Where Have You Guys Been??

Charlie adminstering polio vacinations in Lalo.


Miranna with our taxi and all of our luggage when we left Porto Novo for Lalo.


We are now official residents of LALO! Yes, we are alive and fine, but we do not have access to email in our new town. Hence, the lack of communication from us. Today we have come to the regional capital, Lokossa (which is about an hour away for us), to do our banking, check email, and most importantly, celebrate the big 3-0 for Miranna with other volunteers in our region.

Things are going well- wow, where to start? We have been in Lalo for about 3 weeks now. Our house is great, though it is taking time to get settled in since it was completely empty when we arrived. We have acquired a bed, bookshelf, and a dining room table with 4 chairs from another volunteer nearby (he moved into a previous PC couple’s house, so he had lots of everything). We just put in an order with the carpenter for some other items such as a chest of drawers, a clothes rack, and another bookshelf. It’ll be nice to finally take clothes out of our suitcases that have been there since July! Well technically we have been living out of a suitcase since May, so you can imagine how excited we will be to not have to dig through a suitcase everyday! Once we are really settled in, we’ll take some pictures and post them.

But to give a general description, we have a large main room that we will use as a living room/dining room/office. Then we have 2 smaller rooms- one is our bedroom and the other is our storage room- clothes, food, etc. We have a small outside area in the back- one side has the kitchen, the other side has our toilet (yes, we have a real toilet, not a latrine- but since we don’t have running water, it is pour flush) and an area for our bucket showers. It is very comfortable! We have electricity which helps- so we are able to run the fan and have lights at night.

Everyone has been really welcoming and we feel very safe here. While Miranna was initially hesitant about the small size of Lalo, we now realize how better it is to be in a smaller town where everybody knows who we are. It would be nice to be in a bigger town where access to goods (and email) is easier, but you’ll never get to know as many people and not feel as comfortable as we are getting around town. One of Charlie’s work counterparts, named Fagla, is the Chef du Village of Lalo. Our house is very close to his and he has taken us under his wing. We eat dinner at his house most every night, he introduces us around town, finds us things we need, etc. He has known other volunteers in the region in the past so he is familiar with Americans and is excited to show us Beninese culture. We’re not sure how many wives he has (at least 3), but he has 13 children! Not too atypical for here. The older girls (between 13 and 10 years old) fetch our water for us every other day and sometimes they just come over to hang out. So what does “fetching water” mean? Basically, they use large aluminum basins that we have to go down the street to a house where the person charges folks to collect water. We give the girls enough money to pay for it and give them sweets or fruits once they’re done. It works out nice for everyone. Eventually we want to start teaching them English because none of them are in secondary school yet and it’ll give them a jump start in a few years when they do start English in school – where M is teaching.

And, what about work? The reason we are here, right???
Miranna: I officially started school on October 1st, but after a week and a half, I had not yet taught a class. The “1st day of school” has a very different connotation in Benin than in the US. Basically it means that students start to show up to pay their school fees and clean the school grounds and classrooms. Primary school is free, but secondary school (the equivalent of middle and high school) costs about $20 for continuing students and new students have to also bring a bag of cement to help finance the construction of new buildings. This doesn’t sound like a lot, but for families here it is a lot of money. This is one reason why after primary school many girls are not able to continue school. If a family only has enough money for one or two of their children to go to school, it will be the boys. So, students are not allowed to find out what class they are in until they have paid. So, even if I had wanted to start teaching the first day there wouldn’t be any students because they hadn’t yet had a chance to pay. What this means is that there will be about a 3 week period that every time I have a class that meets, I will have new students. This makes it hard to teach because everything will have to be repeated until all of the students are finally present. By the end of this past week classes had started to fill up- I had about half my students in all my classes (the average number of students in a class is 50- so classes of 25 sure did feel full- I’m not too excited about that number doubling!). I am tired of teaching “Good Morning,” “How are you?,” My name is…,” etc… I really don’t want to start teaching anything important, such as the verb “to be,” until everyone is there. I am one of the only teachers that has actually started teaching- so I don’t see everything getting into full swing for at least another week. It really is bizarre!
I officially only work 18 hours a week, but I spend at least that amount of time at home on class preparation- so my days are still full. My schedule is as follows:
Monday: 8-10AM 6eme A (equivalent of 6th grade); 5-7PM 6eme BTuesday: 8-10AM 6eme C; 3-5PM 5eme A (equivalent of 7th grade)Wednesday: 8-10AM 6eme B; 10-12 English Department meetingThursday: 8-10AM 6eme C; 10-12 6eme A; 3-5PM 5eme A
I don’t have class on Friday, which is great, but by the time it gets here, I’m exhausted- especially after teaching for 6 hours on Thursday. Everybody has “repose” between 12- 3PM. This is fabulous because at that time of the day it is too hot to function here. The mornings and evenings are very pleasant, but it is so HOOOTTT in the middle of the day, I now understand why everyone takes the repose- think “siesta” like in Latin American culture. Between classes and for repose I typically come home, prepare for classes, do laundry, take a nap, read, clean, etc.- but most important sit in front of a fan!
Overall, I am happy with my school placement thus far. I enjoy the change of pace from an office job and the challenge I have everyday creating lesson plans. It is sad to say, but with my limited training I am one of the better English teachers at my school- mostly because I always show up and I actually care if my students learn something. Everyone at the school has been nice and open to answering all my questions. I am super lucky because the person at my school that takes the school fees- called the Comptable- is a women (named Judith) and she is also an English teacher! In Benin the majority of school staff and teachers are men. In fact at my school, we are the only women; in such a male dominated society it is nice to see a woman in an important position. You can tell Judith is super excited to have me there and I am glad she is there! I am able to go to her about anything- including how much I should pay for eggs or tomatoes in town, where I should get clothes made, etc. We have talked about finding a night for her to come over and exchange 1 hour of speaking in French for 1 hour of speaking in English. I look forward to getting to know her better!

Charlie: Hmmmm, where do I start? Work for me i.e. health volunteers, isn’t exactly as clear cut as Miranna’s teaching gig. It’s not too unexpected for me, but a challenge to deal with. In Benin, people at work have very specific roles, so to have a volunteer come in and start working is a bit of a challenge because they don’t know quite what to do with us. It’s not to say that I can’t find something to do or they don’t want me there, it’s just that coming in to working as a community health volunteer doesn’t give them much to go with…..yet. On top of it all I have my language barrier to work with and everyone speaks local language to each other for the most part. What’s frustrating is that they will do it in front of you and leave you completely stranded trying to figure out what they are saying. I have to then ask, “what’d he/she say?” and get a short version of the story. Oh and did I mention they actually speak 2 different local languages around here?

While we were in Porto Novo, we had gotten a few courses in the local language Adja. That was great and helpful to know we would get to learn that language. Of course, we get to Lalo and everyone in town is speaking Fon, another local and more widely spoken language throughout Southern Benin. Then one day I go on a trip into the bush with Fagla to see the rice fields and scare away birds – its rice harvesting time so this is a very important activity! We meander through narrow dirt paths and come along a small village at the outskirts of where he is still considered village chief. Here, he says, is where they speak Adja. “Wonderful”, I say, and immediately bust out the few greetings and phrases I knew. Let me tell you it’s one of the most rewarding experiences to be able to be in such a strange, different, culturally awkward environment and make a connection that is as simple as- “hello, how are you?” They love it!! So, after a few shots of the local brew, sodabe, I leave slightly buzzed and confused about what language they do speak around here. I’ve come to find out everyone pretty much understands bits of the other and just depending on where you are you have to speak that language even if the village is only a few kilometers away from another speaking a totally different language- it’s really fascinating.

In response to an increase in polio (yes, the polio that has long since been eradicated in the US) cases within West Africa, Benin is participating in a door to door campaign to vaccinate all children under 5 years of age. As soon as I found out this news I quickly began asking around to find out how I could help out. Turns out they put me on a team to work within the center of the village here in Lalo. I even dragged Miranna to help out giving vitamin A doses to the kids. It was an amazing, and not to mention incredibly tiring, 3 days of literally visiting every house in town and performing the vaccination which is simply done by administering 2 drops of vaccine into the kids mouths. It was a great way for us to see parts of town we would have never gotten to visit (there’s not really a reason we would go there) and also just get the word out that we were here for the next 2 years and make new connections. (See picture above)

Another question that might be on your mind:
What do you eat? For breakfast we typically have bread, fruit (bananas or oranges), and tea- nothing too fancy. For lunch we eat a lot of hard boiled eggs, soy cheese (most easily compared to Tofu), tomatoes, rice or couscous, and fruit. Dinner is more typically Beninese when we eat at Faglas’s house- it consists of pate blanc (a staple starch made from corn or cassava meal boiled with water- about the consistency of really thick mashed potatoes) or rice, a sauce, such as sauce de legume (a vegetable based sauce made with tomatoes and cassava leaves- basically the only form of green vegetable you get here) or a tomato and sesame based sauce, and fish or chicken- all eaten by hand (the right one, of course!). The few times we have cooked for ourselves we have made some version of American dishes, but you have to be pretty creative since finding ingredients isn’t too easy! What we can find on a daily basis: tomatoes, eggs, rice, beans, fried dough concoctions, onions, ginger, and peanuts. Things we get excited about when I find them in town (or walking past me on top of a women’s head): bread, pineapple, bananas, oranges, avocados, soy cheese. And that is about the extent of our diet! While we eat well, we do miss the variety from home!

Please send us your questions and we’ll do our best to answer them in the next blog post. Hopefully we’ll get a chance to check email again in the next few weeks! In the meantime, if you miss us, please call us! We’d love to hear from you! Our parents have been buying phone cards that work well that get you about 20 minutes for $5. Our numbers:
Miranna: 011-229-96695532
Charlie: 011-229-97914934
Keep in mind that we are 5 hours ahead of ET, though that will be 6 hours when you all change time. We are typically home after 7PM our time.
A bientot!