August 6th, 6:40am CST, 12:40 Benin
So the news is in and I'll be living in the beautiful city of...DJOUGOU (pronounced: joo-goo). It is, as Jess says, "the lottery of Peace Corps posts." In my beautiful house, I will have electricity, running water (that includes my own shower!), and internet...yes, internet...in my house. It's pretty funny because PC has been telling us not to get used to the nice amenities of Porto Novo because we probably wouldn't have them at our post...but it looks like my post is actually going to be nicer haha.
So Djougou is the capital of the Donga region of Benin, in the Northwest region of the country. It takes about 8 hours by taxi to get up there from Cotonou, but the road is safe and quick. The city is the commercial capital of the northwestern part of the country and has like a quarter of a million people in it. Suffice it to say, I am not going to have the typical villager life Peace Corps experience...which I am totally okay with. The city is primarily Muslim, the area around the city is really beautiful, and there are sweet touristy waterfalls just 45 minutes-hour north of me.
I will be working with PSI (Population Services International) which is an NGO widely regarded internationally and I'll be doing a lot of structured work. I'm not really sure what I'll be doing, but the organization works a lot with women and children and STI information.
I am really happy about this and cannot wait for my post visit in a few weeks to check it out. I'll let you know more information soon, but now I'm off in search of a nice cold soda before more french lessons this afternoon.
Also, randomly, Djougou is also the city where the last trainee who stayed with my host family lives. SO WEIRD. haha
YAY!
E
August 5th, 2:58pm CST, 20:58 EN AFRIQUE DE L'OUEST
This evening I went with the Wiricks to purchase a few necessities at the Grande Marche (Grahnd Mar-shay). After a very disappointing time at the internet cafe after school, I headed back to my house to get my moto helmet and talk to Maman. Actually, my time at the internet cafe merits some mention here. I was there to have a skype date with Colt and he and i had only been talking for a few minutes when I was assaulted by children. It was sort of cute at first; I had them sing the yovo song to Colt which was pretty hilarious, but then they would not leave me alone. They actually started touching my computer and would not go away when i said "don't touch me, don't touch my computer. Thank you, go away, good bye!" They understood French, but they just didn't give a damn. If their parents had been around, they would have gotten smacked in the face probably...but naturally I'm not going to start beating the children...so I just got up and left. The internet was sucking anyway, haha. I think that was the most frustrating moment I've had so far in this country, though. I just wanted to talk to my baby! Grrrrrrr.
Anyway, I talked with Maman a bit and told her I was heading off to the grand marche and she complemented my French and we chatted a bit about her dinner plans, etc, and I was pretty stoked to understand like the vast majority of the conversation. I definitely think my French has improved because there have been like 3 or 4 moments in the last couple days where I was like "there's no way I would have understood that 2 weeks ago"...so that's bon!
I met up with the Wiricks at the grand marche (I asked people where the other yovos were and eventually found them!). The place is crazy busy with vendor stalls all smashed together along the streets with motos passing by right in front of them and chickens and goats all meandering with kids and mamans with babies strapped on their backs. The vendors are all trying to call the shoppers over to their place and especially us since we're white and assumed to have lots of money to spend. We made our way through the vegetable section in search of tissue and on the way we happened to run into the jae lady. Ok, so jae are these sexy, lingerie beads that many many women wear here under their clothes. They are just strings of beads that go around the waist and you wear them all the time, to bed, to shower, etc. They are definitely pretty, but the coolest thing about them is the sexiness of them. Apparently if men see them, they go wild. One volunteer I was talking to dated a Beninese man for a while and once during an argument, she shook her jae at him when he was storming out of the house and when he saw her do it, he just demurely came back in and she had his full attention. She said that he would sometimes touch the small of her back and lightly graze his fingers over the jae in public places and that was super sexy to them. So, anyway, Heather and I saw the jae lady and decided that we must procure some for ourselves. So we spent the 600F for them to be fitted and I swear, there were probably 10 Beninese men who did double takes while we were getting them fitted, haha. Heather and I each got colors we thought our men would like...but since I'm mostly the only one who will see mine, I made sure I'd like it, too haha. I guess Colt will just have to wait until December to understand the wild sex appeal of the jae =D
After that, I quickly bought a coin purse and one of the sweet loofahs here that are basically like the loofahs in the US, but unraveled so it's one long piece of fibrous fabric for showering. Then we headed for the tissue aisle and it was a mad house there! There were like 4 places all shouting at us to come and check out their stash and we all bought so much tissue! I got a demi-piece (half piece) that is 6 meters to make a modele, which is the traditional outfit here with a long skirt and top. For someone short like me, 4 meters is sufficient, but I'll use the left over 2 meters to be a pagne, which is just a wrap around skirt. I also bought two other sets of tissue, but only got them in 2 meters so that I can either use them as pagnes or just get a couple simple skirts made. Pagnes aren't really professional wear so I shouldn't wear them to training, but if they are actual skirts, I can wear them. We'll see...I definitely have plenty of time to build up my Beninese wardrobe. All in all, I basically got 4 bottoms and one top and I spent about 10,000F...which is roughly 20 bucks...but for my payrate, it's more like $100. But honestly, it was worth it and I still have a lot of money from home that I got changed into cfa when I was in Cotonou.
When I returned home from the market, i showed my family my tissue and whispered to Maman about my jae and I discretely showed them to her. She was super excited and pulled me aside to show me hers, which were very pretty. She then asked when my fiance was going to come visit and I said that he'd come in December and that I'd bring him to Porto Novo to meet them if I lived close enough (which I'll find out tomorrow!!!!!) I then had myself a bomb ass dinner of a salad on top of spaghetti with french fries mixed in with a delicious mustard based viniagrette on top. C'est bon et j'ai bien mange! Apres, j'ai mange l'ananas (pineapple) that was pretty awesome, too. It was a good evening!
I am also feeling really good about the work that I am going to be doing here in the health sector. So often we're just trying to figure out how to live and talk to people that we sort of forget why we had the passion to come here in the first place. Today we had a talk about the different forms of malnutrition in African children and how to recognize them...and also the various causes and solutions for prevention and treatment. Most of what I'll be doing in this section will be helping mothers prepare and learn about healthy meals for their children, encouraging exclusive breast feeding for the first 6 months and then progressively weaning until 2 years of age. I'll also be doing baby weighings probably to teach the mom's about how their children are growing and sensibilizations about complete meals. I know I am destined to go into medicine, though, and not public health, because honestly, when I get down to it, I am actually a lot more interested in treatment than prevention...but of COURSE I KNOW that prevention is KEY to helping these kids. I know that and believe whole heartedly in public health work...but I'll be damned if I wasn't a bit disappointed when the speaker said the really sick kids would be sent to hospitals away from the health centers where I'll be working. I can't help it; I want to know the science of disease progression...I want to see someone get healthier because of my work. Maybe I just don't have patience and need the instant gratification that comes with treatment as opposed to the subtle knowledge that I've made a difference with prevention. I don't know what it is exactly, but I get much more excited when I think about myself in a hospital treating patients who are sick than thinking about giving a demonstration about how to prevent sickness in the first place. I guess they're just two sides of the same coin and I'll have many years to do treatment after I've left Benin.
On that note, I will have to see what my community at post is most interested in me doing. I can focus on child nutrition and give sensibilizations or I can just work in the health center or do a combination of both...or I can focus on sexual health awareness and HIV/AIDS...or I can do maternal health...it just depends on what they think I can be most helpful with and what resources are available to me. I would really like to work with pregnant women with prenatal care and my super big most awesome-est goal is to help a midwife (une sage-femme) with births...and maybe even catch a baby if I can swing it. That would be my ultimate post: one that I can work with a midwife on prenatal care, births, post natal care, and lactation as well as help moms prepare healthy foods for their kids and do baby weighings.
Well. Tomorrow we find out where we're going and who will be living closest to us. SO EXCITING! I'll try to hurry over to the internet cafe and get this posted along with the location of my site.
A demain,
E
PS. The mefloquine induced insomnia seems to be better, but I think it’s only the first couple nights after taking the pill that are bad...so we’ll see next week if it’s any better. But last night I slept very well and had awesome, very vivid, fun dreams. Yay!
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