Penessoulou

Hello again!

I returned from my post visit in Penessoulou last night, so I have lots of news to share about my post and about my trip. I’m trying to write some of this on the French computer at the internet café because I want to try to post some photos on Facebook while I type, so please excuse any typos!

We left for post on Wednesday morning. It takes a good day’s worth of travel to reach Penessoulou from Cotonou (if you leave by 9 a.m., you might get there by 5 p.m., depending on the road conditions and your means of transport), but on a bus the journey is not entirely unpleasant. I was fortunate to travel most of the way with two other volunteers posted nearby, and our Directors (school principals) accompanied us on the way up – so aside from the heat, lack of bathrooms, and various engine troubles en route, it was actually a pretty nice and uneventful trip :) haha.

Penessoulou itself is quite small – just a strip of low buildings lining the Goudrone (“good road”) linking Cotonou in the south with Natitingou in the north. Its permanent fixtures are a mosque, a tiny church, a small health center, the primary and secondary school complexes, and three buvettes (go figure). The CEG (College d’Enseignement Generale, equivalent of junior high in the U.S., where I will be teaching) is a little ways out of the town “center” and consists of three one-story buildings with 5-6 classrooms each, plus a small office for the Director and Censeur (Vice-Principal), a basketball court, and a soccer field, all surrounded by cornfields. There is a weekly marché in Penessoulou, but I’ll have to travel to Bassila to get most supplies and to find a post office, a bank, and an internet café.

That said, I’m really happy to be posted in a small village rather than in a big city like Cotonou or Porto Novo. The cities here are wild– crazy motorcycles cram the roadways and pollute the air, vendors line the streets hawking their wares, women in colorful tissue (fabric) stride with baskets balanced on their heads and babies strapped around their backs, and children (and animals – goats, chickens, dogs)run about as they please. People are generally very friendly and saluer people as they pass, however, we – Peace Corps volunteers – stick out like sore thumbs everywhere we go and are greeted instead with shouts of “Yovo! Yovo!” (white/foreign person in Fon), or worse, the “Yovo” song: “Yovo, yovo, bonsoir, ca va bien, merci, donnez-moi un cadeau.” The song was taught to Beninese children by the French during the colonial period in an attempt to teach them French, and, as the song suggests, if children sang it the French would give them gifts – thus it has all sorts of negative connotations, in addition to being pretty obnoxious and tiresome. I like to tell the kids singing, “Je ne suis pas Yovo, je suis Beninoise!” but I don’t think they believe me…haha.

My house is about a two-minute walk down a dirt path from the Goudrone, and is, as I had heard, quite grand for one person even by American standards – I have a salon, two bedrooms, a kitchen, a bathroom with a toilet and shower area (although no running water), and a porch. The house is at the moment entirely empty, so I need to get a lot of furniture (and visitors!) to fill it up (no small feat considering that a lot of things can only be bought in the south, but I shall persevere haha). I also really want to get a dog to keep me company! Most people here use dogs as protection rather than pets and as a result the dogs I’ve seen have been kind of wild rather than friendly, but my Director has a really nice dog (named Rocky haha) so I’m hoping I can convince him to help me find one like him.

Since my house is unfurnished, I stayed with my Director and his family – his wife, Catherine, and their two daughters, Grace (4) and Lydee (2), his wife’s two younger sisters, Bernadette and Ossila, and their domestique, Guira – while I visited. They were all very hospitable and friendly—Catherine is a tailor and she made me an AWESOME modele (skirt and top) in Yayi Boni (President of Benin) tissue (I don’t have pictures yet but just wait til you see it); they fed me lots (they raise turkeys and chickens in their yard – which, if you know how much I love birds, was mildly terrifying, but I mastered my fears haha); and they were really nice when I came down with a cold the second day and just needed to sleep for a while. (However, I must admit that I’m looking forward to having my own space and not feeling bad when I don’t want to eat food, be sociable, or play with screaming children - but I have to wait a bit for that!)

My Director, M. Ponou, seems great so far – excited to have me and eager to make improvements in the school and community. He considers himself a bit of an outsider in Penessoulou (he is from Porto Novo, originally), so he understands a little of what it’s like to be new and not villageois and is making a conscious effort to encourage the village to adopt me as their own, always remembering to introduce me as “notre etrangère” (our foreigner) and telling everyone we meet that I will be living in Penessoulou for two years (emphasis on two years).

It was during these many introductions that I felt for the first time confronted with the reality of my service—two years teaching English in a remote village in West Africa?! How crazy is that?! But it’s exciting, too. When M. Ponou brought me in to meet the village elders, who were at the time gathered in a one-room dwelling beside the mosque to select the next village chief, I couldn’t help but think, “How on Earth did I get here? And where else could I ever have had this experience?” It really is priceless.

Lots of love from Benin, and more news to follow…

I'm alive!

Bonsoir tout le monde! Greetings from Porto Novo, capital of Benin!

I’m sorry it’s been so long since I last wrote – we haven’t had very much internet access since we arrived in country, and I have a lot of trouble typing on the French keyboards in the internet cafés, so I’m writing this post on my home computer and will try to find my way to a café soon to put it online. I’ll write more frequently from now on, I promise!

It’s hard to believe that I arrived in Benin just over three weeks ago – the past several weeks have been such a whirlwind that it feels as though we’ve been here for months. The Peace Corps keeps us very busy with training during the day (we have class from about 8-12:30 and 3-6 Monday through Saturday…which might not sound like much, but it’s pretty draining!), and we spend the rest of our time with our host families learning about life in Benin and practicing our French (or in my case, speaking a lot of franglais and serving as a source of great amusement for my host sisters).

My host family is awesome. I have a maman, a papa, and five sisters: Anick (28), Nadia (25), Mureille (23), Geofride (20), and Dona (14). Anick’s daughter, Kadol (3), and Mureille’s son, Femi (1 ½), live here as well. My maman runs a petit magasin from the front of the house and sells a little bit of everything – tomatoes, laundry soap, flip flops, charcoal, etc. My papa is a retired gendarme who now has a shop in town where he sells construction supplies. Anick and Mureille work at NGOs, Nadia is working towards her Maitrise (roughly the equivalent of a Master’s) in international community development, Geofride is studying English at University, and Dona is in 3eme at Lycee. Anick, Nadia, and Mureille take me out with them to boites and buvettes on the weekends (the first Friday I was in Porto Novo we got stuck at a boite until 4 a.m. because there was a voodoo ceremony going on outside…but that’s another story); Geofride and I work on French/English together; and Dona teaches me how to do things around the house (or rather, she puts up with my total incompetence in all things practical). Femi is adorable, and Kadol is my best French teacher (mostly because she repeats things until I figure out what she’s saying and do whatever she wants haha). Maman doesn’t understand half the things I say in broken French and thinks I’m very silly, but she goes along with it. Papa is slightly elusive, but he does take me with him to faire du sport (which for him means to go for long marches across town) some evenings, which I really appreciate since it’s hard to work out during the day and it’s too dangerous for me to go out alone at night.

I’m really lucky to have such a large family, especially one with so many girls around my age. Occasionally, it’s overwhelming – par example, when I’m trying to study French and Femi and Kadol burst into my room screaming – but mostly it’s comforting and makes me feel like I’m at home. Nevertheless, I’m definitely looking forward to being at post and having a little bit more "me" time.

Speaking of post, I got my post assignment on Friday and I couldn’t be more pleased! Beginning in September, I’ll be teaching English in Penessoulou, a village in the Donga region in mid/north-west Benin on the border with Togo. The nearest "big" towns are Bassila (which just got a new cyber café!) and Djougou, and the closest Peace Corps workstation is in Natitingou. I’ll be the first and only volunteer in my village, but there are a few other volunteers posted in the surrounding area so I shouldn’t be too lonely. From what I’ve heard, my house is pretty grand by Peace Corps standards – I have a bathroom with a toilet and a shower, a kitchen with a sink, a porch, AND a guestroom – what luxury! (I’d better have lots of visitors!) I’ve also heard that the director/principal of my school is really nice (I get to meet him tomorrow) and that the people in the region are very welcoming. I really don’t think I could have asked for anything more!

In addition to receiving excellent post news, Friday was a fantastic day all around because I celebrated my first birthday in Africa! (Thanks everyone for the birthday wishes!!) I had no less than THREE cakes (vanilla in the morning and two mango in the evening…mmm), was sung to on multiple occasions, received a package of Hobnobs and other goodies from Lauren in Scotland, got lots of phone calls from the States, and feted the occasion first with PCVs and then with my host sisters at a local buvette. I had been a little nervous beforehand that having a birthday here so soon after I’d arrived would make me feel homesick, but it actually ended up being one of my best days here so far.

Alright, I do actually have to stop writing because we have a big day tomorrow (meeting the directors), but hopefully this gives you a little idea of how I’m doing. I’ll write more about life in Benin soon! Until then, I love and miss you all and hope to hear from you soon if I haven’t done so already!

On my way!

I'm off to Benin tomorrow! After what seemed like weeks of good-byes and two days of training in Philadelphia, we're finally ready to go. I'm nervous, but I can't wait to get on the plane! It's going to be an incredible, if challenging, experience, and I'm eager to get started.

I'm not really a blog person (I don't usually read them and I'm not really sure what to write in one), but I think that this could be a good way to let friends and family know what I'm up to in Benin, so I'll give it a shot. I'm off to sleep now, but I'll write more once I arrive in Africa!!