I LOVE the first day of school. I love everything about the “back to school” season. Back to school shopping was one of my favorite experiences growing up. It was more than just the excitement of getting to pick out a new backpack, lunchbox, and crayon box. For me, back to school was a time of giddy anticipation. I didn’t love getting up early or having to do homework, but for some reason I loved going back to school in the fall. I loved seeing everybody after what seemed like ages. I loved waiting to see if there were any new kids in our class of kids who had all basically gone to school together our whole lives. I love the feeling in the air the first day of school as well as the smell of the school on the first day. Maybe it was all the new plastic and polyester accoutrements that made the first day of school smell that way or maybe it was just me. I never really told too many people about my love of “back to school” because I’m sure they would hate me or laugh.
Obviously, back to school season is a little different in Benin. The kids wear uniforms but they are all these khaki outfits that are made for them by the tailors in the village. There is a tailor across the street from my house who has been “working on” three dresses for me for three weeks but has really just been making little khaki outfits for all the kids who are going back to school. The tailor across the street works in a building made out of mud brick and has a sewing machine but it is powered by a foot pedal. I just got one of my dresses back from her and it was done really well. Anyways, back to the “back to school”. In Benin, the first day of school is official, but most of the students don’t show up and neither do the teachers. Students generally trickle in for the first few weeks of class. Teachers show up only to write their schedules on the board. I think I was the only person teaching the first week of school and I had about twenty of my supposed sixtyish students there. My classrooms are open air cement rooms with a chalk board, desks, and a dirt floor. The “cafeteria” is a thatched roof pavilion where moms come to sell food around lunch time. The kids who do show up for the first week of school come with brooms and machetes. The brooms are to sweep the garbage out of the classrooms and the dirt off the desks. The machetes are to hack away at grass that has grown in the school yard over the summer. I was so confused when I saw the kids walking up with machetes on the first day. At lunch time I stood in the “cafeteria”, ate some rice, and watched a bunch of kids hack through chest high grass. Suddenly there was a lot of yelling and running and pointing. It turns out that the kids found a python! They got a big stick (more like a branch) and lifted the python out of the grass with it. The python was at least 4 feet long and HUGE! One of the older kids carried the stick and the snake over to the jungle and through them both into it. They also found a hedgehog in the fifteen minutes that I was standing there. I almost didn’t want to leave for fear that I would miss an African bigfoot emerging out of the grass.
Friday, October 15, 2010
Life in Lobogo
Its been a really long time (like a month or two) since I’ve updated my blog and I’m sure my loyal readers are dying for more stories on my life here! I’m currently in my village, Lobogo and have been here for 3 weeks. Village life takes some getting used to. It is really slow moving and laid back which was nice for like three days and then got really boring. A typical day for me (before school started for me last week) involved sleeping until around 10. Then I would get up and make myself some coffee in my French press and eat some oatmeal and feed my cats. Then I would sit around and read (I went through like 5 books in my first two weeks) and stare at my walls. Then I would walk around my village and to the market. I attempt to do yoga in the afternoons and then at night I make myself dinner and read for hours or socialize with my neighbors or walk around. Lobogo is a decent sized village but still pretty small compared to other villages and towns here. It is very green and lush and to get here you have to drive on a jungle-y red dirt road for about twenty minutes. Most of the houses are made of mud and have thatched roofs. My house is cement and in a walled concession with other houses but all the houses around me are mud houses.
Some things I like about my house and village:
-Everyone is ridiculously excited when I greet them in my terrible Sahoué.
Mi fon! = Good morning
Mi dahoué!= Good afternoon/evening
Na de mi le do?= How are you?
Ko le nyuedé= I’m fine
Ézahndé!= Goodbye
I have no idea how to spell any of those things really, but that is how they sound and look in my mind.
-It is really beautiful. I have visited some other volunteers in my region and some of them are in bigger towns and they are surrounded by dirt and cement. They generally have better access to the goodness that is cheese and internet but I think I’d trade that for what I have here. Plus, we have a big market day every five days and I can find almost anything there (except cheese and internet, lol).
-My house was basically fully furnished by the volunteer before me (Thanks Angelina!) and there was also some food left behind that helped me survive my first few days when I couldn’t figure out where to buy things or how to cook anything decent with Beninese ingredients. I have a couch and a bed and shelves and while that may not seem like a lot, it really makes a big difference. Volunteers who are opening a new post have to furnish their own house and that takes a lot of time and money. When they first get to their post all they usually have is their PC issued trunk, a mattress, some buckets, and a portable stove. That means that they sleep on a mattress on the floor and that basically everything in their house is on the floor and their house is really bare. Angelina left me lots of cool stuff that I didn’t even know I would want. For example there was a bunch of sticky putty to put things up on my walls and tons of cool books and games to keep me entertained. She also left me Febreeze and candles so my house smelled a lot less like dirt and cats pretty quickly.
-I have seen more stars here then I have ever seen in my life, even out in the country in the States. I went to Catholic Mass with my concession Maman, Angele, just to see what it was like one night and when we walked out of the church I looked up and was made speechless by the night sky. It seriously felt like the stars were falling down all around me. There were so many stars- it was overwhelmingly beautiful. It is moments like that in which I am forced to stand still and realize what an amazing experience I am having here. It is so easy to lose perspective in the struggle that I have every day here but then there are always those little moments that it occurs to me that I am really living in Africa. Crazy.
-A million other little things and experiences: the market mamas feeding me when I come and sit with them even though they don’t speak French and I can’t really speak Sahoué so we just sit in silence while I eat and smile at them; the time my laundry lines broke twice in one day and my laundry fell into the dirt and my neighbors helped me rewash my clothes twice by hand and rehang them; my first day in the market when I was totally lost and my neighbor, Dorcas, appeared out of nowhere and basically led me around by the hand and helped me find everything I needed; the fact that there are other volunteers about an hour or two away that I am growing to love and that are there for me if I really need it; all the people who have come to my house to welcome me to Lobogo; etc etc etc.
-The mail and packages that everyone has been sending me from home. Every little thing in those packages is appreciated, whether it is tampons or candy!
Some things that are challenging:
-The language barrier. I was spoiled during stage by the language facilitators who spoke very clear and slow French for me. It seems like the people in my village all speak so fast and don’t open their mouths when they talk. I guess that’s how people speak their native language. Haha Its just really hard for me to understand people sometimes and the most simple activity can become so frustrating when I can’t communicate right. Part of the problem is that I have a strong accent as well, so people don’t understand me. One day I was walking to the market and started talking with a girl who was along them way. I said something to her in French and she turned to me and said, “I don’t speak English!”. I was definitely speaking French to her but either my French was so terrible that it was unintelligible or my American accent was so strong that the girl thought I was speaking English. It was a sad day. Luckily my French is getting better and even more luckily, I don’t have to use it much in the classroom because I’m teaching English!!! I am hoping to get a French tutor though soon to help me a little bit more.
-The abundance of free time. I am an over-thinker already and given this much free time my mind has tons of time to evaluate every issue under the sun. This is a terrible idea when one of your most recent ideas was to move to an obscure African village away from all of your friends and family. With school starting this past week things have gotten a little better and I imagine I will only be getting busier as time goes on so maybe I should appreciate this alone time more, but it has been really rough.
-I am always worried that I am doing/not doing something here that I may or may not be supposed to do. The smallest interactions can become stressful when the language/culture barrier takes away all of the small indicators about how you are supposed to act. I am always worried that people think I am either too forward or too shy on various occasions.
All in all I am beginning to love my village and get used to life here.
Some things I like about my house and village:
-Everyone is ridiculously excited when I greet them in my terrible Sahoué.
Mi fon! = Good morning
Mi dahoué!= Good afternoon/evening
Na de mi le do?= How are you?
Ko le nyuedé= I’m fine
Ézahndé!= Goodbye
I have no idea how to spell any of those things really, but that is how they sound and look in my mind.
-It is really beautiful. I have visited some other volunteers in my region and some of them are in bigger towns and they are surrounded by dirt and cement. They generally have better access to the goodness that is cheese and internet but I think I’d trade that for what I have here. Plus, we have a big market day every five days and I can find almost anything there (except cheese and internet, lol).
-My house was basically fully furnished by the volunteer before me (Thanks Angelina!) and there was also some food left behind that helped me survive my first few days when I couldn’t figure out where to buy things or how to cook anything decent with Beninese ingredients. I have a couch and a bed and shelves and while that may not seem like a lot, it really makes a big difference. Volunteers who are opening a new post have to furnish their own house and that takes a lot of time and money. When they first get to their post all they usually have is their PC issued trunk, a mattress, some buckets, and a portable stove. That means that they sleep on a mattress on the floor and that basically everything in their house is on the floor and their house is really bare. Angelina left me lots of cool stuff that I didn’t even know I would want. For example there was a bunch of sticky putty to put things up on my walls and tons of cool books and games to keep me entertained. She also left me Febreeze and candles so my house smelled a lot less like dirt and cats pretty quickly.
-I have seen more stars here then I have ever seen in my life, even out in the country in the States. I went to Catholic Mass with my concession Maman, Angele, just to see what it was like one night and when we walked out of the church I looked up and was made speechless by the night sky. It seriously felt like the stars were falling down all around me. There were so many stars- it was overwhelmingly beautiful. It is moments like that in which I am forced to stand still and realize what an amazing experience I am having here. It is so easy to lose perspective in the struggle that I have every day here but then there are always those little moments that it occurs to me that I am really living in Africa. Crazy.
-A million other little things and experiences: the market mamas feeding me when I come and sit with them even though they don’t speak French and I can’t really speak Sahoué so we just sit in silence while I eat and smile at them; the time my laundry lines broke twice in one day and my laundry fell into the dirt and my neighbors helped me rewash my clothes twice by hand and rehang them; my first day in the market when I was totally lost and my neighbor, Dorcas, appeared out of nowhere and basically led me around by the hand and helped me find everything I needed; the fact that there are other volunteers about an hour or two away that I am growing to love and that are there for me if I really need it; all the people who have come to my house to welcome me to Lobogo; etc etc etc.
-The mail and packages that everyone has been sending me from home. Every little thing in those packages is appreciated, whether it is tampons or candy!
Some things that are challenging:
-The language barrier. I was spoiled during stage by the language facilitators who spoke very clear and slow French for me. It seems like the people in my village all speak so fast and don’t open their mouths when they talk. I guess that’s how people speak their native language. Haha Its just really hard for me to understand people sometimes and the most simple activity can become so frustrating when I can’t communicate right. Part of the problem is that I have a strong accent as well, so people don’t understand me. One day I was walking to the market and started talking with a girl who was along them way. I said something to her in French and she turned to me and said, “I don’t speak English!”. I was definitely speaking French to her but either my French was so terrible that it was unintelligible or my American accent was so strong that the girl thought I was speaking English. It was a sad day. Luckily my French is getting better and even more luckily, I don’t have to use it much in the classroom because I’m teaching English!!! I am hoping to get a French tutor though soon to help me a little bit more.
-The abundance of free time. I am an over-thinker already and given this much free time my mind has tons of time to evaluate every issue under the sun. This is a terrible idea when one of your most recent ideas was to move to an obscure African village away from all of your friends and family. With school starting this past week things have gotten a little better and I imagine I will only be getting busier as time goes on so maybe I should appreciate this alone time more, but it has been really rough.
-I am always worried that I am doing/not doing something here that I may or may not be supposed to do. The smallest interactions can become stressful when the language/culture barrier takes away all of the small indicators about how you are supposed to act. I am always worried that people think I am either too forward or too shy on various occasions.
All in all I am beginning to love my village and get used to life here.
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