on fire, went out into the streets to call for the current dictatorship to step down and make room for democracy so they can have a voice. 

These bold acts inspired Egypt, who suffers from similar issues, to take to the streets and call for their dictatorship to step down in the name of democracy as well.  These protestors were of the same or similar demographic as the protestors in Tunisia.  From there, it has snowballed and this contagious idea of revolt has spread like the flu to the entire North African region (Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya) and several parts of the Middle East (Bahrain, Yemen, and Iran) and people are trying to get the idea to catch in parts of China. 

The two major forces driving these “Jasmine” revolutions that these countries have in common is the lack of economic opportunity among the majority of the population, particularly with recently graduated college students who are more forthcoming with their grievances, in addition to a non-democratic form of government responsible for these causes of distress.  It is not the “radicals of Islam” who are causing or encouraging the protestors to take to the streets, causing all of this “chaos”; it is the desire of the people to make a better life for themselves. 

Some of the leaders have reluctantly respected their wishes and have, or are planning on, stepping down, such as Egypt and Tunisia.  Others have taken violent means to put down the protestors, such as in Libya.  Their leader has used fighter jets, among other things, to unsuccessfully silence the population and many have lost their lives for wanting a voice and a better life for themselves and their family. 

The United States has always been a proponent of democracy and has done their damndest to spread democracy to places such as these, who are now pulling for democracy as I write this.  Hopefully, this blog will clear up any confusion that “Islamic extremists” are the perpetrators of these revolutions.  Just because the protesters happen to live in a predominantly Muslim country doesn’t mean they are extremists.  They are people, just like us, who deserve a better life and are fighting for it.  As Americans who get the luxury of a vote, I encourage you to support them.  After all, we have been in their position before; we also once had a revolution that brought democracy and gave us a voice.