Benin is making me afraid of the dark

So about two nights ago I couldn’t really sleep. Not that is anything new because now that it is getting hotter I’ve noticed that I don’t sleep real well. Anyway, I was tossing and turning trying to fall back asleep when I heard a rustling noise around my door. A little freaked out I couldn’t deicide on what to do. My lantern was next to my bed because I read before I go to bed, but my matches were near my door and thus near the noise. Thankfully the other day I noticed that I had a book of them in my kitchen cabinet so I carefully got out of my bed, I didn’t want to frighten whatever it was making the noise, and made my way into the kitchen and fumbled through my cabinet until I found the matches. Lighting up the lantern I look around my walls and ceiling, which has become a habit of mine. Why you may ask? Because you never know what is creeping and crawling around and at various time I have found various insects (spiders, cockroaches) on my walls. Sure enough, I saw the biggest “spider” of my entire life. It had to be at least 4 minutes long. I was torn, do I try and kill this scary scary monster in front of me or do I go and investigate the noise I in my living room/bedroom. I attempt to kill my “spider” but it moves to fast and I can’t reach it. So I decide to investigate the creature in my living room. I take my broom and hit my screen door. Nothing runs out, so some of my fears of giant rats are gone. So I use my broom to push open the screen door and again I don’t see anything. I would have left it at that and gone back to bed except for the “thing” in my kitchen. My bug killer was outside; going to open the door I look down and guess what was there? A lizard, I hadn’t imagined hearing noises. I can deal with a lizard more than I can a mouse or god forbid a rat. Anyway, I go and get the bug spray and armed with it in one hand and my lantern in the other I go in search of my “spider”. It had moved while I was gone but with the spray I could still get it. I sprayed it once and it fell onto my kitchen table but the damn thing was able to crawl right back up. I spray it again, and it falls to the table once again, it still doesn’t die right away instead it crawls away under my stove. With that much poison on it, I was convinced that it had crawled under my stove to die. I went to bed. The next morning while lying in bed I see something out of the corner of my eye on the floor in my kitchen. I think at first that it’s a mouse or a lizard. Putting shoes on (shoes always make me feel more secure when killing something) I grab my broom once again and go to investigate. Thankfully it is neither; it is instead the “spider” from last night. I couldn’t tell if it was dead or not so found something heavy to drop on it. Satisfied that it was dead I found a piece of paper to pick it up. It had 10 legs so it couldn’t be a spider. And if it wasn’t at least 4-5 inches long I’d be surprised. The body on the thing was huge and I could even see the hairs on its leg. So what hell was this thing that I killed? I took a picture of it, but I don’t have a way to load it up right now. I will try and show you all soon. Things like this are making me afraid of the dark.

I am the scary house

So I was sitting at the health center like I normally do, writing in my journal when I look up and see two little girls a couple yards from me, staring at me. Being stared at is nothing new, comes with being the only white person for miles and miles and the first one most have ever encountered. Anyway, these two girls were giggling and then one ran up to me, said hello shook my hand and ran off. This must have given the other girl courage, because before I could blink the other girl was over doing the same thing. This brought the me to the realization that I have become the scary house that is often used in tv shows or books have a bonding experience for kids. You know what I’m talking about; usually a show will have an episode where there is talk of a haunted house and how the kids dare each other to run up and touch the door. I have become that door, that scary house.

Forever and a day

This is from the 11 of this month

It’s been forever and a day I know. It’s not my fault, blame it on African internet, or recently the lack there of. It’s amazing really, you get use to having something and then when it’s taken away you’re like, what the heck, I was using that. Only to remember, oh yeah, I’m in Africa stuff like that is suppose to happen. So what was I up to during the lovely month of January, since I am pretty sure I didn’t post anything, or if I did, I only posted once. Well, I welcomed the New Year in with style, rocking it out in Malanville with Megan, Audrey, Ryan and Michael. Dinner, dancing, wine and Dawson’s Creek what more could 5 twenty somethings want/need to welcome in 2008? A few days later I found myself on a bus heading down south to Ouidah for training. Periodically throughout the year different sectors (in my case the health sector) get together and talk about what they’ve been doing and get further training and ideas about what they can be doing at their posts. It lasted a week, and though I was looking forward to seeing all my health pals, I was not really looking forward to the conference its self. But I’m glad to say that I was wrong, and that the conference went really well. It did what any good conference does, it inspires you to want to go out and change the world, or at least in this case your village. It is not until you reach your village however that reality starts to crash down around you and you realize that this new wonderfully awesome things you were taught about, well they are easier said than implemented. So for most of the month of January I have been trying to figure out what to do with myself over the next two years. Big surprise, huh, since I believe in most of my posts or letters to you all, I have mentioned this “trying to figure out what I’m doing here”. The PC gives us things that they would like us to work on, such as Morgana trees, soy, mosquito nets, mud stoves and so on. However, over the past few weeks I have realized that my village already knows and uses this kind of stuff. Well, except for the mud stoves, but I was told that people would probably not want to use them b/c they are comfortable with what they have and know, and are not likely willing to change. So the few ideas I came here with are slowly one by one being shot down. So I’ve kinda been in a discouraged frame of mind here lately. But then this past Friday, I did my first health lesson for the women who come in to get their babies vaccinated. I give the information in French and the midwife that I work with translates it all into local language for me. Or at least I believe she’s translating it into local language, she could be singing the lyrics to a Greatful Dead song for as much as I understand local language (which is Mokole, incase I’ve never mentioned it before). I was so nervous before I started, and I told Safia (the midwife) this and she asked me why, and I explained that this was the first time I had done this before and she was like it’s going to be okay, you’ll be fine. And I was. There were times that she didn’t understand what I was saying; thankfully I had everything written down so between that and my retrying to explain the concepts in more basic french everything went really well. It is amazing how something so small as a half hour lesson on breast feeding can change my disposition. To finally feel as if I have accomplished something is so wonderful, I actually feel like I am earning the right to be here, instead pretending like I actually have the right to be here like I usually do. May the work keep coming. My hope is to keep doing the lessons every Friday with the women who come for vaccinations, but change the topic I speak on every month or so since different women come each week. I am going to start up my girl’s club health lessons this week as well. My two new project ideas is to start a prenatal group for women who pregnant with their first child and to do a health conference of sorts on women’s health for the fathers in my community. Men rule everything here and very few have any respect whatsoever for women. I want to explain what it is important for the woman to go to the doctor for prenatal check ups, and why she needs to eat better than what she does, stuff like that for the most part. I am hoping that I can get enough interest to start a weekly or month group to continue on teaching them. But we’ll see. Everything here is just wait and see for the most part.