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...