Happy Tofurkey Day from Benin

Here in Kandi, my fellow PCVs and I are preparing our Thanksgiving spread a day late.  I'm in a reflective mood, so here are some of the things for which I am especially grateful this year:
1. The baby goats roaming freely all over Kandi, and especially the ones that wander into my concession, making their ridiculous goat noises and bouncing all over the place.
2. That harmattan, with its cooler days and chilly nights, is right around the corner.  Finally, some good sleeping weather.
3. To have two work partners, Bio and Diallo, who care and are there for me.  Until recently, I doubted I'd ever feel like I had Beninese friends,  but upon returning from vacation, I realized how much I had missed them.
4. To have stayed free of illness during my service thus far.  It's a minor miracle.
5. For the first time, being proud to be an American, despite our country's varied faults.  And on that vein, that as a female, I was born in a country that values education and equality for women.
6. My parents, who call me faithfully each Saturday and who are ever supportive.
7. Feeling that I am exactly where I should be, doing exactly what I should be doing.
8. BBC's Pride and Prejudice and Modern Family, my most reliable pick-me-ups after a tough day.
9. November/December's watermelon season
10. The novels of Harlan Coben, my guilty pleasure reads.
11. My fellow Alibori volunteers, especially Nina.  We are out here beyond the middle of nowhere, and we know we can depend on each other.
12. To have daily access to the luxuries of electricity, the internet, and an oscillating fan.
13. My Niger-now-Benin stagemates Mary and Kimie.  I definitely could not do this without them.
14. That I can get freshly made tofu every day if I want it.
15. For the food stand lady by the post office, who has my plate ready by the time I am seated on the bench.
15. That I'm still here after sixteen months but also that I'm starting to make plans for life post-Peace Corps.

Oh, public school. You can be a cruel, cruel beast.

Very rarely I have a day which causes me to think, "if submitting my resignation to Peace Corps didn't involve a 10-hour bus ride to the capital, I would quit right now."   Today was, as one of the musical-loves-of-my-life James Taylor would say, "a day that you can't explain."  It started off well with a trip to the health center, where all the nurses and nurses' aides were gearing up to go out "en brousse" (to the bush) for the annual, nationwide meningitis vaccination campaign.  I decided to follow the team led by the new head nurse, Brice.  Our territory was EPP (Ecole Primaire Publique - Public Primary School) Gansosso, where all my neighbor kids go to school.  I have only ever spent time in high schools here, so seeing where the younger kids (supposedly) learn was a little shocking.  The class sizes of fifty students typically found at the high school level could be considered a luxury.  I spent about two and half hours in a classroom of five and six year olds and one teacher.  Guess how many of them there were - I dare you.  One hundred and three.  In one classroom. So that alone was discouraging, but then we started the vaccination paperwork (no parental consent involved, apparently).  Each child received a little yellow card filled out by both Brice and myself.  An alarming number of the children didn't know their last names or their ages.  It's funny the first time a kid of about six claims to be twenty, but after that you start to wonder how they're ever going to learn in this environment. If your child has a learning disability, you might as well just pull him out of school.
Now, there's many things I like about Benin, but sadly today involved two things I really cannot stand: corporal punishment and what often seems like a total lack of compassion.  You can imagine if there are 103 children in one room, someone's likely not behaving.  As such, the schoolmaster is constantly ready with a rubber whip in hand.  Or, as he did today, he might just tell a kid to beat the offender for him (a cop out if I ever saw one).  Witnessing the latter proved to be my breaking point.  Whether or not I should have done this, I don't know, but I told the teacher to come outside with me and explained that while I'm in the classroom, he's not going to hit the kids.  Either that, or he takes them outside because it's violence, and I don't want to see it.  I probably was really out of line, but I've tried for a year and a half to understand the concept behind teaching with intimidation, and just......no.  The teacher/headmaster guy wasn't super offended, I don't think, and was kind of like, "Whatever.  She's here for two hours.  I suppose we'll oblige her."  What I see as a lack of compassion came into play once the nurses began vaccinating.  Public service announcement to the team of nurses today: some kids are afraid of needles.  It's okay.  It doesn't mean they're weak and deserved to be ridiculed or, worse yet, slapped.  I don't even like most kids, but I also don't think they deserve public shaming for something they can't really control..  I've witnessed thousands of babies receive their shots here in Benin; I guarantee vaccinations are not given with the gentleness American parents would expect for their children.

Following all this was a trip to the high school to pick up some paperwork.  I try to avoid that area when school lets out because it's also next to two primary schools.  This translates to hundreds of kids spotting me and screaming, "batoure" (white person).  If you've read this blog, or I've talked to you at all about being here, you know how much I hate being called this.  I know it's not usually meant maliciously, but seriously kids.  If I tell you DAILY to call me "madam" instead of "batoure," you could maybe oblige me once in the twenty-seven months I'm here.  I'll say it again, I know it's not  meant meanly, but imagine if every single time you left your house, the neighborhood kids screamed "white person" at you.  It can be maddening.  I've tried every single approach that have worked for other volunteers, but I'm beginning to think that people just don't care enough to change.  Womp womp.

On the way home I spotted in bushes a dog sitting perfectly still with a frighteningly solid stare at something  in front of him and......what looked like slobber on his mouth.  I really, really hope we don't have a rabid dog in the neighborhood.   Maybe he was just pondering what to have for dinner.  But rest assured that in any case, I've received all the rabies pre-exposure vaccinations, GENTLY given by our Peace Corps Medical Officer.

Tomorrow's a new day, thank God.

Back at post!

Hello again! I'm back in Kandi after a little vacation to America - the land not of milk and honey, but in my case, tortilla chips and brownies. Before I get to today's topic, I'll sum up the return trip. In Paris, I had a ridiculously long layover of six hours, in which I would have liked to have slept (and even found a lounging chaise, if you will, on which to do so), but alas, could not fall asleep. I spent approximately $30 on a Coke Zero, a large Evian, and a (really) delicious airport pasta salad. Paris, even your airport alone tempted me to stay. Someday I will venture outside your doors and get to see the actual city. I don't know what it is about Air France, but it's just better. I felt right at home finding my seat on the Paris to Cotonou flight: some Beninese guy was sitting in my seat and I was like, um, excuse me sir, I have that seat. "No you don't," he said, "I specifically reserved this seat on the internet." "Okay, well you can see 18D is right here on my boarding pass, and I know it's slightly weird that it goes 18E and then 18D, but 18D is definitely the aisle." He huffed and puffed enough to make me calmly concede to sit in the middle, but then I pointed up to where the seats were clearly labeled, and said, "tu vois?" and the three men behind us started laughing enough to make him move. Were they laughing with me or at me? I will never know. And then like so often happens in (or on the way to) Benin, I felt like a jerk, even though I was right.


Stepping off the plane onto the tarmac in Cotonou (which for some reason always feel more dignified than using a jetway, probably because I pretend I'm the President leaving Air Force One), I thought about a book I read before Peace Corps, the annoyingly named Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight. It's a memoir which, if I recall correctly, takes place in what is today's Zimbabwe. The author talks about returning home and how, even if she hadn't known where her plane had landed, she would be able to recognize Africa by smell alone. So I took a few sniffs to see if this were really the case, and no, it just smelled like an airport. Still, I decided, West Africa must have its own variety of smells that are slowly inching their way into my memory. And that turned out to be true, just not to be found in Cotonou. On the bus ride back to post, I knew we were close to Kandi when I started to smell whatever herb (perhaps mint or sage, although I once tasted it and couldn't tell) makes the whole town smell clean and crisp when the wind blows right. When it doesn't, it brings one of my least favorite smells ever: goat being cooked. (I wasn't too torn up about missing Tabaski this year). The mustard cakes that are added to sauce (mustard in the form of patties that look like cow poop, in other words) have a similar nauseating effect. Perfume selection in Benin, I would have to guess, is not terribly varied, so every time I smell my host mom Juditha's perfume, I assume she's right behind me. This happens at least twice a week. Also, I've never figured out if it's cologne or what, but there is a very particularly strong (cologne?) that our Peace Corps Niger assistant, Boubacar, used to wear that's both nostril curling and not entirely unpleasant. Whenever I catch a whiff of it (usually at the market), I always get to wondering if that's some sort of El-Hadji (a Muslim man who, like Boubacar, has been to Mecca) trademark.

I don't know who to ask, but it seems like it's going down as one of my Great Unanswered Questions, just like "who sells those gorgeous silver rings with the Arabic phrases? I want one!"

Because I'm pretty sold on the idea of aromatherapy (is anyone not?), I had brought five or six of my favorite Way Out Wax candles to Benin last summer. Best thing I packed, for sure. They certainly help make my concrete oven/prison cell of a house more like home. Perfume was this trip's most valuable player occupant of my suitcase. It will remind me of home and that before too long, the (relatively minor, comparatively speaking) hardships of sweat, constant grime, and feet that would make a pedicurist scream will be things I laugh about at dinner parties. So I'm going to try to continue to enjoy my time au Benin, but from now on, I'm going to smell better doing it.

Wake me up when September ends (thanks, Green Day)

Oh, September. You never were my favorite month. For the longest time it brought anxiety of a new school year, and for the past two, the adjustment to a new country and a new job. This year, September has been all about anticipation - mostly for my upcoming vacation to America, to the changing fall colors, to Starbucks iced coffee, and to, most importantly, seeing my family. Alas, from the beginning I knew this month would be tough and Green Day's "Wake Me Up When September Ends" became my anthem. Indeed, alert me when it's October and time to get on the plane.


Out of what I believed was ethical responsibility, I decided to have our workstation dogs, Sasha and Malia (Did you not suspect that Peace Corps is full of Democrats?), taken to Cotonou to be spayed. They endured the long journey, accompanied by our local veterinarian (who also needed a break from Kandi, apparently), just fine and made it back home. After a week of recovery, Malia died today. She had torn her stitches out on two prior occasions, and this morning's was the last and ultimately fatal episode. The vet, with the help of our amazing workstation guard, Yarou, patched her up, but she had already lost a lot of blood. So while I'm already missing her - as is Sasha - Malia's untimely end made me realize a couple of things:

a) I still have a heart. My defense mechanisms are hard at work here, 24/7; it's just...necessary. I try to run and sweat out as much of the emotional stress as I can, but part of dealing with ill treatment of women, kids, animals, etc., involves steeling oneself. (And I feel obligated to say a hopeless Benin is not a picture I want to paint. There are a million things going right in this country, so please don't misunderstand me on that front. This could easily happen in America were I a social worker, for example.) Anyway, sometimes I feel jaded and unsympathetic. Seeing Malia today reminded me that's it's okay to cry for a friend, or even a stranger.

b) Our workstation guards are amazing. Yarou not only served as the vet's assistant twice, but he took time out of his Sunday (after working a 12-hour shift) to bury Malia for me. Victorin was kind about my openly crying. I really, really appreciated that.

So, yeah. Hopefully the next two weeks will go a little more smoothly and quickly. Inchallah.

Beach birthday

Ikpunando, everyone! How's it going at home? I'm writing this from a village about 5 miles north of Porto-Novo called Dangbo. I'm assisting again this week with the training of new health volunteeers. I gave a presentation this morning and will hang out with the "new kids" until Saturday. Other than PC not leaving me a water filter in my temporary home (what the hell, Peace Corps?), things are going fabulously. This trip down south may have been just what I needed.


I left Kandi last Wednesday for Cotonou and for the first time opted to not take the bus. My faith in the Indian-run bus line I normally take has tanked recently, so instead I called the 4am taxi man named Gouda - like the cheese - and arrived in Parakou by 7:15am. From there I scrambled into a rickety minivan where I was sandwiched between an obese maman and a semi-catatonic young man for the next nine hours. Despite a great fear of deep vein thrombosis and having to hold my helmet, backpack and purse in far too few square inches, I actually arrived in Cotonou before nightfall. That alone may have been worth all the hassle. My reasoning for an extended trip down south was two-fold: complete my mid-service medical exam and send Alex off to what he liked to refer to as "Murica." As I often like to remind people, I haven't required medical care since arriving in Benin, other than a brief looking over after my tussle with a motorcycle. My brown Peace Corps medical record, which looks extremely official in a military type of way, was much thinner than the other volunteers' that were sitting on our doctor's desk. Side note: our doctor do a passable job of respecting HIPAA laws, but at any moment I could have picked up someone else's file from the desk and flipped through it. Anyway, the exam itself was pretty pointless. Sadly the lab technician found some variety of intestinal parasite I've never heard of, but I'm pretty certain it's the same one I had last fall that happily promoted a little weight loss. The doctor said it would clear up on its own. And really, other than a "manque d'appetit," in the mornings, I don't feel any different. Other than that, I'm as healthy as a horse. An American horse, not the one in my neighborhood with pinkeye and a look of complete annoyance.

After the doctor dismissed me with a clean bill of health and enough anti-malaria meds to last me until next May (!), Nina and I took what was possibly the easiest and most relaxing taxi ride of our service to Grand Popo, a beach resort town about two hours west of Cotonou. Other than Parc Pendjari, Grand Popo's resorts are pretty much THE tourist attraction in Benin. For only the second time in my life - the other being last month - I showed up at a hotel without reservations. In fact, neither of us had done any research and let the taxi driver drop us off wherever he chose. Less than thirty seconds later, we were walking down a sandy, canopied path to a (classily) pirate-themed hotel, wondering how we managed to wake up from the taxi ride in what clearly must have been another country. A clean, American hotel-grade pool, a beach bar, a giant (life-sized?) chess set, and a tiled, pristine room awaited us. Oh, right, and so did the Atlantic Ocean. Birthday weekend perfection. Nina swam while I lounged in a pool chaise (they exist here!), my arm sore from repeated pinchings. Later we sat on the beach and watched the fisherman on the shoreline reel in their wooden boats using mile-long ropes. If it sounds like a lot of work, you'd be correct. It took a team of at least twenty men to pull in each boat, like playing tug-of-war with the ocean. Later we dined on pizza and fettucini and pinneapple and banana smoothies. When it came time to leave on Sunday, we put off flagging down a taxi on the roadside in order to stay for lunch. That's how good the food was, or at least how desperate I've gotten for something other than couscous and lentils that I don't have to cook.

But now it's back to reality. Five more weeks until a real vacation and break from l'afrique. Until then, I leave you with a pre-birthday picture of 3/4 of Team Niger - Mary, Kimie, and I - taken in Cotonou.

Of flora and fauna

One of the things I'm asked most by people aux Etats-Unis: is there wildlife around where you live?  Not exactly.  Kandi is a large town along one of the (five or so) major highways in Benin.  As much as I'd like to thing I'm roughing it out in the African bush, I'm not really in the bush at all.  (Although ask people in Cotonou - even Peace Corps staff - and yes, they'd say, you live in the bush.)   Even so, we have thousands and thousands of chickens, goats, and sheep that wander freely.  Clearly people are able to keep tabs on them, although I have no idea how.  Sometimes people tie scraps of fabric around goats' and sheeps' necks for identification because they really get around.  Across the highway, into the market, up on the porches of school buildings, on the steps of mosques, through the yard at the health center, everywhere. Kandi also, like most of Benin (and much more so than Niger, certainly), has its fair share of dogs, who are sometimes fed and sometimes most definitely not.  About seventy percent are candidates for another Human Society commercial featuring Sarah McLachlan's song "Angel" in the background.  You know, the one that would make Michael Vick cry?  Neutering does actually exist, if you were wondering, but no one does it, and sans anesthesia, it certainly is a huge risk for the dog.  We just adopted two puppies for our workstation, as my concession dog, Pipo, just had three.  Their names are Sasha and Malia, and they are the best-fed dogs in the Alibori, I'm pretty sure.

In terms of actual wildlife?  We have scores of bushrats (which people sometimes eat), regular rats, and snakes.  I've never actually seen one of these non-poisonous snakes, but sometimes the guards at the workstations get all excited because they got to hack one with their coup-coups.  They make a point of telling us every time; they're always super proud.   About forty kilometers to the north, there are elephants!  The town of Alfa-Koara is one of the entrances to Parc W, a game reserve.  Occasionally elephants will wander out and into surrounding villages.  There are even elephant-crossing signs on the highway.  Back in May or June, a young elephant wandered down to Kandi, or so I was told.  Unfortunately this is not something I saw myself, but I have it on good word from a co-worker.  Apparently a Fulani (semi-nomadic herder) saw it and tried to cut it with his coup-coup (sword).  The elephant was all, "hell-to-the-no, sir," and stomped on him.  Does it make me a terrible person if I kind of side with the elephant on that one?  You just don't mess with elephants.

When it rains, it pours

I'm off to Cotonou tomorrow for a 11-day soujourn in the south.  I have my mid-service medical exam, where I shall be tested for everything under the Sahelian sun, will say goodbye to my good friend and Alibori teammate, Alex, and will assist in training the new group of health volunteers.  I know that mentally, I really, really need to get out of Kandi.  While I'm super grateful that I live in a regional workstation town and can now bank here, it means I never really leave.  Still, going to the south has me riddled with anxiety.  Having to negotiate taxi prices (even when I really don't know what they should be), dealing with Cotonou traffic, and just the palpable difference in the pace of life have me worried.  Surely I can handle it for eleven days.  Surely.
This week, in anticipation for the trip, has been more stressful than most.  For whatever reason, I didn't go to the bank yesterday when I had time (aka laziness set in - it was awfully hot yesterday afternoon), so a line was added onto today's to-do list.  Here's the thing about living here: it seems almost inevitable that you become paranoid.  Case in point: this morning at circa 3:30, and I know because I was awake thinking about this trip, it started to rain.  Usually rainstorms here are downpours that are deafening on tin roofs like mine.  Oh no, I thought, there goes my morning run.  The problem was, it didn't stop.  At 8:45, I really started to panic.  Why didn't I go to the bank yesterday?  What if it doesn't stop raining, and I can't get there?  (Because of course when it rains, the world stops here, and that most certainly includes moto taxi drivers.)  Is the bank even open?  I paced; I fretted some more; I cleared cobwebs from the flourescent lights; I tried to work on sodoku puzzles that I still can't seem to master.  Finally, finally, at 10:45 the sky cleared up a bit, and I donned my rain jacket and set out.  Very quickly, I noticed the fields around my house (some of which are rice fields) were completely flooded.  All this gushing caramel-colored water had actually flooded the road, too.  Lovely.  I actually ended up just standing there, wondering how disgusting my feet would look after I waded through it, and if that would be acceptable in the relatively tiled and pristine Bank of Africa, Kandi branch.  How has this become my life?!?  Just then, a pickup truck of unknown origins, though somewhat official in appearance, pulled up to cross the river of liquidified goo, and you bet I flagged them down.  I hopped in the back and made the acquaintance of three cotton executives from Cotonou.  They drove me to the bank, where I thanked them profusely. Hitchhiking is not something I normally do, but desperate times. 
The rest of the afternoon has been relatively uneventful, save for my annoying trip back to the tailor.  I don't know if I've ever mentioned this before, but there is a fundamental misunderstanding among African tailors/coutouriers regarding the average Western woman's body type.  This time, this resulted in some extremely ill-fitting pants and a shirt, which although merely a copy of one I brought in for her, was much too small in the shoulders.  "Ah," she said, "you've gotten fat."  Thanks, madame, that's exactly what I needed.  And fyi, I weigh exactly the same as when I arrived in this country. Telling a woman she's fat or has gotten fatter, is actually a compliment here; I've tried to explain how it's quite an insult in America, but somehow it just didn't register.  Tomorrow, another day.  Dieu merci.