Boy In Benin Part 2

Erik and I devoted this week to seeing my village and the surrounding areas – this included experiencing the frustrating life of a peace corps volunteer (where work plans are currently being postponed, shuffled around, or just plain canceled).. He experienced the disappointment of watching a school garden die because the water pump is broken, the strange excitement of children (and adults) as they constantly shout at the foreigner walking by, and he got to meet lots of my friends both Host Country Nationals and Peace Corps.

Early in the week we went to Ouando where he got to experience the sites and sounds of a large West African market. We went tissu shopping (and he even bought some fabric from my regular tissu lady).. I showed him lots of different foods.. we walked through the animal section (which is super depressing but necessary to see)... I know from experience that the market can be really overwhelming the first time you see it, so I am hoping that if we go again next week he will be able to take more in..

On Monday we made a point to see Porto Novo's Botanical Gardens.. I had not been here before, but now that I have seen it I highly recommend going. Just as a note! ** The gardens are in fact not open on Monday. Some random guy who may or may not have been associated with the gardens in anyway let us in... and it was really great.. but I can't promise this would happen for everyone. The gardens house what is left of Porto Novo's Sacred Forest and is also the home to a very curious and friendly family of small monkeys (we think they are Mona Monkeys)

Between rain (and failed attempts to bring him with me to do actual work) we went over to Songhai so that Erik could take a tour of Songhai while I had my local language lesson... due to this being West Africa.. the tour didn't start until well after my class was over so I joined him (the tour was only 500cfa a person – not bad) the tour guide was really great. Although I am obviously a little over-dosed on Songhai.. I think that Erik really enjoyed the tour.

We have visited a lot of my neighborhood friends – and even made some new ones. Erik really enjoyed hanging out with my Supervisor, where we ate Igname Frites and helped feed his rabbits. We had a really great time at my landlords house one afternoon talking with their family, taking pictures and he even got some free reflexology from one of their friends (no that isn't normal).. And of course he has gotten to know my tailor, local bread lady, and bar and cafeteria owners.

As far as food is concerned we have done a lot of eating in because.. that is what I am used to doing.. but I have made a point for him to get to taste as much local fair as possible. We went to two restaurants in Porto Novo that are popular with Peace Corps Volunteers. Java Promo is a nice restaurant located near The National Assembly (and the gardens) and Erik tried Igname Pile (with Peanut Sauce) a Benin specialty found more frequently in the North. We enjoyed vegetarian chwarma at a restaurant near Ouando called Esperence Maquis (1500cfa for a chwarma plus soda). Erik enjoyed his meal here so much we even went back a second time. At Songhai we stopped for drinks and sampled locally made soy milk and my personal favorite baobab juice and snacked on (another personal favorite) Voandzu from the Bean lady across the street. We have had all sorts of beignets and fried foods.. Erik now understands my ridiculous addiction to bissap (a popular hibiscus drink). He has sampled sodabe... enjoyed a Peace Corps style taco feast.. tried most of the local beers.. and has eaten spaghetti omelets at my neighboring cafe.

I can't believe how fast his visit here is passing by.

Next week we are going to try to make a few day trips to see more of Benin.

Lots of Love

Z 

Answers for April "C'est quoi ça?" post are now available HERE (at the bottom of the post).. and Erik will be bringing home a tub of All Natural Shea Butter for fcrum!!!  - - Thank You Everyone for participating <3

Expectations

I spent this week staying at the Songhai hotel (a whole 15 minutes from my house) with about 13 other volunteers and our selected counterparts for what we all thought was going to be a training on how to add nutritional information/aspects to our current projects. While it is obvious that there are ways to include nutrition when talking about say... a vegetable garden. Sometimes it is really hard for us as volunteers to combat language and cultural barriers especially when something is as culturally loaded as the topic of food can be.

To all of our surprise.. this “Nutrition Training” that we had been invited to was actually focused on how to give formations and negotiate with women pertaining to to the health of new born babies. The idea behind this being (and for good reason) that the most important step in combating global issues with malnutrition is to teach mothers how to properly feed their babies for the first two years of their lives. During early development nutritional deficiencies can end up being life long irreversible problems if they are not dealt with properly. This is lots of really great information.. but we have four sectors here in Benin and the only volunteer sector that ever works one on one with babies is the Health Sector.

So you can imagine all of our surprise when we showed up at this nutrition training expecting to talk about our gardens and food pyramids only to find that we were going to spend our entire first day and most of the second learning the in and outs of breast feeding. - -

A major part of what it means to be a Peace Corps Volunteer is that you need to be flexible and make the most of any situation even if it doesn't meet up with your original expectations. Unfortunately, this week I felt that the group of us – myself included – took a little longer than normal to remember this. By the end of the first day I think that most (if not all) of us were agitated and felt as though we were wasting our time. By the end of the second day we were completely checked out. It wasn't until the third day of our three day training that we (as a whole) remembered what we were doing here.

This specific maternal nutrition mini-training was a trial run for Benin Peace Corps and is one of the newer Peace Corps world wide standardized training – still in its early stages. Since this was a “trial run” of a standardized training (I'm not going to get into whether standardizing PC training world wide is a great idea or not) we were lucky enough to have some observers at the training from Peace Corps Washington.

After a long talk with our Washington buddy in the evening after day 2 of the training where he was able to better explain to us the reasoning/goal behind the training.. and we aired some grievances.. we all showed up Wednesday morning feeling refreshed. Even if we weren't exactly ecstatic with the training we had a better understanding of the situation.. and we had gotten some of the negative feelings that were keeping us from being the best volunteers we can be off our chest.

I think that on day 3 of our training we really pulled together to show what Peace Corps is all about. We went to a village and did some practice runs of working with women to negotiate/discuss better feeding practices for their infants. Showing that even the volunteers who may never do exactly this activity at post got something really important out of this training – culturally sensitive negotiating techniques. AND later in the day – because they heard what we wanted – we were given a session on how to tie nutrition into the projects we are already doing.

Sometimes it is no fun being the "guinea pig" for a new training were no one really knows what to expect. However, as Peace Corps volunteers there are some expectations. Peace Corps expects volunteers to be flexible and to provide thought and feedback. The volunteers expect that Peace Corps will take their feedback into consideration and not take advantage of the position of the volunteer. 

In my opinion.. even if the training itself didn't meet expectations (and was kind of bizarre) I think that the facilitators and the volunteers did a really great job of wrapping up the training and meeting each others expectations. We were all able to show that we were listening and that we are capable of making good out of an otherwise painful situation. 

Z

What I've Been Doing

Wow. It's September... Just two more weeks and I am a real PCV!

For the last two weeks I have been working hard on the technical aspects of training which we are now immersed in. I know some people at home are interested in knowing what exactly I have been up to.. so here is the run down of what training has been like since I returned from my post visit.

For the Environmental Program we do all of our training at Songhai... I know I have mentioned Songhai a few times on here, but here is the official description:

Centre Songhai

“Created in 1985 by F. Godfrey NZAMUJO [google him]... Songhai's purpose is to draw Africa into a development mentality which consists in developing new strengths in spite of socioeconomic, cultural and environmental constraints.

The Songhai model is based on interrelationships between environmental resources, agriculture, technology, services and industry. It also includes a component of human capacity development. This is as an integrated set of management techniques, based on the values of leadership and development of entrepreneurial skills. In practice, the model encourages the use of local resources, the combination of traditional and modern agricultural practices, the adaptation of technologies and the diversification of activities. Through these practices, Songhai integrates concepts of “zero waste” and “total productivity” through the use of biological and ecological farming practices. Providing opportunities for rural communities to use and manage in a sustainable way their resources while promoting local economic development.” [description from my post assignment]

Basically.. it is a self sustainable eco-utopia created with the purpose of teaching the people of West Africa work ethic. It has been recognized by the UN as a “center of excellence” And it is a really.. really impressive place. They even recycle plastics.

We arrive at Songhai every morning early enough to water our planches (garden beds... but way more fun to say.. its pronounced plonches) before class commences at 8... Our various class sessions are over at 5.. and then we have an hour of tutoring in our local languages (I can now count to 10... saluate.. and tell you what I ate today). Usually I make it back home around 630.

The first week of tech training was mostly gardening and agriculture: I learned how to build a planch, Plant things... and also transplant things. All about soil structure, How to tell which disease/insect/deficiency a plant has, All about composting, How to prepare natural pesticides, How to collect and save seeds from various vegetables. We covered a lot of things I knew and a lot of things I didn't know... a crazy amount of stuff was packed into the first week. Early in the week we had a special session on the Food Security program here in PC Benin.. which I am very excited about.

This week (week two) was more of a melange of bigger projects. We spent one whole day learning about food processing and then canning tomatoes... it was a very long day.. but we had fun. Two days were spent with a local gardening group practicing PACA (Participatory Analysis for Community Action).. and then teaching them how to prepare a natural pesticide. Also.. it was tree week. We learned our local Tree IDs, grafting, how to plant a tree plantation, and how to collect seeds/plant seeds for said tree plantation. Most importantly we learned how to dig a hole with a machete. 

On a Funny Note: Starting this week, Mama is teaching me to cook [Rumor has it while we were gone PC told them all a story about a volunteer who never learned to cook.. and then got really sick and had to go home because they starved. Now all the host parents are convinced that none of us know how to cook].... today I learned how to make a salad.

Z