Dear friends and family,
I hope all is well in the US! I am sitting in my classroom at the high school where we have our classes. I just finished with our second “language interview”--we have three during the course of training. I knew things were not going well when I found myself attempting to describe the Mubarek trial as an example of a news story I had been following...and when I the only book I could think to talk about was “The Executioner's Song” by Normal Mailer. These topics are not my best in French...as I am missing lots of useful vocabulary words such as Mormon, dictator, and death penalty.
If I could merely stick to simple things that were untrue as opposed to complicated things that were true...I would most likely convince the Peace Corps that I had reached an appropriate level in French...but alas, this is apparently not my gift.
I believe we will get our results on next Tuesday. On a positive note, I was able to work in the future simple, subjunctive, and conditional tenses when I was doing the role play portion of the exam—I was a sports coach and needed to describe the activities I would conduct in order to assure my team's success. We will see...we have yet another test in three weeks...so perhaps I can come up with a fake book and simpler new stories to describe if asked again. Someone said they described “The Giving Tree” which is a brilliant idea, as most of us know the words for tree, little boy, old man, cut down, and give.
In other news, we are approaching our post visit week! Ed and I were on the schedule to go separately but they changed it so environment and health sectors will go together (I don't think this is because of us...but perhaps?). We will be meeting our site counterparts and will go up together to the village for 4 days—we'll hopefully see our house, meet some people, and make arrangements to put up mosquito netting and to get furniture made. Exciting—we'll also get to meet up with the guy who recommended our site, a PC volunteer who will leave next week—he's a few miles up the road.
Yesterday, all the health volunteers went out to a village to do our first baby weighing. This was a pretty adorable experience. I weighted approximately 5 babies. There's a baby harness that hangs from a scale tied to a tree. I believe the most difficult part of baby-weighing is getting the baby's legs into the harness—they really don't like this part. Many babies share the unfortunate sentiment that white people are terrifying. This results in lots of crying and kicking. However, some babies were not scared at all. I will likely do some baby weighings at my village at the health center—I will have to see if they have anything set up already. In the south (or the middle) where I'll be, there isn't as much problem with malnutrition because the dry season is not as dry as in the north. However, it seems like the baby weighings are a good way to get women together and people can talk about adding protein and vegetables to the toddler's diet if they are lower in weight.
We've also been taught to do a bouille demonstration. Bouille is this porridge-type food item that reminds me a bit of cream of wheat. It's super popular with the toddler community of Benin—so PC tries to get women to add peanut butter, soy/millet flours, and fruits to the bouille to make it healthier and make sure toddlers get the right nutrients.
What else? Hmm...can't think of much. Homestay is going well—we're gearing up to move out to post and thinking about you guys! Health is well—some people have gastrointestinal critters but in general, everyone seems in good spirits. I don't think I have any of said critters...
This last season seems a good one to visit. It's a bit cooler and even though it's the “rainy” season—it doesn't seem to rain all that much.
and here's a different note I wrote just after we got our post announcements about our new village!
Ed and I finally got our post announcement yesterday! This was LONG awaited since Peace Corps wanted to keep it a secret until Friday of our 5th week in Benin. Apparently, we will be in the Collines region of the country (fyi, “collines” means little hills in French) in a village called Kpakpa (I don't know how it's pronounced...). We got a packet of information with our assignment that is supposed to give us a bit of background—it's a little sparse, though. Here's what we/I know:
The village has never had a Peace Corps volunteer before. There are less than 1,000 people living in Kpakpa. Most people don't speak French there but speak a language called Idaasha. The village has two primary schools and one secondary school (so the teenagers should speak French). Kpakpa is too small to have its own market, but we can get to a big weekly market which is about 20 miles away. We don't have electricity and I believe we have a pump for water (and a well?). My counterpart or work partner is a nurse at the health center. It says the health center is 10 meters from my house...which sounds awfully close so I'm wondering if this may have been written down incorrectly? We're also near a much bigger town called Dassa which has things like internet cafes, electricity, and ostrich omelette's. Of course, I was overjoyed to hear of the ostrich omelettes.
Also, this area has a large yam festival every August (sadly, my site visit up there is the week after the yam festival) and is famous for a dish called yam pilai (I just don't know how to spell that!) which in my personal opinion, tastes like mashed potatoes—but I have experienced some descent upon mentioning this to other trainees.
We're in the middle of the country and not to far from a major road to Cotonou and Parakou—two major cites here. Seems there may not be lots of paved roads in our village.
You may be asking yourselves why we will need to know French if no one speaks it in our village. Well, when we are attempting to learn Idaasha through a tutor when we get to village and when we are not very good at speaking Idaasha—things will be translated into French. By the way, if anyone comes across an Idaasha dictionary, let me know!
I was pretty excited to here about our post. We had heard a rumor that we would be in a village in the south outside of Cotonou so this was a surprise. To do the announcements, they drew a map of Benin with chalk on the floor with all the posts labeled and then called us one by one to give us our packets and have us stand on our village. That way we could see who we would be near.
Well, abrupt ending. I also included some photos that are truly a random selection as I continue to get used to the hilarious combination of this version of linux on this netbook (which my dear friend Meghan has SO generously loaned/donated!), shaking electricity, and terribly slow internet. I just chose files...and here's what came up! So enjoy—love love love you all!
