L'annee deux mille douze (was a doozy)

And for what I hope is your reading pleasure, I bring to you today a roundup of deux mille douze (2012), bullet-pointed out of sheer laziness.

• I applied to graduate school.  Allons-y toward the future.   The three schools should get back to me in early March.
• Thanks to my grad school applications, I devised a five-year plan.  It's the first time maybe ever that I actually have one and want to put it into action. 
• Accomplished: I weighed at least 500 children - both in town and in the surrounding villages, and have revitalized the growth monitoring system here in Kandi, which is to say, someone's finally doing it.  As a result, I overcame my fear of babies, finally (but I still don't want one).  I conquered the beast that is the local high school and started a weekly English club.  Shockingly, I really enjoy it.  I also organized and led a week-long girls' camp.
• Was challenged EVERY single day, mentally and physically.  I'm stronger but also more aware of my limits. 
• I became a radio star this year.  I realized the other day that the station donates what is the equivalent of $40 of radio time to me each week.  That's a pretty significant community contribution..  Although I have never received any feedback on my show, which covers health and American culture, I hope a few people learn something each week.
• FINALLY, I started dreaming in French.  I've hoped for this since my first French class in 1995.  Although I am by no means what I would consider fluent, I can hold my own in a conversation. I love the challenge.
• I read several great books, though definitely not as many as I should have; among them were Dr. Farmer's Haiti after the Earthquake (which made me want to travel there even more than before) and Paulo Coehlo's The Fifth Mountain, a novel much more spiritual than I'm used to, but then again, spiritual uplift is a good thing.
• Became (sort of) owner to a rambunctious puppy named Sasha, who along with me would like to wish you a Merry Christmas and a most lovely 2013!

On guilt (sigh)

On guilt

Apologies in advance if this doesn't read totally coherently.  We're going with a "stream of consciousness" theme on the blog today.  In general, I suppose I don't spend a lot of time feeling sorry for people in my community, or for that matter, for Benin as a country.  There's no value in that.  The majority of people I encounter have what they need to get by, and I think it's evident that most of the time (there are exceptions), I'm not living in a Save the Children commercial.  Granted, I think my perspective is a bit different based on my time in Niger; there are legitimately people starving in Niger.  Here, less so.  Or at least it's less evident   Kandi, for example, has the infrastructure to deal with malnourished children.  The resources are there, but organizing and strategizing for the optimal usage of said resources is the real issue.  The Peuhl, an ethnicity of semi-nomadic herders who absolutely fascinate me, bear the brunt of the malnourishment problem in this commune.  But why?  They have the cows who produce milk, milk that the Peuhl make into cheese.  They're not lacking in nutritional resources (and as a vegan - at least while in America - that's hard for me to say).  I think in the case of the Peuhl, it's not a lack of caring about their children, certainly, but rather a matter of knowledge.  And this, of course, is where volunteers like me come in.

Where I do not feel I fit into the picture is as a source of money.  Most of my fellow volunteers, and certainly the agency, feel the same way.  I dislike the "teach a man to fish...." analogy because it's so overused, but it's true.  We're here to help "Africa stand up," as our friends at Songhai like to say.   But standing up means taking responsibility for yourself.  My dad and I have debated whether or not it's a good thing that Peace Corps has such a long history in Niger and Benin (arriving in 1962 and 1968, respectively).  Is this breeding dependence?  Some would argue so.  On most days, I would, too.  Where things get messy is when a co-worker, someone you see and interact with daily, asks for help.  This is where I start to doubt myself.  He claims he hasn't been paid in sixteen months.  I didn't really understand his explanation as to why this was so, but I was almost immediately dismissive given that these requests inevitably arrive near holidays (first before Tabaski, and now, near New Years).  But what if his kids aren't eating?  Then again, why is he only asking me and not our other co-workers?  The Beninese have a collectivist society; if your family is struggling, you can depend on your extended family, and to some degree, your neighbors.   I don't know if this should include the "batoure" who clearly does have a lot of resources, even if I do my best to hide them.  Most volunteers I know have lent money people in their villages (neighbors and host families, for the most part).  I made a rule against this before moving to post and have only budged twice: once for my neighbor with a sick child (the equivalent of $2) and once so that the guy next door could get a  new carte d'identite (ID card); he promptly repaid it after I specified a deadline.  And so today I (nicely) refused my co-worker, citing my not being here to just dole out cash.   But I feel guilty about it, and I don't quite know why.  Part of me feels like I do at home: if I have the means, it's my moral obligation to share them.  But I also feel like I've already given up a lot just by being here.  How much is enough?  Argh.  I don't know.  I hate not knowing the answer.

The Polio Campaign

Today I earned every bit of the $6 Peace Corps pays me (after taxes, naturally) to be here.  Rotary International sponsors a door-to-door polio vaccination campaign trimesterly here in Benin.  For this December's iteration, I actually received some advance notice and thus was able to plan to participate.  I generally have nothing to do on Friday mornings, so I figured I  might as well check out a new neighborhood - in-depth! - here in Kandi.  Despite that I walk everywhere and go for runs in the mornings, there are still a few spots in this town that I haven't yet explored.  And, ever since working at my nightmare of a job that happened to be located at their world headquarters in Evanston, I've been curious about what exactly Rotary does.  Not that they ended up  having a whole lot to do with the actual vaccination part, but whatever.  They did do a good job of marketing it (including text messages from our cell phone carrier, MTN), so props to them for that.

According to the coordinating doctor, all volunteers (relais communautaires - or community health volunteers who are specially trained - and myself) were to be ready at the health center's gazebo at 5:30am.  Being Benin, we really got going around 7.  I was paired with two women I had never seen or worked with before, both of whom were too fond of gesturing to me rather than using words.  I should probably put in a disclaimer here that I hadn't eaten breakfast and was anticipating stopping for some fried dough or other such street food delicacy (ha ha, total oxymoron).  We all know how I get when I haven't eaten breakfast.  So when they meant door-to-door, they really mean door-to-door.  At each house/room, volunteers are required to ask to see any children under 5 and even if there aren't any, they must write (in chalk) a big zero and "3T," representing the third campaign of the year.  If you actually do vaccinate, you have to write on the door of the house (or the wall) what fraction of them you vaccinated.  Most were 1/1 or 2/2.  The chalking of the doors/walls seemed bizarre at first, but I guess it makes sense.  It reminded me of Hurricane Katrina.  Of course there is also the official "fiche de pointage"or the tally sheet, where the volunteer (me, in all vaccination cases - tallying is ALWAYS my job, but I'm good at it) mark the age of the kid and how many were in the household.  Luckily one of the volunteer women was from that neighborhood (Keferi), so she mostly knew which kid belonged to whom and who comprised each household.  When you have literal mazes of single room mudbrick homes, it can be a challenge to figure out who belongs to whom.

Luckily the polio vaccines are oral.  The vaccinator kept telling the kids to come get their "bonbon," and their little faces would light up only to be met by bitter disappointment moments later.  This is no bonbon in the traditional sense.  It's hard to explain to a kid that these two flavorless drops of drug might not taste like candy, but you'll thank us later when you're not dealing with paralysis.

And so we wandered around this little neighborhood for, wait for it....., SEVEN hours.  At six and half hours, I was like, "ladies, can we possibly take a five-minute break here?"  I'm pretty habituated to walking around in the sun (believe me!), but this was another thing entirely.  Mostly because, as I mentioned, I hadn't eaten breakfast (not that there were any viable options at 6am, being that the Dunkin' Donuts just went out of business) and we were inching dangerously close to the end of the food stand/shack lunch rush.  So we sat down for five minutes, and I returned a friend's call.  My two fellow volunteers stared at me intently while I spoke what they initially thought was Spanish.  They asked what other languages I speak, and I mentioned Hausa, to which one of them said, "well the sun is a lot more intense in Niger."  For once, I just kept my mouth shut., mostly out of fatigue.  Twenty minutes later we finished the last vaccine vial and headed back to the health center.  Selfishly, I decided not to go tomorrow, given that I have a 14 mile run to do on Sunday.  Not only do I think the other volunteers have this one covered, but I also just want to say "no" for once. Perhaps that's not a bad thing.

Do They Know it's Christmas?

Do they know it's Christmas?

There's something weird about eating watermelon and listening to Christmas music.  Those two things shouldn't really go together, which, incidentally, is also how I sometimes feel about my living in Benin.  In the Christmas spirit of the "Holiday Lite" aka 93.9 in Chicago, I began listening to said Christmas tunes somewhere around November 1st. I downloaded a whole collection from the workstation harddrive, and bam, instant Christmas cheer.  Surely you remember and can undoubtedly hum along with "Do They Know it's Christmas?" originally sung as some sort of aid thing in the 80s.  I don't know how the actual lyrics of the song escaped me for so long.  Have you ever listened to them closely?  Perhaps I'm super sensitive or have not yet conjured up enough holiday-induced compassion, but dang!  This may debunk "The Little Drummer Boy" as my least favorite holiday tune.  Let us deconstruct some of the phrases.

Though the songwriters claim to want to "throw our arms around the world," they seem to lack an understanding about the actual lives of the so-called "other ones."  Was the situation of most Africans that much more dire in the 80s? The "bitter sting of tears" seems a little dramatic.  I'm not seeing a whole lot of tears around here.  Even in Niger, where the food security situation was especially dire this year, no one's crying about it.  In fact, I don't think I've ever seen a Nigerien or Beninese cry about anything.  Africans (all 54 countries' worth) could teach Americans something about stoicism.

Possibly my least favorite line in this bush-taxi wreck of a song is "tonight thank God it's them instead of you." Isn't this slightly hypocritical after the wrapping-arms-around-the-world part?  I get the being grateful for what you have thing, but I'd be embarrassed to play this song for my English club.

And lastly, the namesake phrase, "do they know it's Christmastime at all?"  In fact, they do.  In Benin, somewhere around 50% of the population is Christian, mostly Catholic.  So yes, "they" do know.  Even in places like Niger, where nearly the entire citizenry is Muslim, there are still a lot of people listening to the BBC or Voice of America on the radio or watching France 24, where the holidays will undoubtedly be discussed.  We're not as cut off from each other as you might imagine.

So one of my Christmas wishes is that we retire this song for good.  The world needs more of this instead:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kYEK-pxs_A  Could anything be better than transforming Toto's "Africa" into part of a Christmas medley?  No, no there could not.

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.