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...