“Maybe the curse came in the form of the disease you have?”

Recently one of my best friends in village, Dorcas, has become very sick. Dorcas is about 30 years old and has two small children. She is a neighbor of mine and lives in a mud hut with the parents of her husband (who died last fall). Many women in my village make money by selling things at the market, sewing, or doing hair. I’m not exactly sure what Dorcas does for money aside from the money I pay her every month to help me with my laundry and bring me water once a week. She has been a very good friend to me over my last year in village. When I have been sick she has brought me food from the market and is generally just really nice and thoughtful. She is very poor but has never asked me for anything except for a mosquito net for her 2 year old daughter who kept getting sick with malaria. She fed my cats when I was gone in America and refused to take money from me when I offered it to her afterwards. She is an honest and hardworking person and she sees me as a person as well, not just a rich white anomaly in her world. Also, she speaks some English, which has probably helped us get closer.

Anyways, recently Dorcas disappeared from her house across the street and when I finally found her at her mother’s house near the market it was a sad shock. She was lying on the ground and could barely get up to greet me. The last time I had seen her she had complained about a pain in her side. When I found her, she showed me these horrible open sores on her side that looked like the skin was being eaten away. It went all down her right side and onto her stomach. She was also very tired and occasionally dizzy. She complained that her heart would suddenly start beating really quickly and she couldn’t breathe. Apparently she went to several doctors in the area and they gave her a bunch of medicine that cost a lot of money but could not explain what was wrong with her. After she explained all this she told me how she believed that someone in the village had cursed her and sent bad spirits to her and that was what was making her so sick. Benin has very strong Vodun traditions and many of the slaves that were taken from here went to the Caribbean and created the voodoo traditions there. Essentially there are many good and bad natural spirits. The bad ones can be sent to others in the form of gris gris or a curse and can make that person sick, die, or have bad luck. It may seem sort of crazy but it makes more sense when you live here and you see the kind of lives that many people live.

I tried to work within this structure when I talked with Dorcas and I asked her maybe if the curse had come in the form of the actual disease or sickness she had and she said yes. When I asked her what disease was, she said it was a bad spirit, so we were back to square one. It was so frustrating to me to not be able to understand the sickness that she had and do nothing to help her. She couldn’t even lift her two year old daughter. As I sat with her next to her mother’s mud hut and watched the other women prepare a meal on the fire, it made more sense to me why so many people here resort to blaming evil spirits for their misfortune. Who/what else can they blame? Many of them wash with and drink water filled with parasites. They eat untreated fruit and vegetables. They go to the bathroom in a field next to their house. They sleep without mosquito nets. They are not vaccinated against any diseases. The cause of Dorcas’ ailment could have been any combination of these factors and perhaps exacerbated by others. She has little money to pay doctors and the ones around can’t even properly diagnose her problem. When you have no explanation, no options, and no education an evil spirit makes as much sense as anything I could have told her about the transmission of parasites. It was just so frustrating and heartbreaking to sit there with her and know that there were not many options. I called the male nurse who works in my concession and he came over to look at her and decided to give her infusions of some liquid that he said would reduce the infection. When I asked what the infection was he couldn’t really explain it. Even if I had the money to pay more/different doctors for her, they would probably all say the same thing. There I was sitting with my best friend who could not get access to decent medical care and I could at any moment call the Peace Corps doctors and tell them of any ailment I had and it would be taken care of. The sad difference is that she is a real citizen of a third world country and I am an American citizen.
Currently, Dorcas is still sick but slightly better. The last time I saw her she was living in a local church and spending her days praying with other women for God to take away her sickness/curse because there is nothing else she can do. Regardless of the state of health care in America, none of us will ever have to experience the kind of powerlessness my friends here do.

There and back again…and 10 lbs heavier.

So I didn’t mention in my summer post that I got to go HOME!!!! For the month of August and a little bit of September I was in Cleveland, Ohio spending time with family and friends. This was all thanks to the donations of a lot of people who gave money to my ticket home and I am eternally grateful and humbled by how many giving people there are. I really needed this trip back and I couldn’t have done it myself, so thank you to all of you! It was really weird to get a on plane home. I must have looked a little special in the plane before it took off in Cotonou. It looked so shiny and new and fancy. I just couldn’t believe I was going home. I had also been stressed for days by the idea that somehow this was all a cruel joke and my ticket wasn’t real and that I would get to the airport and they would just laugh at me and tell me to go back to whatever village I crawled out of. Well, surprise, that didn’t happen and I got on the plane. Did you know they feed you awesome food on planes? They were feeding me like every four hours and it was delicious and a little bit too much. So many tiny little morsels of goodness. By the morning I couldn’t handle it any more but didn’t want to waste my food so I started wrapping it up and putting it in my bag. Benin has made me like an old person who lived through the Depression. Napkins, jelly packets, salt and pepper packets, plastic silverware, and wet wipes all made it into my bag. I just kept thinking, “I could use this in my village!!”. Except I was going to America and looked like a fool lol. I finally realized I had a problem at the airport in Paris. I had wrapped up a baguette with some butter and a plastic knife while still on the plane from Cotonou and placed it in my bag so that it wouldn’t get waster. I mean, butter?!?! I never eat butter in village! So sure enough at the Paris airport I got hungry and decided to pull out my baguette and eat it. The problem was that now I was in fancy society and I also looked sort of like a bum. I had old, baggy, faded linen pants on and a sweat shirt. My hair was slightly disheveled and I was real tired. As I sat huddled over my piece of bread I realized the Americans sitting next to me were addressing me. “So where are you coming from?” they asked, confusion and pity in their eyes. I told them I was coming from West Africa and saw nods of comprehension. “What were you doing there?!?” I told them I am a Peace Corps volunteer and they said, “oohhhhh” and turned away and started chatting in hushes undertones. Looking down I realized that I had crumbs all over my sweatshirt and a few on my face. My first day back in civilization and I looked like a homeless person.

Aside from the first episode I think I did pretty well in the first world. I had a minor break down in Target when I realized that the five pairs of underwear I picked out would be the only new ones I would have for another year so I better choose wisely. At times I felt a little disconnected from people but I think that’s probably normal. I’ve spent the last year of my life trying to fit in here and that means a lot to me but I know it’s hard for someone who hasn’t experienced it to understand or appreciate that. It was so nice to see my family and friends and make new memories with them to tide me over for another year. It was also nice to eat American food. I managed to gain close to 10 pounds while I was home, which I feel is no mean feat. I would say almost every woman friend I have in village has commented on how fat and beautiful I got in America, so there’s that. They also do this arm movement and “boom, boom” sound when they say this that makes me picture a jolly fat person and makes me a little uncomfortable. Beninese people don’t see calling someone fat an insult. They just see it as the truth. In their eyes it’s similar to calling a doctor, “Doctor” or a tall person “tall”. Also I’ve taken it in stride since I’m quite certain my rice and bean diet and close proximity to all the parasites and amoebas the world has to offer should slim me down again once more.

Summa Summa Summa Time!

I haven’t written any entries in a while and a lot has happened in my life over the last few months so I figured I should probably give my readers what they want: an update on my life! This summer has been kind of crazy. I ended my first year of teaching in Benin, woot woot! Then proceeded to have some of the most boring days of my life in village since school was out and I didn’t have anything to do. I made it my goal to learn more Sahoue (my local language) this summer and started on that but didn’t actually get very far. I spent a lot of time sleeping and reading and sitting with mamas in the market trying to learn local language. I was realllllllyyyyy bored. A lot of my village left for the summer to work in Nigeria or visit relatives in another city, so my concession (the walled complex I live in) was all but empty and many of my friends were not around. By friends, I really mean all the little kids that I hang out with on a pretty regular visit. Sometimes it is easier for me to hang out with little kids in village because their French is not much better than mine and we just play games or sit around coloring and I feel much less awkward then with adults. Usually with adults I greet them in local language or French and then they all start speaking local language really quickly for a long time and I just sit there staring blankly. This is also why I have become obsessed with babies in Benin. Babies are everywhere here and they provide a perfect distraction for me while I am sitting around staring blankly. Well expect for when they pee on me or start crying because they are afraid of my spooky white skin. Most babies in Benin don’t wear any kind of diaper and half the time are sitting on my lap with only a string of beads around their waist so you could see how that would happen.
I also happened to make friends with a new family in my village which has been awesome. I went to meet this family to ask permission to take their daughter to a girl’s camp (which I will talk about in a bit) and they were super nice and welcoming. They live on the other side of my village and it is quite a hike to get to their house. Plus it is about on the edges of the jungle and down this tiny dirt path, so I would never have found them accidentally. The mama works in the market on market day selling medicines and the father must work outside of the village because I have only met him once. Anyway, the mama doesn’t speak much French but is always so happy to see me and so welcoming. I greet her on market day at her stall and she always makes me sit down and eat something (which she buys) and promise to come eat with her family the next day. They don’t ask me for things and generally seem to just really like my company. This development is especially nice because my mama in my concession has been disappearing a lot lately to another village and is generally unhappy and unpredictable and I’m not sure how to deal with her on a day to day basis. There is also this ridiculously adorable little boy who loves in the family complex with this new family and his name is Rodrigi and he is delightful. He always runs up to me and hugs me and then hangs all over me while I’m there. In America that would most likely annoy me but here it’s nice to hang out with Rodrigi while everyone speaks Sahoue around me..
In June I had a break from monotony when I took 5 girls from my village to a weeklong girl’s camp run by PCVs. They were the top girls from all my classes and the camp was to help them make connections with other hard working girls in the south of Benin and also successful Beninese women who had worked really hard to get where they are in the hopes of inspiring them to stay in school and make Benin a better place for themselves and their daughters. There were also hygiene, sex ed, study skills, and malaria prevention sessions, to name a few. It was really cool to be a part of such an awesome event. There are very few girls who graduate from secondary school in Benin and go on to university to become professional women. Most girls drop out to get married, have children, or work. It is also very difficult for girls to keep up in school while they have so much responsibility at home. The best part of the camp, I think, was the small group time the girls had to talk to various successful Beninese women. There was a mayor, a doctor, an entrepreneur, and several other professions. I can tell my girls a thousand times to stay in school and work to become something more but if I strong independent Beninese woman says it, there is such a big difference. This camp inspired me to attempt to do a girl’s camp in my region next year for all the top female students in the surrounding schools. I’m currently talking to my work partner and other people in my village to see if it is possible. If anything comes of this, I’ll let you know…probably by asking for money for it lol.
After the camp, I went directly to Cotonou to welcome the new volunteers who came to Benin this summer!!! It was really cool to be with them their first few days in country and explain life in Benin to them a little bit. It was also weird to have that many new Americans around. I’ve become so used to seeing them exact same people all the time that having new Americans here was surreal. Seven of them are coming to live and work in my region and 2 of them are going to be around an hour away from me!!! New friends! I am going to bombard them with intense energy. They swear in on Sept 15 and move to their villages a few days after that. I also had to say goodbye to the volunteers who were leaving this summer as well. We serve for two years and a new group comes every year so all my friends from the group who came the year before me were leaving to go back to America. That was very difficult, especially with the people from my region. Those were the volunteers I saw the most and they became my support network and my family. We had regular taco nights (not real tacos, but close) and hang outs and it is going to be a little difficult at first to not have them around. But with the new volunteers replacing them and coming to new posts in my region, I should be good. And to think, I have less than a year left here! Crazy! School starts in a couple weeks, along with my reading/discussion club, so bring on the machetes!!!!
Funny story/ridiculous story: When I was buying fried yams in my market a few weeks ago I was handed a coin straight from the red hot coals of the mama’s fire. How did this happen? Well I handed her a bigger coin and needed change. She exchanged the coin with a different woman and in the transfer, dropped one of the coins in to the fire that she was frying yams on. She proceeded to pick up the coin out of the fire with her bare hands and then hand me my coins. Not paying attention, I grabbed the coins and one of them burned a hole into my palm. As I drop the coin and swear, the woman says, “Doucement!”, which means “watch out!” two seconds too late. Beninese women have oddly thick skin on their hands from a lifetime of work. They can grab boiling pots from a fire without oven mitts and apparently pick change out of a pile of hot coals. As I was walking away from this woman and nursing my hand, another woman yells at me, “What are you looking for?!?” I distractedly said I was looking for oranges. She shouted at me, “Those do not exist!” and walked away. I have heard my village name, Lobogo, means “under the orange tree”….It was not my day in the market.

Who wants to send me to America?!?!

So I would really love to come home to Cleveland for a few weeks in August/September but I have no money, being a Peace Corps Volunteer and all. This is why I have created this super awesome paypal button on my blog!!!! The money will go into an account that my older sister Mandi manages for me and she will buy the ticket! I need about $3,000 for a ticket and I'm hoping people will be willing to contribute! I realize that it may sound silly to me living in Africa and asking for a donation for myself, but I would really love a break before starting my second year of teaching here. So please donate!!!! :)

White trash bush woman

My friend Scott came to visit for the weekend and I think my maman was excited to show off two white people for all her guests. In Lobogo, everyone calls her “yovo” which is the term for a foreigner or white person. Angele is definitely black, but she has an albino daughter and has had three different white women live in her concession over the last six years, so she has gotten the nickname, “Maman Yovo”. A few weeks ago, some white people were visiting my village and saw my albino concession sister and asked to take a picture of her. Angele agreed and then said something along the lines of, “You know…we have a real white person who lives here too…”. She brought them to my house to greet me. I had been taking a nap and was extremely disoriented when all of a sudden there were three white women standing outside my door. I got up and walked outside and I must have looked like a crazy white bush woman to them. I was wearing only a tissue wrap and my hair was disheveled and my normally adequate French was hindered by my sleepy state. I could barely form a coherent sentence and the fresh from Europe Frenchwomen looked horrified to find someone in such a sorry state in a remote African village. “You live here? By yourself?” They asked with a mixture of confusion and pity. It was ridiculous. There have been a lot of random white people in my village lately which is strange and they always seem to catch me at my most unkempt. But I guess I can't fault that since I am in an unkempt state quite often here. The problem is that I only notice it when I occasionally go some place nice in Cotonou and instantly realize that I look like a homeless person and that it isn't necessary to look like a bum all the time here. Honestly, I think Peace Corps Volunteers are like the white trash of the aid workers in Benin. We always have less money and look so much more stressed out and dirty than any other people I've seen here.

8 months in (a month later)

So depending on when I get to post this I have been in Benin for about 9 months. That is about 1/3 of my total time here, which is crazy to consider. It feels like a lifetime and yet it feels like just yesterday I left home. It is hard to reconcile my two worlds with each other. I knew when I made the decision to come here that my life would change completely. The most interesting part is how many ways I have changed that I didn’t expect. It is both beautiful and terrifying to realize how much the people here, both volunteers and Beninese, have come to be almost my entire world. That doesn’t diminish my relationships with people back home, but it is really difficult to imagine life back at home while I am here in the bush. January was a rough month for me and I even considered maybe coming home, but with the support of other volunteers and a change of perspective, I am becoming incrementally more happy here. I was getting very frustrated with teaching and life in this tiny village but I have been doing a lot of little things to make myself happier. I’ve started trying to sing a song or play a game with my students at the end of every class. Even when I have a bad day and the kids are horrible or don’t understand what I was trying to teach, it makes me feel much better to leave the classroom to a chorus of Beninese children butchering, “We are family! I’ve got all my sisters with me!” or “L is for the way you look at me!”.
A few weeks ago my maman, Angele, had a fete for her father who died in December and it was ridiculously awesome. I had heard from the previous volunteer that my concession papa, Quirin, is one of the wealthiest men in Lobogo, but it is kind of hard to grasp that when we have no running water and sketchy electricity. Although, seeing as how all the houses surrounding our concession are mud huts and we live in a cement house, maybe I should have known. Beninese people love to throw parties, especially when the deceased was really old. Angeles father used to own a buvette (bar) in town and was pretty well known in Lobogo. I never met him because he got sick before I came to Lobogo. Angele told me about the fete two months ago and I expected a reasonable sized party that lasted all day. Little did I know. Every day of the week leading up to the fete there seemed to be more and more women and children congregating in my concession bringing water, huge cauldrons, and food items. I really loved this week a lot. The women were overjoyed and entertained when I offered to do any simple task to help out. They thanked me profusely when I washed like five dishes one afternoon and in my mind they responded like this when I sat with them on mats in the concession pealing garlic, “Look at the yovo pealing garlic! Isn’t she cute!!” It was beautiful to see the network of women who came to offer help. One afternoon a group of about twenty women came into the concession with basins of water on their head to help fill the huge jugs of water that were to be used to prepare, cook, and clean. They called Angele out and sang to her and offered her the water. Then they saw me standing there with a Beninese baby on my hip and proceeded to sing to me and dance around me. It was amazing. It really made me think about all the women I have in my life who have helped me and supported me over time and miss them a lot.
The fete was scheduled to happen on Saturday. By Friday night there were two canopies set up in the concession and four huge speakers. The music was turned on Friday night and did not stop until Monday afternoon. People came to greet Angele, offer condolences, and eat and drink for three days straight. When a new group of people came into the concession, the dj would yell, “Wuezo! Wuezo!” which is welcome in Sahoue and that group would find some empty seats. Angele and her husband would them come to greet them and thank them for coming. Then one of the women (family members, friends, neighbors, etc.) would bring the group beers and the first round of food, which was rice and goat meat. I know for a fact that it was goat meat because I had to listen to the goats being slaughtered and hacked apart every morning before the fete-ing started. There are always goats wondering around my concession but on Friday three special goats had been brought into the concession and tied to a wooden post. Saturday morning I woke up to a mysterious hacking sound and theorized on what it might be but I didn’t realize it was goats bone being hacked apart with hatchets until Sunday morning when I walked out of my house and saw a guy doing it. The second round of food was pate or akassa, both of which are made with corn flower and sort of the consistency of mashed potatoes accompanied by a sauce and fish and eaten with your hands. After this there was a lot of dancing and yelling and funness to be had by all.

That's Actually A Dog That You're Eating...

I just ate a potentially E.Coli filled half-raw omelet sandwich. My second gas can ran out of gas just as I was about to flip my possibly delicious onion omelet over in the skillet. My options at this point were numbered and pretty obvious. I could walk over to my concession maman’s while wearing my requisite panya house wrap, raw egg filled skillet in hand, or I could flip the omelet over as fast as possible and attempt to use the remaining heat in the pan to partially finish the job. Guess which option I went with?!? I placed the soggy omelet onto a loaf of bread, which managed to soak up/disguise some of the raw egg goop. It was surprisingly delicious. No one told me one of my areas of personal growth in the Peace Corps would involve discovering what new lows I can bring myself to where food is involved.

Here is a list of gross or just plain sad things that I or PCVs I know have eaten:

-Crystallized slugs disguised as pretty pink candy in Niger

-Little round mystery meatballs suspected to be goat testicles

-A piece of goat that appeared to contain both teeth and a hairy nostril

-An entire log sized igname after an ill fated first trip to the marche in village

-About 10 pieces of gum all at once that exploded from the container and landed on the ground

-Mashed ignames mixed with a potentially 2 year old Mac n Cheese cheese packet left by a previous volunteer

I had a dream recently in which I was hurrying around a grocery store, Super Market Sweep style, and frantically putting everything I wanted to eat in my shopping cart. I stopped short at one of those giant plastic jars of dill pickles that appeared to be illuminated from above by something more than mere supermarket fluorescent lights. As I excitedly reached into the jar to get a pickle, a pair of tongs appeared in my hands and the jar turned into a hot dog dispenser. Next to it were all the ketchup, mustard, and relish you could ever want. As I continued through the store, the hot dog in my hand turned into a peanut butter container that I began attacking with my bare fingers. I’m not exactly sure what point I’m trying to make in telling that story, but seriously, how awesome is the idea of a huge pickle jar/hot dog dispenser?!? Also, think about how much more tolerable our mystery meat food would be here if it came in a delightful hot dog shape and was served on a bun with endless amounts of ketchup and mustard. A hot dog made of real dog meat? It’s at least got to be more visually appealing than my runny, undercooked excuse for an omelet sandwich.