Work Trip to Porto Novo!

Hi Everyone!

I am very happy to tell you all that it has been a very productive trip, even with a lot of hours on the road.

The day that I arrived I got to have a quickly rescheduled meeting with my program manager. After scouting around for rabbit raising association in the first three months at post, only at this meeting did I find out that my program manager actually works with rabbit raising groups on the weekends! So that was exciting to find out. We also got to talk a lot about the latrine project and all that fun stuff.

After the meeting Zoe (the volunteer with whom I was staying) and I tried to watch the inauguration on her supervisor’s TV. Unfortunately after about 5 minutes the electricity went out. We went back to her house and, along with another volunteer Michelle, downloaded a text version of the speech and we read it to each other paragraph by paragraph. It was really fun to share that experience together and feel like we were participating in the inauguration. The picture of hope for a more just and equal future that the president painted was definitely rejuvenating for me.

The next day I met with Zoe’s supervisor to learn about his rabbit raising project. I didn’t really know what to expect and it turned out that he prepared a whole training session complete with outline! We spent the whole morning covering one topic and then another. The supervisor answered a lot of my questions, and was able to give Benin-specific examples of food and weather considerations. I am so grateful to have had the chance to meet with him!

In the evening I visited my host family for the first time since I moved to post, to celebrate Sena’s 10^th birthday. It was such a trip being back there. Things that I hadn’t realized that I had started to forget came back to me, like the warm welcoming smell the house has, and the way that the kids all flit in and out of the rooms speaking a combination of quick French and Fon. I was really glad to see them all again, and I was really struck by how nice their life in Porto Novo is, compared to life up north. I tried to tell them how awesome it is that the kids speak French so well and read and write so well. The opportunities they are going to have in the future are exciting.

Now I am making my way back north, excited to tell my work partners about what I have learned and very anxious to see my cat, Jack! It’s been a good trip and I look forward to what it is going to bring for the future.

As always, thanks for reading.

With love,

Lauren

January

Hello everyone,

I hope January is treating you well. It’s been something of a mixed bag here in Founougo. Projects are getting underway, but there is always plenty of uncertainty and delay and worry that my days aren’t busy enough.

I notice that I haven’t mentioned much about gardening lately, even though I do indeed have a garden box in front of my house. I am sorry to say that since mid November rats (or possibly mice?) have been slowly and systematically taking over my garden. They ate the most palatable seedlings first, but whenever I think their appetite couldn’t go any further, another Flamboyant gets mowed down.

Part of the problem is that the wooden box that contains the garden bed has been breaking down and the rats have eaten holes into the structure so they can burrow around and generally have ownership. I decided it was time to make repairs and talked to a carpenter who lives down the street. He checked it out and said that ‘tomorrow’ he would come by to repair it, so I should move all the soil. The trouble is sometimes ‘tomorrow’ really means 24 hours from now, and sometimes it means ‘sometime in the foreseeable future’. In this case it was the latter, and I haven’t seen him in two days. Even though I knew this was a possibility, I didn’t want to hold work up by not actually being ready the next day if he did show up. So I started slowly scooping the dirt into a large metal bowl with a hand-hoe that I have. There was a lot of dirt. Probably two and a half feet high, three feet wide four feet long. I was determined, but knew it was going to take a long time. After maybe 20 minutes, my neighbor Jean-Marie, who is probably 12, came over to help. Even though it’s pretty normal culturally, I still think it’s astounding that he came over, just because he saw that I was doing a difficult task. He was also really strong the work definitely went more than twice as fast with him using the hoe and me just scooping with my hands. The work that kids do here is really astounding. While I was trying to help him help me I also noticed that the waistband on his shorts said BARACK OBAMA. The whole experience was a good example of how much people here help Volunteers, and how much American culture is abstractly revered. When we finished I was able to invite him into the house for a big glass of Crystal Light.

This week I was supposed to have my second community latrine meeting with the help of the Delegate for Founougo – B. Unfortunately, his adult son died, so the meeting was canceled. I found out about this in a bizarre conversation with the Delegate’s third wife from Togo, who sings at the evangelical church I go to (I know, right?). I said something like,

“I am so sorry to hear about the Delegate’s son”

“Yes well he was sick.”

“Oh. Was it a long sickness?”

“No. He fell and broke his leg, then he started vomiting blood.”

Ok, that’s not being sick. That is a high trauma injury! She went on to explain,

“He didn’t go to the ‘radio’ to see if anything was broken inside. People here don’t do that” Here, I am sorry to say, I think the vagueness is due to my poor translating abilities, not necessarily simple language on her part. But wow, that conversation has really stuck with me. I was able to visit the Delegate today and give him some peanut butter bread that I made for him. Seeing that he seemed to be doing ok was encouraging.

I think that we learn big over arching things in phases. As I am starting to really feel moved in here, as life becomes more normal, I feel like I am accepting more and more how tough life is here. Initially, I sort of deflected the difficulty saying to myself, ‘yes but one can still be happy here, there are still things to take joy in’. That certainly is true. Yet at the same time there is this reality that people die of treatable illnesses and injuries (even if not in the case above, certainly in others), and girls don’t usually finish school and it took me two hours to wash 8 pieces of clothing today.

Writing this up for you guys, I feel reminded that this is why I am here. I wanted to go somewhere where there were challenges so I could try to help with some challenges. But it is easy to feel overwhelmed. It seems unlikely that I am going to be able to completely revolutionize Founougo in my short time of service here, or raise the annual gross income of every household. I would just like to help even one person in a way that will really stick and help them for their whole life. I don’t want to just give away some gift or money that will be gone a year after I am, and the only thing learned will be that nice things in life come from foreigners. Sustainable grass roots development, right? That’s the goal.

Well, this has been a somewhat heavy post so far, hasn’t it? Time to talk about my kitten, Jack. He is the cutest kitten in the world, and he is so social and friendly. He literally walks all over me, and likes to sit on my shoulder while I am walking around the house or cleaning dishes. Sometimes I wear an empty backpack to give him a little more stability. He is also very talkative, especially around mealtime. Sometimes he tries to meow and eat at the same time and he kind of gargles. It cracks me up.

However next week I am going to be a bad kitten mama and also break my new-month resolution of being at post more. Hopefulls the trade off will be being a good Peace Corps Volunteer. I am headed south for the 10^th birthday of my host sister Sena, and also a meeting with my program director about the projects I am starting work on. I hope both of these are very impactful because right now I feel guilty about how long it’s going to take to get there and back.  I will let you guys know in a week, I suppose!

As always, thanks for reading. I really appreciate getting to share this stuff with you.

With love,

Lauren

Classes and Kittens and Latrines

Hello Everyone,

It’s been a busy week here in Founougo. To begin with, I set a personal record of enjoying a bought of food poisoning for at least 6 days straight. That was discouraging to say the least, especially since I had a meeting that I was actually really excited about on Tuesday, and on Monday I wanted nothing more than to lay around in a building with running water and ice chips. Fortunately, through a combination of prayer and Oral Rehydration Salts, I woke up on Tuesday ready to take on the day.

That was a good thing, because Tuesday was arguably my most ‘real work’ filled day so far. My homologue, or counterpart, Baron and I ran a meeting for the people of Founougo about the possibility of a latrine project here. We even had a friend of mine from church translate everything into Bariba.

While the meeting was a success, we did sort of take the long way around. I really wanted to ask some of the ‘needs assessment’ open-ended questions that the Peace Corps had advocated, even though I knew open-ended questions can be a struggle here. I tried to ask the group to list characteristics of a successful project based on previous projects in Founougo. After rephrasing several times, people were able to give examples of projects that have happened here, like building the Health Center and adding classrooms at the secondary school. However, when pushed to come up with characteristics of success, we were really at a stand still. Finally one guy raised his hand and basically said ‘people come in and build stuff, and then they leave. We know they do it, but we don’t really know what they do, or why it works.’

Wow. What a statement. I will explain that I think it needs to be taking with a grain of salt, but even if it’s partially true, that is a weighty statement. In that moment I thought briefly about all the aid that may have come into Founougo in the last 60 years, and what had the people sitting before me learned from it? Apparently nothing. It made me hope that I never hand out materials without also teaching something that’s going to help people even after the material is used up.

That being said, later in the meeting we were coming up with next steps, and there was this universal agreement of ‘Oh, well now we need to form a planning committee’. So maybe it’s the style of question that is the biggest challenge. I hope to figure it out better with time.

So sure enough a planning committee was formed. My supervisor from Banikoara even visited to say a couple words at the meeting. That turned out to be a huge help. He has apparently done a number of projects with Peace Corps Volunteers before, so he is familiar with the process.

Later the same day I also taught my first environmental guest lecture in a 6^th grade class. That turned out to be really fun. The students were very attentive, and as luck would have it, my lesson hit a nice middle ground of some familiar things and some new things. Despite my fears of speaking French in front of, say 100, 6^th graders, I suspected that I would really enjoy getting to know some of the kids. That turned out to be very true. Whenever a student took extra care to write the answer as neatly as they could, or their hand shot up in the air with a confident gleam in their eye, I couldn’t help but smile. I wish I could do more for those kids, to meet their enthusiasm with every opportunity for success in life. Anyway, I am glad I get to work with them a little bit for the time being.

Alright after all that do-goody work news, something more literally fuzzy. I got a kitten! His name is Jack and I am afraid to say, after only two days, I am in love. He is chatty and inquisitive and takes long naps in the afternoon and purrs like a little racecar. I am still working on getting him to like phad thai, but there is still time to refine his tastes. He is still small, and young to the world. Hopefully pictures will at least hit facebook before the end of the month.

Ok, That’s the update for this week. Thanks for reading!

With love,

Lauren

Travevling into January

Hi Everyone,

I hope you are all setting into 2013 very nicely. After so much traveling in December, I have to say that settling in is taking a little bit of time here. I keep reminding myself that it seems to take a week to really get momentum back. Despite that, I do have two West Africa anecdotes to share with you all.

The first is from my trip back to Founougo on New Years Day. Apparently not unlike in the US, New Years Day is a pretty big day for travel here. That meant that instead of taking an overcrowded station wagon-taxi, I actually took an over crowded van-taxi. Not being quick enough on the draw, I was crunched into the very back, where two rows of seats face each other. Joining me in this most accommodating part of our luxury vehicle were many semi-nomadic Peul, or Fulani. The Fulani are much more likely to dress in cool bright colors, much less likely to speak French, and much more likely to stare at me blatantly. A hush fell over the back of the van and I felt a lot of eyes on me when I reached into my bag and pulled out my sunglasses.

It was at about that point that they started crowding people into the ground area between our two seating units. One Fulani girl, maybe 16 years old had to sit on a tire, facing the trunk door, jammed between all of our knees for the trip. I started to feel a little more privileged in my seat pinned between the side of the car and a woman who was definitely not giving any more space than she needed to. 

Suffice it to say, I was having a moment of acknowledging how tough life can be here. I was struck by the idea that we were all actually paying to be in this van, and that really, we weren’t ‘paying for our seats’ the way we think of in the US, we were all just paying to get from point A to point B and that was significant enough. I couldn’t help staring at that Fulani girl. I couldn’t help thinking how tough her life must be, where there is always an authority figure making her take the worst seat. In my grumpiness, I tried to remember what has consoled me in the past when I hit thoughts like that. I noticed that she was wearing a bracelet with white, black, and yellow beads. That struck me as something she would have picked out, something that made her feel pretty, that showed joie de vivre. I think that’s something.

As it happened, that van broke down about an hour into our trip and that girl and I, along with a few others, wound up jumping ship for a different station wagon taxi that stopped when it saw that we broke down. That’s life I guess!

On a less heavy note, I mentioned before that I have been making friends in village a little bit, and I thought that I would expand on that some. One woman that I hang out with often is Angeline. She is one of those very rare women in Founougo who speaks very good French (and even a little English!). Her sister lives in Cotonou so she has big city connections. She owns a buvette in the market. A buvette is basically a bar in that they sell drinks, however, that is pretty much where the similarities to American bars end. Angeline’s buvette has several seating areas that are partitioned by sheets of fabric, which makes the place feel cooler than the market. I go by there sometimes just to say hi, or to order a soda. Sometimes if it’s not busy Angeline will invite me to share a meal with her and her niece and nephew. On Christmas morning she called me to wish me good health, and a Merry Christmas, and to send “bises” or kisses, to all the Peace Corps volunteers. In fact the time that I saw her after that we did the three kisses on the check a la France. I am so happy to be making a local friend to do ‘bises’ with!

Those are the anecdotes for this week. With any luck next week I will be teaching my first environmental classes at the Primary Schools. I am nervous about that but I get the feeling I need to take the plunge. I would really like to get to know the students better. More stories to follow for sure!

Thank for reading!!

With love,

Lauren

A Quick New Years Post

Hi Everyone!

Happy New Year! I hope that you all are having fun, and getting a little time to look back and look ahead. December has been a very busy month here in Benin, with a lot of time away from post. Looking back over the month, I actually feel like I have been able to grow some friendships in my community, though work definitely hasn’t been at full speed ahead. So, looking ahead a month at least, my goals for the new year are to spend more time in village, really start moving on some projects that we have been talking about during these first three months, and to generally keep practicing living in the moment. …We will see what February brings!

I am grateful to be getting to live in such a different, new place, and I am grateful to be able to share this experience with all of you back home.

Here’s to all the crazy things in 2013 that we will get to experience, share and think about.

Thanks so much for reading,

With love,

Lauren

Christmas time!

Hi Everyone!

December has been a crazy month hasn’t it? I hope you have had a very wonderful Holiday Season, and that you have a wonderful New Year. Things have been good here, and I am happy to say I am looking forward to some calmer weeks in January and February. Life has been busy, but it has been pretty great.

The week leading up to my birthday I had a little trouble getting traction to get work done, since I had just gotten back from In Service Training. By the end of the week I was getting to have some exciting meetings. On Saturday I got to go to a training Session on small animal raising, which Foussena (who wants to raise rabbits) also attended. I felt good about that, even though there was a lot of pretending to understand Bariba for me. Better that Foussena understood it than me!

For my birthday some of the other volunteers (Camille my post mate, Josh, and Suzanne) all came and visited Founougo. That was so exciting. For Josh and Suzanne, it was their first time seeing Founougo, so it was fun to hear their reactions. Founougo is a pretty big town. Camille and I are pretty decided that it’s great. We all ate some good local food, and chatted a lot , and thanks to charged laptops got to watch a little Star Wars. It was a pretty great day.

For Christmas I met a lot of the other volunteers down in the beach town of Grand Popo. I tried to make the whole trip I one day, and man was it a marathon. The trip was full of uncertainty and lots and lots of stops. At one point we blew a tire, and that was actually one of our shortest stops. They had that tire changed out in 10-15 minutes. I kid you not. I felt like that was telling. I really can’t cross the whole country in a day, and that is sad, but I guess that it’s good to learn.

Grand Popo was really nice. Because there were so many of us, I actually rented a camping tent with my friend Megan. I wound up paying $8 staying there for 3 days. We do need to remember I only get paid $6 a day, but that is still impressively cheap. We all swam a little bit, relaxed a lot, and enjoyed the visit.

Now I’m on my way back up North, passing through Parakou for the night. It’s good to get to literally recharge the batteries. There are probably more deep thoughts to share, but it is late here. We will hopefully have some weeks ahead at post for deep contemplation.

Love you guys. Blessings of the season!

With love,

Lauren

First In Service Training!

*I thought I posted this last thursday, the 13th. Sorry!*

Hello Everyone!

I am writing this post from a hotel in Parakou. I’m here for In Service Training. That means, incredibly enough, I have actually been a Peace Corps volunteer for three months. That seems almost unbelievable to me. Like so many things in life, I thought by the time I made it to in service training I would have everything in life figured out, but there is so much to learn!

That’s seems to be a good place to transition. In the last two-weeks-and-some-change since I wrote a post, I have done a lot of learning.

As I may have mentioned, I was very much looking forward to getting to use the Internet at the Kandi Workstation over Thanksgiving. However, the Internet actually wasn’t working in the workstation that weekend. So, while it was really nice to catch up with people and eat delicious food, I spent the whole three day visit /not/ getting things done on the Internet. When I got back to post, I was really discouraged about that. All in all, it’s been over a month since I have been able to check my email. I felt frustrated and discouraged, and just sort of out of steam. I felt out of control of being able to get in touch with people. Being so close to the holidays didn’t make it any easier to feel like I didn’t have the ability to communicate. My work kind of went into low power. While I still did all the work that had already been planned, like environmental club, but I wasn’t taking the initiative to get people together for extra meetings and things like that.

When I was thinking about explaining to Baron, my homologue, what had me in a funk, I realized how un-relatable my ‘first-world-third-world problem’ was. It’s weird to remember that there really are no computers in my town. The times when my neighbors have been on the computer are probably more noteworthy than the times when computers have been inaccessible. That made me realize, in ways that I haven’t really internalized before, how I really do come from one of the richest countries in the world.

When ever anyone comments on my nice sandals, or motorcycle helmet, or earrings, and jokingly ask if they can have it, I used to think, “well, if you really do like [this thing] you probably could save up for it”. While that is true, at the same time, any one of those things is also symbolic of everything in my life that really is so out of reach for my neighbors. The plane tickets and the technology and the communication and the conveniences of first world life; I have to wonder if when they see any one of my nice things, they partially see that whole life that I have access too.

So that whole revelation was sort of humbling, and it started getting me in a better place. I did also benefit from the generosity of Katrina, a neighboring volunteer who shared her Internet key with me one morning. I still wasn’t able to check my email, but it was good to get a small peak at the outside world. (That was also when I updated the blog the last time.)

From there, I got thinking about Christmas. First I was thinking a little about what would be challenging because I am away from home. Then I got thinking about the religious/spiritual aspects of Christmas, which I can still participate in, and in fact can bring new perspective to this year, based on my new context. I got thinking about a line from the first chapter of John, as it was translated in ‘The Message’. As it is explaining how God became man and came to Earth, it says that God ‘moved into the neighborhood’. I am getting to fulfill a dream in that, in my own smaller way, I am getting to follow in God’s footsteps and move into the neighborhood with the people I would like to help. That revelation kind of knocked me back. In a way, since then, I think I have had a better attitude than I have had the first three months. It’s still taken me some time to get momentum back with work, but it really made a faith aspect click for me.

As a side note, the song ‘Away in a Manger’ says “no crying he makes” but I have to think that Jesus was a fussy baby. I mean that is a pretty huge transition o make. There is a lot to fuss about! But maybe I just take a lower Christology than some people…

After all of that, the last couple days here in Parakou have been so wonderful. The food is wonderful, and other people are preparing it for us and cleaning up afterwards. There is running water and (when the power is not cut) the hotel even has air conditioning. It’s so good to get to hear how other people’s work is going, and just catch up and speak English. The break has been really wonderful. In my opinion, the Peace Corps has a good supportive structure to make these transitions through the different parts of service easier.

This weekend I was at a voluntary training session here in Parakou with Baron my homologue (or work partner). It was really great to travel together and share in the class sessions. I think we bonded over hanging out together outside of village, working together in the sessions, and even times sharing in some humor about how we felt about certain lessons. It’s great to get to bond a little bit. All things little by little!

In one final piece of news, I have purchased an Internet key. It’s like a flash drive that I can buy phone credit for, and when you plug it in to your computer, it will connect you to the Internet as cellphone reception permits. I am hopeful that if I pace my laptop battery out well, I may be able to update my blog weekly, and maybe even check my email. We will see!

That’s all for now. Love you guys and I think of you all the time. I hope you are enjoying the holiday season. It still feels like it’s still summer here, so that is a weird challenge. It doesn’t stop a person from dreaming of sugarplums and future snowstorms though. I hope you all enjoy a little the season!

With Love,

Lauren