American Baby

Friday morning. Normally it’s my laziest day of the week; today, however, I got work to do. As matter of fact, I should be at the school right now attending an end of the semester school meeting to decide the student’s conduct grades but seeing as I only found out about it 10 minutes ago by accident, I am boycotting the meeting (which is surely going to be dull) and pleading ignorance if I get accused of not going.

As a reminder to those of you who are reading this, meetings in Benin are not just like ordinary everyday run-of-the-mill meetings. Meetings in Benin are a chance for everyone and anyone to get up and get on his soap box and make a speech of this and that. Meetings in Benin are loosely structured and have no time limit. Meetings in Benin are all in French (or the occasional slip of local language) that is too fast for me to understand. Meetings in Benin are utterly boring and pointless. Meetings in Benin can take anywhere from two to seven hours. Thus, this is way I am not going and do not feel bad about not going to this particular meeting (that I wasn’t told about).

Instead I am going to enjoy just a slice of my lazy morning before I have to get on the back of a moto and zip around the commune of Bassila trying to gather up names for my girls summer camp. Today, really, will be quite satisfactory if I am able to get everything done; however, the frustrating part of it all is that everything that I am going to do today was already supposed to have been done. It because of an extremely absent minded and lackadaisical counterpart that we are now behind. He doesn’t really seem to understand that in order to have a girls summer camp you actually need girls to be in attendance. Truthfully, I think he means well and is possibly trying as hard as he can, he’s just one of those guys that likes to take on a lot of projects but then has no real way of organizing his time or priorities and so he just sort of flies by the seat of his pants leaving those of us who do have schedules (me) completely dumbfounded and irritated when he shows up 2 or 3 hours late (if he shows up at all). Through all of these frustrations, though, I am still hoping that the camp is going to turn out okay. They did it last year and it seemed to be a success and they are doing camps all over Benin which have been successes in the past and are doing well this year, so I don’t want to drop the ball on this one. It seems like so many things have gone wrong throughout the planning of it, that it wasn’t meant to be at all, but I can only hope that those were just little bumps along the way to test me. Our program for the camp is a good mixture between things I want to do like sports and bonding activities and learning about the internet and a trip to see monkeys to things that are important for the girls to do like listening to speakers talk about sexual harassment in schools, child trafficking, and female sexuality and going to Djougou to see and to talk to a woman who has started her own very successful business. I’ve put a lot of hard work into this camp and I would hate to see it fall through. One thing is for sure--I will be really happy to have this camp done and over with so that I can look forward to the rest of the summer which is building up to be amazing.

First, we have all the new volunteers coming in which everyone could not be more excited about. We are all happy to see new faces and have a new wave of fresh energy coming into Benin. The year mark is just about when volunteers start to become a little stagnant and at that point its great to be refreshed by people who are just beginning their own adventures--we are once again reminded of the excitement and the novelty of being in a new country. We are also reminded about how far we have come already and how truly short the rest of our service is. After the new volunteers arrive and begin their training, I was selected to work part of their training, so I will be able to be around during several critical weeks of the new volunteers service where they find out their posts and go on post visits, where they begin model school and get their first real taste of what they’ll be doing, and where several of them will be going through all those same mind-exploding frustrations I had of learning a new language. I am excited to be there during all of this and I hope that I can be a resource and an outlet to help the new volunteers. One of the great things about Peace Corps is that we truly are a family, and it’s quite and honor to be part of the introduction into that family for all the new volunteers. Finally, after my four weeks of working stage, I will be getting on a plane and heading back home for approximately a week and a half before I take my parents and my brother hostage and we all return to Benin for a little tour of what I call home over here. As you see, even though I am just finishing up with end of the year meetings and end of the year grades, before I know it, summer will be over and I will starting the next school term. Nevertheless, better to be having fun and see the time fly by then to be banging my head against a wall all summer because of boredom. First things first, though, I have to get this camp out of the way--then I can let my hair down a little bit (figuratively speaking, of course, because actually letting my hair down doesn’t really happen here as there is almost nothing I hate more than the feeling of having my own hair sweaty and matted and stuck down against the back of my neck). Anyway, off to take a bucket shower and to try to wash some of the non-deodorant stink off of my body. I also have to make breakfast which is going to require a little bit of creativity on my part. I have no eggs, no bread, no pasta, no butter, no oatmeal, and not a lot of gas left in my gas tank. I do, however, have a little bit of powdered milk left and I am going to see if that is enough to whip up one of my pudding packets. Nothing better than to start off your day with a little chocolate pudding I always say--it is “calci-yum”--so at least I got that going for me--which is nice.