Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone. I miss you all and have been thinking about everyone tons and tons. I dont have time to write about what i did this holiday season; but it will be comming soon. I just wanted you all to know that you are in my thoughts.

love,
jenn

Merry Christmas

Wow, has it been a long time or what. I have wanted to write beofre now, but the internet is down in our workstation so I had to use a internet cafe computer and they are usually so slow and so busy that i dont have the time to write a proper post. So it is four days till Christmas and I have sweat running down my back. Now if I was from Texas or Louisanna or something, I wuldnt think anything of this, but I am not. As an Indiana girl it is not Christmas until snow is falling, my nose is running and I am so cold that I am shivering so hard it hurts. In a way I am glad it feels like July here, because it makes it feel less like Christmas. And really since my village is a muslim village, if it wasnt for my calendar I could forget its december altogether really. So this makes it all easier to be away from you all, the family and friends whom I love and miss.

So you might be wondering what I am infact doing for Christmas. Well, like I said earlier my village doesnt do the whole Christmas thing; hozever, they do do Tabasky, which is holiday that i know involves the killings of goats, but other than that I know nothing; oh yeah and it is based on the lunar calendar so its date changes year to year. Anyway, the reason I am not going to be learning more about this is because I have gone south to Bohicon this holiday season because the health volunteer is working on doing some stuff at some of the local villages and a near by orphanage. She needed some helpers so I got on the bus and came 8 hours to give my help. I know we will be giving out toys to some kids, there was not enough money to get a toy for everyone; though everyone will get somethng, perhaps some candy or something if not a toy. And then there is going to be a good meal will be involved because that is something most of these kids really lack. So anyway I am going to be down here working on this until the Christmas, and then the day after I am going to be heading back home.

In other news I want to give a big huge thankyou to all of you who put stuff in the box to send to me. I recieved it last week, which was amazing timing since it was on the last mail run before Christmas. Everything was wonderful, you guys are awsome, thank you so much.

I guess it is time to wrap this up because I am in the internet cafe and people are waiting for me. I miss you and love you all and my thoughts are with all of you this holiday. Keep your fingers crossed that this time next year I will be able to be there with you in person.

Until next time...

Happy Thanksgiving

I have very little time because the internet is down at work so now i am at a public internet cafe and as always people are waiting. So everyone, I am alive and well. I hope you all had a wonderful dinner yesterday, I will be getting mine tonight, however instead of a turkey i will be having turkey wings.

A quick note on what I have been up too. I have started working with some girls in my village. The school director wants me to teach them health issues so that is what I am going to try and do. I had my first lesson this week or HIV and how it is transmitted. I hated doing it because my french is so bad, but afterwards I felt a sence of accomplishment that I really havent felt since I have been here.

Word has it that a bunch of people went in and got me a bunch of goodies. i cannot begin to tell you how much i appreciate it. i have always had this belief about myself that out of sight out of mind, and I cannot tell you how good it feels to be proven wrong. I am lucky to have some pretty great people in my life.

I have a lot more to share, but with the internet being down and ppl waiting here I have to keep this short. Just know I miss and love you all.

Halloween!

Happy Halloween everyone! It's a drag that Halloween isn't a holiday here. I was telling another of the volunteers about how into halloween our family is. she was greatly amused. We are having or at least suppose to be having a halloween party today in Kandi which is why I'm even here online. Because as I have been told repeatedly, I am not suppose to leave post until the end of December. However, because today is a holiday we have been given the okay to come and spend the night here. It's already after 6:30 so i'm not really sure what kind of "party" we are going to have, but it's nice to get out of my house and see others. Especially others that I can easily talk to. I think my french is getting better, but it's still a struggle. Actually I'm not even sure if my french has gotten much better or i'm just slowing down and taking my time to think out what I want to say. either way i've been able to talk to the people i work with much more than i had been able to. i am hoping to find a french tutor soon.

There is not a lot else to report on. I live in a concrete house in a corn field. I have no electricity and no running water. I spend my morning at the health center working (I got to see my second baby being born) and then afternoons/evening are spent reading, cross stitching and listening to the bbc. I really do like my village. It's growing on me. I had a meeting Thursday with one of my Peace Corps supervisors and I basically told him that each week is better than the previous one. He seemed happy with how things were going for me and what I was doing in the village. I think he wants me to try an intergrate more into my community. This is something I want to work on as well. Part of it is my own fault, I'm so damn shy that it's hard to go and talk randomly (especially when you don't speak/understand the language well) to people you don't know, but also my supervisor here hasn't introduced me to any of the people he is suppose to have. I've mentioned it to him several times but nothing has been done. Hopefully now that someone from PC has done it it will be done. The reason that this is important is that my village is so tiny (about the size of Athens people) that certain people carry a lot of weight and without their blessings on projects getting things done could be difficult. Also the more people you know the easier it is to live here. But I'm getting better. I'm learning to greet people in the local language instead of just french which the people just love.

In other news I was told today that another person has decided to leave Benin. This is the 9th person out of a group of 59 originally. I'm really sad to see them all go. Most of them have been friends and their being gone has definetly left a hole. For those who worry that this might be my fate, don't. I'm doing really well. Sometimes I get homesick, and lonely, but I'm content here. I have yet to ever really feel like going home. Keep your fingers crossed that this feeling continues 23 months.

More Pictures

Why are three reasonably inteligent people wearing sunglasses at night? I'm not really sure, but I believe beer was involved. That's Sunny, Matt and Me by the way.

Part of our training was to go out into the villages and do different educational things as well as practice some of the hands on things that we would be doing at our posts. Prior to this baby weighing we had been in groups and gave various talks and malaria and diareha i believe.

Jacci, Me, Mel out on the town in Dogbo.
One of the streets I would often walk in Dogbo.

Another view of Dogbo

Music

So I mentioned in another post that I would like some cds. That has led some of my wonderful friends and family to ask what kinds I would like. That has got me to think, here are some of my favorites, but in all honesty I'd be happy with just about anything.

U2
David Bowie
Robbie Williams
David Gray
Elton John
Billy Joel
Rusted Roots
Coldplay
REM

I guess that's it for right now. But anything will do.

More Pictures

Another picture from village life. You'll notice the black marks on the girl's face. Scarification is a very common practice here.
Typical village view. Women carry everything and anything on their heads here.

Me at the Python Temple in Ouidah.

They brought in traditional dancers for us to watch and even join in on.
These dancers are amazing to say the least.

This picture is from the door way of my house looking on to the front yardish area. The lady in the picture is my mama.

Another picture of my front yardish area.

Me and my helmet, though I have a different one now. I wish I had a picture with me and my current helmet because it's blue and awesome. PC policy is that I have to wear this helmet every time I'm on a moto so rest assured everyone, I am safe.

Village Life! This isn't the village that I lived in, but for trainings we use to come here to practice on these people. Dancing and singing is a huge part of the culture in the south part of this country. Where I live now is mostly Muslim and there is really no music or dancing and I must say I really miss it.

Another picture of village life

Still Alive and Kicking

So I am in Kandi for a meeting. Since this is one of the rare chances to use the internet i thought I'd better grab it and update as much as i can. I've already been on the computer an hour and i'm starting to feel bad about hogging. i wanted to put pictures up but for somereason i can't get my hard drive to connect, hopefully in the near future I will be able to show you guys what things here look like.

Okay, well I had to leave the room for a girl to get a private call so now I'm back. But since I've been on here forever I need to sign off for now so that others can use wonderful modern technology.

More to come later.

Quick Note

For those of you who've asked, the only mailed I've recieved has been some letters and a package from my gram and a package from Amanda. That's it. I would love and can't wait to hear from all of you. My mp3 player died on me, so if you would mind sending CD's I'd love it love it love it. Also, if anyone wants to send food, i'd love peanut butter (i need protein in the worst way), and powdered drink mix stuff.

I am alive!

I can't believe it's been over a month since I last posted anything. So yes I'm still here alive and kicking in Benin West Africa, though where I am doing the kicking has changed since I last posted. I have moved from the house of my host family into the house that is going to be my home for the next two years. Yes that's right folks I'm at my post now. If you're looking at a map of Benin and want a general idea of where I"m at look in the north east area and locate the city of Kandi, I'm about 25k north of that. It's a tiny Muslim community that is probably about the size of Akron, if not smaller. I live kind on the outskirts of town, in the middle of...get this...corn! Those who know me know I've longed for adventure outside the streets of Akron and Rochester and get away from all the blasted corn fields, yet this is where I find myself for the next two year. Ironic isn't it. I live in a concrete building with three rooms, well actually it's a fairly big building but I live in the front half of it and another person lives in the back half. You'd think living this closely we'd see each other all the time, nope, I saw him for the first time in two weeks today. And then in my front yard off to the side is my latrine. As latrines go it's a fairly nice one, I've definetly had to use worse since I've been here. Lizards are everywhere here, but especially around my house and grounds. I also have a mouse or mice in my house which i hate, but this is Africa and not a whole lot I can do about it I guess. I don't know if it would bother me as much if i wasn't sleeping on a mattress on the floor. So I go to the health center twice a week to help out, which let me tell you is saving my sanity. The PC has this policy that volunteers are not suppose to work during their first three months at post, neither are we suppose to leave our posts either (except for things like market, post office things of that nature). We are suppose to use this time to get to know our community and so forth. Well I'm having a slow start of it I guess. I'm trying to get out there and talk to people, but I find it really difficult, and I know everyone else does to, which helps. But it's hard not to be bored and lonely. I just don't know what to do with myself all the time. Thankfully the people I work with are super nice and helpful, well sort of. My supervisor is a nice guy, but getting him to follow through with things is a bit difficult. The women I work with though are amazing. Women in general in this country are amazing. They work their asses off for little if any respect or gratitude.

I know there is much more to write about, and if I have time at some point I'll try and put some picture up. Until then...

Post Visit Part Deux

So in my last installment I had just returned from my post visit to a village in north western Benin. It was a crazy few days, filled with moto chaces across the capital, abandoned briefcases, bus changes, and i guess ultimatly post changing. Because my post visit a few weeks ago was such a bust my director is allowing me to change posts, which is why i am here using the internet when normally i would be staying in my internet free village.

Today I came down to Cotonou because tomorrow morning I am to be put on a shuttle heading up to Kandi which the biggest town near me. Don't ask me the name of the village because I can barely say it much less spell it. All I know is that it's in the far north eastern side of the country not far from the niger and nigeria borders. The pain in the ass thing is that the shuttle ride is going to be like 9 hours long and that I'm going to be missing 3 days of language class to make this trip.

Normally I'd be all about missing class but you see, the peace corps requires that you meet a certain level of language fluency before they allow you to become an offical volunteer. well the test to see what level we have is a week from this wednesday, the wednesday i am returning on. So you see missing the classes is coming at a really bad time for me as my french rather sucks. i'm a little nervous, but not horribly worried b/c i know i will be able to get extra tutoring between when i return and the test date, but it wouldn't hurt if everyone kept their fingers crossed for me just the same.

There isn't a whole lot else to report since my last posting. my schedule hardly every varies. I'm up a 6:45, eat, have a bucket bath and leave for class by 7:30. I then have french from 8-10 and then technical training from 10:30-12:30. We then break for lunch and general repo till 3 at which time we have another 1.5 hr of language followed by more technically training. We then have the choice to do one on one language tutoring if we so wish. I wish about 3 times a week. We dont' even have Saturday's off. So far we have either hands on partical stuff or some sort of class or something or other every saturday till 12:30. The only day of the week we are completly free is Sunday. Which for most of us is laundry day. An odd thing about laundry in this country, it is socially unacceptable to wash your underwear and bras outside in public, and by public i mean jsut in your own yard. I wash mine in my bed room.

Well I am ashamed to say taht I have been hogging this computer for hours now but only have this short pitiful post to show for it. I swear one of these days I will write more, but until then bare with me.

Post Visit

So I have spent the last couple of days traveling to and from the my future home. The way the PC works is that everyone arrives in country at the same time and travels/lives together for the first week in country. After the first week, we travel by sector (for example i am in the health sector), to various town for our training. I have been living in a town about 2 hours north of Cotonou, which is where I'm living with my host family and training in lanaguage and whatnot with the other volunteers. We train for 9 weeks before we go off to our posts, (which are the towns we are going to be living in for the following 2 years).

Well almost two weeks we were all told where our posts are and then just this past wednesday we all left to go and visit them and to talk with the people we will be working with. I am going to be working in a little town not far from the Togo and Burkina Faso borders. It's pretty remote, with not a lot of traffic coming in or out of the town. This fact makes me both happy and a little sad. I did not want a busy area to live and the fact that instead of using turn signals to indicate when a car is going to move in one direction or another they use horn instead, i am rather glad to be away from the constant noise. However, because getting out can be difficult it makes having internet access, phone access and such things difficult as well. Thursday is market day for me so I have been told that that will be the best day for me to leave the town if i want to go the neighboring one to use the computer or buy things that i can't find in my village.

So Wednesday I went down to Cotonou to spend the night so that I could catch the early bus to my town, well not actually my town, the bus doesn't go that far, but to the neighboring town. The bus was suppose to leave at 7 however, for some reason it left early, so me and another girl were left to take a different bus. It gets a bit complicated here, but to simplify it let me just say a high speed moto/bus chase occured, being left on my own on the side of the road occured and changing buses various time occured. Now before anyone get worried, I'm sitting at the computer right now typing this so obviously everything ended up well in the end.

It takes anywhere between 9-13 hrs to get from Cotonou to where I live and I was beat when I got there. With a bit of difficulty I met up with one of the people I will be working with, due to the lateness though we made plans to meet the next day. That night I ended up spending with a volunteer who is already living there. Her name is Nikki and she was really great. The next morning she took me around a bit before I left with my co-worker.

My co-worker ended up taking me around town, the ministry of finance, the police station and a bit to the health centers where I will be working. Afterward we went to a funeral. The funeral was like nothing ihave seen before. my co-worker, her husband, me and someone else from the family all rode motos out to this feild, which i discovered was a grave yard kinda and there was just tons of people just milling about. In one area there was a group of women in a circle and in the circle two women at a time would come and dance while the rest clapped. it was a amazing to see and hear, because just through clapping, stomping and a bit of singing they were able to create some wonderful music. however, because i could not speak french communicating was very difficult.

Again it seems like i'm out of time. More to come later.

Where was I?

I believe in my last post I left off talking about my family. I must say over all I got a great family. My youngest mama is a bit crazy, but i love her. An example of a typical conversation with my mama is Jennifer mange comme babe, which basically means I eat like a baby. This is usually followed by some comment about how my sister who is almost two eats more than me. You all know me, when has me not eatting been a problem. The problem is that my family or perhaps the Beninise people in general have turned eatting into an olypic event. You would think as a Morgan Id be trained enough to compete in such an event, but I am not even close. I think I have managed to eat everything on my plate maybe 4 times since I have been here and then I felt like death afterward.

Another really funny thing happend with my mama just this past week. On Tuesday night I told my mama that I had to get up early the next day because we were all going to a neighboring town for a converence and we had to leave at 7:30. I told my mama i would be leaving the house at 6:45am. i got to bed that night around 10. So I am sleeping when all of a sudden i hear a knocking on my door, im like what the hell is that. i cant tell if it is knocking or a breeze causing my door to rattle; i decide to ignore it. however the noise continues and before i knoz it i hear my mama saying my name. i am like what the hell, i look at my clock and it is 2:30am. what in the world can my mama want. i open the door to find her standing there with my breakfast. because my french is so bad i dont know if she just didnt know what time it was or she simply thought it was time for me to get up all i know is that she gave me my breakfast and left;

well the timer on this computer is telling me that my money is almost out so better wrap this up. more to come later.

Remember Me?

So it's been almost a month since I left the states, I can't believe it. I feel like i've been in this country for ages. Because it's been so long since I've posted I'm not even sure where to begin. I've been living with my host family for the past two weeks. My family consists of my papa and his two wives. One wife is older, one is younger than me. There is two children, a girl who is almost 2 years old and a boy who was born just a week ago. I was lucky or unlucky enough depending on your point of view to participate in the coming out cerimony for the boy (whose name is zack) this past weekend. My family is really great, but because my french is so bad, talking to them is so very difficult and trying. I spend the most time with my youngest mama, in some ways i feel like i'm her "project".

sorry to do this but i've been told to get off the net so that others can get on. hopefully i'll have access again in a few days. until then...

Au revoir Cotonou

well I'm leaving the capital tomorrow to move in with my host family. I'm super excited, but nervous as hell. My french is non exsistent and so is their english so communicating will prove to be interesting. I have been in the country for about a week now, but honestly I still don't have a whole lot to say. I don't know if this stems from still processing all I'm seeing/doing or from the lack of things we've been doing. Honestly, we've been busy everyday, but nothing really special. Today I've been in the Peace Corps HQ waiting to have meetings with doctors and with the lady who is in charge of the Health sector. The past couple days have been filled with much of the same, language lessons, meetings with doctors and various other trainings. One point of interest was that yesterday I underwent zimmijean training, which is basically the motorbikes that they use to get around the city. Benin volunteers are the only PC volunteers to be allowed to ride these machines. I must say it was a blast. I can understand why Eric loves his bike so much. The only things that takes a little getting use to is that women are not allowed to touch the driver. We may be able to touch their shoulder to get on, but while riding we either keep our hands on our lap or hold on to the rack behind us. I'm not sure when I'm going to get to post again because as I said earlier I'm leaving tomorrow for my host family's home and I have no idea what kind of conditions that is going to be. I know my entries have been pretty boring so far, hopefully things will start to pick up.
until then...

I have arrived!

This is just going to be a very short note to let everyone know that I arrived in Benin last night. Everything went well, luggage and me both made it one piece. It's humid as hell, but not as hot thankfully. I just had my language placement test and am off to get some shots. A longer post to some soon I hope.

Leaving For Africa

I'm leaving today! I can't believe it. We are meeting in the lobby soon and from there heading to the airport. I'm a lot more calm than I was in my last post and I think I'm finally starting to get rid of some the nerves enough to finally become excited. I'm still trying to get to know people, which can be kinda hard, but heck, we have 27 more months to do so. I'm not sure when I'll get a chance to get online again, so be patient with me getting back to you.

i love and will miss you all!

Staging Day 1

Today marks the end of the first day of our staging in Philidelphia. And thankfully everything went of without a hitch. I arrived at the Indy airport (after being greeting in the early morning hours by heavy rain and lightening) early in hopes that they wouldn't complain too much about my huge bags, and i mean huge! I'm carrying a huge big enough to hide a body inside kind of bag, as well as a huge duffle bag and a carry on that weights as much as my big back pack. I know you are all probably thing, gee Jenn pack too much. But I really didn't. I even had my friends weed out some stuff. Sure I brought stuff that i could live without, but i worked hard not to overpack. Suprise suprise though, I was only over the 80lbs weightlimit by like 8 lbs, which totally rocks. I will probably be crippled by the end of these two years after carrying these bags around.

Staging has been pretty much what one would expect. We've done a lot of talking about fears and hopes and just the basic getting to know each other stuff. All the people I've met are supper nice. But I'm still on the search for that one person I click with. There is so much more to say, but I am beat, so I am going to head to bed. More to come!

Is it really worth it?

lets try this again. how sad is it that my first three blogs on this thing are just me trying to figure it out.

I hate technology

i really hope this works!

Testing One...Two...Three

So I sent everyone an invite to this group but I've been hearing that when you click on the link the page does not exists. I have no idea as I am not familiar with google groups, I am typing this now in hopes that you will all receive it, which was the purpose of the group after all. More stuff to come later.