A Day in the Life

A day in the life of one PCV’s training:

6 AM - Wake up to:

a.       A rooster

b.      The morning call to prayer

c.       Small children crying

d.      Your neighbor’s operatic singing, heralding the new morning

Although none of the other options are out of the question, option “D” usually applies to me as might be guessed from the specificity. Observe that “alarm clock” is conspicuously missing from the list.

7 AM – Eat breakfast (omelet and instant coffee) while studying French.

7:45 – Ride bicycle to class with friendly neighbor- co-volunteer.

8 – 12:30 AM -  French class. Organized based upon comprehension level and composed of no more than 4 trainees. Try to tell jokes in French to Beninese teachers, only to be met by blank stares and long explanations for why what you are saying is not reasonable. 

Example: When talking about the freedom Beninese people have in taking livestock and domesticated animals on public transportation, one trainee suggests that perhaps a camel might also be usefully transported in a taxi. (Attempts at jokes are often this pathetic when crossing language divides.). Language trainer, frowning, says, “No, that’s impossible”, and quickly tries to draw attention away from the apparent stupidity of the trainee. Move on.

12:30 – 1:30 – Lunch! Mad rush to the local, trusted rice-and-beans lady. Sum total for lunch = $0.60.

1:30 - 2:30 – Technical Session. May include: building more efficient mud-stoves (reduce wood consumption); gardening techniques; information session on moringa trees; teaching a sixth grade class about deforestation; bicycle maintenance; natural insecticides.

3-4:30  - Visit a local village and teach the gardeners how to make a compost pile. Imagine a group of over-zealous and excitable trainees talking to a group of rural farmers in painful French. Now, remember that none of the villagers speak French, but are receiving the information through a translator.  Successfully compose organic matter into a pile to make “compost”. 

4:30 – Ride bicycle back home to a chorus of “Yovo!”. Yovo is the “mzungu”, or “white-person” call of Benin. Here, it is even accompanied by a song which seems to be taught to all young children. Dodge motorcycles en route. 

4:45 – Study French or read. 

6:30 – Hang out with my host sister while she makes dinner.

8:30 – Eat dinner while watching “El Diablo”, the most popular soap-opera on television. It is a rejected Spanish show dubbed into French which takes place in New York City. As might be guessed, it’s my life in America in a nutshell.

9:00 – Play cards or mancala with my little brother and our neighbor. Lose miserably every time. 

10 - Read and sleep. 

Repeat the following day.

New Address!

Quick note: because I will be moving to post in less than two weeks, I have updated my mailing address! Rather than sending any letters or packages to the Cotonou office and having it wait there for what could be months, please send them along to my workstation in Natitingou. Check out the address to the left!

Travelling with Chickens

Finally, we trainees have seen a little bit of Benin. Yes, perhaps our lives as volunteers might consist of something more than marathon language classes and awkward homestay family encounters: We just returned from visiting our posts. For five days, the trainees were set loose upon the country to see their villages, meet their counterparts, and get a taste of what their lives might be like as volunteers. This was certainly a refreshing break and a wonderful opportunity to see a very different part of the country for me, as the north, I found, is a totally different world than the south.

My post is one of the most remote volunteer sites, which means, unfortunately, that it takes almost two days to get there from PC headquarters in Cotonou. This is particularly impressive when you remember that Benin is only about the size of Pennsylvania. Additionally, transportation is not always (read: never) comfortable in Benin. I had to take three different taxis during the second day of my journey and there were never any fewer than seven additional people carefully arranged in the cab with me. Imagine riding for five hours in a seven-seater station wagon with twelve (twelve!!) other people and a chicken, and you might have an inkling of what traveling in Benin might entail. This doesn’t even include the man who had to ride on top of the station wagon.

Luckily, the north is absolutely beautiful during this part of the year. The rolling green hills of cotton and corn, dotted with huge trees such as the baobab, are certainly enough to draw your attention away from the discomforts of an overcrowded bush taxi. As an Environmental Action volunteer in my village, I am lucky enough to be working (often outside!) in this beautiful area with local gardening groups, promoting sustainable gardening techniques and trying to help them increase their profits. Cashews and shea in particular have a lot of potential to be an excellent source of income, while the moringa tree and environmental education classes may improve food security in the area. Indeed, the differences in income levels and education between my village and Porto-Novo are breathtaking: only a few people in my village have electricity and no one has running water. Additionally, the poverty level means that finding people who are educated enough to understand or speak French will be quite a challenge. 

Anyways, this does give me an excellent activity for my first three months of post: learn Bariba! Until then though, we still have two weeks left to pack in as much French as possible and prepare for our departures. In my case, I have also been poring through my Beninese cookbook and dreaming of conquering the kitchen at post. How many ways can one use rice and beans.

Also, I should add that I am currently distracted by the lizards which always seem to lurk in this gazebo. Half of the time when writing these posts, I am cowering over my computer, ready at any point to fend off any lizards which may leap upon me. This is a real possibility. And these are no small lizards.

I'll leave you with that :)