Some Recent Pictures & Events

A Beninese funeral procession in Lalo. Funerals in Benin are a BIG deal- they are like a big party. Unlike in the US, people do not dress and black and you never see anyone crying. A huge procession of people and a band walk around town with a large picture of the deceased. They go from neighborhood to neighborhood, dancing, singing, drinking and visiting.


Miranna with some local women at the funeral reception. After the procession, everyone gathers at one location for the reception- more food, singing, and dancing. Note the hat: this is a typical hat women wear for special events here.


Lunch at our neighbor's house last weekend.
This family is super nice and we have enjoyed getting to know them. The dad is a primary school director at a neighboring village and the mom makes and sells food. They have one boy and two girls at home with them and then two older girls who live in Cotonou. Believe it or not, five children is actually a reasonable size family for Benin! The two girls that live there- Andrea and Inez- are always at our house playing with Koko, coloring, or just watching us do whatever we are up to at the moment. The girl in the front of the picture, Andrea, is in the same grade as I teach (but not in my class) so I often help her with English as well.


Charlie, KoKo and a student name Prosper. Look at the size of the papaya that he brought us! It was bigger than the cat!


Not a great picture, but Miranna teaching "Parts of the Body." It was a really fun lesson followed by a revised version of the song "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes."


KoKo waiting in Miranna's bag- ready to go to school with her.


Miranna with her school director's youngest children at New Years. In Benin, families often wear matching fabric for important events, such as funerals, holidays, or weddings. The two girls are twins. They were so cute in their matching outfits, we couldn't resist taking a picture!

Life is Full of Surprises

We woke up one Sunday morning to find a mouse swimming in our sink! Miranna screamed for Charlie, who then put Ko Ko to work...


In the end, Charlie had to drown the mouse...

Mouse Kill Count:
Charlie: 2
Ko Ko: 0

However, she is very skilled at catching cockroaches (and keeping us company!). Hey, we're not all perfect, right?

Random Updates

Wow, it’s February! We’ve just hit our 6 month mark in country!

What is cooking in our side of the world?...

Charlie is currently in the northern part of Benin (look for Kandi on the map) on a HIV/AIDS education bicycle tour with other volunteers. Miranna could not go because she had to teach. However, if all goes well there, we hope to do a similar tour in our region in the near future.

Miranna just finished her first semester of school this week- calculating semester averages for 160+ students should be fun! This week she has been teaching family vocabulary and the possessive case which was a lot of fun. She used all the fun magazines that friends have sent to make up an imaginary family tree. Did you know that John Travolta and his wife are parents to Renee Zelwiger, the Olsen twins, and Patrick Swazye? Who knew they were all related! Of course my students didn’t know who any of these people were (the just loved looking at the pictures) so only I found the humor in it.

A few weeks ago we started learning Fon- the local language in Lalo. We have lessons for 2 hours on Monday afternoons between Miranna's classes. It isn’t easy! It’s not really a written language- it is very phonetic, which is fine if you’ve studied phonetics (which the Beninese do). But, the locals of Lalo love it when we bust out a greeting in Fon!

Because everybody is dying to know: Our kitty’s name is “KoKo.” This is taken from the local saying “KoKoKo,” which is what you say when you go to visit someone at their house. She is always at the door to welcome us, so we thought it was appropriate.

We’ve now had one week with no power- so no lights and no fan have given us the taste of the “real” Peace Corps experience. Man, do we miss our fan! There is a bit of a dispute with the electricity bill with the 30 or so houses that are on our block (and on the same bill) so we’re not actually sure when we will get power back. I won’t even try to explain how it works here because it is incredibly nonsensical, but, we’re coping!

So, all in all, life is good!

A New Year, A New Leaf

We can’t say that we don’t like the food in Benin. In fact, that is the problem; we like it too much! However, most of the foods are not very “figure friendly” due to their high contents of oil and carbohydrates. Most everything here is prepared in lots of palm oil and fried- everything! We also don’t have easy access to fresh vegetables so a salad is very hard to come by! So, we recently decided that it was high time to get motivated and begin an exercise program. Our two main original hesitations were a) the heat- who wants to exercise in the hot African sun? and b) people staring and thinking “What are those bizarre Yovos doing now?” We get enough attention as outsiders on a daily basis, we didn’t need one more reason for people to stare at us.

A few months after school started, Miranna began to notice students walking around in gym uniforms. After a little bit of investigation she discovered a “track” behind the school and learned that all the students have 3 hours of sports every week! I was quite surprised! So, maybe if we started sports too, it wouldn’t be that bizarre of a concept! Given the hot weather and Miranna’s teaching schedule, we decided that if we were going to exercise it was going to have to be at 6:30 in the morning. Most of you know, we are not morning people, so this was going to take some dedication!

On the first morning that we arrived at the track, a small gathering of children slowly began to arrive before their 7AM classes to observe our turns of the track. We smiled and waved and continued to run. Slowly word began to get out that “Madame” was doing sport in the morning and every morning we had a bit bigger of a crowd watching. One day, Miranna went by herself and was running her usual laps when all of the girls from one of her 6eme classes appeared on the track- in their Kacki uniforms. Their math teacher was late and they were concerned that she was running by herself. She assured them that she was OK, but they insisted on running with her. The girls got such a kick out of this- as did Miranna! This wasn’t the first and last time that this happened. Most times when we arrive at the track there is always a group of students who join us- either because of their concern that one of us is by ourselves or because it is a good opportunity for them to practice their English (and hang out with the coolest teacher in school!).

A few weeks later we were chatting with a student and asked her what she was doing on the weekend. She mentioned that on Saturday morning she would be doing sports, per usual. We kind of gave her a funny look and asked what she meant. She explained that “everybody” goes to the school on Saturday mornings to do sports. If this was the case, why hadn’t we heard anything about it up to this point? So, we told her that would be there Saturday morning to see for ourselves. On Saturday morning we showed up at 6:30 and begin, as usual, to run laps. Slowly, but surely, more and more students began to show up. By 7AM, the Director, other members of the school administration, the President of the Parent’s Association, a doctor from the Centre de Sante, and beaucoups of students were present at the track. Some students started to run with us, there were two soccer games, a volleyball game, a basket ball game, and a group doing aerobics all at the same time. We had such a blast paying with the kids and were happy to have found a Saturday morning activity. Yet, we were also shocked that we had been living in Lalo for almost three months and no one had yet mentioned this to us!

So, our decision to start on an exercise routine has been one of the best decisions I we have made since arriving in Lalo. Not only for the obvious fact, that it is good for our health, but more importantly it has allowed us to get to know students (in all the grade levels) on a more in depth basis. Even on days when it is so hard to drag ourselves out of bed at 6AM, once we are there and that unexpected student shows up by my side to run with us, we arrive back home feeling so happy that we made the decision to exercise that morning. What we used to view as an activity just to stay healthy has proven to be an activity in becoming more integrated and involved within Lalo.

Joyeux Noel

or..."Merry Christmas" from Benin!

Of course we are missing not being at home for Christmas, but we’re making do here! It doesn’t feel at all like the holiday season and Christmas music just doesn't have the same ring here: it isn't "beginning to look a lot like Christmas," it's never going to snow (even if we repeat "Let it Snow" a million times) so it won't be a "White Christmas," and we won't "be home for Christmas" (even if we wish we could be!)! However, we are having a great week.

We are spending this week of Christmas in Cotonou. We lucked out and got asked to house/dog sit for an American couple that lives here, so we are enjoying the luxuries of AC, satellite TV, and internet! Tuesday night we were invited to a reception at the Ambassador’s house- it was a lot of fun and the new ambassador and his wife are really nice! Last night we hosted a Xmas Eve dinner for the other volunteers that are also in town. The menu: chicken, sausage and apple stuffing, greenbean casserole, and mashed potatoes. For dessert: homemade eggnog and xmas cookies. It was so nice to be able to cook in a real kitchen!

The Ambassador has also opened his pool on Christmas Day for the American community, so we’ll be spending some quality time there today! Saturday we are going to attend a wedding with a friend from Lalo, who is going to a co-worker’s wedding here in Cotonou. That should be fun! Otherwise, we are relaxing and enjoying a break from the heat!

We wish everybody a very Merry Christmas back home!


No photos allowed at the Ambassador’s house, but us before we went to the reception.


Bon Appetite! Christmas dinner is ready!

1st Three Months in Lalo

This week hits a milestone for us- we’ve officially been at “post”- or Lalo- now for 3 months. This means that we have been in Benin now for 5 months! It really has been flying by. So, we wanted to write an update about what has been going on in our lives since we have been official residents of Lalo.

Overall, life in Lalo is good! Our house is starting to feel like a home- especially with the addition of a kitty! We are starting to get in a groove with our schedule and work, we’ve pretty much figured out where we need to buy what we need, and we feel like we know a good amount of people in town. Our next hurdle is trying to learn the local language. Up to this point it has been difficult to pick up a lot because there are two languages spoken here in Lalo- Adja and Fon. We have a few of the greetings down in both, but we never know who is speaking what and/or which one to use- it is very confusing! We have chosen to study Fon, mostly because it is the predominate language in the center of town, but also because many people in Cotonou speak Fon, so we think it will be more helpful in the long run. After the holidays we will start with a tutor (an English teacher at Miranna’s school) and see what progress we can make!

For Miranna, the month of December has been a long exam process: writing and correcting exams for all of the English classes at her school, reviewing exam material with her students, proctoring exams (boring!!), grading exams (super time consuming), and finally handing back and reviewing the exams with the students. What a process- and she gets to do it again at the end of January (they have tri-mesters here)! The grading scale here is out of 20, not 100 like we are used to, so students have to get a 10/20 to pass. Most of Madame Miranna’s students did- on English anyway- but the grades ranged from 19.75/20 to 2/20 (it was not a hard exam!). This gives you an idea of the range of students in each of the classes. Are you curious what Miranna is teaching? Luckily, up to this point, it hasn’t been anything too complicated for the lowest-level classes (6eme): we have covered the verb “to be,” greetings, school vocabulary, question words, prepositions, days of the week, and numbers 1-100. After the holidays, she’ll be teaching time, possessive adjectives, and the verb “to have.” The 5eme class has been concentrating on reviewing verb tenses they learned last year and learning the simple past. This is not so easy because of all those irregular verbs (ate, spent, bought, etc)- that are only irregular in the affirmative, but not negative and interrogative forms! It's been a learning process for me, as well as the students!

Miranna and some of her students outside one of the classrooms.

Charlie is doing fine at work. He has still been going out into villages and helping with vaccination days. There’s another PC volunteer in a nearby town called Dogbo and she comes down to a nearby village close to Lalo. Together they do baby weightings and provide consultations to the mothers on how they should continue breastfeeding their child up to 6 months, when they can start weaning the babies, and what they can do to increase the nutritional value of the food given to them. He has also visited a few villages with the chef du village, where he works with groups of rice growers. He plans on organizing some educational sessions to talk about health issues. For example, learning proper hygiene practices or doing a cooking demonstration to illustrate how they can supplement meals with the leaves from a local tree called “moringa,” which grows very quickly in this part of the world. A big part of the work for both health and environment volunteers here is to encourage mothers to use the leaves in their cooking to provide a nutritional supplement for their children.

One of several artesian wells found in surrounding villages. The water flows nonstop year-round. It’s used for drinking water, washing clothes and to irrigate nearby rice fields.

The dry season has begun because it is the beginning of the “harmatan.” It is a time when the dry Saharan dessert winds sweep over West Africa and actually make it cooler and less humid most everywhere in Benin- including Lalo. It actually makes for very pleasant evenings! Also, when we do laundry, the clothes dry in about a day which is awesome compared to when we first got here and it took several days due to the humidity! But, don’t get us wrong- it is still hot! We love our fan more and more everyday!

Boy on his way to school (this is the boy's uniform) cutting through a rice field.

Ho Ho Ho

Santa made an early delivery to Lalo last week...

TOO Cute!

Needless to say, Miranna is tres content! She dosen't have a name yet- Charlie wants to have a naming contest with the local kids- we'll see what we come up with!

Another post coming later- so stay tuned!