Like Dylan in the Movies

In the past nine weeks I have organized and put on a girls camp, I have traveled down south to work and answer hundreds of questions from eager new stagaires in training, I have flown back to the the good ol' US of A and seen family and friends that I hadn't seen in over a year, and I have returned to the golden land of Benin and traveled around in rented taxis with my family showing them the sights, sounds, and tastes of Benin. It has been, as you might expect, I bit of a whirlwind. Today, I have put boiled water from the pot into a smaller jug to be placed in my non-working refrigerator. Life has slowed down just a little. Now, rather methodically, I am going to attempt to recall all the events of the past nine weeks in any detail I can muster. I'll start at the beginning with the girls' camp and work as diligently as possible towards the present. It's might be a long one, so buckle your seatbelt.

I'll begin by saying the the girls' camp was a major success and that I'm really quite proud it. Out of all the things that I have done this far in my service, the girls' camp has been, by far, my most rewarding experience; partly because it was the fruits of my labor and partly because I felt like I was actually making a difference in the lives of the girls who participated, which was one of the big reasons why I joined Peace Corps in the first place. The camp (Camp Success--naturally) was designed as a week long girls’ empowerment camp where top female students from six different secondary schools were invited to participate. The purpose of the camp was to promote gender equality and women’s education in Benin. During the camp, the girls participated in a variety of activities designed to enhance and teach life skills as well as address issues in the environment, girls’ education, child trafficking, HIV/AIDS, and sexual education. On the surface, the camp looked polished and great, but behind the scenes, things were a little less perfect, a little less organized, some might say it was chaos; hence, why I can say that while being one the best weeks of my service, it was also one of the most stressful. Anyway, the following gives a brief description of what took place each day during the camp (I wrote this for a project report following the camp, and quite frankly I'm feeling too lazy to change it, so I apologize if it seems a tad stilted):

Day One: On the first day of the girls’ summer camp, the top female students from the commune of Bassila arrived in Bassila at 3PM at the Maison des Jeunes, where directors, professors, and local representatives from the government had been invited for the opening ceremony. At approximately 5 PM, the official opening ceremony took place with words from the PCVs who were present as well as from the president of NGO-RADD. This was a great opportunity for the girls to begin to get to know each other as they taught each other a song indicative of the spirit of the camp.
Following the opening ceremony, the students were shuttled by bus over to the village of Manigri (8km away) to the house at which they would stay for the week long camp. Once all the girls had settled into their new living arrangements, the PCV and the president of NGO-RADD spoke briefly on the program for the upcoming week. After this short information session, the girls and the camp facilitators enjoyed dinner together before the day ended around 10 PM.

Day Two: In the morning of the second day, the girls awoke and showered and ate breakfast at the house before heading out together led by three PCVs. Forming three long lines, the girls and the PCVs marched all the way through the village of Manigri singing and chanting songs about women’s empowerment along the way. On the opposite end of Manigri, the group arrived at the Borne Fonden educational center. All the girls were divided into four teams and spent the late morning participating in a sports rotation with basketball, football (soccer), jump roping, high jump, limbo, and other various team building activities. As a special guest, Camp Success welcomed the captain of the women’s national basketball team in Benin. She led the basketball station along with her older brother while the other stations were led by PCVs and other facilitators working the camp.
Lunch followed the morning of sports and in the afternoon, two of the four teams were shuttled to Bassila while the remaining two teams stayed at the house. The two teams in Bassila partook in an internet formation led by a PCV. This PCV instructed the girls how to do scholarly research using Wikipedia French and Google. Additionally, the PCV helped each girl to setup her own email account through Yahoo. For the girls who remained at the house, they were led by three PCVs in a confidence building art project in which the girls had to write positive self-attributes about each letter of her name.
Rejoining after their separate afternoon sessions, the girls had an information session on how to make a good decisions based on a step by step process. During this session, each team was given a scenario of a difficult situation that they would later have to present as a skit.
Finally, the girls gathered together one last time to eat dinner after which they divided back into their groups to begin preparing their skits. The day ended around 10 PM.

NB: It should be noted that because I am absolutely incapable of controlling myself when a competitive opportunity arises, that I decided to jump in and play goalie for the girls during penalty kick practice at the soccer station during our sport day. Not only did I decide to play goalie, but I decided to be the best damn goalie I could be and therefore was diving all over the place (and also uniting the rallying chant of “Carly, Carly Carly” from all the little kids watching). I, however, did not foresee that being the best damn goalie would result in several bad scratches and not being able to move properly or without pain for the next month because of being so sore. Love that competitive spirit.

Day Three: In the morning of the third day, everyone awoke very early for breakfast and showers before leaving the house to travel to visit the scared monkey forest in the neighboring village of Kikélé. The small field trip was both fun and educational for the girls as they were able to see glimpses of the monkeys who inhabit the forest while the hired guide explained about the forest protection program that had been initiated a couple years ago.
After the trip to Kikélé, the girls, once again, divided into teams. For a second time, two of the four teams returned to the house and two of the fours teams went to Bassila to participate in the PCV led internet formation. The teams had switched places so that the teams who partook in the first internet formation were now making their art project and vice versa. All the teams later convened at the house for lunch and a little bit of rest before the afternoon activities.
In the afternoon, all of the girls went to CEG Manigri for an informational session with an invited guest speaker on how to maintain and protect the environment. With the morning’s trip to Kikélé still fresh in each girl’s mind, they were able to ask intelligent questions while learning even more about the environment in which they live. Following the speaker, the girls were given several hours to begin practicing and honing their team skits which were to be presented the next night.
After skit preparation, everyone returned back to the house for dinner and a little fun with the PCVs who had been working hard to fill up enough water balloons for a small tournament between the teams. The night ended around 10PM with lots of laughs.

Day Four: The fourth day of the camp was set aside as a sexual education day. The girls awoke in the early morning to eat breakfast and shower before everyone gathered around to play a game to introduce questions about HIV/AIDS. Played much like the game “hot potato,” a blown up condom was passed around until the music stopped at which point the holder of the condom had to pop the balloon and read a true or false question concerning HIV/AIDS. This activity nicely prepared the girls for their morning speakers from a NGO based in Parakou called Victory Way. The guest speakers covered nearly every issue regarding girls education from simply encouraging the girls to stay in school to talking about heavier topics such as sexual harassment in the school system and child trafficking. The morning really energized the girls and everyone returned back to the house for lunch with a new feeling of confidence and control over their education.
After lunch, the girls returned to CEG Manigri for an animation with an invited guest speaker who was a midwife working for the hospital in Manigri. She was very spirited and knowledgeable and was a great source of information for the girls. Once again, working side by side with the PCVs, a wide variety of topics were covered ranging from HIV/AIDS to a woman’s menstrual cycle.
Following the question and answer session with the midwife, everyone returned back to the house where each team presented their skit in front of a panel of PCV judges. Every skit was incredibly well done and it was evident that each team had worked very hard on each of their presentations. Dinner was served after all the performances and the day ended around 10PM.

Day Five: In the morning of the fifth day, the girls awoke early once again for breakfast and showers before loading into two mini buses for a field trip to the department capital of Djougou. All of the girls happily chanted and sang during the long trip and much positive attention was gathered from the near by villages as we drove through. Finally arriving at our destination around noon, we unloaded and ate lunch.
After lunch, we were treated to a tour of the Centre de Tissage where we saw women hand making all different types of woven fabric (using cotton hand picked and hand spun in Benin). The tour was led by the founder of the center and later, she spoke intimately with the girls about how she began her business from the ground up--she was a great example for the girls of a real Beninese businesswoman. Next, she took us outside the Centre de Tissage and gave us all a tour of other various local artisans in the city of Djougou. All and all, we were able to see and speak with four different head artisans who each had a different hand crafted specialty: spoons and bowls made with silver, jewelry made with silver, shoes and bags made with leather, and lamps and boxes using cow hide and horns. For many of the girls, this was their first time visiting a large city of Benin; therefore, it was a very eye-opening experience. All the girls were very enthusiastic throughout the day.
Returning from the trip to Djougou, the girls arrived back at the house and had a few hours to pack and clean before we all gathered around again to walk to a local night club that had been rented out just for the girls’ camp. At the night club, we ate dinner and danced and celebrated the week’s achievements until late into the night. We walked back together and ended our night around midnight.

Day Six: In the morning of the last day, the girls were able to have a more relaxed morning with just one session led by the PCVs. The PCVs covered several topics that the girls had raised questions on following the discussions of the fourth day such as family planning and condom use. Following the PCV led conversation, the girls packed all their belongings and prepared for their departure after the closing ceremony.
The closing ceremony took place in the late morning. It was relatively short but was highlighted by several speakers from the community and the giving of prizes to the all of the girls and to those girls who were selected for their extra hard work and passion during the week. Additionally, the girls entertained onlookers with one last camp song. After the closing ceremony, we all walked back to the house to take several camp photos before we all said our goodbyes.

BAM. That was the camp in a nutshell. I continue on in my report, but I think that the overall picture as been painted, and as I said, that was all the stuff on the surface, the boring stuff. The drama behind the scenes is really infinitely more intriguing in my opinion. So, while there were what felt like a million different things stressing me out that week, I will try to highlight the real medal winners.

First, the “Camp Mama.” The camp mama, in theory, is a woman who is there with 100% energy and enthusiasm 100% of the time, leading the girls, motivating the girls, helping myself and my homologue with getting the girls where they need to be—the camp mama is supposed to be a woman who is of high standing in the community and who has selflessly given up a week of her time to encourage the next generation of women leaders. This was how it worked last year, this is how I anticipated it working this year as we decided to choose the same woman to take over the reigns of Camp Mama. However, one small, crying, peeing, mama's milk-loving, thing had changed from last year to this year—Mama was now an actual Mama and only decided to let me know that this was going to be a problem the day we started the camp. Essentially, the events that dominoed after this mama confession were this: she would no longer be able to spend the night with the girls because she couldn't leave her son (that left me to spend the night so that I was suddenly spending all my nights at a fifty girl slumber party and energizing my tired body with about four hours of sleep each night while still trying to play hostess back at my house where several PCVs were staying during the camp), she would no longer be available to attend all the planned activities (that left my male partner on the project to lead all the information sessions instead of a smart Beninese woman, and it resulted in our mama miraculously choosing to come to all of the “fun” sessions mostly to participate rather than lead—she took Internet time at the cyber and made her own name poem during the art session after pawning off her baby onto one of the girls), and finally, she would expect the same amount of payment for her time even though the camp was half as long and she barely did half the work (that left me to sadly inform her that she would only be receiving half of the payment she received last year for her time, which left an angry Beninese woman and her angry husband sitting in front of me on my sofa and vowing never to work with me again). Awesome.

Second, invited officials seemed to care less that we were having a girls camp which isn't exactly helpful when you are trying to rally the support of the entire community around you. No one showed up to the opening ceremony and basically, no one really should up to the closing ceremony either, which is disappointing for me, but especially for the girls who worked so hard all week, and I think expected to at least get some recognition from the mayor. Granted, much of this particular difficulty can be equated to the fact that the national exam for Benin was moved to the week of the camp and thus, many of the high officials were called away to do work for the exam, but still, come on boys.

Third, one of the tiniest and quietest girls in the camp fell ill with some mysterious and painful illness that another PCV and I later deducted to what we believe was something similar to rheumatoid arthritis. She was screaming in pain most of the nights keeping up the other girls and crying during the day when she wanted to (but could not) participate in the tour of Djougou—she also refused to go back home. Finally, during the last night of the camp, she was moaning in pain so loudly that none of her roommates could sleep, so I scooped her up and fireman carried her to my house where she spent the night with the other PCV who was working the camp. In the morning, while the other girls were still showering and figuring out what happened during the night, I made the executive decision to send her home with one of her friends(she had to go with one of her friends so that in case she spasmed on the motorcycle ride home, her friend, who was tied to her, would be there to comfort her and keep her on the bike). Honestly, I had exhausted my knowledge and patience of how to treat her, and I figured that it was time for mom to intervene and take care of her daughter.

Finally, I was dealing with nearly fifty teenage girls living in the same house—enough said.

Again, however, despite all the chaos behind the scenes and despite my complete mental and physical exhaustion by the end of the camp, I would (and will) absolutely, whole-heartedly, do the camp again because never before has anything during my Peace Corps experience so unexpectedly and so significantly touched me.

Next stop, Porto Novo, Benin, where instead of fifty teenage Beninese girls, I got to work with fourteen knowledge hungry stagaires preparing for their own Peace Corps journey. Inevitably, there was a bit of stress involved in this particular job as well as I was presented as being some “almighty and all-knowing” Peace Corps volunteer when, in fact, I am still learning new things everyday. Naturally, I do know some things after being here a year, and I feel that I was able to ease some tension and answer some questions, but I found that I hardest part for me was not just giving away all the answers. A huge part of Peace Corps, in my opinion, is self discovery and learning how to find the solution without having the answer just laid out in front of you. So, many times my answer to questions was one that didn't entirely give away the answer, but led the stagaire to figure out the answer on their own—I hope that this was not too frustrating for some of the stagaires. The truly great part for me working stage (and the reason that I applied to work it in the first place) was that it gave me a real sense of satisfaction realizing that dispite the continual learning process, I really have come a long way since the beginning. One year ago, that was me asking all the questions and looking around all googlely-eyed. As a matter of fact, even though I rarely give myself the credit, I have come a long way and being in Porto Novo allowed me to look back on my accomplishments so far. Really, the four weeks that I was down there passed by rather quickly and uneventful as the real excitement was right ahead of me—seeing my family and friends and then coming back to Benin with my family. I was excited and nervous and could not think about anything else in the days leading up to getting on the plane to fly back to the States. So nervous was I in fact, that I got the doctor's to give me some Dramamine to knock me out on the ride to Paris because I thought that I might be ill otherwise. (wow...that was a lot of rambling...let's be honest, my favorite part of working stage was playing scrabble with the other PCVs and "borrowing" the projector to blow up movies and tv shows on the "big screen")

Home sweet home. The plane ride wasn't bad at all and before I knew it, I was back on my homeland. I went through all the necessary custom check points (the customs guard was a little confused that I had been abroad for a year and only had a backpack with me, but I after I explained that I was planning on going back, he sent me through and didn't give me any trouble) and before I knew it I was looking at my dad giving a little jump of joy and my mom turning the corner first to give me a hug. Over a year had gone by since I had seen them last and yet, there I was giving them hugs—it was a very surreal feeling. As a matter of fact, the entire trip was very surreal and nearly impossible to explain to anyone. The best I could seem to come up with was that feeling of going back to a place like college or high school—some place that you once knew really well—and everything is still the same, but yet it all feels different to you for some inexplicable reason and then you realize that the difference is you; you are the one who has changed. And it wasn't even that drastic or that significant of a change (I'm not that profound), it was just that it didn't feel like it did before I left (not that I ever expected it to or hoped it would stay exactly the same). Like I said, it was hard for me to explain what it felt like to be back, and it clearly hasn't gotten much easier as I still can't seem to put the words on paper to describe the emotions of feeling lost in a familiar world.

The most wonderful thing about my trip home was that I got to do absolutely everything that I had wanted to do and see (almost) everyone that I wanted to see. I can happily say that for the last handful of weeks of my life, the Gods have been smiling down upon me and been kindly looking after me. The first few days of my trip were spent visiting family, first my mother's side and then my father's side—it was like a handing of the baton in a relay race the way they came and went. It was absolutely fantastic to see everybody and I still can't believe that everyone was able to make it around to Kalamazoo. Between the hugs and family loving we got in plenty of funny stories and jabs, plenty of lawn games, and plenty of questioning me about monkeys (seriously). After family had said their goodbyes, my friend, Ryan, took a train in from Ann Arbor to hangout for a couple nights. I had a bonfire with his family and mine the first night first roasting salmon on the grill and then toasting marshmallows by the fire. The next morning, he treated me to homemade blueberry pancakes, a treat that I never was privy to before Benin, leading me to believe that I need to go and live in far of places more often just so I can come back and be spoiled by friends and family. Later that day, we went to the new Batman movie before he also had to say goodbye and get back to his real life. It wasn't long, however, before I was distracted again by going to the zoo the next day to see some African wildlife (the best stuff is in Michigan) and then meeting up with my best friend to see the new X-Files movie—not, of course, before kicking some serious parental butt in mini-golf. I'm kind of a legend. The next day was spent riding horses in the morning and then getting some nice clouds at the beach with two other foxy ladies. My mom and I showed off just how stubborn we were by going into the freezing water and then rewarded ourselves with some Dairy Queen afterwards. The next morning, EARLY the next morning, I headed off in my lovely, little, loyal Ford Focus (how's that for a good alliteration), Rosa, to Sandusky, Ohio to meet college friends at good old Cedar Point. Five us made it to the park and then two more joined the crowd after the day was done. Being at Cedar Point made me realize two things: first, just how much I love and miss my friends from college and secondly, that I am either getting too old for roller coasters or really need to change my diet because I kept blacking out on them. Hmm. As an old standby, my favorite ride had to be the bumper cars—simple, classic, and fun. Like I said, after the amusement park, our coaster group met up with two others and we went to a nearby bar which took us back to our nearby hotel. We then stayed up like a group full of girls, fresh out of college, who haven't seen each other in a year—talking about and gossiping about all the things that I carefully leave out of this blog and about all the things that they seem to leave out of their emails as well. It was a perfect night with some long lost friends. From Ohio, I returned back to Kalamazoo only to go straight to a party later that night...a party for adults...a party I was crashing...a party that was really weird to be attending...a party where I took a shot with my high school basketball coach....yeah. The next day was spent having lunch with my best friend and then returning to my house for some serious bocce ball action and pool afterwards—a very well spent afternoon. A bit tearfully, I packed up all my things that night to prepare for a drive and a baseball game in Detroit the next day—we would be flying out of Detroit, so that meant that we would also being staying the night in Detroit, which meant that my nights were numbered in Kalamazoo. The following morning, my family and I caravaned with my best friend to DEE-TROIT were we sat and enjoyed four hours of baseball and hot dogs and peanuts and pretzels with cheese. The day concluded my most wonderful and awesome trip back to the States. Not only was I lucky enough to be able to do everything that I wanted to do—bocce ball, washers, bonfire, Bell's beer garden, the zoo, mini-golf, movies in the theater, horses, beach, swimming pool, roller coasters, baseball game—but I was able to eat everything I wanted to eat—chinese, mexican, indian, american—and I was able to see everyone I wanted to see—both sides of the family, high school friends, college friends, and all my neighbors who might as well be family. It was a perfect trip home and the adventure was only about to get more exciting as I was flying out the next day with my mom and dad to go meet my brother in Paris who was flying out of New York. That last night in the States I enjoyed my fluffy king size bed and warm shower with good water pressure, I enjoyed eating a Subway turkey sandwich with all the unnecessary Subway mayonnaise while watching a movie in bed. Certainly, part of me didn't want to go back to Benin, but the other, stronger part of me, knew that I still had a job to finish and that all in good time I would be back and enjoying the comforts of the States.

And so, off we went in the airplane, my mom, my dad, and I. Soon enough we were in Paris and after a small maze we found our terminal and we found the fourth member of our party. My brother had been waiting about an hour for us to arrive, but we found the fact that he had arrived had been a bit of a miracle itself as he had almost missed his plane—thinking that he departed the next day and not the day of (thank goodness for all of my dad's panicky and perhaps annoying messages). Anyway, with that being in the past and with my brother and my dad negotiating their way into exit row seating for more leg room, we were off to start our African adventure.