My Description of Service, or Every PCV's Validation

Well, I'm getting on a plane here in just about 18 hours and I wanted to post my DOS. After this post, I probably won't update again about Peace Corps, but may put up a general: oh hai, please come to my new blog over at HopeMD, type post.

Anyway, here's my last year and a half, condensed into two pages. The official copy is signed by my country director and kept on file on official letterhead. Ooh, official. Oh, and PS. I totally tested into ADVANCED LOW in my last language interview. I was pretty excited to have actually gone up a level since swear-in, especially because I was so worried I'd actually gotten worse! So there ya go, even someone with novice level in the beginning can finish up in advanced. Go me!


Ok, DOS time:

Elaina Hope ________
Description of Service
 July 2010-November 2011

REPUBLIC OF BENIN, WEST AFRICA

TRAINING
Pre-Service Learning  (July 14 – September 17, 2010)
1 Language (87 hours) Classroom study of French; current level: Advanced Low.
2 Technical Training (118 hours) Overview of Beninese healthcare system, comprehensive training on integrated disease management, maternal health, and infant and child health; 10 hours practice trainings and activities in the community.
3 Cross-Culture (35.15 hours) Discussion on Beninese history, geography and, traditions; professional and social culturally appropriate behavior and communication.
4 Health (22.5 hours) First aid, preventive and symptom oriented medical procedure, diagnosis and treatment.
5 Safety and Security (8.5 hours) Instruction on safety practices in Benin and ways to stay secure at post as well as incident reporting procedures.

In-Service Training (December 2010): An intensive two week training that reviewed strategies for community assessment, funding streams, and provided and introduction to promoting behavior change. Instruction also focused on PD Hearth, a nutritional recuperation program and Life Skills, a Peace Corps resource designed to promote communication skills that will enable healthy decision making.

In-Service Training (May 2011): A five-day training on community mobilization for malaria prevention and organizing populations to become health resources and leaders in their community.

PRIMARY PROJECT: RURAL COMMUNITY HEALTH PROGRAM (RCH)
Population Services International (September 2010-November 2011): Worked primarily with the office of PSI-Djougou assisting the communications director with social marketing and health education programming in the regions of the Atacora and Donga. Assisted with the smooth operation of the office and compiled monthly reports and tracking of impacts on the community in the areas of reproductive health and HIV/AIDS peer education trainings. Accompanied PSI on regional formations, assisting with logistics and documentation of activities and progress as well as the synthesis of gathered information and reporting. Assisted the office staff with learning English and regularly participated in translations of documents and paperwork.
HIV/AIDS and Reproductive Health (October 2010-November 2011):  Assisted nurses midwives with the placing of contraceptive devices such as upper arm contraception implants, sexual health consultations, and HIV/AIDS testing and counseling. Participated in discussions of healthy relationships and sexual behavior with community women including condom demonstrations and other family planning options.
Vaccination and Baby Weighing (January 2011): Participated in the facilitation of discussions with community women about healthy nutrition for their newborns and children during baby weighing sessions and weekly vaccinations. Helped nurses and health workers track infants’ progress on growth charts and described healthy meals and options to mothers as well as information about exclusive breastfeeding and malaria prevention.
Pre-Natal Consultation Assistance (September-November 2010): Assisted with Pre-Natal consultation at the maternity center with procedures in conjunction with health workers.

SECONDARY PROJECTS/ACTIVITIES
Peace Corps Volunteer Discussion Day (October 2011): Spent the day talking to high school students in the United States while on vacation, discussing cultural life and development work in Benin and answering questions about the application process, life abroad, and social media while in the Peace Corps.
Running Club (October 2010-September 2011): Had semi-weekly informal running sessions with local kids and adolescents and talked about the importance of regular exercise and nutrition.
English Instruction (March-September 2011): Provided informal lessons of English language instruction with community members and colleagues.
Science, Engineering, and Entrepreneurial Camp (August 2011): Acted as the lead science instructor for a two week course of 60 middle school aged kids. Discussed theory and practice of basic science concepts and designed and implemented several science projects (water rocket, solar water distillation, terrarium, science of sound). Assisted kids with the presentation skills necessary to inform and recreate the projects on their own and oversaw the final community science fair.
Camp GLOW Bohicon (July 2011): Participated in five day empowerment camp for girls as a camp counselor. Facilitated sexual and reproductive health sessions and assisted with the smooth operation of the camp.
Camp Success Djougou (June 2011): Invited girls to participate in the week long girls’ empowerment camp and was a logistics coordinator during the week. Developed and facilitated several sessions, including life skills and women’s rights. Designed sexual and reproductive health sessions and assisted a local midwife with answering questions. Maintained copies and information of projects and progress for sustainability and posterity of future girls’ camps in the region.

It's been fun! I'll miss you all, but be sure to check out my new, med school adventures blog, HopeMD, on wordpress. Thanks everyone!

What I'll Miss About Benin (and what I definitely will not miss!)

I have just under 24 hours left in Benin and I've been thinking a lot about my time here over the last year and a half and what I've really come to love and those things that really drive me crazy. I don't know if I'll miss all these things right away or if it'll take months or even years for me to have a craving for something on the list, but who knows? Here it is, my two lists. Warning, it's pretty long.


Things I’ll miss about Benin:

-the sound of women pounding yams at dusk
-the five times per day call to prayer at the mosques around Djougou
-the sound of the rain on my tin roof while I’m laying in bed
-riding on the back of a zem at night with the cool air rushing by
-seeing and wearing colorful fabric and fun outfits everywhere
-women carrying baskets of whatever on their heads
-cute, free roaming, bratty Beninese kids (even though they annoy me, too!)
-adorable baby goats and chickens running around
-yam pilee…sooooo delicious
-wagasi…there are no words for how awesome and unique this food is
-a cold, refreshing beer after a crazy hot day, especially with other PCVs
-hanging out and venting with other volunteers
-the excitement of making American food and drinks with other volunteers
-watching movies at the Nati workstation
-ordering fries at the Nati workstation
-hanging out with my Beninese friends, just sitting or making small talk
-teaching sexual health and seeing the look of understanding in people’s eyes
-greeting strangers on the street
-French, especially Franglais, the combination of French and English
-random sayings like ‘bon assise, bon travail, bon douche.’ It’s just so friendly!
-constant sunshine and feeling like summer (although Chaleur sucks)
-Zaari and cuddling with her…omg, I can’t even think about her, too sad!
-sitting out in my back porch at night smoking a cigarette and looking up at the stars in total silence, feeling small and awed by the world and my place in it
-long runs in the African bush, the red dirt dusting my shoes
-mango season
-joking around with my work partners
-the camaraderie between volunteers and shared experience of living in Africa
-being the center of attention, someone always interesting and worth talking to
-inexpensive and simple living
-lizards running around like squirrels
-the colorful craziness of the market place
-the awesome tan lines on my feet from my Chacos
-the simple joy of eating a good meal and watching an episode of How I Met Your Mother
-the excitement of others when I speak Dendi, the local language
-not having to shave and just being a dirty hippie
-Harmattan, the windy season, and the fires late into the night, burning on the horizon
-the poignancy of the first, cooling rain of the season
-feeling like I’m making a difference in people’s lives, sometimes in unintended ways
-crazy, unexpected setbacks and the lessons learned (although it is very frustrating, too!)
-feeling like I’m part of something bigger than myself

Things I won’t miss about Benin:

-13 hour bus rides in the heat surrounded by BO and noisy chickens and babies
-constant sexual harassment
-extreme pollution and trash everywhere
-Chaleur, the hot season
-frequent power outages and water being cut
-screaming babies and children
-seeing kids get beat and generally abused
-seeing malnutrition and poverty related illness
-feeling ultimately useless in the big picture of development
-waking up hot and sweaty and gross
-always feeling dirty, never perfectly clean all over
-not being able to cool off or stop sweating after a run even hours after a cold shower
-having my privacy constantly invaded by neighbors and kids
-never being able to be anonymous or walk around without getting called out
-YOVO, YOVO, BONSOIR, CA VA BIEN, MERCI!
-getting called "yovo", "batoure", "anasara", "blanche", "blondie", or "mademoiselle"
-pretty much everything in Cotonou except for the good food and workstation internet
-the subtle pressure from some other volunteers to drink and party heavily
-feeling inadequate as a volunteer and aid worker
-boring and carb heavy food options
-constant sickness and diarrhea and constipation
-having to filter water and always be conscious of how safe the water is
-bleaching vegetables to have a fresh salad
-doing laundry by hand
-bugs and spiders and having to spray and kill them
-mosquitoes and weekly malaria prophylaxis
-constant boredom
-missing friends and family and feeling guilty for being so far away
-LONG DISTANCE RELATIONSHIP and all the crappiness that goes with it
-getting physically grabbed at the market place
-the bureaucracy of the Peace Corps
-feeling stranded at post or frustrated with outside communication or internet
-casual cruelty to animals
-the informal attitude toward time and keeping appointments
-hearing creepy rustling sounds at night and freaking out about what it could be
-sunburns and worrying about getting skin cancer
-gross, always dirty and cracked feet
-fearing for my safety on crazy taxi rides
-being frustrated at the slow pace of life (although I’ve learned a lot, too!)
-having to discuter for prices
-feeling lonely and homesick
-being constantly asked for gifts and money and to be taken to America
-Nescafe. That stuff is nasty. I don’t care how desperate you are. Just say no.

Oh, Benin. It's been life changing and amazing and I wouldn't trade it for anything. But I am ready for a change! I'm not sure if I'll be back on this blog except to post my DOS, but if you'd like, you can keep following my life journey, here at my medical school blog on wordpress.

Keep on rocking!

Elaina

ET update, or Acronym City

I said in my last post that the PC administration doesn't make it difficult to early terminate. Well, after finishing up a couple days of processing down in the capital, I'm realizing that they don't exactly make it easy either.

The ET manual closely resembles the Close of Service (COS) one and because I have spent so much time here, most of my process resembles a COS more than it does an ET for someone who has only been in country a few months or never made it to their post or something. I must meet with almost every PC administration person, get many forms filled out and there is a master checklist that I must get signed before I meet with the administrative officer (AO). I have written a Description of Service (DOS, which I'll post here in a follow-up post), and filled out my official resignation form, and had my close of service medical exam (although I still have to talk with the PCMO about my smoking and get my TB test read...fun stuff haha). I have officially turned in all my Peace Corps stuff (mattress, gas cans, etc) and assigned books (Where There Is No Doctor, Helping Health Workers Learn and many many others), and I need to also go to the bank headquarters and close out my account (which involves a letter and basically taking out all the money left in the account). Essentially most of the things remaining that I have to do are administrative things and talking to the Country Director (CD) and the AO and having my final language interview (scheduled for the morning). I have a couple other errands I need to run in Cotonou and a few loose ends to tie up, but for the most part, I've gotten the majority of the necessary procedures finished.

Right now I'm also waiting on confirmation of my Air France flight information, but if all goes according to plan (and really, how likely is THAT going to be haha), I could theoretically be leaving Benin in the evening on Thursday, the 24th. Which, of course, is THANKSGIVING. I'll be able to have a last meal here with a few other volunteers and say some goodbyes and get a couple photos. I'm planning on wearing my nice bazin tissue, the red marbled pants and top that I wore for the new stage swear-in in September. I'm gonna be cute! Peace Corps will provide a ride to the airport with all my things and if all goes well (meaning no horrible two day delay in Paris grrrr), I could be back in Kansas City by the evening on Friday, the 25th. I won't make it for Thanksgiving, but I'll be home in time for leftovers! Woo hoo!

Ok, that's all I can think of for right now, I'll update with my DOS later on today when I think of it. I was pleasantly surprised after finishing it up. I've felt for a long time that I didn't really do that much work-wise, but then I finished writing the DOS and realized that I may have had more of an impact than I thought. Which is a lovely feeling to have as I'm leaving. Ok, talk to you later!

~Elaina

I'll be home for Christmas

Well, it's official! I am leaving the Peace Corps a few months early to go home, help my family out, and make some money before medical school. The decision was definitely a tough one and one I analyzed for a long time before calling the Peace Corps to set it up, but ultimately it's the best thing for me and my family right now. Essentially it came down to the fact that I was going to have to ET anyway, probably in April, and why should I wait around for five months, get back into a routine, and be frustrated and miserable when I could make it home for the holidays? The Peace Corps does not make it difficult to early terminate and once it comes down to a need to ET for grad school, a few extra months seem superfluous in the long run. Sure, I feel a little guilty about leaving my projects and work partners behind (and I am close to traumatized about leaving Zaari), but everyone has been very understanding, especially of the fact that in reality, it's only a few months earlier than expected.

The next couple weeks will be spend filling out pages and pages of forms, figuring out packing and getting Zaari to her new home. She will be going to the home of a PC homologue who has many kids who love animals. I will be able to get updates on her through my Djougou post-mate and in the end, staying here is what is best for her (even if it makes me cry at night haha).

The last year and a half has been completely life altering and amazing and I wouldn't trade it for anything. It had its ups and downs, but doesn't life? Overall, I was happy and feel like I've both done some amazing work here and made many lasting friendships (cue cheesy music now). I'll miss a lot of people, but I would have been saying good-bye in a few months anyway, so I guess it's just ripping off the bandaid early.

All that sad stuff said, I am so incredibly excited to be going home! I'm looking for jobs in tutoring, being a nanny or long-term babysitter, or working as a receptionist at a medical office. I've already applied to over 20 jobs and hopefully I'll start to hear back soon. Apparently moving is sort of expensive...as is getting married and starting a household...(who knew? haha) so I'll be trying to save up as much as possible in the next few months before the wedding and med school.

I also just want to say that there have many times when I've wanted to leave, usually for very emotional reasons not backed by real logical ones. I've missed America and my family and Colt, but I've held out because I'm strong and determined and have never been someone to quit something just because it was hard. While ETing now does indeed solve some of those feelings (completely normal feelings that almost every PCV deals with on occasion), me leaving now is not due to emotional reasons. Right now it's about logic and finances and being a part of my family. Once I reached this point of clarity in thinking about my options, it actually wasn't that stressful of a decision. Ultimately, I'm not upset or struggling with the choice because I've put in enough time for me, personally, to feel accomplished and satisfied with my work and life here. Before I was always worried about regretting the choice later in life, which was a major deterrent to leaving. But now, at this point, with only a few months left, I know that I will have no regrets, only good memories! It helps that everyone I've talked to is supportive and in no way do I feel like a quitter. I loved it here and feel like I'm ending things on a good note at a good time for me.

Benin, it's been real. Stay classy,

Elaina

PS. I'll probably be back on to give a few ET updates for interested people and I may update again once I'm permanently back in the states. I can't believe this blog is ending! It's been such a big thing in my life for a long time now and it's going to be weird. I'll link my new, med school blog here and again in my final post. Yay, for turning the page!

A Hundred Fans

My standing fan is broken and I am sweating in my hot little house as I finish the movie. I’m frustrated and itching for a cigarette. I’m thinking about tomorrow and the early trip I am taking to the regional workstation where I know I have a package from America waiting for me. I am planning my vacation, thinking about dinner tomorrow night, thinking about anything other than where I am right now, bored and alone in my hot, airless house.
I step outside as the credits start and I shut off my computer. I rummage through my purse until I find the battered box of local cigarettes with the inked label “last pack ever” across the lid. I sit in my bamboo chair and strike a match, my cat following me out the screen door to catch bugs in the florescent glow of my back porch light. I smoke there and notice the silence that has fallen in my neighborhood. All I can hear are the cicadas and the whirring of my small refrigerator fan, and the occasional moto engine in the distance. I’ve missed the sounds of the women pounding yams, or the children playing soccer with an old deflated tennis ball. Even the mosque is quiet, the evening call to prayer not even a whisper on the wind.
And there is a breeze out here, I realize. Once I step outside my cement house the cool air hits me and I wrap my pagne around myself a little tighter, enjoying the cool feeling, knowing that I’ll be sleeping soon without the comforts of a fan, wishing a had a hundred of them. I decide I want to travel to exotic places when my service here is over. I want to be a world traveler. I think about that for a while, filling my passport with stamps, taking trips with my lover, leaving the hypothetical kids at home. Mommy and Daddy trips, we’ll call them. We’ll eat local foods and learn local language. I think about those days in the future while I finish my cigarette.
I’m not ready to go inside yet. For some reason I feel like I’m missing something out here and as the winds shift I understand what that is. I am here right now. I am living here. I live in Africa. I live in Africa. Instead of berating myself for not living in the moment, I just stop thinking and listen to that silence. I watch Zaari as she intently stalks a carpenter ant and I really see her in this moment. I don’t think about the future, or my trips, or how hot I’ll be sleeping under my mosquito net tonight. I even manage to not try to guess what’s waiting for me in my American package. I just let myself go as silent as the night, and empty everything else in my life. I close my eyes and take a deep breath and find that quite unexpectedly, I am happy. I drink it in, feeling the world as simply a part of my happiness, as part of the love that I have for myself, for Zaari, for that carpenter ant.
It doesn’t last very long and soon I am wondering if there are Oreos waiting for me tomorrow and debating whether or not I should order French fries for dinner. I set my watch for three minutes and decide to meditate. I know I should get back into the habit and I’ve always felt centered after doing so. I cross my legs over the bamboo armrests and close my eyes again, forgetting the time, forgetting dinner, clearing everything away but my smile and the love I feel for the whole world. I think of myself as a small island with all the stress and frustrations swirling around me and disappearing into the earth through the legs of my chair. I breath deeply and every time my mind wanders I gently bring myself back to the center of myself, my island of calm and peace. When my watch beeps I am genuinely surprised. It had felt like 30 seconds, like I had just begun to find that peace. I stand and stretch, the pagne falling to my feet. I am here, in this moment under the African sky. I will not be shaken; we are all as one. I take another deep breath for good measure and decide to take a quick bucket shower to rinse off before climbing into bed for the night.
As I step over to my shower I see a small spider is floating at waist level, diligently building a web in the evening glow. I watch her work with a small smile on my lips. Typically freaked out by spiders I am impressed with my own calm, a direct result of my awesome meditation and powers of living in the moment, I think. She is, however, blocking my entrance to my shower. I wiggle my finger in the space around her, thinking I guess of lifting her web and depositing her elsewhere so that I can cool off in the water and go to bed in peace. Instead of just allowing me to move her, however, the spider rapidly climbs up the web and onto my hand. Immediately my calm peaceful meditation mindset vanishes and I am totally freaking out, wiping my hands together, jumping up and down, heart beat racing, praying that the damn thing is dead and not crawling over my naked skin burrowing in to lay her freaky baby spider eggs.
As my heart slows and I am sure that I am not the future host for a hundred spider babies, I start to laugh. Quiet at first and then full out cracking up. I actually have to lay my hand against the wall to steady myself (after making sure there are no bugs of course). I laugh for longer than I meditated, until my eyes are tearing up and I’m sure that nothing makes any sense anymore at all and that’s okay. I don’t have to be a balanced work of art, I can be a messy finger painting. I don’t think I could live in the moment, every moment even if I really wanted to and devoted my entire life to it. I need to plan, I need to think about the future, tomorrow, my vacations, my trips, my package from America with the possible Oreos. That’s who I am and that’s really alright, too.
I pour a couple of bowls of cool water over my back and smile, loving the cold chill of the simplicity of it, loving my body, myself. I close my eyes and rinse off the day, the stresses and frustrations, the heat, and I am content. As I step out and pick up my fallen wrap I realize that I had just spent the last few minutes living in the moment without even trying, just actually being and experiencing life. I grin to myself as I shut my screen door and put Zaari to bed.
As I climb under my mosquito net I decide that I might spend the entire night feeling too hot, wishing I had a fan, wishing I was somewhere else, but that when it really counts I can find my own inner peace, too. And that knowledge is worth a hundred fans.

Camp GLOW Bohicon and gluten free peanut coconut cupcake!

So we just finished up camp GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) in Bohicon. The Wiricks ran it and it was beautiful. I feel for the first time in a year that I can actually see the difference I'm making in people's lives here. I mean, my group, the red team, was just absolutely inspiring. My mind was blown in a totally awesome way. I'll just let the photos speak for themselves.

It was amazing and I got so close to my girls. I miss them now! They were so smart and motivated to change the world and be feminists! <3

I got my first med school rejection...and then I got rejected at my dream school, the University of Chicago. So...in order to cheer myself up, I needed to make a cupcake. So I did. A delicious, gluten free peanut and coconut cupcake with chilled brown sugar coconut icing.

classy in the old tomato paste can...but so fluffy!

delicious and gluten free!

before the frosting...crumbly but amazing

probably the best thing I've tasted since America

So there ya go. Life is good despite the med school rejection...which is totally lame but I'm over it. The science camp is in a few weeks and I'm starting to get excited about it. I get my own team again and am running a terrarium project and a solar cooker project. We'll see how it goes. I'm also making gluten free snickerdoodle cookies tonight at the Nati workstation. WHATUP.

back to the blogosphere

I don't really like that word "blogosphere," but I suppose that's what this world is, a little sphere. I know that right now, while I'm specifically blogging about Peace Corps life, is the time when I will probably have the most followers, the most people who regularly read my thoughts about life. It's interesting to know that the scope of this blog has gotten pretty wide. In a lot of ways, that's exactly what I wanted. I wanted to share my experiences with the rest of the world. In other ways, though, it's a bit nerve wracking. Clearly, the powers that be ARE paying attention to what we write, and the idea of censorship just makes me feel pretty icky all over. Because I'm applying to med school right now, I don't want to mess with it, though. Part of me definitely feels that if the Peace Corps thinks something on my blog is inappropriate, med schools would probably agree, and so ultimately it's only a good thing that I am censoring myself, even if it came about through third party censorship. So really, in the long run, no harm done.

And the point of all that was to say: I'm not going anywhere! I'll stop the cursing and maybe think twice about posting negative thoughts, but other than that, I'm sticking around. I still have a lot of time left and a lot of things still to say about the Peace Corps, about Africa, about Benin, and about my life. And I know y'all are still listening, so thank you.

I'm updating my wish list to include more vegan, gluten-free items (more on that later...with a recipe and pictures!), and I'll be posting a few entries today and working on med school applications all day. I'm in Cotonou, just living it up. I live in Africa, man. And life is good.

whoa

I was just asked to remove blog content. Ironically, it was nothing political, but profanity. I am very upset that anyone would think me unprofessional and apologize to anyone I offended by posting my unedited thoughts. I assure you all that I am nothing but professional in practice in my work here and all frustrations are, of course, handled in appropriate ways.

I highly doubt I will be posting often during the second year of my service. I have been effectively scared off. It's unfortunate; I really did consider my blog to be one of the best ways of fulfilling the third goal. I'll be on every now and again with very generic updates, but i doubt the blog will be as free in the future. I'm also deleting my twitter. I have never considered anything I've posted there to be off putting, but I didn't think anything here was, either. I have too much on the line right now to risk it.

So I hope you've enjoyed the blog! I can't believe it's been a year.

Taking the leap

I've been thinking about faith lately, contemplating the reasons we believe in certain things and choose to allow so called reason to take the reigns on others. Do we choose these distinctions or do they just somehow develop? Can the balance shift and should we seek out challenges to encourage our assumptions to change?

Something I've been feeling in the last 9 months is that what we know to be true is never static as long as we allow it to grow. Ideas, beliefs, faith--all these things are dynamic and should be dynamic for social and personal change to really be affected. We can so easily get caught in our knowledge, in what we know to be true, that we forget how to learn, forget that discovery comes from the sometimes unforeseeable opening of the mind.

I've become so jaded while here. I came to Africa thinking change was possible and somehow along the way my thoughts shifted to a deadlock. Everywhere I looked I saw roadblocks to change from the very people who could benefit the most. All the stereotypes we laughingly discussed at the beginning of training seemed to be true. From believing that people here wanted my help to assuming that I was irrelevant and unwanted, my truth made a complete shift. I struggled with finding friendships among women who seem to just perpetuate the injustices against them, and men who daily and constantly harass me to the point of demoralization. Sometimes I really do just want to give up because I know that nothing I do here is going to have any sort of impact in the long run, so what's the point?

Volunteers get together and binge drink. Sometimes there's a therapeutic bitch session where we complain about the administration, the country, the people, the corruption, but mostly people just drink themselves into a stupor so they don't have to think about it at all. It's cathartic in its own way, I suppose, but not particularly helpful and not something that I participate in often. There's something so juvenile about it, like being trapped in a frat house party where no one seems to justify the real occasion. I'm not trying to blame the volunteers; life here is difficult and frustrating so much of the time. But we do get so trapped into our own assumptions and our own frustrations that no one really says anything about anything anymore. It's just the same thing every time, hoping to pass the time away so we'll be one more day closer to being finished with the pointlessness of these two years.

The last three weeks I've been paying my thirteen year old neighbor girl to come over to my house on Saturdays and help me with my laundry. I get everything set up, she washes, and I help her hang the clothes up to dry. She's quick and efficient and gets 500F out of it, which is a pretty good deal for us both. This last Saturday she didn't show up at the time we had agreed on, 10am, which was extremely irritating for me. I assumed that she had either forgotten or didn't care enough to respect my time or her money and I was grumbling pretty angrily to myself while I started doing the laundry on my own. I was starting to scrub a t-shirt when I thought to myself that perhaps something had happened, maybe there was an emergency. Of course that would be my first thought if I was paying an American girl to come over and help me. I would immediately worry about her and want to check up to make sure she was okay, not angrily assume that she had ditched me for some other more interesting activity. Why did I make the choice to be upset with my neighbor for those reasons? Was it a choice? I tend to think yes it was.

 I am conditioned to think the worst of my fellow neighbors because time and time again, the worst is what I've seen. When a Beninese man comes up to me, my first instinct is to be aggressive and dismissive. I am rude automatically because so often I am harassed. Is this fair? I don't know. I'm not sure if it was wrong for me to assume that my neighbor had ditched me. But when she showed up, an hour later, she explained that she was making lunch for her little sister and brother because their mother was traveling somewhere and couldn't make it to my house on time. She said that she would have called but that her family cannot afford a cell phone. Immediately I felt both guilty and elated. Guilty because I had assumed that she was just being lazy and in reality she was working much harder than myself. Elated because a small part of my cynicism had been chipped away by this girl with her honesty and strength. I realized, for just a moment, that my time here did not have to be shaped by the static preconceptions I'd developed, and all I felt then was joy.

As far as faith goes, I know that nothing is certain. I know that challenging our assumptions is the only way to get to a place of acceptance, of peace, because if we let ourselves, we will be surprised by small acts that alter our perceptions. Before I got here, I knew I would change the world. Three months ago I knew I wasn't going to make it all the way through my service. Today I know that with an open heart and mind, I can be changed. I wonder what I'll know tomorrow?

a light at the end of the tunnel

Things are looking up. Colt will be here in 29 days, the Harmattan winds have started bringing cooler nights and wonderful midday breezes, my french is almost always adequate in any given situation, and those damn baby goats are as cute as ever. I have a new found sense of duty after filling with patriotism post season two of the west wing. i am serving my country by living here, i am working toward international cooperation and peace by living with the people making little money and hand washing my laundry. There is honor in that and i am really starting to believe it. I thought I believed it when I applied, but Peace Corps applicants have no idea about so many things. I think it takes at least a good chunk of a year to realize how much you don't know and even more time after that to find the perspective that will foster effective work. I am at that point. I started so completely misguided and I had done my homework! I was as possibly prepared as can be expected from a well educated American 22 year old and rounding up to my fifth month here I am only now seeing that there might actually be a place for me here. I had to get lost in myself, in the dark, before I could see the possibility for something other than a cheap idealism. I have come full circle as it were, and i am just now understanding that there was something almost insincere about our desire to serve.

Nakayo! Part Un

That means "welcome" in Dendi, the local language of my village!

Ok, so let me just say that wow, it has been a long time since I have been away from my computer and I am realizing that I have definitely not been absconding from technology since I’ve been in Africa. I have pretty regularly updated this blog despite the fact that I no longer find anything in my day to day existence particularly interesting, unless you consider incredible bureaucratic frustration to be especially engaging. However, the last week that I have spend sans computer has been one of legit trials and tribulations, as it were, although not much of those trials were directly related to technological-withdrawl. While in Djougou I got really bad food poisoning, was throwing up bad enough that I was super dehydrated, and ended up needing to go to the local hospital for intravenous intervention. Now, seriously, before anyone freaks out, I am fine and back in Porto Novo, safe and sound. The Peace Corps doctors advised me the entire time and everything was clean and safe. That said, it was pretty intense.

I suppose I’ll just tell the little post visit tale chronologically, but know that as I write this I am at full health with my trusty anti parasitic pills, and that I really liked Djougou. I’m also breaking this post visit into two parts; my thrilling tale of food poisoning will come later, but first let me recount all the other parts of my journey! The writing is a bit more story-like, which was definitely more fun to write than normal blog entries have been.

Ok.

Djougou Post Visit Part Un

The first day of visit began at 5:00am when I left my host family to walk to the school where the van was picking us up to take us to the bus. It was still dark outside as I walked to school and the entire city was transformed into a weird, mysterious landscape that only made not speaking french that much more frustrating when dark shadows called out things to me. Once I was on the bus, I managed to use up the entire battery of my ipod within an hour and my homologue, Imorou, and I didn’t really have much to discuss beyond the basic familiarities. I think we both realized we’d be spending a lot of time together in the future and there was no need to waste the glorious air-conditioning of the bus to actually attempt to engage in a conversation en franglais (an intriguing blend of French and English). We stopped in Bohicon, a lovely little town that will be hosting Heather and Craig, and there for the first time in my life, paid someone to allow me to pee in a hole. It was cheap, but one would think that the very act of paying to urinate necessitates some sort of sanitary conditions, but that was definitely faux.

Once we arrived in Djougou, Imorou kindly discute’d (“dis-queue-tay’d” a franglais word of tres importance that means negotiation) a good price for a meal of yam pilee with wagasi. Yam pilee is like pate (sticky and solid and white without any hint of nutritional value…comes from yams…which are not like one would expect; here they are these giant freakishly hairy grey tubers that resemble firewood. To make the pilee, the yams are mashed and boiled and mashed again and then molded into a strange gelatinous pile to eat by hand with the sauce) but unlike pate, yam pilee is actually sort of good. It tastes a bit like mashed potatoes if they were made by anyone not my mother or myself (there are few things as delicious and incomparable as my mother’s mashed potatoes). They lack a little salt, but with the thick, spicy tomato sauce and the freshly fried, crispy wagasi, yam pilee is definitely my favorite traditional Beninese food I’ve experienced thus far.

Wednesday night I just hung out with my homestay family in Djougou, which ended up actually being a quasi-hotel with clean sheets and my own room, but so much noise outside that I wished I had brought my earplugs or not used up all my ipod battery on the drive. The woman who was supposed to house me was sick and I instead slept at her place of business, a tissage center, a new, French built compound where groups of women get together to weave various colorful fabrics. It is actually the place where Doug, my post mate and host brother from another mother (he had my host family last year), works with his homologue in the Small Business Development sector. The place was nice and the people nicer; the children outside were screaming the screams of children playing, the noise was supplemented by the other key sounds of the West African town: goats, guinea fowl, and the ever-so-present muezzin of the many mosques that dot the horizon in the city. That night I ate some strangely spicy rice and bean dinner (washed down with half a liter of unfiltered, unboiled water before I realized what I was doing and poured it down the drain), listened to the muezzin in his minaret and read my book called Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Labor in the American Black Market (if possible, I’ve become even more of a voracious reader here in Benin as well as increasingly, annoyingly liberal. By the end of the book I was ready to argue about the legalization of marijuana to anyone who was bored enough to listen…which was essentially the huge cockroach that ended up dying next to my bed that night). The third half of the book was all about pornography and nudged between discussions of Hugh Hefner and the porn connections to the mafia, there was a mention of my NGO, Population Services International (PSI) as having been started by a guy who wanted to sell novelty items by mail in the US and contraceptives in the developing world. Well, there ya go.

The next day was Thursday and at PSI I was introduced to the Djougou staff who all tried to speak English with me. I thought about asking them about their organization’s humble beginnings, but didn’t think either my French nor my English was sufficient to discuss mail order sex toys at any great length. Everyone seemed really nice and well educated and fully enjoying the air-conditioning and the high speed internet. A few people really joked around with me and I think that I will actually have a bit of fun working there. Imorou and I went out on a little visit to a neighboring village a few kilometers out and met up with a sage-femme at a maternite to collect from her records information about STIs and contraceptive use in her region. Imorou diligently recorded the numbers and we chatted with her for a bit. The place was eerily quiet; all the public health workers in Benin are en grave, on strike, right now for more money from the government. I asked what people do if they get sick and she just smiled and said that they all still work on Fridays.

I was able to see my house that afternoon and let me tell ya, I was not thrilled with my first impression. It had been taken back by Africa; reclaimed by the gods to the insects and creatures of this continent. Spiders, lizards, heretofore unseen bugs of various varieties, cobwebs, freaky looking plants. All that paled in comparison to the maestro, la grande, the largest fucking spider that has ever been conceived outside of a Hollywood horror film. This spider was the size of a large, well-fed rodent, although not nearly as hairy and it was hanging out in a thick, dewy web next to my shower just waiting for an unsuspecting child to wander into it’s nest, Shelob style. I’m talking ten inches from the tip of it’s disturbingly pointy front legs to the back of it’s claw-like nether regions, with a dark, sinister body as thick and robust as my fist. MY FIST. I actually don’t think I’ve seen a larger spider in cinema, except for the Tolkein creation, Aragog from HP, and those freaky Jumanji spiders that gave me the heebie-jeebies for years. Yeah, you remembers those. Imorou killed it valiantly with a stick and I have been assured that the body has been properly disposed of. Doug guaranteed that la grande was not a normal occurrence, a reassurance that was very necessary after Imorou insisted I stay at the house and get habituated to them. Yeah, I don’t want to be that bien ingre, thanks.

Despite the lurking arachnid horror, the house is lovely. I have a few things to be made by the menusier, like a bookshelf, double bed, a few shelves here and there, and a clothes rack, but I have already a make-shift couch, a coffee table, two living room chairs, a dining table with four chairs, a desk, a cot, an extra twin bed, and some duct taped newspaper clippings from the 2008 World Series as decoration. Most of my move in allowance will be spent on carpentry, kitchen supplies, and some cool paintings if they are not too expensive. The house is big and right next door to PSI. I think I’m going to try for a garden outside in my concession if it is okay with my 2 neighbors, although I doubt they’ll care if I give them some tomatoes or moringa leaves free of charge every now and again. I have a guava tree beside the house, but my favorite thing about my house is that there is a mango tree right in front of my little stone porch and I can absolutely see me and Colt sitting underneath it in the hot African winter, eating warm mangoes that have just fallen from above us. It’s like a Jack Johnson song in my front yard, which is just dandy for me although it makes me miss him even more.

That night I had another ‘whoa Africa’ moment looking up at the stars while on the roof of the buvette near my house, on the outskirts of the town where the noises fade away after dark. Doug and I met up to get to know each other a little bit better and have a couple drinks and somehow we ended up on the roof with the very drunk proprietor and a bowl of yam frites while drunk dialing Maman Rico in Porto Novo. I was drinking a petite Beninoise, the local beer of Benin, which is also the feminine nationality here (one could think I was ordering up a small Beninese woman for the evening if that sort of thing happened here, which it does, just not by other women). We had lapsed into a comfortable silence despite the odd moto horn in the distance, unintelligible insect noises in the bush, and the reassuring snores of the bar owner next to us. The moment was subtle, I hardly noticed it to be honest, but I looked up and realized that all the stars seemed somehow nearer and brighter than I’d ever seen before in my life and immediately after that realized that that moment was the first time I was really seeing the unaltered African sky. Because I’d only been in big cities thus far and was too tired and stressed on tech visit in Lalo, I’d managed to miss one of the most simple and breathtaking sights this continent has to offer.

I spent Friday at the Centre de Sante, the health center, and talked with the sage-femmes and lab techs there. I actually watched a women, who only spoke Dendi, get the implant contraceptive, Jadelle (like Norplant) contraceptive inserted into her upper arm in the morning and sat in on a positive HIV test informing meeting in the afternoon. Both of those were pretty intense for different reasons. The first one was pleasing to me because I really enjoy procedures and seeing them done is always exciting for me to learn more about how the human body works and responds to stress. I am always impressed with both the resiliency of the patient’s body and amazed by what looks like a callous roughness from the physician or nurse. Imorou was with me during the insertion and he mumbled reassuring things to the woman in Dendi while taking photos of me dripping iodine solution onto a gauze pad for the midwife. After that we saw the lab where one of the doctors was just about to get the results for an HIV test he was working on. We waited while the little strip began to clearly show the outline of a positive sign and I found myself choking back tears as he explained that the woman, also a non-French speaker and Muslim, was waiting in the other room to get the results. I sat next to him in his office while he called her in. Her face was veiled completely save for her eyes, which were outlined with black and flashed boldly. When the door was closed behind her, she removed her veil and sat down, silent. Without the cover, her gaze was less bold and more tired; the lines of the years had begun to write themselves in the corners of her eyes. I glanced down at the papers in front of the physician and noticed that she was thirty years old and that she was pregnant. Looking while trying not to stare, I could see she was just starting to show under her robes, the swell not more than 6 months old. I expected him to greet her, open the conversation carefully, doucement, break the news as gently as possible, but that didn’t happen. He simply pulled out a stack of cotrimazidole pills from his desk drawer and handed them to her; she didn’t even blink as she tucked them into her waistband.

Later, after a suspiciously tasty dinner at Le Cafetariat le Flamboyant, a buvette/salad joint near the bus stop, it began to rain harder than I‘ve ever experienced. I was lounging on the bed, the mosquito net still flipped up, not yet ready for the night, fanning myself and reflecting on the Dendi that I had managed to pick up during the last couple days (Nasuba--bonjour, Me teg gah?-- comment ca va?, baani--ca va bien, nagbe--merci). I was laying there, trying to think over the noises of the guinea fowl, children, and mosques, vaguely hoping that the still distant cramping in my gut would soon abate, when the skies abruptly opened up with the crack of lightning. My door had been open to the warm evening and the tiled floor was instantly soaked with the sudden African rain. I felt the heat immediately dissipate as I jumped up to close the door against the barrage. I noticed something else as I stood there, the rain soaking through my clothes. It was easy to miss if you weren’t listening, but the sound of the rain was so complete that it filled the room perfectly and silenced all the other sounds of the city save for the pounding hush of the downpour.