The sunset over fellow volunteer Glenna's village, Azolwisse (spelling?). This is the view from her porch. It's very, very hard not to be jealous.

The valley near Adjoun where much of the regoin's produce is grown.

The river near Adjoun. People bathe in, swim in, do laundry in, haul water from and gaze at the river.

The path along the river in Adjoun. Pictured are Vitale and friend Allinest, who lives there. Adjoun is about 45 minutes North of my village by moto.

I have furniture!!! The couch and table are new. I put my books under the table, then when I go to Cotonou I take all the ones I've read and switch them out at the Peace Corps library. Books in english, woohoo!

HIV/AIDS rapid testing in Lake (lah-kay), the village next to mine. When I did it there were about a hundered teenage boys watching, to see if the Yovo would flinch at the prick, so I smiled, shrugged and said "It was nothing," afterward. They laughed.

A view of the sea at sunset... boats on the horizon.
Right before a graduation ceremony, posing with Vitale's bike and wishing it were mine
Vitale (007)
The beach. The palm trees keep it from all tumbling into the ocean. The small shallow boats are for fishing and I am mystified as to how they control them on the open sea with the little oars they use. The current is so strong that it is difficult to remain standing if you wade in above the knees, but locals dive right in to cool off mid-day. Repairing the knits looks tedious and is very time-consuming. If you do get pulled into the current, I read, you should relax because it won't carry you too far away, it will just take you in a giant loop around the beach. Them you swim in diagonally with the waves. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't drown but I'm not about to find out! I'm content to just splash around on the beach and look for shells.
You can drink a beer and really, really, REALLY let go here. Most relaxing day of my life. Please bear in mind, though, that the life of a Peace Corps Volunteer is very taxing and warrants the receipt of many care packages from home.
A particularly strong wave: Gotcha!
Right outside the concession where my home is. African sunsets are tops!
And then there are fields, forests, and clear blue skies. The variety of landscape here is astonishing and makes exploring fun!
Vitale and Lou take a walk in Tchaada, Lou's village.
The road from my village, Djigbe, to nearby Hozin. This is on the outskirts of my village. The little girl on the left is wearing khaki, the school uniform for all students in Benin.
Me with the cutest baby I have ever seen in my life. Sometimes babies just appear in my house- I swear. Moms get tired of watching them and they just walk in and plop them on my floor, smile, and waltz on out the door, unburdened and breezy. Usually some kids will take the baby before I see the mom again. Babies are less the prized, unique possessions here as we think of them in the states. They are more like communal parasites, to be dealt with until they are completely independent and can take care of themselves, usually around age 2 1/2.

IB

"It's Benin," we tell ourselves over and over again. It's both a spiritual exercise and a realization that becomes less and less shocking with each utterance. It is spiritual in the sense that it takes the place of so many other things a person could exclaim in the ourageous, outlandish situations one finds oneself in almost daily: the 30km trip that ends up taking four hours, smaller quantities of things costing more than their larger counterparts, having conversations in three languages at the same time... these are weak examples and I promise to keep better records of the good ones, but rest assured that when I could justifiably scream and laugh maniacally and pull my hair out and set fire to something with frustration, I'm completely accostomed now to saying to Lou on the phone or myself in my head, "It's Benin." This has become it's own reason and has nullified my original foolhardy desire to try to control anything at all about my circumstances. Others have taken to saying "Wawa": West Africa Wins Again. God, it feels good to give up. Now maybe I can get some work done.

10/25/09

Things are still going well. Still can’t cut chili peppers with my bare hands or my skin catches fire for the next six to twelve hours and I have to sit with my hands in front of a fan, repeatedly dipping them into a bowl of water at my feet and rendering them useless for the rest of the evening. Still studying French, only now I have procured an eight foot blackboard, which is brown and graces my living room wall. Still learning to cook. Still in love with the rain. Still alternating between constipation and diarrhea with an occasional pleasant poop in between If anyone has the time, they can research whether there are long-term effects from being afflicted with giardia for two or more years, because I still have that, too. Third time I’ve taken a stool sample and yep: still got it. Still passing my days mostly in the house, still getting the flow of life without appliances (except my stove and fan, of course) and just learning about Benin. I make cultural faux-pas every day and usually learn I have done so by the imminent raucous laughter. I always join in.
I went to see Louis in Tchaada over the weekend with my friend Vitale. Louis showed us the health center where he works and they may or may not still think he is a doctor. They ask him to do things like sew people up without anesthetic (which doesn’t exist here) and deliver babies. He doesn’t do these things, of course, but he does clean the babies up afterward and gets to witness a lot of really cool stuff. I also met his Chef du arrondissement, which is like a mayor. He gave us cold beer and put on Madonna videos. Amazing!! Lou cooked a delicious meal of rice with yummy tomato sauce, then performed the dance from “High School Musical,” which he adores, in his living room. You HAVE to love Lou. You just have to.
Mosquitoes are ruining my life. Thought I’d throw that in, too.
There is a zit on my face that hasn’t healed in over a month cause I didn’t pop it so it just healed as a hole and now there’s constantly a red scab over it. People are starting to ask me why it’s still there. I tell them I don’t know. I’ve also had a cold for a couple weeks: no coughing, just runny nose. But people in my concession can hear me when I blow my nose (which they think is comically huge) and they are alo starting to worry about that. It’s life in a collectivist community and it’s nice to be cared about, and damn it, I know it’s a compliment when they tell me I’m fat but sometimes it’s hard to know what to say.
I’m still ridiculously happy. With regard to things that go on at home, I do find it difficult to not be a part of some of them. There are moments with my friends and family that I can never get back, but I don’t think I’d trade them for the moments I’m experiencing here. Nope. I’m sure I wouldn’t.

Ongoing Wish List
Here are some things on my wish list if you are just desperate to send me something : )

External disc drive for my laptop! Teehee. Worth a shot.
Bobby pins
Cotton boxers or shorts I can wear around the house or to bed
Mom- my favorite jeans, the express ones. Dark blue. Size 6. Broken zipper. Send them like that and I’ll have the zipper fixed. Shipping might cost a lot but charge it to me. So worth it.
Jelly bellies!!!! My favorite candy. I’m fond of tropical and fruit bowl mixes but would take buttered popcorn and pickle flavors at this juncture. Coconut is my favorite. God, I can taste them!
A case of blue moon (hey, it’s a WISH list)
National Geographic magazine. The last issue I got was in july or august so anything after that would be fantastic!
Decent pens. Seriously. The ones here are pathetic excuses for writing tools. I’d do better with a chisel and some stone slabs.
Contact solution, so when I get my contact I can actually wear it!! I use the complete kind. Though, on the Critical scale, this falls at a mere 6, with jelly bellies and Tom Robbins books at ten and I can’t think of anything to represent zero.
I’m liking drink mixes. The propel ones are yummy, and small so easy to send. Protein mixes are awesome too. So are protein bars, for the matter, but I’m not eating eggs at the moment. . .
Mac n cheese packets! Seriously, buy the mac n cheese, find something else to do with the noodles, and send me the damn packets. I crave cheese and have only had it once in three months!!!!!
Instant mashed potatoes as well. I love love love not having to cook. Sour cream n chive or cheddar cheese.
U.S. stamps to send you letters! We leave them in the office and when someone COSes or goes for a visit they take all the mail to the states, dramatically increasing likelihood of delivery.
Chocolate-- Auntie Laurie sent Godiva which was AMAZING. I’d take anything though!
A Magic Wand (again, I’d like to point out: WISH list)
******Parmesean Cheese****** I think this ranks above jelly bellies, even!!





11/2/09
Happy birthday, Dad! I hope your day was fabulous. Things are going swimmingly on this end. I’m getting to know my village by going for long walks at night, mapping out the pathways and shortcuts, which is what a village mostly consists of. I walk with one or two friends, though I probably wouldn’t feel entirely unsafe walking alone. The moon is so bright here that it illuminates everything like a cool blue streetlamp hovering not miles but mere feet from the ground. It feels like I could reach out and touch it some nights. If I were a child, I would fear it falling to earth and landing on my head. As we trod single file on the narrow footpaths carved through corn and manioc fields, the moon’s rays glint off the perimeter of palm trees which encircle the field. They reflect off the slippery surfaces of giant tropical leaves blooming around us, off the corrugated tin rooftops of the concrete and mud houses as we pass, off of us. Sometimes we dance. Sometimes we sing. We occasionally leap into the plants to safely make way for approaching motorcycles, which rip through the night like thunder. Everyone knows everyone and we stop to talk with people every few minutes: those going to visit someone, returning from market or school, or I try in vain to explain the expression “high on life” but since we’ve been sipping sodabi it sinks in as well as it might. I’m completely in love with life here. Last night it was a full moon and I think I had a life-gasm.
A few days ago we were walking, my two friends and myself, and suddenly we were overtaken by a strange, painful pricking sensation on our legs. We began to slap ourselves and jump and kick as the frequency of the pinches and stabs spread up the skin of our legs. We all had pants on so it was difficult to tell what was causing it, but then we saw in the light of someone’s house the tiny black shadows passing over the tops of our feet. “Fourmis!” Angele cried. We had ants in our pants. Not just a few. Apparently that had crawled up our legs when we’d stopped briefly to chat with some people. We’d had no idea, but we must have been standing on their nest or something. Those little suckers can really bite! They say necessity is the mother of invention; well it was necessary to extricate the ants from our pants and we invented some pretty radical dance moves during the attempt. Needless to say I took a bucket bath the second I got home, but it being after dark, the mosquitoes had their way with me instead. I did indeed feel like a human pincushion as I lay down to sleep that night, but the effects were not lasting, as effects usually aren’t.
Because it is too hot to do much during the day, unless I wished to use up an ungodly amount of water and sunscreen, which I don’t, I spend the time in and around my house, performing maintenance tasks: laundry, dishes, filling water containers and moving water around to various buckets, sweeping, and cooking which, it turns out, takes quite a while to do when you are using real food and fire instead of boxes and microwaves. I’m not saying, however, that there aren’t nights when I would give anything for a damned frozen pizza or some Taco John’s (mmm… Taco Johns. I feel like it’s morally acceptable to crave fast food when it’s far beyond my reach but will probably go back to resenting myself for it when I return to the states in the impossibly far-off future). But if I don’t feel like cooking I can go buy beans, bread, and pineapple on the street and have a delicious meal.
Today I used the foot file that Dad and Jackie sent. I’d never filed my feet before. Almost 27 years: the poor file never knew what hit it. It’s lying unconscious on my bedroom floor right now. Little grooming things like that can change a person’s life, you know. I’m going to pluck my eyebrows for the first time in 5 months for my birthday. On a crazy Saturday night I’m prone to painting my fingernails. Sometimes I even shave my legs!
In spite of the lightheartedness of my average day, which also includes a grueling two-hour French lesson, which I actually enjoy and probably was only inclined to refer to as grueling to elicit reader sympathy, the realities of the comparatively harsh life here continue to hit me. I’ve seen dozens of malnourished kids, some progressed to the state where they will be permanently stunted if not mentally disabled, and that is assuming they survive. Last week I saw a woman sitting outside with her baby and went to sit with them. I then noticed what she was doing: gavage, as it’s called in French, or force-feeding. This is a fairly typical way to initiate a baby to the world of food during the transition from breast, I am told.
The woman was pouring bouille, or porridge, into the baby’s mouth, then holding it closed. The baby, ill from the force feeding, was gagging and coughing, breathing through its nose, untl the mother clamped a finger over the two tiny nostrils. I watched in desperation, paralyzed, as the terrified baby, his fight instinct having failed him repeatedly and unable to flee, figured out to swallow the food in order that he might breathe; waterboarding came to mind. It was one swallow too many, and he vomited immediately afterward while his mother held him by the wrist at arm’s length to avoid getting the vomit on her, or me. She laughed and played with the baby as he continued to scream, giving her what was obviously an expression of “How could you!?”
Before you villainize the mother, however, consider the circumstances in which a person raises a baby. In the cultural context, it makes perfect sense: her mother fed her this way, as did as many previous generations, and they were all healthy enough. I had tried to ask her mid-way through why she didn’t give the baby the breast, but the words came out all jumbled. When I’m speaking French it takes all my concentration and I hadn’t been able to formulate a single concrete thought. All I could do was watch. Afterward I walked home, had a breakdown, called my APCD and mother for moral support, then decided that I’m going to write and memorize exactly what I want to say next time I see this. No mother wants to harm her baby, and though it’s hard to imagine she can’t tell the baby is suffering at being suffocated, tough love is more than an abstract parenting concept in an environment where only the strong survive. They really are doing what they think it best, and since I’ve been told that most mothers in my area think gavage is best, I plan to attempt to offer them alternatives and change at least some minds about the necessity of force feeding.
So while I’m personally happy and healthy, this isn’t true for everyone here, which is why our government is spending up all your tax money for me to do health work here. There really is that there is a lot of work to be done, and though at times the urgency and desperation strike me with such shocking clarity I feel compelled to charge out into the street and shake the first person I see, screaming “What the hell is going on around here?” I constantly remind myself that I have two years, possibly three, in which to effect change and that if it lasts, however miniscule it may have been, I’ll have done my job.