Angel on My Bike

Departure for Manigri is set for Wednesday! (This is only a three day post visit by the way). We met our Directors today, which is like the head honcho of the school. The guy you want to be happy with you. My guy seems very nice, and I think that he is going to be patient with me, so that’s good. Whoever I get needs to have a lot of patience as a struggle through learning the language. Supposedly, the volunteer that I am replacing had a really, really awful Director for most of his service. Like the guy was really against women, and I guess that he was found to be sleeping with several students (though this isn’t a very uncommon occurrence sadly enough), and I guess that every time John (the volunteer I’m replacing) tried to start an after school program for girls, his Director would find a way to shut it down--so, I’m really glad (obviously) that I don’t have that guy. And I guess that my Director was happy to see that I was a girl, because he thinks that I will have an easier time getting through to the girls, which is hopefully true.

Anyway, enough of the technical talk. I can write more about my post when I actually know more about my post instead of what I know based on hearsay. In more exciting news, a version of bocce exists in Benin! As part of our “cross-cultural training” we had a night of Benin games among them was “bocce.” I was, of course, overly excited and jumped in as soon as I could. Little did I know that I was playing against the national champion of Benin. He definitely put me in my place, BUT he did ask if I had played before, so clearly he recognized that the skill was there. So, despite the fact that I got creamed, I am happy to know that while I had to give some things up in America, at least I can have my “bocce.”

The other exciting thing to know is that something else that I did not leave behind in America is my ability to get lost. Here’s the story. Several of us stagaires decided that we would go visit the Health volunteers in Dogbo (look it up). Dogbo is about an hour bike ride away. Anyway, five of us want to leave a little earlier at 9am to spend more time in Dogbo, and then there were about 5 more who were going to leave at 11am after a yoga session. Needless to say, I am in the early group, and somehow I get nominated to be the fearless leader. So to get to Dogbo, you take one road the whole time; it’s a straight shot, on paved roads, and should take an hour. However, should you choose to take the wrong road out of town, you get to experience a whole new adventure. I am more one for adventures, so you can guess what road I unknowingly took--oh yes. So skip ahead to 12:30, we are in Dogbo and we see the second group arriving. The catch of the story is that we had arrived only 5 minutes earlier. It took us 3 and ½ hours to get to Dogbo! And we went through some crazy terrain, and tiny, tiny villages, and some gorgeous scenery. Would I do it again? Probably not. But I am sort of glad that we got lost, just to have had an adventure along the Africa countryside. And now I definitely know which road to take when riding out of Lokossa. The whole time I just kept having flashbacks of Thanksgiving. Ugh.

C’est tout. LOVE