Craig and Heather's Excellent Beninois Adventure

COS Conference

2012-05-20T19:10:00.002+01:00

We just go home from our COS (Close of Service) Conference in Cotonou, where, among other things, we chose our COS date (aka the date we leave Benin, aka September 2), reflected on our service, spent one last time together with the rest of the folks we arrived with, and looked forward to future endeavors. Peace Corps was nice enough to put us up in a very nice hotel for three nights and we had conference sessions all throughout the day, including a career panel with returned PCVs (a.k.a. RPCVs, a.k.a. Craig and Heather in a few months), lunch with government ministers, and feedback about Peace Corps programs and work in our communities.

Craig with the other Small Enterprise Development (SED) volunteers, at COS Conference

The graphic below is woefully incomplete, as there is a lot that we will miss about Benin. When we get home you can ask us all about it.

Cheers.

Visitors: Denisse and Marcel edition

2012-05-13T18:43:00.001+01:00

Heather and I played "tour guide" for the past few weeks when our friends Denisse and Marcel came to visit us. We picked them up in Cotonou and visited Ouidah, Grand Popo, our home in Bohicon, and Parakou, and introduced them to interesting Beninese things like water in bags, FanMilk, sodabe, tchouk, vodoun, local clothes, and more. They even made some new friends when we visited a small village near our house. Check out the photos from their visit. (Click 'em to see them larger.)

Marcel enjoying his first water saché, at Marché Dantokpa in Cotonou

Marcel on his first zemijan, in Cotonou

Denisse and Marcel at the Python Temple in Ouidah

Craig, Heather, and Marcel at the "Gate of No Return" in Ouidah

Denisse in front of Lion Bar, a Rastafarian hotel in Grand Popo

Marcel and Denisse's first encounter with a Beninese gas station

Denisse washing clothes by hand

Moto time!

Vodoun altar just south of Bohicon (on Vodoun tour)

C'est trop grand!

At Craig's worksite, Parc Archeologique d'Agongointo

Drinking Tchouk in Parakou

At GAD (Gender and Development) fête in Parakou (night 1)

GAD night 2 (Parakou)

Making new friends!

Cheers

Where the Hell Are We?Part IV, March 20-28:Bamako and Our First Coup d’État

2012-04-09T15:22:00.000+01:00

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March 20: Off to Bamako

Ok, so we are all over this trip and ready to go back to Benin—or America, whichever comes first—as soon as possible. Again, we took a once-air-conditioned bus, but fortunately the trip from Segou to Bamako was only 3 hours rather than 5 and the bus stopped less frequently.

The bus was supposed to leave at 9:30am, but in true African style left at about 11. When we got to Bamako—the gigantic, sprawling capital that seems to stretch on forever, in contrast to the cramped, concentrated Cotonou—we were, of course, accosted by taxi drivers and the frustration began.

First, when we got off the bus we wanted to secure our onward transport to Ouagadougou right away. We wanted to know that, yes, there is a bus, yes, it is on a schedule, and yes, we could be accommodated. We heard that TCV bus line had an overnight bus to Ouaga, which would have been perfect because we wouldn’t have to pay for a hotel for one night. We asked for the location of the TCV bus line and were told that the bus we came in on (called Bittar) also handled TCV, which we went along with even though we were convinced that it was a big lie. We got the phone number and left to find a taxi to our friend’s house (we were to stay with a French friend who lives in town and works for an NGO). One taxi tried to gouge us, so we left to find a different taxi and the first taxi driver ran over to us and accepted our price. We called our contact—a Malian friend (Guisse) of our French friend (Thibaut)—to give the taxi driver directions to the house. Thibaut was out of town for work so Guisse was given the task of meeting us at the house and letting us in with the spare key.

After getting lost a few times, we FINALLY arrived at the house but, of course, taximan wanted more money. Guisse intervened (terribly) in local language and discovered that the taxi driver did not speak French and that he somehow agreed to a price that he did not understand.

This was a problem throughout our entire trip and would prove to be a major obstacle in the capital. Though the Mali’s official language is French, maybe only 20% of the population actually speaks it. The major language is Bambara, and Songhaï, Fula, and Dogon are spoken in different regions. Almost everyone in Benin speaks French as a second language, so we understood that people maybe wouldn’t speak French fluently, but it seemed like almost nobody in Mali spoke French, which was a major problem.

Anyway, after about 15 minutes of arguing and grandstanding with the taxi driver, he finally left with his hard-earned cfa. The house was comfortable and had fans everywhere, which was nice because Bamako is essentially the Phoenix of West Africa. Thibaut had told us that there was a chawarma place near his house so as soon as we were settled in, Heather took off with Guisse to get us some food. After we ate it was close to night time (about 5:30pm), so we stayed in for the night and decided to check out the city of Bamako (whatever there was to see) the next day, then leave on Thursday.

March 21: Half a Day in Bamako

We left chez Thibaut at around 9 or 10 to check out Bamako.

First, we had to find the TCV bus gare to secure our next day’s passage to Ouagadougou. We got a taxi that seemed competent and we were off. He seemed to know where he was going…until he clearly did not. He, of course, took us to the wrong bus station, then drove around FOREVER trying to find the one that we were looking for despite our pleas to just stop and let us out and cut our losses. He knew French and used it to argue with us the entire time and wanted extra money when we finally got out. He got out of the taxi and chased us down, grabbed my arm and demanded more money. I shook him off and he returned to his taxi and screamed at us as he drove away.

By this point we hadn’t yet eaten breakfast. We were all hungry, frustrated, confused, and upset. Our collective blood sugar was dangerously low so we took off on foot to find something to eat. Luckily, we were able to find maman selling bananas, and around that time we also found a way to get around Bamako besides taxis—tro-tros. Heather spotted a bunch of run-down green minivans with men shouting destinations out the windows (like we have seen in Accra), and we decided to give it a shot. The tro-tros cost 100 or 150 cfa a trip; taxis, on the other hand, often cost 500 cfa each trip, plus you have to deal with an irate driver who wants more money but doesn’t speak French at the end of the trip.

We checked out a neat (albeit sprawling—if there’s one word that describes Bamako, that’s it) artisan’s market that churns out jewelry, immaculate boxes, swords, chairs, woodcarvings, sandals, and other souvenir items at an industrial level to sell to tourists. This was not mentioned in Lonely Planet. After that, we tried to go to the “Marché Medina” that LP promised was a decent market and see “Point G” where supposedly there is a good panoramic view of the city.

'gator skin at Artisan's Market

That part of our plan did not work out for a few different reasons: First, the medina area sells like a mix between dried & fried fish and shit. It was pretty disgusting. The quartier was criss-crossed with open sewers full of trash and feces and the breeze blows the stench everywhere. Second, Point G would require some light hiking that we were not excited about since it felt like it was 200 degrees and we didn’t have much water with us. Third, the city is so covered in dust and smog that you cannot even see the surrounding hills, so there was no way of seeing the city from the escarpment, anyway. A shop owner we asked about it showed us a picture in a book of the view from Point G, which, based upon the graininess of the photo, was probably about 25 years old. Who wants to see a birds-eye view of this mess, anyway? I wanted to click my heels together, say “there’s no place like home” and be transported back to Benin, America, anywhere but Bamako.

We took another tro-tro to our quartier and went shopping for food for the next day’s likely voyage. Our host would be back later that afternoon and we were going to ask him to take one us to Bittar to get our bus tickets for the next day.

Taureg-style box from Artisan's Market

After our light shopping we went back to the house, took a quick nap, and left for some hard-earned and much-needed chawarma. When we got back to the house, we saw that we had 4 missed calls from our host. We beeped him and he called us back and talked to Erin for a few minutes.

Apparently a coup d’état was in the works. The army had the presidential palace surrounded. The story Thibaut told was that there were “violent protests” and that the army had fired upon the protesters, killing some of them. We were to stay at the house and not to go outside. We called out country director, Bob, and asked for advice. He advised us to stay inside and gave us the phone numbers for the Mali CD, Mike, and the PC Mali Safety and Security Officer. We called Mike and he filled us in with some information, then we called our families to let them know that we were ok.

We got to work setting up an informational tree: Erin would be able to speak directly with her family, and Heather and I would use Brian to get any word to my family and to Heather’s family through Vashti. That way, we would only have to make 2 phone calls total to get all info to our families. We had no internet connection where we were, nor did we have radio or television, so we were completely reliant on second-hand accounts of news.

Brian called me later and filled me in on what he had heard/read from news reports. We talked for about five minutes and he promised to keep us informed once a day at least. Erin’s family called her late at night and she spoke with them at length each evening.

We watched a movie and went to bed, anxious to hear the next day’s news.

March 22: Stuck Inside

We were stuck inside all day and got restless. Heather and Erin woke up early and went out to get a few things from a little shop that was close to the house. We got Guisse to go out and get some other stuff for us in the afternoon. We figured that the cost would be 3500 cfa at the most and gave him a 5 mille bill, but when he came back he hadn’t bought everything that we asked him for and said that he used up all of the money; there was no change and he couldn’t get everything on the list. He basically shorted us and bouffed our money!

We spent the rest of the day alternately brooding, contacting Peace Corps to see if they could possibly move us to the Peace Corps house, and complaining to each other about Guisse, who kept coming and going and kind of awkwardly hovering over us. I tried to talk to him but couldn’t really understand his garbled French.

We got a hold of PC folks to get updates on the situation and to plan our next moves. PC informed us that we were officially caught in a coup d’état, all borders had been closed (as well as the airport), and no PC vehicles were traveling due to safety and security concerns but they would work on a plan to possibly get us to the PC house in Bamako.

Brian called in the am on his way home from work after he was called in and gave us info about why the coup happened as well as rumors about what was going on in the city center, such as looting, gunshots, etc.

Nothing else really happened. We watched some movies and went to bed anxious to see what, if anything would happen the next day.

March 23: The Move

Guisse stayed with us again last night and we awoke to see who we were pretty sure was a prostitute crouching in Thibaut’s bedroom door. Thibaut never made it back to Bamako because the roads were shut down, so he had Guisse stay the night just in case something happened (because he speaks the local language). We also saw Guisse speaking with another Malian man outside and we thought that if we had not woken up and made our presence known, the man probably would have been invited into the house. Fortunately, at about 10am the Malian CD called and said that he had been able to arrange transport for us to get to the Bamako PC house.

A Malian staffer had been tasked with procuring foodstuffs for the volunteers stuck inside the house and he would call us when he was available to come and get us. It would probably be something like 2 hours or maybe more, so we just had to sit tight and start packing and wait for his call.

He called within an hour and was at the main road near the house in a taxi about 10 minutes later. Traffic seemed a little more subdued than normal and I only saw one instance of a military presence, that of a large group of soldiers at a gas station. Apparently there was also a group of soldiers in the street ahead of us at one point but I couldn’t see because my huge bag was on my lap. I did see groups of people out the side window who were staring at the soldiers with suspicious glares.

There were 11 other PCVs at the house. We made 14. The house was much nicer than we expected and was very comfortable. We had internet and access to news and were filled in from the PCVs were at the house who had been connected to news outlets and information from PC since the situation began.

Soldiers up ahead

Throughout the day, PC Mali sent out communications to Malian PCVs through text message and email that the volunteers in the house shared with us. One of the later communications mentioned that in the neighborhood that the PC house was located in experienced looting, but it was just hungry soldiers going into a hotel kitchen to get some food and that nobody was hurt. We were to stay inside. PC had also had many safety/security briefings and was likely preparing for a worst-case scenario and figuring out evacuation plans if needed. They decided to consolidate volunteers to their local consolidation points so that they could keep track of everyone.

I went to bed at midnight, but couldn’t sleep and got up at 1 and watched part of a movie and went to bed again at 2 or 2:30. It was difficult to get to sleep but once I fell asleep I was only able to sleep until 6:30am, when I woke up and went downstairs to check out the news.

March 24: Breakfast for Dinner!

I always have trouble sleeping at Peace Corps housing. I’m not sure if it’s because the internet and access to information, air-conditioning, and other amenities are so great that I don’t want to miss it by sleeping but whenever I go to bed, I can’t seem to get my mind to shut off or slow down to get a proper night’s sleep.

The only significant event from the 24^th was that a PC Mali staffer came by and had a roundtable discussion with volunteers about the situation and answered their questions, mostly having to do with hypothetical evacuation procedures. There were no new revelations or news, nor were there any significant activities in the capital.

The PC Mali folks were so welcoming for us and were so organized that they never seemed to miss a beat. We made communal dinners each night at the PC house that sort of miraculously came together and organized themselves out of thin air. We decided to thank our hosts with some “breakfast for dinner”: country potatoes, scrambled eggs, and pancakes, and Heather used some extra mangoes to whip up delicious mango syrup.

Heather was spending a lot of time on the computer so I spent a lot of time reading cast-off and outdated magazines, mostly Esquire and Rolling Stone.

March 25: No News

Didn’t really sleep (again) but did get some laundry done, my first achievement since I left Benin. Today’s major development/news was that we were able to go outside the gates of the concession, if only to the nearby boutiques, and either Erin or Heather were told that it was likely that we would be flown back to Cotonou, which sounded great to me! The Mali staffer who was at the house the previous day came back and brought some Snickers and Bounty bars, then left an reappeared with a bunch of fruit—bananas, mangoes, apples, etc.—to everyone’s delight (there were a few vegetarians who were really excited). PC Mali did a great job and seemed to go to great lengths to keep everyone as comfortable as possible while stuck inside the house.

Folks continued to get restless, and some people got up early to get in a quick workout in on the terrace or in the back area to get some of that anxiety out of their systems.

Bamako continued to be relatively tranquil, though traffic seemed to flow a little heavier each day as the capital became more normal.

March 26 is the holiday of the coup in 1991 that ousted a dictator (by, ironically, the guy who was just deposed) and ushered in the recent democratic regimes. Some volunteers speculated that significant developments might happen on the 26^th but lacking concrete information about what was happening at the presidential palace, the speculations only added to the noise and confusion. Of the few things that we knew for sure, one of them was that we would all be holed up in the house together for the immediate future and no amount of speculation about what was happening or what was going to happen would change that fact. With that in mind, I kept myself busy reading through magazines and keeping tabs with folks at home.

Since Monday was due to be a state holiday, everything was going to be closed and it was unlikely that any new information would seep out until Tuesday or maybe longer.

March 26: Waiting…

Apparently there were some scattered, small demonstrations in the city center this morning, but all was calm in our neighborhood. By the afternoon we were given clearance to go to the PC office a 5-minute walk away. PC Mali Dr. Dawn came by and checked up on folks who were in Bamako for medical reasons.

The BIG news of the day, a momentous piece of news, was that we would be able to leave on Wednesday! Mali’s country director called to inform us that we were booked on a 9:30am flight and a driver would be at the house at 7:00am to pick us up to take us to the airport.

PC Mali staff was amazing throughout the entire coup d’état ordeal. They checked in with the volunteers on a regular basis and updated everyone with information and dropped off food at the PC house when the volunteers could not go outside. All volunteers have things that they like to complain about but in this case, PC Mali was excellent from the beginning.

March 27: Gettin’ Out

Since we were able to walk over to the PC office, we decided to pay a visit to the staff that had been so excellent to us to thank them for all that they did. We met the country director and it turns out that he was a volunteer in Benin back in the day, not too far from where we live now. We also met with another staffer to sort out our visa situation. When we first entered Mali, we tried to buy a visa at the border but the official there just stamped our passports and let us go on our way, without a visa. With the coup and its silliness we didn’t know if we would have any trouble at the airport with a visa-less passport, so he made a few phone calls and got it sorted out for us: a high-ranking police officer that he knew would meet us at the airport and escort us through to make sure that we wouldn’t have any problems.

After we left the PC house, we got ice cream! In front of a little boutique in the area was a soft-serve ice cream machine with a guy sitting next to it who sold big cups of ice cream for 250 cfa. It was a great deal and Mali is so miserably hot which made the ice cream extra tasty. We spent some time arranging our stuff to make the next morning easier without waking everyone up as we left. The volunteers at the house were a good group and stayed pretty positive during the whole situation.

March 28: Back to Benin

The driver came and picked us up at 7 to take us to the airport. On the way to the airport we saw a part of Bamako that we never saw the previous week when we were out in the city center. We passed by what looked like a brand new business park-style block of buildings that hosted the top offices of each of the ministries, which was pretty impressive, done up in a faux Sahel style of many of the mud buildings that we had seen in other parts of the country.

We didn’t see any military out until we got to the airport. At the entrance to the airport were a few checkpoints where soldiers checked cars going through, but we did not have any problems. There were a lot of people at the airport; there was a huge line to get in, and it looked like all the affluent people in Bamako were looking for tickets on the next flight out of the country. We were met at the airport by our police officer who would guide us through, and we were able to walk right in past the long line of Malians to get inside the building and check in for our flight.

Our Air Mauritania flight left about 30 minutes late and stopped briefly in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, where about half of the passengers got off the plane and we continued on to Cotonou.

When we arrived in Cotonou and got our luggage, our country director Bob was waiting for us at the airport! We never thought that we would be so excited to get back to Benin, and it was a big surprise to see Bob standing there waiting for us, since he is always so busy. He had to run off to a meeting but a PC driver was there to take us to the workstation.

That’s all! We stayed in Cotonou Wednesday and Thursday night to take care of Cotonou business and then came home on Friday. Back to work…

Where The Hell Are We? Part III, March 16-19 Interlude: The Journey to Bamako

2012-04-05T15:30:00.000+01:00

Part III, March 16-19: Journey to Bamako

March 16-17: Our Cave in Mopti

There’s not much to say about Mopti. Lonely Planet’s West Africa 2006 edition says that over 100,000 people call this place home, but it feels like Bohicon (but dryer and hotter). It’s dirty, people constantly harass us, and we only want to go outside for essentials, namely water sachés and food. Therefore, we turned our dark, ventilated room into a sort of PCV cave. We slept and watched movies all day and tried to avoid contact with the outside world. We left for Djenné on the morning of March 18.

The early-morning view across the river from Mopti's taxi gare

March 18: Djenné

We got up early to try and get a 6:00am taxi from Mopti to Djenné. When we got to the taxi gare just before 6am, it was empty, save for a few drivers wiping their cars off with dirty rags. The taxi gare in Mopri has a sort of hierarchy, or pecking order, which determines which cars leave first. The taxi gares in Benin are complete anarchy; when a taxi is full it leaves. In Mali, however, there is a chef of the gare who has a list that determines which cars leave first. The downside to this is what we were facing today: the first vehicle on the list was a van that held 25 people, so we had to wait a long time. If we were in Benin, we could have persuaded a few people to join us in our taxi and we would have left within an hour.

When we finally left, all 25 of us (including 4 children) were smashed in the back of the van, plus 2 or 3 people in the front with the driver. The route was supposed to take 2 hours but we stopped a few times to pick up people or drop them off, and we even got a flat tire once—the tire was completely shredded—so the trip took more like 3 hours. At one point we had to pile out to get on a ferry to cross the Niger River, which starts in Guinea and meanders around West Africa in a big semi-circle and empties into the Atlantic in Nigeria, to continue on a few kilometers to Djenné.

Inside our van

Fixing the flat

On our short ferry ride we met a man, Yousuf, who offered to let us sleep at his house for 1500 cfa each for the night, meals and tour of the market included. We thought that we would give him a shot, but then we saw his house and met his family. Without going into details, we decided not to stay at his house but told him that we would give him 1000 cfa each for lunch and a tour of the town, and we would stay in a hotel instead.

Djenne's mosque

Detail

He fed us rice with sauce and showed us to our hotel, where we dropped off our things and left with Yousuf on our tour of Djenné. The city is famous for having the world’s largest mosque made out of mud, and it is pretty impressive. The outside of the mosque has wooden beams sticking out which serve as structural supports as well as built-in scaffolding for repairs, such as once a year when a new layer of mud needs to be added to the mosque before rainy season (why they do it before, and not after rainy season, is beyond me).

We didn’t go in because it costs 10,000cfa each to see inside, but we made do with the pictures. We checked out a little market and some artisans, one of which sold us a few things and invited us back later for tea.

March 19: Djenné Marché Day and Ségou

Got up early to check out the weekly market in Djenné, then jump on a bus to Ségou, which was “scheduled” to leave at 10.

We thought that the marché would be just dirty, African marché. Well, it mostly was, but there were some kinds of specialty things that we hadn’t seen in other places and it was located in a big square in front of the giant mud mosque, which was kind of interesting.

In front of the market with mosque in the background

This kid really wanted a picture with Craig

We got the hell out of there on the 10am bus that left only 45 minutes late. The bus had air conditioning at some point in its life but those times were long ago and, since the windows wouldn’t open, we were in for a long, nasty ride.

Thankfully (or maybe not so thankfully), the bus stopped every 10 minutes or so to pick up/drop off people or to check in at a police checkpoint, so the doors would open briefly, but when the doors opened a cloud of dust would come in and cover everything inside with a thick red layer of laterite.

Ségou was not so bad. We quickly figured out transport. There were a lot of taxis but the better, cheaper, and more pleasant option was to take a moto-taxi—essentially, a rickshaw attached to a motorcycle.

The Niger River in Segou. The trash comes standard.

Once again, Lonely Planet 2006 failed us again. We now know that only the maps were up to date. We ended up staying in a Catholic mission for 2000cfa each, and that on the advice of a PC Mali volunteer who we ran into while leaving one of the recommended hotels that is now very much out of our price range. We ran into him again later (and his squeaky-clean friend who just arrived on vacation from America) when we went searching for food.

Ségou was pleasant and made for a good stopping-off point for a night to avoid the really long haul all the way to Bamako. It felt sort of homey, kind of like Bohicon but with less trash and no big trucks.

Off to Bamako.

Dogon Country, Part II

2012-04-04T15:30:00.000+01:00

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

2012-04-01T15:30:00.000+01:00

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

2012-03-29T13:55:00.001+01:00

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

2012-02-23T11:34:00.001+01:00

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]

2012-02-08T17:56:00.000+01:00

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

2012-01-21T14:18:00.001+01:00

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

2012-01-15T09:22:00.000+01:00

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

Foosball

2011-12-13T15:23:00.000+01:00

From June, I think, but I forgot to post it.

...

I arrived to the park on my bike, as usual, in the late morning. I usually arrive at that time because I take my time eating breakfast and drinking coffee in the morning, and I like to turn up before it gets too hot. We are in the rainy season now, though, so we have a constant low, dark cloud cover throughout the day with intermittent sun (like San Diego’s “June Gloom”). It is cool. I still go to work in the late morning, though, merely out of habit.

When I showed up, I saw Arimi, Denis, and another man huddled around a foosball table. It was brand new, with the plastic still on and around it, and was still sitting on top of the cardboard box that it was delivered on. I parked my bike and walked around to where it was situated, across a corner of the concrete slab by the office but still under the overhang.

“Good Morning,” I said.

“Good Morning,” replied Arimi.

“When did we get this?”

“This morning. The mayor paid for it.”

“Oh, that was nice of him.”

“No. He is not nice.”

I thought of all the things the mayor could have paid for, such as higher wages for the employees or to print marketing materials. A foosball table was unnecessary, especially considering that we all had to come to the park early a few weeks ago—Théo, Arimi, Denis, Elie, and I—to clear out weeds because the mayor had not paid the groundskeeper in the past eighteen months—eighteen months!

As they fidgeted with the screwdrivers and wrenches and assorted metal and plastic parts strewn about the table, I started to look for the instructions. They all looked clueless, so I thought maybe the instructions were in English. But had there been directions only in English, they would have asked me to help (I hope).

I looked at the dark clouds hanging low, directly over us, and asked what they would do with the table if it rains. The table looks too wide to fit through the door of the office, and if left outside it would just be ruined, like everything else.

“We will take it inside.”

“Where are the instructions?”

“We don’t have any. You see, the mayor is not nice.”

Arimi and Denis moved the table to the side of the building, flush up against the wall so it was not visible from the street, and if it rains it would be unlikely to get too wet. The group walked inside and Arimi and Denis laid down on the benches inside the office which line two of the walls. Time for a break. They would finish up with the table later, but for now, the mayor is not so nice.

West African Mania

2011-12-07T20:48:00.000+01:00

Craig had his post visit with his PC boss the day before we left to go south to head to Ghana. Last year, it didn't leave Craig feeling warm and fuzzy, we'll leave it at that. This year was a hundred times better. He paid attention to Craig and what he was doing and saying, what he was working on, and genuinely seemed interested and pleased. Not to mention that he not only treated Craig to dinner/sodas, but he got some to go for me. How nice! My post visit, which was after we got back from Ghana, the day before Thanksgiving, was very similar to Craig’s last year.

So on the 15^th, we went down south to Cotonou then on the 16^th, we left for Ghana. We got to the taxi station at 6am, but had to wait for the taxi to fill up and didn’t leave until like 6:45. I was sitting by a really nice Beninese man who waited for us to get our Togo visas at the boarder with his cute little son. When we got to Lome, which looks way nicer than Cotonou, he also helped us get a zem to the Togo/Ghana boarder, which he definitely didn't have to do. Once we crossed over to Ghana, they were wearing really colorful green uniforms, much different than the normal khaki or army green that everyone else wears, and they all spoke English. It threw me off a bit to have to revert to English since we're so use to speaking French in West Africa. The two are linked in our minds. We got into a tro-tro, which is like a minibus, to head to Accra from the boarder. While we were waiting, I discovered that they sold guacamole sandwiches at the station. Yum! From the boarder to Accra, it is about 4 hours.

Accra was pretty impressive. There are some streets in Accra that you could confuse with a posh street in America somewhere. It was really surreal. We went straight to the airport to get Brian. Dustin was already there so we all waited for Brian together. When we finally saw Brian, it was a nice reunion.

We went out for a drink that night to celebrate. The next morning, we were supposed to leave bright and early for the coast, but we discovered that Dustin never got his Benin visa. He had some issues with getting the Ghanaian visa since he had to send his passport from Germany, where he recently relocated, to the US to do it and wait for it to come back and it took too long. He changed his flight to arrive on the 14^th in order to take care of the Benin visa before we even got there, but he didn’t do it. So off to the Beninese embassy we went when we should have been half wait to Butre. He did his paperwork and then was told that he can only pick up visas in the afternoon and he’d have to come back. This really didn’t bode well with us. I went outside to let Brian know what was going on when I ran into the Ambassador for Benin. I explained our problem to him and he was very helpful in getting our visa to us within the next hour. So off to the coast we went.

It was a really long ride, very pretty though, to the coastal town of Butre. Butre is a small fishing village and we were just outside of it in this secluded “hideout” called Ellis Hideout that was absolutely amazing and the best part of the trip for me. It was pretty cheap to stay there, like $6/night/person and it also had a restaurant that served amazing food as well as happy hour. The beer in Ghana is way better than the beer in Benin, too. We hung out there for a couple days, enjoying their beautiful beach that made it seem that we were the only ones for miles. The beach was small and was surrounded by lush green vegetation everywhere, but unlike Benin, there were hills and mountains included in this lush scenery. It was amazing.

After leaving amazing Butre, we went to Cape Coast. There we saw the famous castle that was used to house captured slaves before there departure to the “New World”, as seen in Roots and other movies. We also took a side trip up about 45 minutes north to a national park that had a canopy walk. The walk was cool, but there were a lot of people and it was just a circle of connecting bridges a little high up in the trees. Not really worth the money, in my opinion.

After Cape Coast, we went back to Accra, changed minibuses, and headed directly up north along the Togo boarder to a monkey sanctuary in a place called Tafi-Atome. We paid about $12 to have a place to stay, dinner and breakfast, food for the monkeys, and a guide that took us to feed the monkeys in the early morning the next day. It was really pretty up there and there was actual forest around in the area. We walked to where the monkeys usually congregate in the morning to feed them. They were completely wild and we called them with making kissy noises to get them to come closer. Soon enough, they were jumping all over us, using their little hands to peel back the banana and eat their breakfast. It was really cool.

Right after we were done feeding the monkeys, we took a zem to the boarder of Togo, where we had some problems with getting Dustin and Brian a visa. They had to pay a “guide” to take them to a nearby town where there was a consulate to get a visa since they didn’t give them at the boarder up there. This took much longer than we thought but the ride there was through hills and forests and it was really pretty. We waited around the taxi gare for them, getting something lined up to take us across the boarder. We all got into this tro-tro that was like a Flintstone car. Every time we hit a bump, the side would sway one way, the back would sway another, and so on. I thought it was going to fall apart around us. The road was a bumpy dirt road, which made us very dirty by the time we got half way across where we switched to a taxi. We thought it’d take 2 hours total to cross the country of Togo (it’s so small!) but it took over 3 hours just to get half way. Then it took another 2 or so in a taxi to get to the Benin/Togo boarder. From there, our taxi took us to Azove, which is south of Bohicon. The night marche in the taxi gare in Azove was crazy and their first look at Benin. Very different from Ghana and Togo. By this time it was night, and we were a bit nervous in traveling at night, but the road was good and paved, so it worked out fine. We didn't get home (after a pit stop for dinner in Bohicon) until almost 11pm at night. Silly us thought that we may even get home by lunchtime. That was before we realized that that distinct line on the map that seems like a very nice road was all bumpy and dirty.

We spent a total of one week in Bohicon, showing them around, seeing voodoo stuff, introducing them to people, and hanging out. We also went to the local artist's house, Julien, to see his art, buy his art, and make new art with him, which was a really cool experience. It reinforced what I already knew about myself though; I am not artistic. Ha! Everyone was super excited to meet Brian and they all commented on his size compared to Craig. They would say things like, "He likes the fastfood, huh?" Ha! It was funny to watch their reactions. We all had Thanksgiving together and invited some other volunteers that came from around the area. We had a total of ten people. I made pumpkin pie, cherry pie, and a brownie cake with a glaze on top, in addition to all the other normal Thanksgiving food that you normally eat (no meat though). It was delicious! Right as the dinner was about to be ready, Logan, our CD’s son who is doing film work in Benin, called to say he was in town and wanted to know if we could hang out, so we invited him to join us, which made our tenth person. And he was a great addition to our group. Since Brian brought all the food except for some stuff, like potatoes, that we could get in town, we had all the out of towners bring a bottle of wine. We ended up with 4 bottles of wine, which was just right for 10 of us. It was great. Dustin and Brian also got to see both of us in action at work. Craig gave them a tour of his park and I had a World AIDS Day event, in addition to taking them to our two English clubs so our kids could ask them questions. It was fun.

The weekend after Thanksgiving, we headed up to Parakou because they were giving mandatory flu vaccines and we wanted to show them Parakou anyway. We hung out the first day and on the second day, went on a tchouk crawl. Like a beer crawl, but with tchouk stands. The tchouk marche that we went to was the biggest in the world. It was really fun and much better tasting than I remembered. The next day, we headed back to Bohicon and had a super fast driver for a taxi driver. It didn't take the normal 4 hours to get back to Bohicon; it only took 3.

We were back in Bohicon for a day or two before we headed back down to Cotonou. The PCVL (volunteer who is in charge of the workstation, basically) in Cotonou was nice enough to let us stay at her house the whole time. Once we were almost in Cotonou, Craig and I realized that neither one of us remembered to pack our passports. Craig went back up to Bohicon that evening to get them and came back down the next morning. That next day, we went to a village called Ganvie. It’s in the guidebooks and we’d never been so we thought we’d go with our visitors. We rented out a whole taxi to take us there and when we got there, discovered that the boat ride to the village was ridiculously expensive. We ended up paying it anyway since we were already there, but it wasn’t worth it in my opinion. That night, Logan was nice enough to invite us over for dinner to thank us for having him over for Thanksgiving. It was a delicious dinner with homemade ice cream and pumpkin pie for dessert. Our last full day in Cotonou, we spent at the beach, then at the Ambassador’s house for swimming, then getting ice cream, then at happy hour, where it was last man standing. It was a lot of fun. The next day, we headed to Ouidah, where there is a python temple and the gate of no return and more slave stuff. They didn’t want to go into the python temple since they were tired, but we saw the gate and continued on to Grand Popo.

We spent two days in Grand Popo laying around on the beach, reading and relaxing, as the last part of the trip before having to get them back to Ghana for their flights. We played the “Inglorious Bastards” game, as we call it (where you’re giving a name to put on your forehead and you have to guess who or what you are), but often the geography version, which we usually enjoy more. It was a lot of fun.

By the end of their stay with us, we were super low on funds, so I decided to go straight back to Cotonou to save money while Craig took them back to Ghana. He’s on his way back to Cotonou right now, as I write. Our time together was great. We like traveling with Brian and we anticipate that we’ll be traveling with him again soon, I’m sure. We were sad to see him go, but we realized that we are pretty compatible travel companions and when we saw Brian again, after not seeing him for over a year and a half, it was like no time had passed at all. Things just fell back into place.

On a side note, I have been obsessively reading through the Twilight book series. I finished the first three in 5 days and have the 4^th one waiting for me at post. I really really wish there were a movie theater here that showed American movies so I could watch it when I finish the book, but I guess I will just have to wait.

Hitting The Ground Running

2011-11-11T14:03:00.002+01:00

Since Craig and I have been back in Benin, there hasn’t been a day without loads to do, which is nice. When we first arrived back in Cotonou, we had to spend 3 days there getting our Ghanaian visa in anticipation of Brian and Dustin’s upcoming visit. It was kind of ridiculous because on top of all the crazy requirements, you could only go before noon to apply for a visa and only after 3pm to pick up the visa (with at least a day in between for processing), which is why it took so long. I guess it would make sense to do it like that if there was a lot of visa turnover, but there isn’t. So it’s just laziness, I guess.

We got back to Bohicon and both hit the ground running. Craig started up his soccer club and a business course right away. I had a week to plan a launching ceremony for my Amour et Vie (Love and Life) team that our host NGO came for, so I had meetings every day on how to actually execute the ceremony. Luckily, my team has 3 other people on it, so when it came to inviting the whole town, it wasn’t too hard to get the invitations spread out. The ceremony went really well. My team prepared a skit to perform and aside from the rain thundering down on the tin roof and not being able to hear for 20 minutes or so, the whole thing went really well. The community leader of the group, Gisele, whom is a Beninese woman who works with my CPS and who has tons of experience teaching people about health-related things, created some drama when the sodas came. Here in Benin, sodas are reserved for officials and everyone else gets beesap or some other beverage, and because of that, there are always a limited number of sodas because they are considered to be expensive. So when the sodas came and there was a rush of everyone, official or not, she just gave them out to whomever and some people who should have gotten one didn’t. But she herself decided to keep one and chugged it right there in front of the officials without offering it to anyone else, including her own team members. She is slowly starting to irritate me in ways like that.

Setting up for the lancement

I also found out that she replaced the student on my team, Patricia, with another university-level girl (whom is also named Patricia) while we were on vacation because “her dad wouldn’t let her go to Parakou for the training”. When I talked to the original Patricia, she said that it was because her family didn’t have the money to front to get to Parakou. I had asked Gisele if she had the funds to cover the team to get there until reimbursements were given and she said yes. Otherwise, I would have given them the money to get there myself and gotten reimbursed afterwards. I guess she didn’t though and instead of saying the truth, she made something up, which is quite common here. The new Patricia is also great and motivated and smart, but I just feel really bad for my original Patricia since she was really looking forward to doing this. It’s like she got robbed of it.

Craig and I have both been busy going to two different CEGs (schools) that we picked out to talk to the administration about choosing a girl from a poor family to receive a scholarship for all school-related expenses for the next school year, which is a Peace Corps-funded project countrywide. We didn’t choose the school that we do our English and soccer clubs at because they are already benefiting from our other activities. So we chose two different schools and both sets of administration have been really helpful and happy to work with us on getting one of their disadvantaged girls a scholarship. We should be done with all of the paperwork next week. I specifically chose Patricia’s school (the original one from my team) in hopes that maybe I could help her out that way. I am not playing favorites though, so the scholarship will go to the neediest girl, but seeing as how her family didn’t have $8 to send her to the training, she may actually get it. Stay tuned!

I also started meeting to implement and organize my next big project, a week-long nutritional recuperation program. In the months of November, we are collecting all the contact information at each baby weighing for the women who have malnourished children and in December, we are inviting them to the program, which will take place in January. Now all I have to do is fill out the grant application and figure out exact recipes for the nutrition-rich food that we are going to teach the moms to prepare.

I also went to my Moringa supplier’s house and operations location to see his set up and give him business advice on how to expand and be more profitable. I also suggested that he begin attending the business course that Craig just started doing with Francois, our zemijohn man. He was really happy about all of that and as I type this blog, he is sitting at our kitchen table with Craig going over business stuff.

Craig has started teaching his homologue Excel while at work. They have it on the computer that they use at his job and Craig created an Excel document to help them track all the details of visitors to view progress and the such and his homologue has been blown away by Excel’s capabilities. Craig has also been playing soccer on the weekends with people from the park and other community friends we know.

We started up our English club and oddly enough, it’s only boys who come. This is a problem since we’re supposed to bring a girl to the National Spelling Bee next year up in Natitingou, but if we don’t have any girls participating, it’s going to be difficult. After the first week of no girls, we talked to all the English teachers at the school to inform their students again and encourage them to come, but there still haven’t been any girls. I’m not quite sure how we’re going to solve this pickle, but I’m sure we’ll figure something out. One of the boys who comes to our club is in Premier (which is like being a Junior in high school) and can speak pretty good English. He said he had a book about American things and when we got on the subject of Thanksgiving this week, he already knew what it was, which was truly shocking. When we did that same thing last year, and not only did no one know what it was, but it was that much more difficult to explain. Especially since they have no idea what any of the normal foods that are eaten on Thanksgiving are, with exception to turkey and sweet potatoes.

When we got back from vacation, we also had responses from Russ’s (Craig’s former coach who is a teacher as well) students who received our package of letters that we sent to them back in July, written by our Camp GLOW girls. I sent out a text to all the captains of each school who had girls participating in the exchange with information on a time and a place to meet, but only one girl actually showed up. So we tried again with a different time and place, and again, only one girl showed up. So it’s been quite expensive (with our phone credit and zem rides) and time consuming distributing these letters and at the same time, the boys in our English club are extremely interested in participating, so we have decided to still include only the committed and serious girls from the original exchange and give the rest of the letters to the boys in our English club to respond to. I think that will work out a lot better.

On a side note, since we have been back, we have hosted a Zou Taco Tuesday with the four new volunteers in our area, which was a smashing success. Craig has also gone up to Parakou for a regional VAC meeting as well as the Halloween party—I stayed home in Bohicon. I have been traveling all around the Zou visiting the new volunteers as part of my duties as a PSN member. Statistically, most people end their contract early in the first 3 months at post, so these visits are to give volunteers company as well as support in integrating and problem solving. They all went really well and I am even more appreciative of our western-style home now, especially after visiting one volunteer who didn’t use her latrine at night because there were bats flying around in and outside it. Our “close-mate”, Amy, had a mishap during a lightening storm which fried her computer charger as well as slightly electrocuted her (thanks a lot, Benin, for your tin roofs) so she was kind enough to let us use her internet key until her dead computer comes back to life with a new charger, which Brian is bringing. She and I also tried making cinnamon rolls too, which were kind of successful. So we have had an internet connection, albeit slow, in our house for the last couple days and the prepaid connection will last until tomorrow.

Heather and Amy at Taco Night

Lastly, Craig and I are leaving on Tuesday to head down to Cotonou. We’re leaving early so we can get some work done while we’re there, like printing, turning in forms, applying for grants, etc. Then, next Wednesday we head to Ghana! Dustin is flying in on the 14^th, but because Craig has his PC boss visiting on that day in the afternoon in Bohicon, the soonest we can leave for Cotonou is the 15^th. Usually, the taxis just leave for Ghana in the morning from Cotonou, which we’ll certainly miss, so we can’t head over there until the 16^th, which is when Brian comes in. I have all the confidence in the world that Dustin will be just fine without us for a day and a half since his girlfriend has been there before and has been giving him lots of tips and instructions, not to mention a Ghanaian phone, which is a lot more than I can say Craig and I can do. We’re spending about a week in Ghana after they arrive to take advantage of some beaching and the western luxuries that Accra has to offer, like sushi and movie theaters. But more importantly, we’ll be with our twinsy and Dustin. We can’t wait!

Vacation Blog #4

2011-11-01T15:17:00.000+01:00

We took the train into Athens, then a bus to Litochoro to prepare to hike Mt. Olympus the next day. Litochoro was a scenic little mountainside town, and we stayed by the beach at a place about 5km outside the town. We woke up early the next morning and our hostel host was nice enough to drive us to the starting point for the trail on Mt. Olympus at 6am for our all-day hike. We started out in the dark and my headlamp stopped working so we wandered around in the dark for about an hour until the sun finally came up. It was easy going for the first few hours until we got to the first stopping point, “Refuge A”, which lies about halfway up the trail. From there it was really steep and slippery (the trail near the top is covered with loose rock), but we huffed and puffed and finally made it to the “top” by noon. We ate our victory Snickers and headed down, were lucky enough to get a ride back down to Litochoro by a couple at the parking lot at the bottom, and dinner in town and got ready for our next day of travel, to Thessaloniki.

We took the early train to Thessaloniki (the ride is only an hour) and headed straight to the White Tower, its most famous landmark. Once it was used as a prison for political prisoners but now it is a museum for the culture and history of the city. We also saw the Agia Sofia, a 7^th-century church (but didn’t go in because it closes for 6 hours in the middle of the day), and other landmarks. We couchsurfed and went out with our host later that night to a bar then a movie. When we were waiting to get into the movie theater, our host mentioned that the Minister of Justice was right behind us and we thought nothing of it until intermission, when 20-odd protesters barged into the theatre, chanting and throwing yogurt on the minister, who was sitting in the back row. There was a lot of pushing and shoving and a big racket until the movie was back on for a good 5 minutes. We had a great time with our host and sadly left the next day to fly to Milan.

We flew to Milan in the afternoon and, because of a delayed plane, arrived just in time to make it to our reservation to see The Last Supper. Later on, we met up with one of Heather’s good friends, Massimiliano, who she knows from her “Paris days”. We had a short, good time in Milan; it is a very pretty city but we unfortunately arrived late and were scheduled to leave the next day for Cinque Terre.

We left early in the morning to take the train to Cinque Terre, where we spent 4 days. It was one of the highlights of our trip and we took full advantage of it, waking up early to walk to the castle at the top of Riomaggiore and spend the day eating gelato and walking the meandering paths that connect to the 4 other principal cities in the area. We tried some freshly made limoncello from a local farmer and ate the local speciality, trofie, a pasta made from chick-pea flour and smothered in delicious pesto sauce. We also met a nice Quebecois couple and were able to brush up on our French that had become rusty since we left Africa. When we left Cinque Terre we took a train through the Tuscany region and visited Lucca and Pisa en route to Florence.

Florence is a beautiful city and has amazing food. We took a lot of pictures in front of the Ponte Vecchio, a famous bridge that is covered in houses (now converted to high-end jewelry stores), saw the statue of David, visited the Uffizi museum, and took a daylong side trip to a little town in the Chianti region for some wine tasting. The Tuscany region is spectacular and everywhere you turn, it looks like you just walked into a painting. It is probably the most beautiful place I have ever visited, and the food is fantastic, too!

After a few days in Florence we took off to Rome again to stay for two days until our flight left to come back home. Unbeknownst to us, Rome suffered massive riots that day that we arrived back and we missed the festivities by about 2 hours or so. We stayed with our good friend Paolo who we had stayed with before, and this time we were able to see the Pope and enjoy a last-minute cappuccino and gelato. We spent our last night shopping and filling up our bags with wine and pasta to take back and enjoy in Bohicon.

We arrived safely and refreshed and were excited to get home and get to work. We are really busy and our schedules are fairly packed until February or so. Heather is hard at work with her projects at work and I just started teaching our favorite zem a business course because he wants to start his own business. We also have our English Club and Football Club that just started (because school started at the beginning of October), I’m still looking for a group of guys to regularly play football with, and are always trying to schedule other stuff to do. To top it all off, twinsy and Dustin are coming out to visit for a few weeks at the end of November!

Lots of stuff coming up soon.

Cheers.

Update not related to our vacation

2011-10-15T11:12:00.000+01:00

Just under our contact information on the right side of the page, we have added a list of projects that we have been working on. Proof to the cynics that we are not on a "2-year vacation"!

Cheers

Europe or Bust! Part 2

2011-10-07T18:57:00.000+01:00

Athens: 1-3 October

After island hopping, we went back to Athens and hung out with our new Greek friends who hosted us the last time. It was really nice and relaxing. Nelly, the daughter of the family, took us out to a place called Beer Academy where I had the most delicious unfiltered beer of my life. Or…at least within the last 14 months. We spend the entire night with her and didn’t go to bed until almost 4am. It was really fun. We spent the next day hanging out with them in the morning over a yummy breakfast and then spent the rest of the day in Athens. We climbed up to the top of this hill that gives a view of the entire city, which was pretty cool. We also went to the Acropolis museum, which we missed last time. And after we were done with all that, we went to a MALL! It was very exciting. We had their version of Panda Express and I ate orange chicken, which for some reason I had been craving. We were going to watch a movie too, but didn’t have time.

Corinth: 3-6 October

We woke up early to spend some time with our hosts before leaving on the 3^rd for Corinth, where we would stay with an old friend from soccer of Craig’s, Kosta, who is Greek-American. When we called Kosta to tell him what train we were taking to Corinth, it turned out he was taking the same one just a stop away. So we chatted the whole hour on the train. He gave us a little walking tour of the city and then we headed back to his house where his mom had prepared an amazing lunch complete with local organic wine. Then we went to their land where they were growing grapes and picked a good 7 pounds of them to munch on. The next day he showed us around another part of the area and then we went bowling. It was the first time we had gone bowling since leaving the States and we had a lot of fun. Afterwards, we had the best gyros that we have had so far in Greece. And his mom let us do our laundry there, which was magical. Kosta and his whole family were amazing hosts and it really felt like we were in America with the American-ran household with Greek flare. The next morning, we got up super early to catch the train back to Athens to catch a bus up to Litochoro.

Litochoro/Mt. Olympus: 6-8 October

Once we arrived in Litochoro, we were automatically blown away by it’s charm and how warm and friendly it was. It was everything that you would imagine and ancient mountain town to be. We were picked up by Perry, the owner of our hostel, and hung out with him for a good part of the night. He was super helpful with all kinds of information about climbing the mountain. We went to bed early (9pm) in order to get up at 4am and be well rested. Since we had to wake up so early that day, it was no problem; we were exhausted! We were eating breakfast with Perry by 5am and we were leaving the hostel by 5:15am to head up to the start of the trail. We were hiking by 6:20am. It was pitch black, cold (luckily Perry let me borrow a woman’s warm windbreaker that he had at the hostel), and a little intimidating since we were the only ones around. Our imaginations definitely got the best of us while we were hiking in the dark. On one occasion though, Craig and I both heard an animal coming towards us from the forest and were completely freaked out. Craig threw a rock in it’s direction and we kept on hiking. The trail was really gravely and when we stepped, our shoes would throw back rocks and we would think it was some nocturnal animal coming to get us so Craig would hear a rock fall from his step and throw another rock frantically in it’s direction, which would get me freaked out and then both of us were imagining things. A little while down the trail, we decided that we were way too freaked out to continue, so we hid against a big rock and waited for the sun to rise. Did I mention it was cold??

Once the sun rose, it was a 2 hour hike up to the first official rest stop where most people who do the trail in 2 days sleep. We didn’t stay there long; just long enough to buy some supplies and use the facilities. We kept going and after 45 minutes or so, we really hit the hard part of the trail. It was barren and rocky and very steep. It was definitely a challenging hike. Once we got to the top, which we had no warning we were nearing it (that would have helped us push through if we knew the end was near), we were super happy and energized. We got really lucky with the weather too. Normally, the weather isn’t as good this time of year, but it was sunny and cloudless for 90% of our hike. At the top, it was still windy and cold, but it was definitely manageable.

Going down the trail seemed to take forever. In reality, we were going down much faster than we were headed up, naturally. Once we got down to the parking lot where we started, Craig asked this older couple if we could hitch a ride down to the town (which is a totally safe and common practice, according to our hostel owner). The guy gave all kinds of excuses why he probably can’t take us, but the wife was wonderfully nice and talked him into it. Turns out, they were from New York. He was originally from Greece and she Brazil and they had lived in the States for the last 40 years. She was really nice to talk to but he was absolutely insane. He basically was completely arrogant about Greece and shot down any thought that there might be something better or equally good outside of Greece. He even stopped the car to admire the view and then told us that we would never find a view like that in California. I’m quite sure he had never been because the view we were looking at is littered all over the Californian countryside. But we were getting a free ride, so I kept my mouth shut.

We leave tomorrow for Thessaloniki, where we got lucky again to couch surf. Then the next day, we are headed back to Italy to Milan. Enjoy the pictures!

Europe or Bust! Part 1

2011-10-03T20:35:00.001+01:00

Oh, Benin…you make it so easy to leave.

We accrue 48 days of vacation for our 2 years in Benin so we planned a month-long Italian-Greek vacation halfway through our service. We are hoping to return refreshed for our next year of service, and I have a personal goal to gain most of the 20 pounds that I’ve lost over the past year (gyros, pizzas, pastas, gelato!).

Once we got to the airport for our 5 am flight to Rome, we couldn’t wait to get out of Benin. The airport has one terminal and only services a few flights each day. We lined up to check into our flight and “security” was standing there checking everyone’s passports…and taking pictures of them with a digital camera. When we asked why, we were told that the “President of the Republic” wants pictures of passports of everyone who leaves the country. We were traveling with a volunteer who had just finished her service and was heading home who had an especially difficult time with the airport staff who wanted to assert their masculinity one last time before she left the country for good. She had a painting with her and had to tape it to the outside of her checked bag, only for them to tell her that her bag was one kilogram overweight, but they were out of tape so she had to go buy more after removing a pair of shoes from her checked bag so she could re-tape the painting back on. While she was waiting in line again to re-check her bag, some ignames (yams) fell out of a bag belonging to the Beninese couple in front of her, and the security guard ran in front of us while we tried to take a picture. So disappointing. (See picture below.) Then we went through 5 more security checkpoints so 11 different people could check our passports (one had a rad game of freecell going on his computer). Finally, eventually, we left. So long.

Rome: 17-20 September

We flew from Cotonou to Casablanca to Rome. We arrived in Rome late and went straight to our hostel, and explored a little. Heather had already been to Rome before so I got my first glimpse of the Coliseum, Trevi fountain, Spanish steps, Parthenon, Vatican, and countless piazzas that dot the city. We had delicious food, gelato, pastries, and cappuccinos. One day we just bought some cheese and wine and had a little picnic at one of the beautiful piazzas, Piazza Novanna, before going back to where we were staying. We stayed in a hostel the first night and for our second and third nights there we stayed with our new friend Paolo, who lives just outside the city. We had trouble with the banks in Rome. Apparently Italy recently passed a law that disallows their banks to change traveler’s cheques, which made basically all of our money null and void (we brought the vast majority of our money in traveler’s cheques, and the moneychangers charge up to 50% in fees to change them). We finally, after an entire morning of trying, were able to get some money. (We had to wait until Athens to change the cheques.) Paolo was really nice and we were able to celebrate Oktoberfest in Rome with him the first night we stayed with him. There was a La Mesa-esque Oktoberfest celebration going on with barbeque, beer, and line dancing. The next day, we went to the Vatican and saw the Sistine Chapel (we had climbed the basilica and saw the Pope—on the TV screens in the plaza—the previous day). Our last night in Rome, Paolo’s brother cooked a delicious Italian pasta dish that we enjoyed together before going off to the airport. Heather slept in the airport just enough to keep me from nodding off, and we had to change terminals at 3 am because one was closing. It was freezing.

Athens: 20 September

Our early flight to Athens was nice and short and we arrived in the morning and got situated with our hosts, a fantastic Greek family who live just outside Athens. Our new friend, Mel, was nice enough to host us: his mother, who speaks English, his father, who speaks French, and his sister, who speaks English and French, were so great to us, and they even had a big dog, Lion, who is just like Ole Gunnar. We got situated at our host house and explored the Plaka area of Athens and the Acropolis. We ate lots of delicious gyros and I got off to a good start on my weight gain regimen. We left early the next morning on a ferry for Santorini, but before that, we stayed up really late hanging out with our adopted Greek family.

Santorini: 21-24 September

The ferry to Santorini was about 7 hours long, most of which, we spent enjoying Amstel beers. When we finally got there, we figured out the public bus system and met with our hosts, Vlada and Inese, a newlywed couple who were nice enough to share their place with us. Santorini currently suffers from too many tourists. The main island, Thira, had 11 cruise ships in port one of the days we were there, but the island is gorgeous and we took a little sunset cruise ourselves to a volcanic island and “hot” springs. On our way down the steps to the port, we passed some other folks who were taking donkeys down (it’s easier, apparently) and one girl absolutely FREAKED OUT and had a complete breakdown just after we passed them because she thought that her donkey was going too fast (they were walking and she was American, unfortunately). We also visited a red sand beach, but couldn’t visit the white sand beach because the boats weren’t running because of the weather (it has been really windy on all of the islands, which makes for choppy seas). Vlada was nice enough to take us to his secret swimming place, though, so I was able to get in the (cold) water and take a little swim. I ate lots of gyros!

Naxos: 24-26 September

After a few days we said good-bye and took a ferry to Naxos, the largest island in the Cyclades chain. We didn’t have any hosts and didn’t make reservations anywhere, so we were hoping that we could get hooked up at the port when we arrived. A really nice local lady who lives in a smaller town, called Agia Anna, hooked us up with a really good deal on a studio apartment 5 minutes walk from the beach. She even made us frappe’s and gave us a small bottle of wine that her family produces when we checked in! (And there was Wi-Fi!) We definitely could have stayed there for a long time. The town was small and walkable and there were really good restaurants that served inexpensive but really good food. We really wanted to rent scooters or an atv but we didn’t bring our drivers licenses (Heather’s is expired, anyway). It didn’t really matter, though, because Agia Anna had pretty much everything we wanted and needed. The town is a little farming town with a pretty little beach and we went for a run one morning and kept running into farmland and kept having to turn around. One day we took the public bus to Naxos Town, the largest city, and were lucky enough to find a bar that had happy hour from 2pm to 2am, so Heather finally got her frozen cocktail that she has been craving for the past 14 months (I opted for a mojito). There aren’t enough great things to say about Naxos. I’m hoping that we can go back and explore some more one day.

Paros: 26 September

We decided to take a chance and leave Naxos after only a few days to check out Paros, which turned out to be a big mistake. Paros is slightly smaller than Naxos, but one really needs a car or scooter to explore the island because the buses don’t go everywhere. We tried our luck with accommodations again and the guy we decided to rent a room from was insane. He was dancing in the car and kept telling us that he dances to hip-hop, rap, and R&B and told us about his YouTube page where we can see him dancing at a local bar wearing an orange hat. He was really drunk later that night and we decided to leave the next day. He was creepy and maybe going through some sort of midlife crisis and lied to us about the accommodations. We couldn’t even see any of the beaches, anyway, because we didn’t have a car or scooter and boats that went to “good” beaches weren’t running because of the weather. Not to mention, a dog humped Craig's leg. A lot of people here have great things to say about Paros, but the less that we say here the better. Not our favorite.

Mykonos: 27 September-1 October

We couldn’t wait to get to Mykonos! Our last island stop. We took the “fast ferry”, a catamaran that only took 45 minutes to get there. It was really windy and the waves rocked the boat a lot while we tried to get in. I was in the middle of the ramp to get onto the ship and it almost fell into the water (with me on it). It was a long rollercoaster ride. Heather had to “go to her happy place” while I turned on my iPod and stared out the window. We were sitting just above the water level and saw the waves shooting up and over the side of the boat. There were huge swells and we were stuck back in our seats the whole ride. It was a lot of fun! We rolled the accommodations dice again in Mykonos and found a nice German lady who hooked us up with a little apartment right in the center of town. We visited the “party beach” and went out that night and partied way too hard. While we were getting ready to go out, we turned on the TV and there was a show about Benin! The host went to Abomey and Bohicon! We were transfixed, trying to remember our “home” that we had left less than two weeks before. We tried to get up early the next day to take a day trip to Delos but that definitely was not going to happen. We woke up late and decided to check out some quiet beaches while we sorted out the details from the previous night. We took the bus to a recommended beach, only to find out that it was a (mostly) nude gay beach. The beach was still nice, though, and a friend we made on the bus let us stay at a private hotel beach for free (away from all the “action”). We went out to a really good Italian restaurant that night (needed a short break from all the gyros). On Sept 30 we took a day trip to Delos, a small island that has amazingly well preserved Greek ruins and artifacts, and we made a delicious pesto pasta dinner.

We have been discovering all of our “Beninisms” that we have acquired over the past year. For example, I have been keeping plastic bags and water bottles to reuse them later. I had a huge pile of bags that I had to force myself to throw away (I was keeping them for the woman who cleans that room so she could reuse them as trash bags). We have also been insisting on breaking big bills wherever we go in order to get small change. We have been hoarding change like the Beninese do. There is a big problem with a lack of “petite monnaie” in Benin because everyone hoards coins! They last longer than bills and everything is so inexpensive, anyway, it makes sense to just pay for everything with smaller money…EXCEPT for the fact that nobody ever wants to get rid of it and many vendors would rather lose a customer than to part with their precious coins. We are entranced by all the technology of the developed world: everyone has a new iPhone or iPad, there are working gauges on buses, wine in bottles, and working refrigerators! It has been a little reverse culture shock but I think that it will help us cope when we finally do come home (we joke that by the time we get back to the States, there will be an iPhone 12 and iPad 5 already…).

Cheers!

Vacation Break

2011-09-17T08:00:00.009+01:00

There will be a lull in activity here for the next month, as we will be on a month-long vacation to Italy and Greece.

But when we get back we will be busy. Heather will be busy working with her CPS and child malnutrition/nutritional recuperation project, Amour et Vie team, and new moringa counterpart, while I am going to try to teach our favorite zemidjohn business skills and try to set up an Artist/Artisan fair at my site during the height of our tourist season.

We will post photos when we get back, or you can check out Heather's facebook to see them sooner.

Cheers!

Camp Parakou & Fête des Ignames

2011-08-24T11:25:00.001+01:00

From August 7-13 we were in Parakou to help out with another Camp GLOW. We had organized our own camp back in July and had signed on to help with this camp, as well, though this camp in Parakou was slightly different because it was an overnight camp and the girls came from all over the north-east region of Benin. (If you remember, our camp was a day camp and involved just girls from our city of Bohicon.) The girls had sessions during the day where they learned about harassment, the importance of education, HIV/AIDS, malaria, sports, and women’s issues. The girls stayed overnight in dorms while we stayed at the Peace Corps workstation. We were supposed to bring a few girls but were not able to because our mayor refused to contribute money to pay for travel and food expenses. The funding for the camp depended on a certain amount of “community contribution”; each volunteer who brought girls asked their local mayor for a certain amount of money to pay for travel and food expenses for the girls, which was to form part of the community contribution that was factored into the overall budget for the camp.

The camp went well and we had a great time and gave a presentation on malaria as our major contribution to the camp. The rest of the time, we tried to get the girls to participate and to facilitate the learning process.

After the camp was over, we traveled down to Savalou to work a tourism booth (to promote my site) and a moringa booth (to promote moringa—duh) at the annual Igname Fête, which marks the beginning of the igname harvest. There were a lot of booths where we could buy artisanal crafts and trinkets, vendors from Togo and Ghana, and there was even cotton candy, Chilean wine, and soft-serve ice cream! We also ate lots and lots of igname pile, which is my favorite Beninese food. Ignam Pilé (literally, “pounded yams”) is made by boiling gigantic ignames, then placing them in a gigantic mortar and pounding the crap out of them with a huge pestle. When finished, it looks like and has the texture of bread dough, but tastes like mashed potatoes. It is served with a spicy peanut sauce with wagasi (locally produced cheese—also delicious!) and is cheap, normally 500 cfa (about a dollar).

After the 3-day Igname Fête we went to another local volunteer’s post to go for a hike in the beautiful Collines region of Benin. The cities of Savalou and Dassa are well-known for their wonderful hiking, and we had been meaning for a while to visit Tony, the volunteer who lives near Dassa, and go for a hike. We went on a two-hour long hike and the view from the top of the hill was very pretty—pictures to come!

We are in Cotonou now for our mid-service medical appointments, which include samples of certain bodily fluids. I am pretty sure that we are not carrying around any parasites or worms or weird tropical diseases, so this should be short and sweet.

Our Italy/Greece vacation starts begins in less than a month!

Cheers

TV Shows/Movies

2011-08-10T10:28:00.000+01:00

We watch a lot of movies and TV shows that we have brought with us, were sent to us, or that we have borrowed from other volunteers. We are always pleasantly surprised when a movie or series mentions the Peace Corps. Without any further ado, below is our list so far. Do you have any others to add?

Movies or TV Shows that mention the Peace Corps

Airplane!
Along Came Polly
Blood Diamond
Dirty Dancing
LOST
Mr. and Mrs. Smith
Sex And The City
The Devil Wears Prada
Towelhead
Volunteers

On Being Busy and Whatnot

2011-07-21T10:53:00.000+01:00

Heather has been busier than I on this blog lately, so here is a quick rundown of what I’ve been up to and what is in store for me/us coming up soon.

My biggest project that I have been working on, the website that I have been creating for my parc is finished—for now. My supervisor and I recently wrote up a budget for the calendar year 2012 that included funds for everything involved with allowing folks to view my labor of love.

Last year we submitted our marketing budget too late. Apparently it needs to be submitted in July so that numbers can be bandied about before it is voted on in November. If or when the funds are approved, we can move forward on the other items included in our funds request, which mainly consist of printing flyers, brochures, and other promotional material to deposit at local hotels and give out to Beninese tour guides/companies to promote our little piece of fantastic in the craziness of Bohicon.

As Heather wrote in the last post, our first annual Bohicon Camp GLOW was a success. See her post below for more details.

Last weekend after the camp we hosted some new stagiares (read: trainees) who arrived July 2 for their “demystification weekend”. It was basically a chance for them to see what volunteers actually do with their time in Benin, and it was a great opportunity for Heather and I to see just how far we have come. This weekend we will host three more and I will leave with them to go down to their training site in Porto-Novo for the week where I will be leading some training sessions.

Our favorite Zemidjan recently revealed to me that he wants to start his own business, so I will start meeting with him on a weekly basis to teach him the essentials (accounting, keeping track of stock, marketing, etc.). If that all goes well (and I have the time) then maybe I will approach the nice folks at the Maison des Jeunes and see if they would like me to lead a free weekly seminar to budding entrepreneurs.

We will be spending a week in Parakou in a few weeks to help out with the Camp GLOW there, then hit Savalou for a few days on the way back down south to take part in their (famous in Benin) Ignam Fête to promote my site. That should be a great opportunity to network with tour guides and eat lots and lots of Ignam Pilé (think: super-mashed potatoes with peanut sauce and meat).

A few weeks after that, we take our month-long vacation to Greece/Italy, and shortly after that, a pair of very special folks will be visiting us for a few weeks (can’t wait to see you, Brian and Dustin)! That will take us into the holiday season and the end of the year.

But before Brian and Dustin arrive (and after our vacation), my girls’ soccer club at our local school will start up again, and I hope to get a good turnout. I received approval from the American NGO who supplies us soccer balls to have Peace Corps release some to me, but due to what I believe is a miscommunication between the NGO and our vast bureaucracy, I have yet to receive anything. Here’s hoping that that all works out.

I have been so busy that I haven’t finished a book in over a month! It’s a good busy. Don’t worry Mom and Dad, I am eating plenty and working out a lot. I even feel like I am gaining some weight back.

Premier League starts August 13! Glory Glory Man United!

Cheers.

Camp GLOW Bohicon 2011!!!

2011-07-19T16:36:00.001+01:00

On Sunday, July 10^th, 7 other volunteers arrived at our house (the 8^th one the following morning) to work the very first Camp GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) in Bohicon. With all the time-consuming preparations, stress, worrying, and hours spent grueling over how I would do this camp, by the time they arrived, I thought that I would have been running around and stressed out, but I was surprisingly calm, excited, and really happy. We had a really great group of volunteers helping out, all of whom we get along with very well. We had a little bump in the road when we realized that all of our office-like supplies were left on the PC shuttle and we wouldn’t be able to use them until Wednesday when the shuttle went through our town again, but that didn’t even worry me. We had a little mini-meeting for less than an hour when everyone got there and by the end of it, we were ready to rock the whole camp. I didn’t sleep at all that night because my mind wouldn’t stand still for longer than 10 seconds.

Day One (July 11th): Sleep deprived and all, we started day one bright and early and totally stoked with a 6:30am alarm. Craig and I were the first to leave the house after coffee. I realized half way there that I forgot the key to the room where we had stored everything, and we had to send Elaina back to the house a couple of times (she was the runner that day) for things we forgot, but other than that, it was a pretty flawless day. When we got there, there were already about 10 girls waiting for us and we got there at 7:30am! They didn’t have to be there for another hour. So that was really encouraging that they were excited enough about the camp to come an hour early. As Patrick, Andrea, and Rich were all doing the check-in, giving t-shirts, taking permission slips, etc, Sarah and Erin were teaching the kids songs. My personal favorite was Destiny Child’s “Independent Woman” in French. It was pretty awesome. We started our opening ceremony incredibly late since we were waiting on the Mayor, who never showed up. The media didn’t show up either as promised, which I was grateful for. Craig and I did our speech, my supervisor did her speech, and someone from the Mayor’s office did a speech. It went really well. We had sodas and the good cookies for all the adults for after the ceremony while the girls got their own less-expensive version of a beverage and cookies. We went over the objectives and rules of the camp and then got in our 5 groups (grouped by colored t-shirt). We had 8 girls that didn’t show up all week, but it was still a good turn out and didn’t affect the groups. We ate with our groups and then played a questionnaire-game to get to know everyone. The photographer showed up and took a group picture of all of us. Afterwards, we went over the next day’s program and then cleaned up and everyone started going home. So day one was really more of an intro for the week, games, activities, and getting to know them more than anything else. After the camp, Erin, Craig, and I went on a long run and inspired most everyone else to do a little workout of some sort. That night, we had a little pow-wow on how to make the next day run smoother then ordered chwarma (yum!).

Day Two (July 12th): After check-in, Patrick and Andrea played “Sharks and Minnows” with the girls and they loved it. It woke them all up and burned out their excess energy so when we started the next activity, “Qui Suis-je?” (Who Am I?) they were attentive. That activity was nice and encouraged them to think positively about themselves since they had to find a positive adjective for each letter of their name. The following activity that we did with them was a Myers-Briggs test. Once they all had their results, we ran off copies of the result page that each needed and spent time with them making sure they understood everything. They seemed to really enjoy it. Several of them said that the test results described them to a “T” and were really surprised that a pre-written thing could be so dead-on. After lunch, we played soccer. We broke up onto 3 different fields. One of the girls on Craig’s team, Hortence, was upset that her team was losing and started a strike with all of her team members and just quit playing. Ha! It was ridiculous and hilarious all at the same time. She was definitely the strongest personality out of all of the girls present at the camp. Following soccer, Gilles (my neighbor and collegue from the CPS) came in and talked to the girls about healthy relationships with other people and women’s’/girls’ rights. I could definitely tell that all these girls were truly the brightest in Bohicon because they all wanted to participate, they all wanted to answer questions, and they all were attentive and respectful to whomever had the floor. It was amazing. After Gilles left, Patrick talked about how to re-use water saches by using them to plant Moringa. Almost none of the girls had heard about Moringa before, so he explained and we decided to squeeze in a Moringa session later on in the week. We had a little pow-wow again that night on how the day went.

Day Three (July 13th): After the girls arrived and registered, they all went into a different room (shoes off) and did yoga/stress management, which was led by Rich and Andrea. None of them had ever done yoga before and they all really liked it. In our camp reviews, some of them said they didn’t like it because it made them sore all over the next day and that was the only reason, so I think it was a success! After that, we had a professional panel come in. We had someone from the mayor’s office (government), a teacher from a school (education), a nurse (health), someone from Bohicon’s women’s center (social work), and a local artist’s wife who runs his art business (entrepreneurial). Julien is the artist and he is also the Censeur (like Vice-Principle) of the school where the camp was. His art was featured in a museum in Chicago for 6 weeks and he speaks fluent English and is very friendly and warm to all Peace Corps volunteers who cross his path, and he’s been a great help throughout this entire camp. The day before, we set out a “Question Box” where the girls could anonymously ask any kind of question they wanted and it was a huge success. We originally did it so that they would think of questions ahead of time for the professional panel that we could give to them, but they used it for every session, which was really awesome. Julien’s wife, Pauline, the nurse (who is the sister of Craig’s homologue), and the teacher were absolutely awesome and very inspirational for the girls. The woman from the mayor’s office was mediocre…she got off subject a lot and would go on and on about how her father would beat her. The woman from the women’s center was terrible…all she did was talk about her rough upbringing and religion. Definitely not what I invited her to talk about, but oh well. Hopefully, someone got something out of it. After lunch, we played red light/green light which was a huge success with the girls. We were supposed to have the added moringa session after that, but the moringa cultivator that we asked to come didn’t show up. The photographer DID show up to give me the pictures that he took for us the first day and tons of girls wanted special pictures with their group, their volunteer, etc and it got kind of out of hand. We decided to limit it to a group picture by color and that was it. After picture-taking mania, we had someone from my CPS (Celine, the awful woman that was supposed to be my homologue in the beginning) come in and talk about family planning. She kept picking on the girls to answer questions, some of them were obviously new to the material and had no idea and she would pick on them anyway. She didn’t explain things well, if at all, and the only family planning method other than abstinence that she talked about was condoms. About half way through, Elaina and I got up there and co-led it with her to try to make it better. I don’t know why they sent her to do that session when I requested Gisele, the woman from my Amour et Vie team who is awesome at family planning, but that’s who they sent. There was a point when Celine didn’t understand that the girls didn’t know what they were looking at when they were told to look at a picture of a vagina, so Elaina sat on the table with her legs open (she was wearing pants) and put the picture in between her legs to show them what they were looking at. It was funny and the girls immediately understood. After the camp that day, upon receiving word that Bohicon had lions, we went to this mysterious place that ended up being a very sad zoo. Before we left though, while Andrea was trying to pose in front of a monkey that was not in a cage, the monkey ran up and smacked her on the head. Haha! Maybe he was camera shy? After the sad zoo, we went to Julien’s house to see his art. He has some very impressive stuff and I can understand why it was on exhibition in Chicago for 6 weeks. He gives PCVs the “family discount”, which is about 25% of what a tourist would pay, so Craig and I will probably be coming home with some of his art. After Julien’s house, we were all pretty beat so we made salads and watched a movie, which I fell asleep watching. We did realize that Craig’s keys (which have our main gate key on them) had somehow gotten left at the camp site and the gate was locked and there were people out at the bar, so we had to wake up our neighbors to open the gate for them.

Day Four (July 14th): As girls arrived this morning, we sent them to the back of the school where Patrick was leading a “planting Moringa in water saches” session. It was quick and went really well. They learned a lot about the Moringa and were completely done with their hands washed by the time our guest speaker for HIV/AIDS (Gisele with an NGO) arrived. We invited the same NGO that we had invited for our World AIDS Day event that we did back in December and they showed the same graphic photos. I think it got the point across though and the whole session went really well. After that, Andrea and I led a session on Self-Esteem. We talked about what it meant, what high self-esteems and low self-esteems mean and so on. We had them do a written activity where they list things that they like about themselves, among other things. After they were done with that, we went outside and taped a folded piece of paper on all of their backs and everyone wrote what they liked about that person on their backs and at the end of the session, they took off the paper and read what was written about them. I thought it went really well. Craig and Erin T. led the next session on goals and aspirations in life. They had all the girls write out a long-term goal, like what they want to be when they grow up, and then write out all the short-term goals that they would need to achieve to get there, like doing well in school. It was a good learning experience for the volunteers and the kids I think. I learned a lot about their school system during that session. And there were a couple tiny little girls who want to be police officers when they grow up, which I thought was really cute. After lunch, we played freeze tag. They didn’t understand it at first and everyone was just running around pushing each other, but after further explanation and examples, they got it. It was super fun and tired them out really quickly. After 17 minutes, all of the girls were back under the tree pouring water over their heads and panting. Haha! It was hilarious! They rebounded quickly though and went back out for more. Once they were all tired out, we went in and had a session on sexual harassment in the school system, which is a huge problem here. Someone from the CPS came to lead it, but seeing how the last one that they led went, I had Erin T. who is an English teacher here, co-lead it with them. It worked out well and we even finished a little early, which is amazing whenever anyone from Benin is in charge of a session. Things rarely end on time; they like to talk. Since we finished early, we all sat down after the CPS people left and answered questions from the question box. They were all really good questions and some of them were very concerning, such as one about whether or not it’s ok for a girl’s brother to have sex with his sister. I thought we answered them all very well and gave them a lot of really good resources to deal with serious problems like that. The last question was, “what does it mean for a boy to masturbate, how do they do it, and….is it good?”. HA! Patrick and Craig were supposed to take that one, but Craig was so embarrassed that he just sat there, beat-red and laughing, as Patrick demonstrated with a garden hoe how guys masturbate. It was pretty hilarious. Craig and I shared the information about the pen-pal exchange program through PC that he started up with Russ’s school (his former soccer coach) and instructed all the girls who were interested to write a letter in English that night to mail off to the States. There were a lot of girls from all over Bohicon interested in the program so we set up a system of communication with all of them to set up meetings once a month to exchange letters. That is really exciting for us since we’ve been trying to start this for forever now. That night, Patricia, who is on my Amour et Vie team that I set up, called me to ask me if the letter should be informal or not. I had no idea that she was at the camp, so I was really confused. Turns out, I totally didn’t recognize her all week! She had been in the camp all week and didn’t say anything to me about the Amour et Vie team either. Crazy! Now I would never NOT recognize her, that’s for sure!

Day Five (July 15th): This was our last day of camp and very bitter sweet. We were happy that it was coming to an end and everything went so well but sad to say goodbye to all the girls. During the week, I had handpicked 3 girls who were in 4eme (the highest grade level invited) and just passed into 3eme. These girls stood out to me as leaders and would not be invited back next year since they would be past the cutoff grade so I pulled them aside during registration to invite them to come back next year as junior counselors to help out at the camp with the other volunteers. They were really happy about the opportunity and gave me all their contact information. In the morning, Erin S. and I led a healthy diets and exercise session that went really well. Exercising to stay healthy isn’t in the culture here and one of our “Question Box” questions was how to have a flat stomach, stay slim, etc. So it was a good opportunity to address that. After our session, Craig, Erin T. and Rich all led a session on various study abroad opportunities. We talked to them about the Fulbright program for the States and different programs in Francophone countries. They were really interested in that and asked a lot of questions. I don’t think that anyone had ever mentioned the possibility of leaving Benin for school to them before. On our review that we gave to the girls, all of the girls really loved the session about studying abroad except for one and it was because she didn’t think that she had high enough grades to get a scholarship so it made her sad, but in order to come to the camp, you had to have the best grades out of the entire school. So it didn’t really make sense. Anyway, that session was kind of like my brainchild and I’m really good that they all liked it so much and got something out of it. Gilles came back to do a session on how to succeed in life, which went really well because it was all reinforcement by a Beninese person of what we’ve been telling them all week. We had lunch then did a little pop-quiz to measure how much they all absorbed all week (for grant-reporting purposes) and then gave them an evaluation to fill out about the camp. After those two formalities, we started the closing ceremony. Julien talked to them about the Fulbright program a bit since he will soon be a Fulbright (he’s planning on studying at Berkley in 2012 on a Fulbright) and gave a really inspiring speech to the girls. I spoke after him and just said a few words on how I would miss them all and how awesome they all are, because they truly are, and how they can go super far in life if they work hard and believe in themselves. It was a sad speech and one of the girls pulled me aside crying because she was so sad to see the end of the camp. By this time, there were only 5 volunteers left (one from each colored team) and we each gave out the certificates, group picture, and school supplies to each of our girls on our team. They all got really nice backpacks with 4 meters of khaki (for their school uniforms), 4 notebooks, a pencil, and 4 pens, which is already more than they’re required to have for school. We collected all the girls’ letters to be sent to the States after the ceremony and before the fête-ing (partying). Once the ceremony finished, we had cookies and the DJ played music that we were all dancing to. It was really fun and we all got to dance with almost all the girls. It was a great end to the camp.

We cleaned up, packed up, and headed home after all the girls left. Myself, Elaina, Rich, and Patrick all helped in a team effort to clean up our house since we had 3 new trainees coming to stay with us for the weekend. I was told that Erin T. (camp-planning super woman) was really impressed with our camp and Rich told us that this was the best-organized camp that he’d ever seen. Since the other camps that he’s participated in have been going on for years and years and this was our first camp and we hadn’t a clue to what we were doing most of the time, it was a huge compliment. After cleaning up the house, I read the evaluations of the camp that the girls wrote. They all really loved the camp and all the volunteers but not surprisingly, they only liked “a little” the people from the CPS. It was really great to read their comments and praises on the evaluations and doing so made all of the stress, work, frustration, and much running around all worth it. And after meeting all those girls and spending a week with them, it was also all worth it because every one of those girls was worth it. They were truly an amazing bunch of girls. We didn’t have any problems with anything. They all participated and were super well-behaved and even on time every morning (for the most part). All the girls had so much personality and were so strong-willed. I really do believe that they can do anything in their lives and hope that I will come back to Benin to visit in 15 years and see them all in successful careers leading lives full of happiness, reaped from all of their hard work. The thing that really made it all worth it though is the fact that I know that this camp will be like a fork in the road that will make a big difference in some of their lives. Whether it’s the lesson on family planning that keeps them from getting pregnant and dropping out of school or that they learn about a program in the States after the study abroad session and get a Fulbright to study there, I know that some of them will lead better lives because of this camp, and that’s enough for me. We will definitely be doing this camp again next year. Only it will be the new-and-improved version. You can find pictures of this on Facebook...the internet is too slow to upload them to the blog. Sorry!

A special thanks to the Wiricks for funding the t-shirts. The camp would have been totally different and not nearly as successful without the t-shirts and your support. Because of those t-shirts, we were able to have teams based on color, which was the foundation of how the camp ran so smoothly. Thank you a million times over!

Laziness + Incompetence = A Frustrated PCV

2011-07-09T16:05:00.002+01:00

One of the many errands and tasks that I have had to accomplish for this girls’ camp was to get a couple banners made that welcomed the girls to the camp. I arranged with my co-worker for them to be made by a local guy here in Bohicon and wrote out specifically what I wanted the banners to say. I also instructed them to draw a globe on the side of the banner as well. The banner was to say “Bienvenue a (line 1) Camp GLOW Bohicon (line 2) Girls Leading Our World (line 3)”. I told them not to paint anything until I ok’d it. So I went to the shop to proofread everything and I decided that I wanted them to do each of the English words in a different color that would correspond to the letter in “GLOW”. I knew that I was reaching for the stars, but they seemed fine with it. So I asked them what colors they had and they said that they had green, red, blue, and black. Since the rest of the banner would be in black, I asked the apprentice if they could mix the blue and the red to make purple and use that color for the forth word and letter.

“Non, c’est impossible!” –It’s impossible

“C’est possible; c’est facile, quoi” – It’s possible and easy

After going around with that a couple of times, I gave up. The shop owner and boss-man came in and showed me where everything would go on the banner. The banner was probably a foot longer/wider than the paper that they had the letters stenciled on. That’s right, they use a stencil system here, like in kindergarten. He said that he would put the globe at the top of the banner and then add the writing. I didn’t like that, so I asked him why he didn’t just put the globe on the side, like we already agreed on and he said that there is no space, which on the paper, there isn’t enough space, but on the banner (what really matters in the end), there is. I told him that if he cut out the lines and spaced them out equally on the banner that there would be more than enough space.

“No, you didn’t understand what I said.” Then he (and my co-worker, whom is equally slow) proceeded to re-explain the same thing to me like I’m an enfant with a learning disability. It was about at this time that I put my fingers to my temples, looked down, took a deep breath, and tried to practice my patience.

“Yes, I understood what you said, but you aren’t understanding me.”

This lasted longer than it should have and I had to listen to them (the shop owner AND my co-worker, who is supposed to be on my side) swear that the problem is my incompetence in French, not their incompetence in imagination/problem solving. They insisted on re-explaining their reasoning to me about 5 times, which forced me to re-explain my point just as many.

Finally, we agreed that in order to understand each other, we would have the apprentice cut out each line so I could show them what I was talking about on the banner itself. Fifteen minutes later, I spaced out the lines equally and put the picture of the globe to the side. “Ahhh huuuuhhhh!” They finally understood. Then, after we had that sorted out, I asked him if it would be possible to mix the blue and red to make purple for the forth color in “GLOW”.

“No, that’s way too much work”. Are you freakin’ kidding me??

“No, it’s easy. You just get another can, fill it half with blue and half with red and mix it up with a pen or something. If you give me the materials, I will show you.”

“No, I don’t have time for that. It’s too much work”.

That conversation went on for another five minutes before I could convince him that it wasn’t too much work and that he was capable of doing it. So once we had that under control, he asked me if I wanted the first line to be in purple too. I said that black was fine, but it didn’t really matter to me if it was in purple or black; whatever was easier for him. Well, that confused the hell out of him for some reason until I had to cut him off and tell him to just stick to the letter and corresponding word for purple and leave the top line in black. I then drew it out on a piece of paper to be super clear. That led to the discussion of when it would all be finished and we could pick it up. He wanted a week to stencil in letters and draw a globe. My co-worker wanted to get it in 2 days. Since we’re the paying customers, we actually won that battle.

As we were out the door, he asked my co-worker in the softest voice that I have ever heard (which proves that they CAN have a conversation without screaming—they just choose not to most of the time) so I wouldn’t hear, for the rest of the money. The expression that he had on his face was the same expression that homeless crazy women have when they ask for food and money when they see a white person. Since we didn’t have any money on us anyway, it was easy to get out of that one and make the agreement that the rest would be paid when we pick up the banners.

This whole ordeal lasted over an hour and although it may not seem very frustrating, it really was, and places in the top ten most frustrating days in Benin. I guess it’s all just part of the experience though and I’m sure I’ll somehow be a better person in the long run for it. At least, that’s what I tell myself when I get into situations like those. In hindsight, it was pretty funny. We should start a TV show out here.

Ze Germans Are Coming!

2011-07-07T01:02:00.000+01:00

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!