Let me try to paint a picture.
It is the twelfth of December. I am sitting on my foam cushions listening to the sounds of a child getting beaten by her mother. The child is screaming for the abuse to stop but her mother isn't listening to her in her blinding fit of rage—the child will later emerge from the house with a huge black eye. Outside the sun is shining on the dry and dusty earth. Normally, the nights and mornings reach a cooler temperature in the low 70s, but at this time during mid-day, the sun's rays are at full force and the only people outside my door who dare brave the heat are the barely clothed children who run and play with their holiday toys—old tires, balloons, and recycled cans. To mask the sound of tears and pain from my neighbor, I begin to play my Christmas music mix. The first song on the list is “Please Come Home for Christmas” and it seems so out of place in this moment that it almost cruelly plays upon my ears. I begin to feel certain emotions that I can only describe as dangerous when felt in a place so far from home: loneliness, confusion, anger, a yearning for home and family. Though I realize these emotions have no place in my heart, I let them start to seep in and the tears start to form. And then, at this moment of fragileness and vulnerability, Otis Redding starts to play “Merry Christmas, Baby” and the barely clothed children who are gathered so close to my door run over and start to dance in a way so comical that I can't help but smile and try to purge myself of the negative emotions.
This snapshot of life in Manigri isn't unlike many December days that I have here. It's why I have such a difficult time imagining a blustery snow storm and family members gathered happily together. It's why everyday is a mixture self-pity, that I'm alone in a strange world missing my family and friends, followed by a moment of self-realization, that I'm surrounded by love and family of a different sort.
I remember feeling similar emotions around the holidays last year. The holidays are the hardest time to accept the differences of a world so foreign from the one you once knew. It's hard to force yourself to let go of old family traditions and accept that this year new traditions are going to be made. The truth of the matter is that even with every smile and laugh the holiday spirit brings me in Manigri, I smile a little brighter knowing that next year I can return to my more familiar holiday traditions of snow and family and trivial pursuit. And so, as I said last year to my family, I will say it again, “Somebody sing something!”
Friday, December 19, 2008
Happy Together
Previously on this blog: The next installment of my journal will be brought to you by two hired guest writers: my parents...I figured that it would be both interesting and considerably more informative for my parents to be the ones to narrate the tales of their adventure in Benin.
And so now you have it: The fabled account of what really happened during their two week visit in Benin as brought to you by my lovely guest writer Judith A. Johnson
I dreamed of Africa every night for about two weeks after our return. It was usually some variation of being in a strange place or trouble with transportation. What the dreams lacked was the excitement of waking up and knowing that today I would see something I had never seen before; surprises waited at every turn. . Every day in Africa I woke to a new adventure. We were in the capable hands of Carly and her well laid plans and so I felt no danger, although I may have been a bit naïve about that aspect.
The skeleton of our plan was for Mark, Carly and I to fly to Paris, meet Nate flying from New York and then all of us fly to Cotonou in Benin. We were there Wed. night through Sunday morning then we left for Manigri, Carly’s post. We stayed there for 3 days and were off to Natitingou, the workstation for her area. From there we went east to Parakou on Friday, another workstation, and on to Camate on Saturday and a hike in the collines (hills). Sunday and Monday found us on the ocean beach in Grand Popo for Carly’s holiday rest, which we all gladly shared. Tuesday and Wednesday we returned to Cotonou and the Hotel du Lac, went shopping and on a tour of the stilt village upriver.
In between all the simple words above is the trip of a lifetime. We have been home about 2 months now and have told lots of stories and shown a lot of pictures about the trip and tried to convey “what it was like” and probably done a fairly good job but it’s like playing a game on a simulator, nothing will really match actually being there. All senses were on overload. While you read the rest, imagine that you are dripping wet with sweat the entire time, unable to understand the language, and that you are living in the 1700’s, albeit with cars and motorbikes available to some, and throw in some electricity once in awhile. Oh, and cell phones. You may cook your food over a small fire outside a mud hut thatched with grass, grind your food on rocks, haul water from a well and poop in a hole in the ground, but most likely you can call a friend on your cell phone.
After barely meeting up with Nate in Paris (he had the departure day wrong and almost missed his flight!) we flew into Cotonou, arriving just as daylight faded. Amid the chaos of the luggage claim we found all of our bags, including the ones with food for Carly and muled goods for other volunteers. Interesting enough, all luggage was checked against claim tags before one could leave the area- a more secure arrangement than in any other airport I’ve been in. Benin.
Aside from all else being new to us, we also met Alex for the first time. We already knew we liked him, I think our only fear was that we would seem like idiots to him. Whether we did or didn’t, we were in his hands getting us on the hotel shuttle and out and we got better acquainted over dinner that night. It was all good.
First impressions: Alex- couldn’t be better. We love him. Cotonou/Africa: exotic, chaotic, humanity everywhere, sidewalks lined with vendors, streets filled with motorcycles and the sound of their engines and exhaust, and it is hot! We are in a hotel with AC and dine on the veranda overlooking the river/lake, which is beautiful at night. Our meal is not too daring or foreign, we are doing well. But it becomes very clear that Carly and Alex are our link to any communication in Benin and we will be very dependent on their skills. We are strangers in a strange land. And water brothers. (Obscure but apt reference to popular 60’s book of the same name)
Thursday we breakfasted on fresh avocado sandwiches, made right outside the hotel door, fuel for the long walk through Cotonou to the Peace Corps office. It was to be our last long walk in town as we picked up our motorcycle helmets and became officially mobile. The walk was good, though, we saw that the river was not quite as beautiful in the daylight, and there were more vendors and more zemis and more pollution than at night. Women of all ages had stuff for sale in baskets carried on their heads and by stuff I mean live chickens, dried fish, underwear, phone cards, oranges, pineapples, food of undetermined origin and stuff I don’t know what it was. We passed through an indoor market, Marche Ganhie, and it was jammed with more goods alive, dead and wall-to-wall. It reminded me of the market scenes in Blade Runner. Another obscure reference.
At the Peace Corps office we met many of the volunteers whose blogs we have been following; it was like meeting movie stars. We know so much about so many of them, or at least know what they look like and it was great to meet face to face. We had lunch in one of their favorite nearby restaurants, which by American standards was like a, well, there is nothing like it here. Open air, limited menu, I don’t recall silverware, language barrier, but somehow we ordered great food and chalked another one up.
Our first zemi ride was to pick up our custom made outfits for the swear-in ceremony and 40th Anniversary celebration of the Peace Corps in Benin. Nate and I quickly decided that riding zemis was one the best parts of the trip and also the most dangerous. There are no traffic laws, few signals or signage; everyone is on their own. We share the streets with large cargo haulers, oil tankers, cars and thousands of other zemis, not to mention pedestrians.
Abel’s tailor shop- we were dropped off near an alley, and walked to large metal gates behind which were the ruins of a large house. (Actually, it was probably a building in progress, but it was gray and black brick and no progress has been made in a long time). The gate squeaked open and we followed a narrow passageway to a small shop in the back and under a tin roof, with uneven pavers on the floor, maybe 2 electric bare bulbs was Abel, working on a treadle sewing machine on our outfits. Our ‘meme tissue’ outfits were spectacular and fit perfectly. We, along with all the TEFL PCVs, will be wearing magenta tissue and it will be an impressive sight.
We belatedly celebrated Alex’s birthday, or at least that was the excuse to eat at a nice restaurant, at the Berlin, a deceptively nice place. Deceptive in that we were thinking, this is really nice, the rest of Benin can’t be so bad, this is food we recognize.
Our first taxi ride, with 7 of us plus the driver, proved atypical for us, typical for most of the rest of Beninese. We listened to another PCV playing sax at a local nightclub, and then took advantage of the great pool at the Hotel du Lac with its high dive.
The swear-in ceremony marked the 40th Anniversary of the Peace Corps in Benin and was held at probably the largest assembly building in Benin, the Palais du Congree. It was very modern, though strangely low in bathroom facilities, large stage, plush seating, good sound system, video/TV cameras everywhere and the proceedings were appropriate for the occasion, lots of speeches, in French or local languages, music and singing. A big celebration attended by the Peace Corp Director of Africa and representatives of the President of Benin. A craft fair of sorts was set up outside the venue, but rainstorms put a damper on shopping, and it was an odd mix of stuff for the occasion. A reception later in the day at the same place, an assortment of African hors d’ oeuvres devoured by the PCVs and guests and a glimpse of what strange offerings were to come.
Our meme tissues earned us an appearance on the news that night, and we were heralded walking in the Cotonou streets as we explored the rest of the day. Seems nothing could brighten a rainy day quite like giant white people in the meme tissue parading around.
Much of the adventure of Benin revolves around transportation. Riding double on a zemi at night, flooded roads, paved and unpaved, dodging the rest of the traffic, dodging police 3x because riding double is frowned upon in the city, separated from the rest of the party, speeding- I am so grateful I was with Alex for this one, but it was still scary scary.
Our taxi ride to Ouidah gave us another perspective of Benin. We rented the whole taxi, even the “empty” two spaces, still cramped by our standards. Miles and miles and miles of roadside stands selling all that there was to offer, heavy traffic, pedestrians, bad bad roads, periodic stops of the taxi at police checkpoints which were intimidating, though I don’t think we had much to fear, filling the tank from whiskey bottles of gas at roadside “stations”, using whatever side of the road had the least potholes. The cabs are midsize cars with few working accessories, beaters by any standard, with a Beninese flag on the dash. The drivers honk warnings at pedestrians which means they honk almost constantly for the many hours it takes to get anywhere. Radios or tape players are barely functional at best.
More to come......
And so now you have it: The fabled account of what really happened during their two week visit in Benin as brought to you by my lovely guest writer Judith A. Johnson
I dreamed of Africa every night for about two weeks after our return. It was usually some variation of being in a strange place or trouble with transportation. What the dreams lacked was the excitement of waking up and knowing that today I would see something I had never seen before; surprises waited at every turn. . Every day in Africa I woke to a new adventure. We were in the capable hands of Carly and her well laid plans and so I felt no danger, although I may have been a bit naïve about that aspect.
The skeleton of our plan was for Mark, Carly and I to fly to Paris, meet Nate flying from New York and then all of us fly to Cotonou in Benin. We were there Wed. night through Sunday morning then we left for Manigri, Carly’s post. We stayed there for 3 days and were off to Natitingou, the workstation for her area. From there we went east to Parakou on Friday, another workstation, and on to Camate on Saturday and a hike in the collines (hills). Sunday and Monday found us on the ocean beach in Grand Popo for Carly’s holiday rest, which we all gladly shared. Tuesday and Wednesday we returned to Cotonou and the Hotel du Lac, went shopping and on a tour of the stilt village upriver.
In between all the simple words above is the trip of a lifetime. We have been home about 2 months now and have told lots of stories and shown a lot of pictures about the trip and tried to convey “what it was like” and probably done a fairly good job but it’s like playing a game on a simulator, nothing will really match actually being there. All senses were on overload. While you read the rest, imagine that you are dripping wet with sweat the entire time, unable to understand the language, and that you are living in the 1700’s, albeit with cars and motorbikes available to some, and throw in some electricity once in awhile. Oh, and cell phones. You may cook your food over a small fire outside a mud hut thatched with grass, grind your food on rocks, haul water from a well and poop in a hole in the ground, but most likely you can call a friend on your cell phone.
After barely meeting up with Nate in Paris (he had the departure day wrong and almost missed his flight!) we flew into Cotonou, arriving just as daylight faded. Amid the chaos of the luggage claim we found all of our bags, including the ones with food for Carly and muled goods for other volunteers. Interesting enough, all luggage was checked against claim tags before one could leave the area- a more secure arrangement than in any other airport I’ve been in. Benin.
Aside from all else being new to us, we also met Alex for the first time. We already knew we liked him, I think our only fear was that we would seem like idiots to him. Whether we did or didn’t, we were in his hands getting us on the hotel shuttle and out and we got better acquainted over dinner that night. It was all good.
First impressions: Alex- couldn’t be better. We love him. Cotonou/Africa: exotic, chaotic, humanity everywhere, sidewalks lined with vendors, streets filled with motorcycles and the sound of their engines and exhaust, and it is hot! We are in a hotel with AC and dine on the veranda overlooking the river/lake, which is beautiful at night. Our meal is not too daring or foreign, we are doing well. But it becomes very clear that Carly and Alex are our link to any communication in Benin and we will be very dependent on their skills. We are strangers in a strange land. And water brothers. (Obscure but apt reference to popular 60’s book of the same name)
Thursday we breakfasted on fresh avocado sandwiches, made right outside the hotel door, fuel for the long walk through Cotonou to the Peace Corps office. It was to be our last long walk in town as we picked up our motorcycle helmets and became officially mobile. The walk was good, though, we saw that the river was not quite as beautiful in the daylight, and there were more vendors and more zemis and more pollution than at night. Women of all ages had stuff for sale in baskets carried on their heads and by stuff I mean live chickens, dried fish, underwear, phone cards, oranges, pineapples, food of undetermined origin and stuff I don’t know what it was. We passed through an indoor market, Marche Ganhie, and it was jammed with more goods alive, dead and wall-to-wall. It reminded me of the market scenes in Blade Runner. Another obscure reference.
At the Peace Corps office we met many of the volunteers whose blogs we have been following; it was like meeting movie stars. We know so much about so many of them, or at least know what they look like and it was great to meet face to face. We had lunch in one of their favorite nearby restaurants, which by American standards was like a, well, there is nothing like it here. Open air, limited menu, I don’t recall silverware, language barrier, but somehow we ordered great food and chalked another one up.
Our first zemi ride was to pick up our custom made outfits for the swear-in ceremony and 40th Anniversary celebration of the Peace Corps in Benin. Nate and I quickly decided that riding zemis was one the best parts of the trip and also the most dangerous. There are no traffic laws, few signals or signage; everyone is on their own. We share the streets with large cargo haulers, oil tankers, cars and thousands of other zemis, not to mention pedestrians.
Abel’s tailor shop- we were dropped off near an alley, and walked to large metal gates behind which were the ruins of a large house. (Actually, it was probably a building in progress, but it was gray and black brick and no progress has been made in a long time). The gate squeaked open and we followed a narrow passageway to a small shop in the back and under a tin roof, with uneven pavers on the floor, maybe 2 electric bare bulbs was Abel, working on a treadle sewing machine on our outfits. Our ‘meme tissue’ outfits were spectacular and fit perfectly. We, along with all the TEFL PCVs, will be wearing magenta tissue and it will be an impressive sight.
We belatedly celebrated Alex’s birthday, or at least that was the excuse to eat at a nice restaurant, at the Berlin, a deceptively nice place. Deceptive in that we were thinking, this is really nice, the rest of Benin can’t be so bad, this is food we recognize.
Our first taxi ride, with 7 of us plus the driver, proved atypical for us, typical for most of the rest of Beninese. We listened to another PCV playing sax at a local nightclub, and then took advantage of the great pool at the Hotel du Lac with its high dive.
The swear-in ceremony marked the 40th Anniversary of the Peace Corps in Benin and was held at probably the largest assembly building in Benin, the Palais du Congree. It was very modern, though strangely low in bathroom facilities, large stage, plush seating, good sound system, video/TV cameras everywhere and the proceedings were appropriate for the occasion, lots of speeches, in French or local languages, music and singing. A big celebration attended by the Peace Corp Director of Africa and representatives of the President of Benin. A craft fair of sorts was set up outside the venue, but rainstorms put a damper on shopping, and it was an odd mix of stuff for the occasion. A reception later in the day at the same place, an assortment of African hors d’ oeuvres devoured by the PCVs and guests and a glimpse of what strange offerings were to come.
Our meme tissues earned us an appearance on the news that night, and we were heralded walking in the Cotonou streets as we explored the rest of the day. Seems nothing could brighten a rainy day quite like giant white people in the meme tissue parading around.
Much of the adventure of Benin revolves around transportation. Riding double on a zemi at night, flooded roads, paved and unpaved, dodging the rest of the traffic, dodging police 3x because riding double is frowned upon in the city, separated from the rest of the party, speeding- I am so grateful I was with Alex for this one, but it was still scary scary.
Our taxi ride to Ouidah gave us another perspective of Benin. We rented the whole taxi, even the “empty” two spaces, still cramped by our standards. Miles and miles and miles of roadside stands selling all that there was to offer, heavy traffic, pedestrians, bad bad roads, periodic stops of the taxi at police checkpoints which were intimidating, though I don’t think we had much to fear, filling the tank from whiskey bottles of gas at roadside “stations”, using whatever side of the road had the least potholes. The cabs are midsize cars with few working accessories, beaters by any standard, with a Beninese flag on the dash. The drivers honk warnings at pedestrians which means they honk almost constantly for the many hours it takes to get anywhere. Radios or tape players are barely functional at best.
More to come......
Friday, October 31, 2008
Wildflowers
Madame Kalamazoo is back!
School started last week, and I couldn't have asked for a better first day. Not only was it great to see all of the professors again back from vacation, but it was a good feeling to stride across the school grounds while having all of my former students greeting me with smiles and polite little bows. My first class seemed effortless and fun as it was composed of mainly former students who already knew my classroom expectations and mannerisms. In the afternoon, my second class, though all new students, went equally as well with their scared and young little faces lingering on every word I said. As I left the grounds that day, I truly felt as though L'annee scolaire 2008-2009 was going to be the year of Mme. Kalamazoo.
Leaving in good spirits, I felt that I could easily handle “eating amongst the people” for dinner that night; therefore, I stopped my bicycle about a quarter mile down the road from the school to join the locals in some delicious sugary porridge. Not only was I given a heaping portion with a fried plantain to accompany my tastebuds, but as I went to pay for my meal, I was told that this one was “on the house.” Truly feeling as though the Gods were on my side that day, I took off with an air of total contentment.
Arriving at my next destination, I was chatting it up with my friend about the rising prices of flour and onions when a familiar face walked by and to my great surprise causally invited me to play soccer with him. Quite sure that he was joking and didn't really expect me to show up, I figured that I would surprise him and actually go show off my tremendous soccer skill. And so, as I said goodbye to my friend, I took off in the direction of home and the soccer field. When I reached the field, I found it was a dismal turnout—myself, a couple of young children, and my familiar faced inviter. Nevertheless, I cheerily found a soccer ball and started kicking it around with one of the older kids. He was more interested in juggling and actual soccer skill, while I just kept focusing on not making a complete fool of myself. The minutes passed and soon the dismal turnout rose to a sizable crowd of oohing and awing children I felt that only Christiano Ronalda himself could have conjured. I played for the crowd until I saw that I needed to quickly make a graceful exit lest I was to actually participate in a soccer match and ruin the magic of the moment.
Accordingly, I left the soccer field and just as I was thinking that my day couldn't get any better, this particular white girl from Kalamazoo, Michigan was invited to play bouielle (bocce ball) by what I perceive to be the Elks club of Manigri. It had been a fairly secret personal goal of mine to be invited to bocce by this well-renowned and established men's club—I just never dreamed that it would happen this soon or at all. They allowed me to toss a couple of balls before I graciously made my exit. While I was naturally disappointed with my first attempts, on the fourth toss, I landed the ball only a thumbs-nail length away from the intended target allowing me to talk as much trash as I wanted until one of the other gentlemen knocked my ball away. Bowing out after my trash talk, I finally returned to my house in such good spirits that I couldn't believe the town of Manigri itself was responsible for such happiness. After completing my exercise routine and taking a shower, I decided to wash down the day with a cold beer because gosh-darn, I earned it. Much to my amusement, my “well-earned beer” was one of the worst skunked beers my senses had ever experienced. I'm talking the squinting of the eye and a shiver that followed every reluctant swallow. However, as bad as the beer was, it was not enough to damper my high spirits as I drank and happily detested every last drop that marked Mme. Kalamazoo's wonderful return to Manigri.
**Intermission—Carly's opinion on Jim and Pam of “The Office”—And yes, she realizes that these are fictional characters, but her mother and cousin asked her opinion and so she feels that she is obliged to give it. I understand why Jim and Pam couldn't get together in the last episode, but I hope that they don't continue to rely on just the tension between the two characters to keep the show alive. My fear is that Pam is going to take the internship (or fellowship or adult education course) in New York and that she is going to leave Jim questioning his commitment towards her especially because she already spent 8 years in an engagement with Roy and won't want to stay in another equally commitment-phobic relationship. Thus, she is going to meet some charming New Yorker who, though quite Jim, is at least ready to commit to her long-term. I think it's undeniable that Jim and Pam will eventually end up together, it's just a matter of how long they drag it out for the “sake of the show.”**
Naturally, the glory of the first day quickly faded away as my classes progressively became less interesting and my students became less polite; the excitement of seeing the teachers and having something to do everyday diminished as it tends to do, and by the end of the first week, I was already looking forward to going away over the weekend. My little weekend excursion found me in a nearby village on the road to Togo, surrounded by many friends, and full of anticipation for the coming Saturday morning when we were to hop the border and attend a local whipping fete. As I can't recall the last American whipping fete that I attended, I will briefly explain. A whipping fete is a coming-of-age ceremony for young boys in the village. Each quartier (neighborhood) gathers up their young warriors and equips them with various traditional garb—more or less elaborate ornaments depending on the number of years the boy has participated in the ceremony. As a means of giving the young warriors more courage, young men who have already been initiated into society cross-dress using their sisters' clothing—because they look more feminine, it is said to make the young boys feel more masculine. After the young warriors and young cross-dressing men have gathered, individual neighborhood battles take place before all the neighborhoods congregate and fight each other. The rules of the battles seemed to change based on locality and familiarity, but essentially, I gathered that every challenge took place between two boys of the same level. There was only one or more referees to officiate and make sure things never got uncivilized or out of hand. From here, the rules seemed to be a little fuzzy—I thought that each person got three attempts to attack the other person, but I'm honestly don't really have a clue. Whatever happened when the drums stopped playing and the boys were allowed to attack each other was just (if I may dip into my bag of thesaurus words) insane, absurd, peculiar, strange, eccentric, bizarre, fantastic, outrageous, imprudent, and wild—it was unlike anything I had ever seen. At some point after a particularly solid blow, both participating neighborhoods would come sweeping in to carry off their warrior either for delivering the blow like a man or for taking the blow like a man. We saw one ceremony in a small Togo village and another the next morning in a small Beninese village where a volunteer currently resides. The experience was by far one of the most interesting things I have seen since being in Benin.
Of course, my wonderful experience at the whipping fete would not be complete with out two of the stranger taxi rides I have ever had—and that's really saying something. First taxi ride was on the was into town. After packing the taxi full to it's usual overcrowded capacity we were on our way. Not five minutes down the road, the taxi driver turns to me and this is the conversation that followed (roughly translated):
-White girl!
-That's me. What's up?
-White girl! Be careful!
-Be careful? Why?
-That door doesn't work and this road is really bumpy.
-The door doesn't work?
-Yeah! If we hit a bump, the door will open and look at how bumpy the road is! White Girl!
-So I am going to fall out?
-Yeah! White Girl!
-Super.
Thus, for the rest of the hour long taxi ride, I found myself clinging to the door, which did not open despite the many bumps we hit. The second taxi ride occurred on the the way out of village where the clown car-esque-ness of the Beninese taxi was pushed to a whole new limit. I've experienced quite a few overcrowded taxis, but this...this was something special. We had nine people smashed into a small two door vehicle that would have surely fit no more than five people in the States. It was so crowded in fact that we were actually breaking the Beninese law of how many people are allowed in a taxi (they stop at eight). Our complete disregard of the law went unnoticed until the last 2km of our journey when we were pulled over by a policeman who demanded that we get out of the car then took out our driver and slammed him against the frame of the car. At this point, I was traveling with some other volunteers, so together we chatted up the locals until our driver begged pardon and we were allowed to continue on our merry way.
School started last week, and I couldn't have asked for a better first day. Not only was it great to see all of the professors again back from vacation, but it was a good feeling to stride across the school grounds while having all of my former students greeting me with smiles and polite little bows. My first class seemed effortless and fun as it was composed of mainly former students who already knew my classroom expectations and mannerisms. In the afternoon, my second class, though all new students, went equally as well with their scared and young little faces lingering on every word I said. As I left the grounds that day, I truly felt as though L'annee scolaire 2008-2009 was going to be the year of Mme. Kalamazoo.
Leaving in good spirits, I felt that I could easily handle “eating amongst the people” for dinner that night; therefore, I stopped my bicycle about a quarter mile down the road from the school to join the locals in some delicious sugary porridge. Not only was I given a heaping portion with a fried plantain to accompany my tastebuds, but as I went to pay for my meal, I was told that this one was “on the house.” Truly feeling as though the Gods were on my side that day, I took off with an air of total contentment.
Arriving at my next destination, I was chatting it up with my friend about the rising prices of flour and onions when a familiar face walked by and to my great surprise causally invited me to play soccer with him. Quite sure that he was joking and didn't really expect me to show up, I figured that I would surprise him and actually go show off my tremendous soccer skill. And so, as I said goodbye to my friend, I took off in the direction of home and the soccer field. When I reached the field, I found it was a dismal turnout—myself, a couple of young children, and my familiar faced inviter. Nevertheless, I cheerily found a soccer ball and started kicking it around with one of the older kids. He was more interested in juggling and actual soccer skill, while I just kept focusing on not making a complete fool of myself. The minutes passed and soon the dismal turnout rose to a sizable crowd of oohing and awing children I felt that only Christiano Ronalda himself could have conjured. I played for the crowd until I saw that I needed to quickly make a graceful exit lest I was to actually participate in a soccer match and ruin the magic of the moment.
Accordingly, I left the soccer field and just as I was thinking that my day couldn't get any better, this particular white girl from Kalamazoo, Michigan was invited to play bouielle (bocce ball) by what I perceive to be the Elks club of Manigri. It had been a fairly secret personal goal of mine to be invited to bocce by this well-renowned and established men's club—I just never dreamed that it would happen this soon or at all. They allowed me to toss a couple of balls before I graciously made my exit. While I was naturally disappointed with my first attempts, on the fourth toss, I landed the ball only a thumbs-nail length away from the intended target allowing me to talk as much trash as I wanted until one of the other gentlemen knocked my ball away. Bowing out after my trash talk, I finally returned to my house in such good spirits that I couldn't believe the town of Manigri itself was responsible for such happiness. After completing my exercise routine and taking a shower, I decided to wash down the day with a cold beer because gosh-darn, I earned it. Much to my amusement, my “well-earned beer” was one of the worst skunked beers my senses had ever experienced. I'm talking the squinting of the eye and a shiver that followed every reluctant swallow. However, as bad as the beer was, it was not enough to damper my high spirits as I drank and happily detested every last drop that marked Mme. Kalamazoo's wonderful return to Manigri.
**Intermission—Carly's opinion on Jim and Pam of “The Office”—And yes, she realizes that these are fictional characters, but her mother and cousin asked her opinion and so she feels that she is obliged to give it. I understand why Jim and Pam couldn't get together in the last episode, but I hope that they don't continue to rely on just the tension between the two characters to keep the show alive. My fear is that Pam is going to take the internship (or fellowship or adult education course) in New York and that she is going to leave Jim questioning his commitment towards her especially because she already spent 8 years in an engagement with Roy and won't want to stay in another equally commitment-phobic relationship. Thus, she is going to meet some charming New Yorker who, though quite Jim, is at least ready to commit to her long-term. I think it's undeniable that Jim and Pam will eventually end up together, it's just a matter of how long they drag it out for the “sake of the show.”**
Naturally, the glory of the first day quickly faded away as my classes progressively became less interesting and my students became less polite; the excitement of seeing the teachers and having something to do everyday diminished as it tends to do, and by the end of the first week, I was already looking forward to going away over the weekend. My little weekend excursion found me in a nearby village on the road to Togo, surrounded by many friends, and full of anticipation for the coming Saturday morning when we were to hop the border and attend a local whipping fete. As I can't recall the last American whipping fete that I attended, I will briefly explain. A whipping fete is a coming-of-age ceremony for young boys in the village. Each quartier (neighborhood) gathers up their young warriors and equips them with various traditional garb—more or less elaborate ornaments depending on the number of years the boy has participated in the ceremony. As a means of giving the young warriors more courage, young men who have already been initiated into society cross-dress using their sisters' clothing—because they look more feminine, it is said to make the young boys feel more masculine. After the young warriors and young cross-dressing men have gathered, individual neighborhood battles take place before all the neighborhoods congregate and fight each other. The rules of the battles seemed to change based on locality and familiarity, but essentially, I gathered that every challenge took place between two boys of the same level. There was only one or more referees to officiate and make sure things never got uncivilized or out of hand. From here, the rules seemed to be a little fuzzy—I thought that each person got three attempts to attack the other person, but I'm honestly don't really have a clue. Whatever happened when the drums stopped playing and the boys were allowed to attack each other was just (if I may dip into my bag of thesaurus words) insane, absurd, peculiar, strange, eccentric, bizarre, fantastic, outrageous, imprudent, and wild—it was unlike anything I had ever seen. At some point after a particularly solid blow, both participating neighborhoods would come sweeping in to carry off their warrior either for delivering the blow like a man or for taking the blow like a man. We saw one ceremony in a small Togo village and another the next morning in a small Beninese village where a volunteer currently resides. The experience was by far one of the most interesting things I have seen since being in Benin.
Of course, my wonderful experience at the whipping fete would not be complete with out two of the stranger taxi rides I have ever had—and that's really saying something. First taxi ride was on the was into town. After packing the taxi full to it's usual overcrowded capacity we were on our way. Not five minutes down the road, the taxi driver turns to me and this is the conversation that followed (roughly translated):
-White girl!
-That's me. What's up?
-White girl! Be careful!
-Be careful? Why?
-That door doesn't work and this road is really bumpy.
-The door doesn't work?
-Yeah! If we hit a bump, the door will open and look at how bumpy the road is! White Girl!
-So I am going to fall out?
-Yeah! White Girl!
-Super.
Thus, for the rest of the hour long taxi ride, I found myself clinging to the door, which did not open despite the many bumps we hit. The second taxi ride occurred on the the way out of village where the clown car-esque-ness of the Beninese taxi was pushed to a whole new limit. I've experienced quite a few overcrowded taxis, but this...this was something special. We had nine people smashed into a small two door vehicle that would have surely fit no more than five people in the States. It was so crowded in fact that we were actually breaking the Beninese law of how many people are allowed in a taxi (they stop at eight). Our complete disregard of the law went unnoticed until the last 2km of our journey when we were pulled over by a policeman who demanded that we get out of the car then took out our driver and slammed him against the frame of the car. At this point, I was traveling with some other volunteers, so together we chatted up the locals until our driver begged pardon and we were allowed to continue on our merry way.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Tonight, Tonight
The next installment of my journal will be brought to you by two hired guest writers: my parents. In an act of genius and laziness (this seems to be a theme of mine: work smarter not harder), I figured that it would be both interesting and considerably more informative for my parents to be the ones to narrate the tales of their adventure in Benin. It would be unfair to say that I do not have an equally interesting perspective on the matter, but it is perfectly just to admit that it was not I who kept a journal during the trip detailing each day's events and meals—including side commentary from even my brother who could also provide an assuredly interesting journal as well. I suppose what it comes down to is that for me, the whole of the trip, much like my girls camp, was spent frantically scrambling behind the scenes to make sure that everyone else was having what turned out to be a fabulous vacation. While I undoubtedly enjoyed having my family with me and showing them the “Highlight Tour of Benin,” I was nearly equally stressed out about finding taxis for the next day of travel or finding hotels accommodating enough for the night or praying the weather would cooperate or translating French or hoping the no one would get sick or just making sure everyone was generally happy—I felt like I had to be on top of everything at all times otherwise, I was sure that the worst would come and ruin what expectations had built up to be the “trip of a lifetime.” Whether by chance or fate or goodwill, however, everything did work out as I had planned and sometimes even better than planned. Sometimes, my only regret regarding the trip is that I frequently felt like I had to be so aware of everything surrounding the trip that I forgot to be present in the moment with my family. However, I know that in the end, I showed my family things they never would have seen and that I gave them the opportunity to eat things they never would have tried and I had them experience things they never would have imagined, and for that, I like to give myself a pat on the back and a “job well done.”
Since the end of my parents adventure in Benin, I have had good deal of time to relax and prepare mentally for the start of a new school year. Recently, I received a clean bill of health from the Peace Corps medical office during my mid-service checkup—they revealed that most significant change regarding my health was my twelve pound weight gain since the start of my service. This, of course, just reiterated what I already knew and adds a certain justification to all of the town people of Manigri who feel it is perfectly kind and normal to let me know that I've gotten fatter—again. With a sigh and a roll of the eyes, I admit that it's better to be healthy and gaining weight rather than sick with some intestinal parasite and fighting to keep any weight on at all. All the same, I have started an exercise program with the hopes that I can at least curve or plateau the weight gain this coming year. Besides my twelve pound baby of fat, my joys have been rather small, but significant nonetheless. First, I finished the seventh and final Harry Potter allowing me to feel as though I am now some way more a part of the American pop culture as well as more savvy for future battles of Trivial Pursuit. After Harry, I finally got around to setting up my World Space radio which allows me to feel connected to the outside world in a whole new way. I now have, with the click of a button, access to NPR and Fox Sports radio and the top 40 countdown. In fact, just last night, the final presidential debate took place and while I didn't listen to it at three in the morning Benin time, I caught all the summaries and sound clips today during lunch. Continuing along the lines of my technology successes, I discovered that I had acquired but never watched Season four of “The Office.” This was, of course, immediately rectified and I now can intelligently brief anyone on my opinion of Jim and Pam. Finally, I have actually been back to school, received my schedule, written my hours on the classroom boards, and plan to start right up this coming Monday. This year is bound to be just as interesting as the last, but I hope that I can act more like the old pro as opposed to the wide-eyed rookie. The school has actually given me the same grade levels to teach as I taught last year thus giving me the opportunity to improve upon my lessons from last year and hopefully make me a more effective teacher—the truth will be revealed throughout the year.
In all seriousness, I am feeling happier and more at peace than I have felt in a very long time since arriving in Benin. Perhaps, I have finally struck a balance between feeling involved and accepted in the community of Manigri while still feeling strongly attached to the world I left behind in the US. I believe that the start of school and the return of many happy and familiar faces as reminded me of all the kindness living in Manigri. Not to mention, my excitement surrounding the possibility of several upcoming projects including the building of a basketball court and the planning of camp success part deux. On the other hand, my recent trip home coupled with my family's visit and now my World Space radio are what are allowing my heart to fill with love and familiarity of a place not so far away.
I nearly forgot to add that amongst my accomplishments of the recent weeks, I saw and destroyed my first scorpion. It was a gray, two-inch little monster who tried to sneak up on me last night—I squished him with my trusty wooden block. Currently, he remains frozen in death on my back porch as a message of warning to any of his relatives who might think it would be cool to come disturb me in my home.
Since the end of my parents adventure in Benin, I have had good deal of time to relax and prepare mentally for the start of a new school year. Recently, I received a clean bill of health from the Peace Corps medical office during my mid-service checkup—they revealed that most significant change regarding my health was my twelve pound weight gain since the start of my service. This, of course, just reiterated what I already knew and adds a certain justification to all of the town people of Manigri who feel it is perfectly kind and normal to let me know that I've gotten fatter—again. With a sigh and a roll of the eyes, I admit that it's better to be healthy and gaining weight rather than sick with some intestinal parasite and fighting to keep any weight on at all. All the same, I have started an exercise program with the hopes that I can at least curve or plateau the weight gain this coming year. Besides my twelve pound baby of fat, my joys have been rather small, but significant nonetheless. First, I finished the seventh and final Harry Potter allowing me to feel as though I am now some way more a part of the American pop culture as well as more savvy for future battles of Trivial Pursuit. After Harry, I finally got around to setting up my World Space radio which allows me to feel connected to the outside world in a whole new way. I now have, with the click of a button, access to NPR and Fox Sports radio and the top 40 countdown. In fact, just last night, the final presidential debate took place and while I didn't listen to it at three in the morning Benin time, I caught all the summaries and sound clips today during lunch. Continuing along the lines of my technology successes, I discovered that I had acquired but never watched Season four of “The Office.” This was, of course, immediately rectified and I now can intelligently brief anyone on my opinion of Jim and Pam. Finally, I have actually been back to school, received my schedule, written my hours on the classroom boards, and plan to start right up this coming Monday. This year is bound to be just as interesting as the last, but I hope that I can act more like the old pro as opposed to the wide-eyed rookie. The school has actually given me the same grade levels to teach as I taught last year thus giving me the opportunity to improve upon my lessons from last year and hopefully make me a more effective teacher—the truth will be revealed throughout the year.
In all seriousness, I am feeling happier and more at peace than I have felt in a very long time since arriving in Benin. Perhaps, I have finally struck a balance between feeling involved and accepted in the community of Manigri while still feeling strongly attached to the world I left behind in the US. I believe that the start of school and the return of many happy and familiar faces as reminded me of all the kindness living in Manigri. Not to mention, my excitement surrounding the possibility of several upcoming projects including the building of a basketball court and the planning of camp success part deux. On the other hand, my recent trip home coupled with my family's visit and now my World Space radio are what are allowing my heart to fill with love and familiarity of a place not so far away.
I nearly forgot to add that amongst my accomplishments of the recent weeks, I saw and destroyed my first scorpion. It was a gray, two-inch little monster who tried to sneak up on me last night—I squished him with my trusty wooden block. Currently, he remains frozen in death on my back porch as a message of warning to any of his relatives who might think it would be cool to come disturb me in my home.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
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.
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.
Friday, June 27, 2008
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.
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.
Thunder Road
Journals are always hardest to type when so much as happened that you don’t really know where to begin. Such is the case with myself at the current moment. I think last time I sat down at my computer to actually put together something intellectual was around mid-may. My most exciting adventure in that time as been a trip to Ghana, but I certainly have other interesting tales to tell as well. Therefore, let us begin with the “end” of school.
Although the “end” of my school year is not technically until the end of this month, for all sanity purposes, I am done teaching. Due to my previously planned vacation, I actually wrapped up a years worth of forgotten information the week before I left for Ghana. For my last week of teaching, I decided two things were true: my students needed some serious revision and I didn’t want to teach. Therefore, with these two seemingly contrasting ideas I came up with a rather ingenious plan--open book quizzes. Going through all of my lesson plans from the year and exercise books alike, I devised two ridiculously hard and long quizzes that my students were allowed to do in groups and with their notes. Without knowing it, they were reviewing everything that I had taught them over the year and all I had to do was sit back and make sure that no one cheated by talking to another group. Mission accomplished.
Besides my clear brilliance, my other end of school year story is about a girl named Bev-ly who shocked and surprised me in the most unusual of ways. She was one of the students throughout the entire year who always showed up to class but never seemed particularly interested in learning English nor was she ever particularly amused by my in classroom antics. It seemed as though she was really only in my class because she had no other place to be; it seemed as though she was just ready to ride it out until the end of the year. However, on our last day together, after I announced that this would be the last class and all the other students had joyfully filed out of the classroom, there sat Bev-ly with her arms folded on her desk, head down. As I walked over to her, it became clear that my initial instinct was wrong--I thought she had fallen asleep--it was clear that someone else was happening, something strange, she was crying. Two other students were standing in the doorway so I asked them why Bev-ly was crying, and they told me something that shocked me even further--they told me that she was crying because of me, because she was sad that I was going away. Having to stop myself from laughing, I assured her that I was coming back next year and that with any luck I would be her teacher in the next grade, too. She seemed unconvinced and I was still unconvinced that she was crying about me--I thought that surely something else had happened to make her behave like this. Anyway, after several minutes of my reassurances, she lifted up her head and said she was okay to walk home, so off we went in our separate paths. The surprises did not stop there, however. For the following three nights until my departure to Ghana I was presented at my door with two huge mangoes. Each night the mangoes were delivered by other students with the message, “These are from Bev-ly.” Very strange. Very strange indeed. Did she really have that strong of an emotional attachment to me? Was she just trying to earn some brownie points before the final grades were decided? Could it have been just a simple act of kindness? Whatever the case, it was quite an interesting way to end my first year of teaching.
After the “end” of school, I traveled down to Cotonou for a few days for the Peer Support Network (PSN) training of which I was accepted into despite my lack of PAL experience at Mattawan High School. The training lasted two days and was rather uneventful although informative. In spite of the incredibly warm and friendly atmosphere, I still became rather embarrassed during a group bonding exercise when I became the only one who didn’t step forward to the statement “Step forward if you like your post.” Even to this moment, I can’t really say why I didn’t step forward even though my body was compelled to do so. It’s not that I don’t like my post, because there are a lot of things and people here that make Manigri really special to me, I suppose that it’s more of a matter of constant rollercoaster of ups and downs at post that make me question my likeability towards the place. I mean how can I dislike a place where I have an old man push me through a pile of mud because I got stuck halfway through on my bike--but how can I also like a place where I have developed an “antisocial” route for days when I just cannot force myself to take the main route through village because of the harassment? I hope that near the end of my service I will find answers, but I have a deeper feeling that I will continue to struggle with my mixed emotions about Manigri well after I have returned home.
Ramming up against the end of the PSN training was the beginning of my trip to Ghana. Together with a fellow volunteer, Alex, we left the morning of the 6th of June. Failing to procure tickets early enough for a direct bus line that drives straight from Cotonou, Benin to Accra, Ghana; we were forced to go to the taxi station and wait for a taxi driving to the Togo-Ghana border. Finding the taxi was the easy part but securing the taxi was the surprisingly hard part. You see, we found a taxi right away, but it wasn’t full so we had to wait (waiting for a taxi to fill can take anywhere from seconds to hours). It wasn’t long after sitting down that Alex remembered that we were going to buy cashews to bring to our respective host families that we would be staying with in Ghana. As no new fellow passengers seemed to be in sight, I volunteered to go out and look for some cashews. Making a long story short, the light drizzle the started when I began my search quickly became much more and as all the stands moved inside out of the rain, I was obliged to walk 25 minutes across town to a supermarket. When I arrived at the supermarket wet and tired, I got a panicked phone call from Alex asking where I am and saying the taxi is ready to go…immediately. Now, frazzled and wet and tired, I grab the cashews and take off running in the rain back to the taxi station. Sadly enough, I arrive just in time to see the taxi pulling out of its parking spot and out onto the road with only ONE passenger inside--he had apparently rented the entire taxi for himself. For lack of any other emotional response at the moment, I started quietly crying and went over to sit on a bench alone while the rain continued to mock me. My state of being must have looked quite pathetic indeed as the taxi drivers began to frantically organize another taxi for Alex and I. Alex, who was clearly frustrated as well, was able to negotiate a really good price and before we knew it, we were off to Ghana in our very own, completely rented out taxi--cashews in hand.
Arriving into Ghana was a fairly smooth process, stressful, but easy enough. We had some hiccups when we arrived at the Togo-Ghana border. First, there was some asshole (excuse me) of a guy who grabbed my arm as I was passing the border line while saying, “Hey there pretty lady,”--this is just so unbelievably inappropriate I don‘t know where to begin. Perhaps the only amusing part of the situation is that caught up in a flurry of anger and forgetting how to speak English, the first words out of my mouth were, “No touch!” Alex was walking in front of me at the time and straightened the guy out big time after I told him what happened. Thus, I learned my first Ghanaian lesson, men in Ghana are also idiots--at least I know some things don’t change across borders. The second encountered hiccup was at the actual Ghanaian border crossing. There was some guard there who was asking to see our WHO medical cards. Confused and disoriented because we were sure that we didn’t need them to cross borders we told the official that we didn’t have them. He asked what we were going to do and then proceeded to suggest that we give him one dollar each as a compromise. Only after we regained our senses did we realize that we just got bamboozled and that we were victims of total corruption. The Ghanaian officials tried this again with us as we crossed back into Togo, but we were much wiser the second time around and asked for a receipt and for the official’s name and number so that we could contact the Peace Corps office in Ghana with our little WHO card problem. They said that there was no receipt and that we should just remember to bring our cards next time and for us to have a nice day. Alex was quite happy that we were not fooled a second time--a small victory for foreign travelers everywhere. Our third and final bump was that we, very foolishly, let some guy carry my bag across from Togo into Ghana. We thought that he was an owner of a taxi and that we would just hop in his car and head to Accra. After realizing that this was clearly not the case, it was already too late--he was just some Togolese man trying to earn a cheap buck off stupid white travelers. We got away without giving him too much, but it was still frustrating to have committed such a rookie mistake. Nevertheless with these several incidents behind us, we were finally off to Accra and off to an amazing week of adventures.
Without going into too much detail, as I have honestly forgotten every little last part, I will attempt to do my best to summarize from here on out the good and the bad of our Ghanaian adventure.
To begin our journey, we started in Accra. I can only say that words will fail me here if I try to describe how shockingly different it was from Cotonou, Benin, let only our respective villages in Benin. It is a city that if it continues moving in a positive direction, if it does not fall to corruption, if it can develop a better infrastructure for its booming economy, it will be able to become a model and a capital for all of West Africa maybe even all of Africa in many years time. Our time in Accra, though the lengthiest stay on our voyage, seemed to fly by rather quickly. We spent our few days there walking around the city, eating cheeseburgers, pizzas, and ice cream, going to the Accra mall, spending a day at the beach, and visiting a couple museums. One particular highlight was that we were lucky enough to stay with an amazing host family; there were not only kind and insightful, but they, too, served us magnificent cuisine. Alex was excited to learn that the eldest brother of the family had dual citizenship in Ghana and England and thus Alex and he were able to talk government and policy and a great deal of other things which sailed straight over my head. I was more entertained by continually hilarious football commentary that was being provided by the father of the family in addition to his incredibly contagious laugh. There were a great host family, and they certainly made our introduction to Accra and to Ghana much easier.
From Accra, we headed down to Cape Coast. It was from this location that we visited Kakum National Park and Cape Coast castle. A real highlight for me was at Kakum were Alex and I walked along a 350 meter long canopy walk. Sure it was a little tourist and there wasn’t really any wildlife to be seen from our vantage point, but it was still really beautiful to be amongst nature and amongst the trees--there was something very serene about looking around and seeing nothing but a vast landscape of green. The castle of Cape Coast was also very interesting, we were a little pressed for time so we opted out of the tour and instead took our own little jaunt around the huge stone structure. In all reality, the real highlight of Cape Coast was the beachside reasturant located next to the castle. Smartly sticking to the Chef’s specialties, Alex dined on steak and real mashed potatoes smothered in a mushroom gravy sauce one night and pancakes stuffed with fresh mangoes, papayas, and apples covered in syrup the next morning--all while enjoying a nice costal ocean breeze.
Heading out of the south and into the central region, we took a bus to Kumasi (using the same bus line that not a day later crashed into a semi truck on the way to Accra killing 21 people-yikes). Getting into Kumasi was the easy part, getting in touch with our second host family was the hard part. However, several phone calls down the phone tree later, everything was worked out and as exhausted as we were at the end of the day, Alex and I couldn’t help but smile when we heard that we were being driven to the “guest house.” What would traveling in Africa be without a little adventure anyway. The next day was busy as we were ushered around Kumasi by our host brother. He took using to two fantastic museums and down into the huge central market of Kumasi. Alex and I were hoping to do some shopping for kente cloth and other fabric but it was quickly clear to us that by doing so we were asking for a headache for greater than whatever satisfaction we would gain by finding our cloth--the place was just too big. Instead, we were taken to the black market money exchange section where we were able to get a really good exchange rate on our Beninese CFA into Ghanaian CD. We returned home in the afternoon after our jaunt into the market and were able to catch the two EuroCup football matches of the day. Unfortunately, we had to leave the next day, but not before meeting the mother of the family we were staying with in Kumasi. She was an incredibly kind and generous woman and though our encounter was brief, she stocked Alex and I with loads of fruit for the road ahead (one pineapple, four apples, three oranges, and 10 bananas). We left Kumasi heading north for Tamale, once again we were grateful to have had the opportunity to have stayed with such an amazing and generous host family.
Our stay in Tamale was brief and rather unmemorable. It was mainly a stopping point before heading west to Mole National Park. We were unfortunate enough to trust an outdated traveler’s guide and stayed at a place that had overrated rooms and overpriced food. It was, however, a place to lay our heads and we headed out the next day to, perhaps the coolest place during our entire trip, Mole Park. The trip west started a bit rocky when Alex and I learned that there were no available rooms at the park hotel--we had assumed that because it was no longer the tourist season that it wasn’t necessary to call ahead. Kicking ourselves, we got on the bus, and came across the good fortune of running into two Peace Corps Ghana volunteers who currently had a friend in the park who assured us that there were plenty of rooms left and that the receptionist always tells “late callers” that there are no more rooms available--I suppose as a tactic to make sure there always are rooms available for the people who arrive late at night and who haven’t planned ahead--like us. Arriving well into nighttime, we got our room and headed not straight to bed, but back to the bar to have a chat with the Ghanaian volunteers--it’s always interesting to hear about Peace Corps posts outside of your own country. A few drinks later and we all decided it was past our bedtime; especially considering that the best tour of the park was a walking tour leaving early the next morning. The tour was fantastic and well worth the three dollars in total it cost for Alex and I to go. At first we weren’t seeing much expect for a couple of male deer sparing with each other, but then, after a little over an hour and a half of walking, we came across a water hole with about 5 or 6 elephants cooling off inside the pond. They later emerged and we followed them over to an open grassy field. I don’t blame my dad at all for choosing the elephant as his favorite animal, they were truly beautiful giants--very cool to see them up close like that with no zoo fence standing in the way. At one point we must have gotten too close because one of the elephants started casually walking towards using with his ears flapping--this was apparently his way of telling that we were crowding his personal space because our two guides (both who were equipped with rifles) told our group to back up. Needless to say, our group quickly and happily obliged. Our morning tour was followed by a lazy afternoon at the pool and an early 4am departure the next day. At the pool, Alex and I were a little overwhelmed by a group of American school kids who were being a bit rowdy. We first agreed that they probably had no idea how amazing of an opportunity to swim in the pool was and that secondly, it was just plain strange for us to be around so many westerners in the first place. All the social skills we once possessed-gone.
Nearing the end of our adventure, we took the Mole bus east out of the park and continued east right into Togo. Along the way we met some more Ghanaian volunteers who were really helpful about getting us pointed in the right direction to get out of Tamale and into Togo. Interestingly enough, all four Peace Corps Ghana volunteers that we met were guys. I guess that they have more along the lines of a 50/50 female to male ratio in Ghana as opposed to our about 70/30 ratio. It was a really long day of travel which surprised me, as the road itself was not long, but we had to switch taxis a lot, which always lengthens the journey, and the roads weren‘t in fantastic condition either. Once again tried and hungry, Alex and I were ready for our final hotel. Our spirits were definitely lifted when we arrived at the hotel--the guidebook did not lead us astray this time. It was a gorgeous place and they were even kind enough to give us a discount on the room because we were Peace Corps volunteers. After a much needed shower, (seriously, you know it‘s bad when you are either sweating dirt or when you think that you have gotten a day during the day but then that tan mysteriously washes off in the shower) Alex and I, for the last time, dined on some gourmet cuisine: French onion soup, steak in an herb butter sauce, and pork with a mushroom and onion sauce--quite delicious after a full day of bush taxis. We hoped to wake up on our last day and take an early morning dip in the pool, however, we were a little disappointed to wake up to rain and clouds instead--this did allow us to be lazy and take off after without feeling rushed to do so, so really not so bad in the end.
And that, I’m afraid, is where our adventures ended. Alex and I took a taxi to Djougou together were we spilt ways. Each of us had a frustrating enough time getting home and while he was off to do a Malaria bike tour in the Alibori region of Benin, I returned to a whole lot of nothing. After all the excitement of the past two weeks, it was strange to sit back down on my couch and look around to no American to talk to, no where to go, no electricity to amuse myself, no running water, and no more someone else preparing all of my food. It was just me, myself, and I back together again.
***
The initial boredom of being alone with my thoughts is starting to wear off. My electricity is back on, so I’ve been able to watch my newly purchased television series and I’ve been able to focus my boredom into productively freaking out and planning my up-coming girls summer camp. Additionally, with the final exams taking place during my absence, I now have all the papers to grade. My most amusing and dumbfounding response to a question so far is that with a multiple choice between a) 2 years b) 4 years and c) 10 years, one student chose the answer d) years. I guess he apparently thought that it was a trick question--just makes me go “hmm…” Anyway, with that I think I have typed about all my brain can handle at the moment. I hope the time in between now in the next journal won’t be quite as long. Cheers.
Other highlights and lowlights include: finding and eating Ghanaian made and manufactured Kingsbite chocolate, getting hit on by men while trying to swim in the ocean thus ruining any and all fun, returning home to Manigri to find my cat not only alive but that he had killed another mouse in my absence, gorging on salt & vinegar and sour cream & onion Pringles, being constantly ripped off my Accra taxis because we don’t know the price, having bacon for the first time in 11 months, wearing awesome rubber boats on the Mole park tour and then later finding out that they were also awesome at giving blisters, both of us having diarrhea at one point or another during the vacation, sweating dirt, free bars or soap and hot showers, spilling a massive blob of ketchup on my newly washed shirt, eating FanYogo Strawberry and FanChoco (which I swear is more chocolately than the FanChoco available in Benin), not being harassed all the time for being white, being harassed for being a woman, realizing I deleted photos of my neighbors frying and eating GIANT grasshoppers, finishing the third Harry Potter book (I finally gave in to the Harry mania), 80s power ballads playing overhead on our way to Mole National Park, sleeping in King size beds, finding out the “Chocolate House” is not a place to find chocolate but rather just a brown building, having the chance to following the EuroCup games on TV, having breakfast delivered to our room in Togo and then finding out that it wasn’t actually for us, getting to hold a bazooka, and finally, the worst thing to have happened on the trip is that my deodorant broke the second to last day, so now I have to sit alone in my house smelling like all of my students that make me crinkle my nose on a daily basis.
Although the “end” of my school year is not technically until the end of this month, for all sanity purposes, I am done teaching. Due to my previously planned vacation, I actually wrapped up a years worth of forgotten information the week before I left for Ghana. For my last week of teaching, I decided two things were true: my students needed some serious revision and I didn’t want to teach. Therefore, with these two seemingly contrasting ideas I came up with a rather ingenious plan--open book quizzes. Going through all of my lesson plans from the year and exercise books alike, I devised two ridiculously hard and long quizzes that my students were allowed to do in groups and with their notes. Without knowing it, they were reviewing everything that I had taught them over the year and all I had to do was sit back and make sure that no one cheated by talking to another group. Mission accomplished.
Besides my clear brilliance, my other end of school year story is about a girl named Bev-ly who shocked and surprised me in the most unusual of ways. She was one of the students throughout the entire year who always showed up to class but never seemed particularly interested in learning English nor was she ever particularly amused by my in classroom antics. It seemed as though she was really only in my class because she had no other place to be; it seemed as though she was just ready to ride it out until the end of the year. However, on our last day together, after I announced that this would be the last class and all the other students had joyfully filed out of the classroom, there sat Bev-ly with her arms folded on her desk, head down. As I walked over to her, it became clear that my initial instinct was wrong--I thought she had fallen asleep--it was clear that someone else was happening, something strange, she was crying. Two other students were standing in the doorway so I asked them why Bev-ly was crying, and they told me something that shocked me even further--they told me that she was crying because of me, because she was sad that I was going away. Having to stop myself from laughing, I assured her that I was coming back next year and that with any luck I would be her teacher in the next grade, too. She seemed unconvinced and I was still unconvinced that she was crying about me--I thought that surely something else had happened to make her behave like this. Anyway, after several minutes of my reassurances, she lifted up her head and said she was okay to walk home, so off we went in our separate paths. The surprises did not stop there, however. For the following three nights until my departure to Ghana I was presented at my door with two huge mangoes. Each night the mangoes were delivered by other students with the message, “These are from Bev-ly.” Very strange. Very strange indeed. Did she really have that strong of an emotional attachment to me? Was she just trying to earn some brownie points before the final grades were decided? Could it have been just a simple act of kindness? Whatever the case, it was quite an interesting way to end my first year of teaching.
After the “end” of school, I traveled down to Cotonou for a few days for the Peer Support Network (PSN) training of which I was accepted into despite my lack of PAL experience at Mattawan High School. The training lasted two days and was rather uneventful although informative. In spite of the incredibly warm and friendly atmosphere, I still became rather embarrassed during a group bonding exercise when I became the only one who didn’t step forward to the statement “Step forward if you like your post.” Even to this moment, I can’t really say why I didn’t step forward even though my body was compelled to do so. It’s not that I don’t like my post, because there are a lot of things and people here that make Manigri really special to me, I suppose that it’s more of a matter of constant rollercoaster of ups and downs at post that make me question my likeability towards the place. I mean how can I dislike a place where I have an old man push me through a pile of mud because I got stuck halfway through on my bike--but how can I also like a place where I have developed an “antisocial” route for days when I just cannot force myself to take the main route through village because of the harassment? I hope that near the end of my service I will find answers, but I have a deeper feeling that I will continue to struggle with my mixed emotions about Manigri well after I have returned home.
Ramming up against the end of the PSN training was the beginning of my trip to Ghana. Together with a fellow volunteer, Alex, we left the morning of the 6th of June. Failing to procure tickets early enough for a direct bus line that drives straight from Cotonou, Benin to Accra, Ghana; we were forced to go to the taxi station and wait for a taxi driving to the Togo-Ghana border. Finding the taxi was the easy part but securing the taxi was the surprisingly hard part. You see, we found a taxi right away, but it wasn’t full so we had to wait (waiting for a taxi to fill can take anywhere from seconds to hours). It wasn’t long after sitting down that Alex remembered that we were going to buy cashews to bring to our respective host families that we would be staying with in Ghana. As no new fellow passengers seemed to be in sight, I volunteered to go out and look for some cashews. Making a long story short, the light drizzle the started when I began my search quickly became much more and as all the stands moved inside out of the rain, I was obliged to walk 25 minutes across town to a supermarket. When I arrived at the supermarket wet and tired, I got a panicked phone call from Alex asking where I am and saying the taxi is ready to go…immediately. Now, frazzled and wet and tired, I grab the cashews and take off running in the rain back to the taxi station. Sadly enough, I arrive just in time to see the taxi pulling out of its parking spot and out onto the road with only ONE passenger inside--he had apparently rented the entire taxi for himself. For lack of any other emotional response at the moment, I started quietly crying and went over to sit on a bench alone while the rain continued to mock me. My state of being must have looked quite pathetic indeed as the taxi drivers began to frantically organize another taxi for Alex and I. Alex, who was clearly frustrated as well, was able to negotiate a really good price and before we knew it, we were off to Ghana in our very own, completely rented out taxi--cashews in hand.
Arriving into Ghana was a fairly smooth process, stressful, but easy enough. We had some hiccups when we arrived at the Togo-Ghana border. First, there was some asshole (excuse me) of a guy who grabbed my arm as I was passing the border line while saying, “Hey there pretty lady,”--this is just so unbelievably inappropriate I don‘t know where to begin. Perhaps the only amusing part of the situation is that caught up in a flurry of anger and forgetting how to speak English, the first words out of my mouth were, “No touch!” Alex was walking in front of me at the time and straightened the guy out big time after I told him what happened. Thus, I learned my first Ghanaian lesson, men in Ghana are also idiots--at least I know some things don’t change across borders. The second encountered hiccup was at the actual Ghanaian border crossing. There was some guard there who was asking to see our WHO medical cards. Confused and disoriented because we were sure that we didn’t need them to cross borders we told the official that we didn’t have them. He asked what we were going to do and then proceeded to suggest that we give him one dollar each as a compromise. Only after we regained our senses did we realize that we just got bamboozled and that we were victims of total corruption. The Ghanaian officials tried this again with us as we crossed back into Togo, but we were much wiser the second time around and asked for a receipt and for the official’s name and number so that we could contact the Peace Corps office in Ghana with our little WHO card problem. They said that there was no receipt and that we should just remember to bring our cards next time and for us to have a nice day. Alex was quite happy that we were not fooled a second time--a small victory for foreign travelers everywhere. Our third and final bump was that we, very foolishly, let some guy carry my bag across from Togo into Ghana. We thought that he was an owner of a taxi and that we would just hop in his car and head to Accra. After realizing that this was clearly not the case, it was already too late--he was just some Togolese man trying to earn a cheap buck off stupid white travelers. We got away without giving him too much, but it was still frustrating to have committed such a rookie mistake. Nevertheless with these several incidents behind us, we were finally off to Accra and off to an amazing week of adventures.
Without going into too much detail, as I have honestly forgotten every little last part, I will attempt to do my best to summarize from here on out the good and the bad of our Ghanaian adventure.
To begin our journey, we started in Accra. I can only say that words will fail me here if I try to describe how shockingly different it was from Cotonou, Benin, let only our respective villages in Benin. It is a city that if it continues moving in a positive direction, if it does not fall to corruption, if it can develop a better infrastructure for its booming economy, it will be able to become a model and a capital for all of West Africa maybe even all of Africa in many years time. Our time in Accra, though the lengthiest stay on our voyage, seemed to fly by rather quickly. We spent our few days there walking around the city, eating cheeseburgers, pizzas, and ice cream, going to the Accra mall, spending a day at the beach, and visiting a couple museums. One particular highlight was that we were lucky enough to stay with an amazing host family; there were not only kind and insightful, but they, too, served us magnificent cuisine. Alex was excited to learn that the eldest brother of the family had dual citizenship in Ghana and England and thus Alex and he were able to talk government and policy and a great deal of other things which sailed straight over my head. I was more entertained by continually hilarious football commentary that was being provided by the father of the family in addition to his incredibly contagious laugh. There were a great host family, and they certainly made our introduction to Accra and to Ghana much easier.
From Accra, we headed down to Cape Coast. It was from this location that we visited Kakum National Park and Cape Coast castle. A real highlight for me was at Kakum were Alex and I walked along a 350 meter long canopy walk. Sure it was a little tourist and there wasn’t really any wildlife to be seen from our vantage point, but it was still really beautiful to be amongst nature and amongst the trees--there was something very serene about looking around and seeing nothing but a vast landscape of green. The castle of Cape Coast was also very interesting, we were a little pressed for time so we opted out of the tour and instead took our own little jaunt around the huge stone structure. In all reality, the real highlight of Cape Coast was the beachside reasturant located next to the castle. Smartly sticking to the Chef’s specialties, Alex dined on steak and real mashed potatoes smothered in a mushroom gravy sauce one night and pancakes stuffed with fresh mangoes, papayas, and apples covered in syrup the next morning--all while enjoying a nice costal ocean breeze.
Heading out of the south and into the central region, we took a bus to Kumasi (using the same bus line that not a day later crashed into a semi truck on the way to Accra killing 21 people-yikes). Getting into Kumasi was the easy part, getting in touch with our second host family was the hard part. However, several phone calls down the phone tree later, everything was worked out and as exhausted as we were at the end of the day, Alex and I couldn’t help but smile when we heard that we were being driven to the “guest house.” What would traveling in Africa be without a little adventure anyway. The next day was busy as we were ushered around Kumasi by our host brother. He took using to two fantastic museums and down into the huge central market of Kumasi. Alex and I were hoping to do some shopping for kente cloth and other fabric but it was quickly clear to us that by doing so we were asking for a headache for greater than whatever satisfaction we would gain by finding our cloth--the place was just too big. Instead, we were taken to the black market money exchange section where we were able to get a really good exchange rate on our Beninese CFA into Ghanaian CD. We returned home in the afternoon after our jaunt into the market and were able to catch the two EuroCup football matches of the day. Unfortunately, we had to leave the next day, but not before meeting the mother of the family we were staying with in Kumasi. She was an incredibly kind and generous woman and though our encounter was brief, she stocked Alex and I with loads of fruit for the road ahead (one pineapple, four apples, three oranges, and 10 bananas). We left Kumasi heading north for Tamale, once again we were grateful to have had the opportunity to have stayed with such an amazing and generous host family.
Our stay in Tamale was brief and rather unmemorable. It was mainly a stopping point before heading west to Mole National Park. We were unfortunate enough to trust an outdated traveler’s guide and stayed at a place that had overrated rooms and overpriced food. It was, however, a place to lay our heads and we headed out the next day to, perhaps the coolest place during our entire trip, Mole Park. The trip west started a bit rocky when Alex and I learned that there were no available rooms at the park hotel--we had assumed that because it was no longer the tourist season that it wasn’t necessary to call ahead. Kicking ourselves, we got on the bus, and came across the good fortune of running into two Peace Corps Ghana volunteers who currently had a friend in the park who assured us that there were plenty of rooms left and that the receptionist always tells “late callers” that there are no more rooms available--I suppose as a tactic to make sure there always are rooms available for the people who arrive late at night and who haven’t planned ahead--like us. Arriving well into nighttime, we got our room and headed not straight to bed, but back to the bar to have a chat with the Ghanaian volunteers--it’s always interesting to hear about Peace Corps posts outside of your own country. A few drinks later and we all decided it was past our bedtime; especially considering that the best tour of the park was a walking tour leaving early the next morning. The tour was fantastic and well worth the three dollars in total it cost for Alex and I to go. At first we weren’t seeing much expect for a couple of male deer sparing with each other, but then, after a little over an hour and a half of walking, we came across a water hole with about 5 or 6 elephants cooling off inside the pond. They later emerged and we followed them over to an open grassy field. I don’t blame my dad at all for choosing the elephant as his favorite animal, they were truly beautiful giants--very cool to see them up close like that with no zoo fence standing in the way. At one point we must have gotten too close because one of the elephants started casually walking towards using with his ears flapping--this was apparently his way of telling that we were crowding his personal space because our two guides (both who were equipped with rifles) told our group to back up. Needless to say, our group quickly and happily obliged. Our morning tour was followed by a lazy afternoon at the pool and an early 4am departure the next day. At the pool, Alex and I were a little overwhelmed by a group of American school kids who were being a bit rowdy. We first agreed that they probably had no idea how amazing of an opportunity to swim in the pool was and that secondly, it was just plain strange for us to be around so many westerners in the first place. All the social skills we once possessed-gone.
Nearing the end of our adventure, we took the Mole bus east out of the park and continued east right into Togo. Along the way we met some more Ghanaian volunteers who were really helpful about getting us pointed in the right direction to get out of Tamale and into Togo. Interestingly enough, all four Peace Corps Ghana volunteers that we met were guys. I guess that they have more along the lines of a 50/50 female to male ratio in Ghana as opposed to our about 70/30 ratio. It was a really long day of travel which surprised me, as the road itself was not long, but we had to switch taxis a lot, which always lengthens the journey, and the roads weren‘t in fantastic condition either. Once again tried and hungry, Alex and I were ready for our final hotel. Our spirits were definitely lifted when we arrived at the hotel--the guidebook did not lead us astray this time. It was a gorgeous place and they were even kind enough to give us a discount on the room because we were Peace Corps volunteers. After a much needed shower, (seriously, you know it‘s bad when you are either sweating dirt or when you think that you have gotten a day during the day but then that tan mysteriously washes off in the shower) Alex and I, for the last time, dined on some gourmet cuisine: French onion soup, steak in an herb butter sauce, and pork with a mushroom and onion sauce--quite delicious after a full day of bush taxis. We hoped to wake up on our last day and take an early morning dip in the pool, however, we were a little disappointed to wake up to rain and clouds instead--this did allow us to be lazy and take off after without feeling rushed to do so, so really not so bad in the end.
And that, I’m afraid, is where our adventures ended. Alex and I took a taxi to Djougou together were we spilt ways. Each of us had a frustrating enough time getting home and while he was off to do a Malaria bike tour in the Alibori region of Benin, I returned to a whole lot of nothing. After all the excitement of the past two weeks, it was strange to sit back down on my couch and look around to no American to talk to, no where to go, no electricity to amuse myself, no running water, and no more someone else preparing all of my food. It was just me, myself, and I back together again.
***
The initial boredom of being alone with my thoughts is starting to wear off. My electricity is back on, so I’ve been able to watch my newly purchased television series and I’ve been able to focus my boredom into productively freaking out and planning my up-coming girls summer camp. Additionally, with the final exams taking place during my absence, I now have all the papers to grade. My most amusing and dumbfounding response to a question so far is that with a multiple choice between a) 2 years b) 4 years and c) 10 years, one student chose the answer d) years. I guess he apparently thought that it was a trick question--just makes me go “hmm…” Anyway, with that I think I have typed about all my brain can handle at the moment. I hope the time in between now in the next journal won’t be quite as long. Cheers.
Other highlights and lowlights include: finding and eating Ghanaian made and manufactured Kingsbite chocolate, getting hit on by men while trying to swim in the ocean thus ruining any and all fun, returning home to Manigri to find my cat not only alive but that he had killed another mouse in my absence, gorging on salt & vinegar and sour cream & onion Pringles, being constantly ripped off my Accra taxis because we don’t know the price, having bacon for the first time in 11 months, wearing awesome rubber boats on the Mole park tour and then later finding out that they were also awesome at giving blisters, both of us having diarrhea at one point or another during the vacation, sweating dirt, free bars or soap and hot showers, spilling a massive blob of ketchup on my newly washed shirt, eating FanYogo Strawberry and FanChoco (which I swear is more chocolately than the FanChoco available in Benin), not being harassed all the time for being white, being harassed for being a woman, realizing I deleted photos of my neighbors frying and eating GIANT grasshoppers, finishing the third Harry Potter book (I finally gave in to the Harry mania), 80s power ballads playing overhead on our way to Mole National Park, sleeping in King size beds, finding out the “Chocolate House” is not a place to find chocolate but rather just a brown building, having the chance to following the EuroCup games on TV, having breakfast delivered to our room in Togo and then finding out that it wasn’t actually for us, getting to hold a bazooka, and finally, the worst thing to have happened on the trip is that my deodorant broke the second to last day, so now I have to sit alone in my house smelling like all of my students that make me crinkle my nose on a daily basis.
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