Bisous du Benin!

So I'm already running short on internet time, so I'll try to keep this brief-ish. This last week was the launching of my Amour & Vie team in Penelan. I've talked about Amour & Vie in past posts- it's a national program all about health peer education in village. So the launching (or lancement) is basically a big party for the village to let them know what we're all about and get them ready to have their worlds rocked. It's also an opportunity for the important men in village (like the traditional chief and delegate) to publicly give their support, so the project is more likely to succeed. Representatives from Cotonou Amour & Vie came to see the lancement, check in on us, and make sure things are going smoothly for us so far. This meant fellow volunteer Brigitte (yay!) and Hugues, who is the Beninese guy in charge of Amour & Vie Cotonou. It was really great that they came out and supported us, and it's always really helpful to get somebody else to talk to your team in French, and cover anything that you (I) said, which your team (my team) totally ignored.
So I was trying to get my team to put this thing together for like the two weeks leading up the the event, but most things like this in Benin happen LAST minute. So my efforts to get a jump on it where...not entirely successful. So the lancement was on a Sunday. Which meant that all Saturday and Sunday was last minute running around to get the entire event worked out. Penelan doesn't have electricity so all our cold drinks (a definite requirement) had to be brought in from Penessoulou- which involved me zemming out at 7 in the morning and dragging around coolers with 50 lbs of soda in them. We rented a sound system, which required both a generator and gas to run the generator. But in addition to the sound system there was a traditional band that we hired to get the party started with some dance music. There were speeches to write, a lesson plan for my team to plan. (They gave a sample presentation on family planning just as an introduction to the program.)
Because there are no really restaurant type places in my town,we had to order all the food in advance. And apparently it's rude and exclusive to just hire one woman to do everything. So I had to get Reine to be an intermediary while I bargained with the village's women's association, who were going to do all the cooking the day off! We had yam pilee (mashed yams) and chicken. It was actually really good.
I also wanted my nice neighbor to do the official launching ceremony at the very end. Which is apparently offensive to my supervisor (a non-entity that I've talked to twice at the maximum). Although my supervisor has no idea what this project is even about, he is technically my liason in village. And it would be disrespectful to him (and the village who chose him) if I went over his head. So.... I had to go talk to him and get him to make a speech.
I also had to walk around Saturday morning with my team and make house visits to all the important men in village and personally invite them to the event. This was the fun part- they were all super sweet to me, and talked about how important health was, and how I was such an asset to the village (flattery will get you everywhere). “The first thing you pray for in the morning is health. You are trying to bring health to our village- how could we not support you?” The delegate (basically a kind of political representative) actually had a longish conversation with me about how it's important that traditional voodoo health rituals work together with the health center. It was really interesting, and I learned a lot about how my village views health. And how to plan an event.
I'm gonna cut this off, even though there is so much more I could say. The event went really well- there were about 100 people there (there are pictures on facebook). It was definitely one of my most rewarding experiences in country. Because it was something that everyone in the village could see that I was doing, and I got so much positive feedback. For most of your service, most villagers will not understand at all what you are doing, why you are there, or what your role is. And I feel like I got the opportunity to show them that I'm here, I'm working, and I'm a part of their community. It was a pain in the ass to put together, and I think that's why it was so much fun when it went off without a hitch. I was very proud of my village for being so helpful, and so receptive, and so totally gung-ho. And I was proud of myself! It's this kind of real village experience that volunteers ALL live for. It's few and far between, but it makes it worth it.

Hey I just wanted to send you all a quick update because it's been so long. I just got back from a conference with Amour & Vie, which is a program run by PSI (a groovy international NGO). PSI (Population Services International) is a great NGO, and they do a lot of health work in Benin with malaria, HIV/AIDS, water sanitation and family planning. So the Amour & Vie program was a training for representatives from our villages (there were like 10 volunteers who participated). The program trains them on health issues, and trains them how to give presentations, so they can go back to village and sort of “peer educate” the villagers in local language. So it's pretty cool! It's a lot of work for us right now, me and my reps are trying to set up the program in Penelan and there have been some hiccups and misunderstandings, but in another month we should be up and running, and Penelan will get at minimum two health lectures a month. By villagers, and not me! Yay sustainability! So that's sort of my main project right now.

I've also been setting up post visits for the new kids. I'm going to be visiting six different posts in November of volunteers from the new stage, just to check in on them and make sure everything's going okay. So I've been helping to set up the logistics for that.

What else has happened? I got malaria about two weeks ago, which majorly cramped my style for a little while. Malaria is the worst kids, you should avoid that for reals. I for sure wanted to die.

Last month I also got a Beninese style tattoo in my friend's village. They just make little lines with a razor blade (a new one, no AIDs!), and generally fill it with some kind of ash so the lines stay. A LOT of volunteers get these tattoos, I'd say maybe 75%, because it's pretty iconic, I'd say the same percentage of Beninese people have the scars. The guy doing mine used the ash of bird feathers, which is pretty cool! I had to eat part of the ash before he did it as pat of the ceremony. I got three little lines on my back, it's sort of a general symbol of protection.

I realize this update is horrifically short, but I feel like there is at once so much to say and so little. Now that I've updated you all on what's sort of been going on, I'm hoping next month I can get into some fun stuff! I won't have internet again til Halloween, so I hope you all have a great October!! Lots of love.

P.S. I forgot! My camera broke, so there haven't been pictures in a while, but my mom is sending a new one in the mail, so pictures should be back soon!

(written 11jan2011)

So I had an inservice midway through December, so the beginning couple of weeks, I was getting ready for that. We all had to do presentations on our villages, so I worked a lot on my village map and found some really cool stuff in my town!

There's a real forest a couple yard from my house if you walk out my front door to the left, and that's where a lot of my community puts their fields. So I've been exploring that area (there's a river, and some really beautiful clearings, and a Muslim cemetery, which is really not that exciting). I take Atti on walks there in the morning. I found some cool areas of town with weird abandoned buildings. I found a fish hatchery. It was all pretty neat! And I feel like I know my village a lot better, and have things to show people when I have visitors!

(written 25Nov2010)

So there is kind of a rotating cast of characters in my life. There is the man I call my “nice neighbor” who lives across the street from me. There is the “bread stealing neighbor” who lives directly next door to me. He is the elementary school director and he did come into my house once under the pretense that he had heard I was making bread. And then took some of that bread and was forever branded. He actually is a fine dude. He tells me when there's mail waiting for me in Basilla. His wife is really sweet, I like her a lot, but I can just barely understand her French. And I'm absolutely in love with their kids cause they are all so darn polite. There is also the “margarine lady”, who runs the financial groupment that I attend every six days. I call her the “margarine lady” because one time she took some margarine from me. The “nice neighbor” has yet to steal anything.

Anyway, the nice neighbor comes to my house every morning around 8:30 to say hello. He drops off fried dough that his wife makes, and always brings oranges and grapefruit. We talk about America. And basically I just love him to pieces. He's like 60 years old (I think he said 57) which makes him really respected in the village. He works with the school parent-teacher association, he runs a farm with loads of animals, and he's always dropping by the health center to pay his respects. I think he may have said at one time that he is the son of the village chief? But I don't really know who the village chief is so that's unconfirmable.

So he has this pretty big garden that's fenced in to keep the animals out. And his really sweet son with girly embroidered jeans runs the garden area, where they grow tomatoes, pimont, and okra. Apparently the pimont (peppers) get bought by someone in England and turned into a drink? What? I'm thinking maybe Tabasco-type sauce? He reserved a plot in this beautiful garden for me, and I'm getting vegetable seeds from some other volunteers, and I'm fairly sure the son is just planning to do my garden for me. Anyway- that's a side note that I'm sure I will come back to once the garden is actually planted.

So the nice neighbor's wife makes fried dough which she sells at the school and at local marches. And we've sort of got a little cooking exchange going on. She really likes this orange bread that I make, so yesterday I offered to bring all the ingredients to their house and we could make it together. Which is the first time I've really done anything like this, or hung out at their house for that long.

Their house is huge. There's a big yard with turkeys and chickens and goats. They have an avocado tree, an orange tree, a mango tree and a guava tree, so it's beautiful and has lots of shade. They have like three different stove areas. And I think it's sort of just a community spot. The wife of my bread-stealing neighbor says it's because he “loves men” that everyone wants to come hang out with him. There are always kids everywhere- and the nice neighbor himself has four sons, so I've always been sort of intimidated to go there, and I was hoping that the cooking session would be a good excuse.

So I went. And all throughout this cooking demo they were just rapt- asking me about substitutions and cooking temperatures, and using different baking pans etcetera etcetera. On my stove, the bread takes an hour to cook, but on coals it ended up taking two hours. This whole time, I was just chillin in their yard. These women came with basketfulls of oranges, which they loaded into giant sacks and onto motos to send to the market in Aledjo. Neighborhood kids showed up everywhere to eat from the orange pile. My nice neighbor showed me how to peel the oranges better (I was dragging the knife towards me like a pirate, and everybody else drags it away). I think I ate about 16. In the meantime, it's gets to be lunch time and they provide food for me (naturally). And then he asks me if I want to go back to my house to eat in privacy.. which is kind of weird, but not really weird for Benin, where they will leave you to eat by yourself as a sign of respect. But of course I stayed with everyone else and hung out.

When the bread finally came out of the oven, there was like suddenly a mob of people there. There were kids scraping the brown bits off the bottom of the pan, and little hands shooting out from everywhere to grab little cut up pieces of the bread. True to African style, the whole loaf was gone in about a minute and thirty seconds. It was ridiculous.

After that I wasn't going to leave because they had some kid washing all my pans. So I was planning to wait until that was done and then head out. But when the pans were done, the neighbor gave me the sad face, and asked if I could do my work there instead of my house. Which actually sounded great, because his yard is like 10 degrees cooler than my house. So I got my book and came back and read in a nice chair under the avocado tree for like another hour or so. My neighbor went inside to take a nap. And I got my one wish. I was sitting, in village, reading. No body was talking to me. People were just doing their chores and stopping by to say hello to the mama. This little boy that I adore was playing soccer by himself over on the other side of the garden. It was delightful. And quiet. And cool.

When the nice neighbor came back out he brought me dinner. While we were sitting around, a bunch of little kids had killed one of the goats and had been boiling it up for dinner. I was really hoping to not be a part of that- and they brought me macaroni with fish so I thought I was in the clear. But one little boy came over and brought me a goat ball. And I pretended that I thought it was for the little girl sitting next to me. But then the neighbor came over and told me that the kids wanted to make that for me and that it was a gift..So I decide, how bad can a goat ball be really? And I took a bite. And there wasn't anything particularly horrible about the ball part, but it was just sooooo goaty! They hadn't added spices or fried it or anything. It was just boiled goat, and that is what it tasted like. It was gross. And it was at that moment that my wonderful magical dog came barreling in from the cornfield, and I gave him the goat under the table. The nice neighbor made me this drink that's supposed to keep you from being gassy after you eat a meal with beans in it. The recipe follows!

So by the end of the evening, I had spent 9 hours at this house. Which is a personal record in every way possible. I was just chilling, shootin the shit, eating oranges, playing with Atti, playing with kids, reading, and having a lovely time. They gave me more goat as I was leaving, ended up being two meals for Atticus. My neighbor said that even if no one's around, I'm welcome to come chill in their yard by the trees any time I want. And I think I will.

I remember sitting under that tree, and for the first time, thinking that I really could live here.

Shelly's “Start an Africa Riot” Orange Bread
2 c. flour
¾ c. sugar
½ tsp. Salt
½ tsp. Baking soda
1 egg (or 2 Tbsp. Mayo if you live in Africa)
1 Tbsp. Orange peel
¾ c. orange juice
2 Tbsp. Oil

Mix it all up! Grease your loaf pan really well. Seriously.
Bake at 350º for 50-60 minutes, and let it set 10 minutes before you take it out.
Enjoy!

The Nice Neighbor's Recipe for “Bonne Digestion Lemonade”
(to be drunk after a meal with beans)
lemon/orange/grapefruit juice
water
sugar
baking soda

He wouldn't give me quantities for any of these items. It's all supposed to be to taste. But that baking soda will keep you fart free!

(written 23Sept2010)

So I'm officially in village! I've been doin the real deal since Monday (the 20th) and so much has already happened!! My homologue is keeping me super busy, and I feel like it'll be a while before I get the Peace Corps boredom. Let me apologize in advance, cause this was kind of hastily written, and might be a bit of a chore to read.

Sunday was my moving day. I somehow managed to be magically assigned a taxi all to myself, which was good because I had a lot of stuff to move around. After driving like 6 hours up from Porto-Novo, I had to stop in Basilla, which is Shannon's town) because a volunteer whose post has closed left a lot of stuff for me: two tables, two chairs, a cot, a giant water basin, general tupperware type things for food storage. We brought all that stuff to Penelan, and unloaded, and then backtracked 2 mi. to Pennessoulou (which is where my friend and closest volunteer Heather lives) to pick up the bedframe and giant food chest the carpenter made for me. The food chest is like an armoire with mosquito netting on the doors so that mice and bugs can't get to your food. It's super rad. My best purchase. A bunch of old ladies showed up at my house out of nowhere to help me move, and wouldn't let me do anything- they kept taking bags out of my hands and carrying them in. Heather's neighbor Alassane (he's a dude fyi) zemmed over with Heather to check out the house and for a brief visit. After they left there was a mini “welcome-Michelle” dance party in front of the health center! And they sure do love a dance party. The dancing isn't that hard core, there's mostly just like 4 or 5 women swaying, but they really really like it when I come dance with them. And I really really like to do it! We went to the buvette (bar) after and had some dinner, and that was pretty much it. See! Totally busy!

Monday I tried to unpack most of the day. I don't think anything really happened in the morning. In the afternoon Alassane and his wife brought Heather to town again because Penelan was apparently having some sort of fete in celebration of women? Which was just another dance party in our marche area. But this one was bigger! And you give candy and Nigerian 5 dollar bills to people who are dancing well, which really means everybody. So the candy keeps getting passed from person to person. And why were we using Nigerian money? We all went to buvette again and had Malta, which is Guiness' version of near-beer. It kinda tastes like molasses. They made us drink two bottles each.

On Tuesday I saw my very first, real life, not kidding, human baby, BIRTH! My homolouge had told me that I had to give a speech on vaccinations around 8:30, and when she wasn't at my house by 9ish I decided to mosey on over to the health center. A baby had just finished being born, and they were cleaning it off! I thought that was exciting. And all the villagers kept telling me “Good job!” and “Thank you!”. And all I did was show up late and hold the baby. As soon as the first mom got settled, one of the women who actually works with us at the health center, and has been ready to pop for a while, started going into labor, and I got to see that sucker beginning to end! I gotta say, for being in the middle of the bush in Africa, my midwives really did a great job. There are a couple weird things they do here though- mostly they will not let the woman cry out, and some mommas get whacked by a midwife if they get too loud. But that's pretty much how Beninese people react to everything. Once the baby came out it got a little on the whiny side, and the midwife that was cleaning her gave her a few good whacks. That's right old African lady, get 'em started early. They pierce the ears of all the girls, and they do it right after birth. The ears are so soft, they just push the earring right in. That was cool. The moms also have like zero rest time. I saw both of the mothers from that morning walking around at the vaccination event later that afternoon. Mothers generally go back to the fields like pronto. Hmm, what else? The weirdest thing about the birth to me was the placenta, because I guess I had never really seen one before. It looked kind of like a heart because there was just so much blood in it and it was all veiny. Cindy! I thought of you carrying your placentas at the hospital!

Anyway after all that, the vaccinations were supposed to happen and I was supposed to give my speech. But my homologue disappeared probably to do something important, so I hung out at the event for a couple hours, and some women showed me how to more efficiently shell peanuts. It was fun! I never did give a speech. Which is probably really for the best.

Wednesday we had a mini Peace Corps reunion! There are five of us that live fairly close together (fairly, not super). Jared (english teacher), Shannon (environment), Eric (health like me), and Heather (english teacher too). Shan and Jared came to my house in the morning and we made kick ass mac and cheese from the Peace Corps cookbook. We didn't have any onions, so I went to ask my homologue (I'm just gonna call her by her name now, because homologue is a lot to type out- her name is Reine). Instead she just gave me a bowl of onions and tomatoes and and eggs from her chickens. Fresh eggs, yum! That woman is such a gem, I'm telling you. Anyway, the mac was made with vache qui rit, which they have in the states (laughing cow)- it's like those little triangles of “cheese spread” in the refrigerated section. It was sooooo f-ing good. My first taste of almost American food since I've been here. Oh man. Let me relive the moment for a second. So good.
After that all three of us decided to walk to Heather's house 'cause that's where we were meeting her and Eric. It's about a 2.5 mile walk, and it was pretty awesome, because we were really walking through the African jungle. We saw a hornbill (like Zazou from the Lion King) and I just about lost it. Near the end of the walk we got caught in a giant thunderstorm, which was very wet, but beautiful. I'm glad we all got to share it together.
When we got to Heather's she made us hot chocolate and I charged my stuff! We didn't stay long. But it was lovely to see everyone and touch base after out first couple days!

Apparently every Thursday my health center holds prenatal consultations. So I went to a batch of them yesterday and Reine showed me how to fill out the Beninese maternity health cards. So I gave a little speech to the ladies about the importance of attending all their prenatal exams, and matched up their health cards with our maternity cards. Then I sat in on six of the exams, and Reine dictated the measurements, and I filled them out on the cards. I was really proud of myself, 'cause it was pretty complicated, and totally in French, and I learned a lot about the Beninese health system, pregnancy warning signs, and the different tests my center is capable of doing. It was fascinating. We sold mosquito nets to the women who needed them, and I learned how to fill out the mosquito net sales notebook. I really enjoyed it a lot, and I think it was really helpful to Reine cause she could go three times as fast with me there.
After all this, I made BREAD! Which was soo sooo sooo good. So good. It was yeast based,. I let it rise twice, which was super fast because it's always 90 degrees out. In the P.C. we use dutch ovens. You put your loaf pan or whatever into a large soup pot. You have to have like a can or something on the bottom of the soup pot so that your loaf pan doesn't touch any of the sides of the pot. And you put the lid on and just set it on your stove on low. It produces dry heat and will just bake anything you want! A thunderstorm hit just as the bread was coming out of the oven and I sat on my mat and ate warm bread with butter and honey and jam and nutella, and listened to it rain like crazy outside. It felt so nice. And I did it all myself!
I think I might get in the habit of making bread every week or so, because they just have Togolese bread in my village, which is kind of like Wonder bread and is bordering on super lame. It gets kinda stale quickly, and just has no ummph.

So I'm just finishing up my post visit to Penelan!! I'm at the Natitangou workstation right now, spending the night, and then I'm gonna head back down to Porto-Novo tomorrow with a group of other stagiers! Booo, I don't want to go back to host-family!

Soooo- my post visit was awesome. My village is super small (just one road) and it's off the main highway so it's nice and quiet. It's actually EXACTLY what I wanted- no electricity, no running water, super small; I'm shocked that I was placed in such an ideal spot. My villagers speak two local languages: Anï and Kokokoli, so I need to learn a little of both! Which is a bit daunting, but I've got some basic salutations down already. My house is adjacent to that of another family, and we share the same yard. My whole village is crawling with goats and chickens and ducks and there are two giant bull-cow type things that hang out behind my house. Which I find absolutely endearing. I saw all sorts of tiny baby yellow ducklings. It was great. The whole village is basically built on top of corn fields- which I realized rather belatedly means that it will be a giant corn maze come fall. Which is super cool! You can pretty much see the jungle from my house- and when I first got there I was thinking about how much boredom awaited me until I remembered that at any time I desire I could hypothetically ride my bike into the African jungle.

So during post visit you spend a lot of time saluating important people- chiefs, supervisors, kings, and co-coworkers. I met everyone at my health center and got to hang out there and at my soon to be house! It was fun to plan all the stuff I'm going to buy- but it made me a little restless to begin shopping. My house is two smallish rooms, and then I have a small little cement backyard sort of thing that has a shower area and a toilet coming off of it. I think it's gonna juuuuust fit all my stuff. In a good way. I like small.

I spent the three days at my homologes house, she is such a sweet woman. One day it rained like all get out, and she HEATED the water for my bucket bath. Nicest thing anyone's ever done. I also offhandedly mentioned how much I liked peanuts and was glad there there was so much peanut sauce in Penelan, so she gave a jar filled with peanuts. And it took me three conversations to figure out it was a gift. She wouldn't accept any money for all the meals she made me when I was there. It kind of makes me feel bad how nice everyone in village is to me. They say that they've prayed for me to come. They all know my name instantly and just welcome me with open arms. I want to tell them that I'm really an imposter who doesn't speak French or really know that much about health. I love the elders in my village (what a surprise). They are the nicest of all- don't speak any French, but are just the gentlest, most loving people. So I would really like to learn more local language and get in with them. I'm a little nervous because on the surface, this village really has their act together. Their health center is the nicest one I've seen- it's as good as my dad's in Porto-Novo- and I can't quite figure out what their problems are, because there isn't really bad malnutrition, which is a big problem most places. We shall see!

I'm going to be working also (I'm assuming) in the bigger town right next to me, Pennessoulou, and in another town that's down the road from mine and is smaller than mine is. It's called Nioro (Nero- as in Captain).

So basically I can't wait to move in and finally reclaim my schedule and my space. I know it's gonna be prrrreetty hard though- getting used to slowing things down, and getting used to not seeing my friends. I'm planning out furniture-buying and things like that. My homologues friend who lives in Pennessoulou and who I'm already fairly tight with went to the carpenters and did all the negotiating for me- he's going to get the furniture delivered to his house and I can pick it up on my move in day. So nice. I worry that they think I'm being a bitch when I don't really talk. But I picture myself as a slightly confused Swedish girl. If you were in the US and you saw a slightly confused Swedish girl you would think- oh I bet she's trying to learn English and is really quite sweet. Those Swedes. That makes me feel better.

I'm at the Nati workstation, as I've said, and it's a little piece of America. It's just a house, with a nice big kitchen, and a big library, and tons of DVDs. You can download movies off the server, and there's wireless. It's really wonderful, I'll take some pictures. I'm gonna be up here every other weekend to do banking, shopping, and pick up my mail- it's about a 2 hour bus ride from my village. So I'm excited for those little trips- cause it's like an little American vacation.
I'm a little sleepy, maybe I'll find a good movie to watch!
I love you all. I'm thinking of you all the time. Please have a wonderful day!

P.S. THE STARS IN MY VILLAGE ARE INCREDIBLE!

(written 31Aout2010)

So, I'm all kinds of excited, because tomorrow I'm gonna wake up at 4 am and head on over to my post in Penelan! This week is homologue conference in Porto Novo (the homologues are our work partners, mine is a midwife at the health center where I'm gonna work- Beninese, not white person). All the homologues come to meet us, learn about Peace Corps, talk to us about our posts, and then we all go back to our posts with them for the post visit, which will be Wednesday-Sunday.

It's super awkward because you have to talk to your homologue in French for hours at a time, and they make you sit next to them in all the information sessions, but none of that really matters because mine is AWESOME! I didn't really know anything about Penelan beforehand, but my lady says that the forest that I live in supposedly has elephants and lions! (Although Shannon my zoologist thinks this is not true- and I trust her on this matter) Also- while pate is the main starch down in the south, in my village apparently everyone eats mashed yam with every meal, which sounds absolutely wicked! I've been eating pate and fried fish (that is half tiny bones) every night for that last three weeks, so I'm totally down to never see either of those things again. Supposedly we also have tomatoes! (Which might also be a lie, but I'm optimistic)

That's all I'm gonna write for now 'cause I'm starting school soon, but I'll send you some more info when I get back and know everything!! Be excited!!