Five Signs your friendly PCV might be craving some variety in their diet:

1. Eating whole, raw tomatoes as if they were apples (when in the States, tomatoes were only appropriate in the condiment “ketchup”) 
2. Impulse purchasing of guavas by the gross – “How much do all of the guavas on your head cost?!”
3. Calling your friend to tell him that you found canned peas (canned peas!) in an up(per)-scale shop in the town north of you.
4. When 90% of your texts to your post-mate concern food.
5. When you look forward to the 120 degree hot season because it means mangoes.

Life as a Professional Dancer

As of tomorrow I’ve been in village for a month and a half. Vrai village life, no strings attached. Finally, villagers are beginning to know my name, relationships are being built, I’m finding work to do, and, thank God, my local shop owner knows that I eat about seven guinea fowl eggs a week. Although I still suffer from a lot of critters in my house – lizards, mice, cockroaches, and ginormous spiders – I have become horrifyingly used to our uneasy cohabitation. Furthermore, I have finally transitioned from “Bature” (white person) to “Anna” in village and just about everyone knows who I am and greets me on my daily village wanderings. Thus, these past few weeks in particular have been particularly successful. 

Immersing myself into the local secondary school has produced some of the most drastic effects. I greeted the director of the high school/middle school and informed him that I wanted to start an environmental club at the high school, a venture which I hope to begin next week. Rallying interest and participation will definitely be the biggest challenge due to the busy lives the students lead, with girls (my secret target audience) particularly occupied with duties at home. Last week I went around to all of the high school/middle school classes, introduced myself, and advertised my club. It is the first club to exist in the school, so I’m forging new ground and I’ll see what happens at the first meeting next week!

Besides planning out my environmental club, taking Bariba class, and doing my greeting rounds, my life has been absolutely consumed with meetings for my gardening cooperatives. In each village surrounding Kerou, a group of gardening women has taken form so that they can better address technical or marketing challenges. My job is to provide further expertise when it comes to both of these aspects. Thus, every day I visit two or three villages (24 in total!) to introduce myself to the gardening groups while my supervisor informs them of new legislation regarding “groupement” formation.  Thus, one visit looks like this:

1.    I begin the day by riding my bike from my village to Kerou, where the commune seat and my boss’s office is – 7 miles. 
2.     Arrive at the office at 8:30, like he said. But in Benin, “8:30” really means at least 9:15. Wait outside the office and chat with small children. Hey, they speak French.
3. I hop onto the back of my supervisor’s motorcycle and we are off to the first village, usually about 20 minutes away through beautiful Beninese countryside.
4. We arrive at the village to find the groupement waiting for us under a tree. We join them and take attendance, noting the presence of the officers (often including a designated singer), and have everyone sign next to their name. In 99% of the cases, the women can’t read or write, so thumbprints take the place of signatures.
5.  My supervisor speaks for about 45 minutes about the legislation, entirely in Bariba. The he turns to me. “Do you have anything you would like to add, Anna?” I give him a blank stare.
6. I settle on simply introducing myself (for now, still in French) and my supervisor translates everything into Bariba. The women clap at the end and then, as is customary, the singer does her thing and I am asked to dance for the group. You can only imagine what this must look like – twenty five women singing and clapping in a circle while I do my Beninese style white-girl dance in the center. Actually, please don’t imagine it. At least for now, I am providing these poverty stricken, malnourished women with entertainment.
7. They present me with a gift – inevitably yams. When you get three five-pound yams per village, the weight on the back of the motorcycle for the ride back gets a little unwieldy, not to mention the difficulties one person has in consuming that many yams. The evidence: 

8.       I thank them profusely, hop onto the moto with yams in hand, and head to the next village.

Thus, life in a nutshell. Hopefully by the next time I can write (Thanksgiving), things will have taken a little more shape. Until then, hope all is well and keep in touch :).

(Learning) How to Live in Village

Our long awaited move to post, the “Grand Trainee-Volunteer Migration”, happened three weeks ago yesterday, perhaps resembling college-move in day on a grand scale. Just replace your chauffeuring and teary parents with a cantankerous taxi driver, friendly welcoming upper-classmen with a gaggle of village children, and your dorm room with a village house inhabited by more insect species than exist in North America, and you have the basic idea.  This merely illustrates the average PC Benin Volunteer’s experience. My own was a little more rocky and perhaps a bit more bug-ridden.

My adventures began immediately upon my arrival at post. There, I learned that my proprietress had mysteriously lost the keys to my house. Yes, this was one challenge I hadn't planned on facing, and therefore, had no idea about what to do. I brilliantly faced this problem by blankly staring at my house for twenty minutes surrounded by all of my belongings and the aforementioned gaggle of children. In turn, the proprietress spent that amount of time staring at me, and staring was about all we could do given the language barrier. When it was clear I wasn’t about to immediately herald the next taxi bound for the airport, the proprietress decided to allow me to stay in a different room next door, where the gaggle and I dragged my mattress and things. I ended up staying in this small, poorly lit, chamber for four days as the proprietress “looked” for my keys, after which I decided to approach a locksmith about the situation. This issue, compounded by the fact that my latrine still was not built, there were no screens on my windows (I would regret this later), and that I did not have any furniture made these initial few weeks a little uncomfortable.

Nonetheless, I have had the chance to meet some amazing people within my community and get a greater understanding of where I might fit into this village’s picture. I've been working on becoming acquainted with any structures existing in my village and the local leaders. Just figuring out where to get water is a week long project. Integrating and discovering are the goals of the first three months at post. Therefore, my days generally follow very similar patterns consisting of local language lessons, hunting down the elusive fresh fruit or vegetable, taking the most beautiful bike rides, and, most time-consuming of all, greeting everyone in village. I have made it a priority to take a walk through village every day and say hello to the people I pass. This is particularly challenging given that I must do this in Bariba. Nor is it polite to simply say “hello”: Their household, work, health, children, husband, sleep the night before, second cousin twice removed, must all be inquired about in turn. It’s a slow process, to say the least.

Luckily, I got a bit of the malaria to make things a little more exciting. Having malaria is an uncomfortable experience I've found, particularly when you inhabit the boonies of Benin and need to take a two day journey to the PC healthcenter in the capital. I quickly consulted my doctor and decided I had to go to the Peace Corps health station last Wednesday after I woke up with a 104 degree fever. The driver I asked to bring me to Nati didn't quite understand the gravity of the situation, which I only realized once he came over to my concession and told me we had to go look for parts for the moto we would be riding, and parts are never easy to find in a Beninese village. Therefore, I ended up stumbling through the village, halfheartedly performing my obligatory greetings and attracting a lot of attention. I'm not quite sure I was looking my best. However, you will be glad to know that it all paid off and the moto was fixed :)

However, the first leg of the journey to Natitingou is quite rural, and I found my feverish self on the back of a motorcycle driven by a one-armed man. For five hours. Wildly clutching my 2 hastily packed bags (you always need a bike tire pump, right?) as we maneuvered through the rural back roads of Benin. The second day of malaria journeying was little better. I was on a bus for 16 hours straight, producing more sweat than I ever thought humanly possible, and placed next to screaming newborn child. The woman next to me kept giving me the stink-eye and shifting further away, while one man took my near-to-tears, pallid patheticness as a classic case of home-sickness. No good, but at least he gave me a very uplifting talk about the values of family and friends.

However, sickness does mean a hot shower, electricity, and seeing friends for a few nights :).

 Hope all is well in the states, I miss you all immensely, and keep in touch!

Love from Benin,

Anna