Bike Tour Video

Hey all. Here is a video depicting our experience on the bike tour. Enjoy!

International Museum Day, 2011!

Mme. SEKO, curator for the music museum, works on her exhibit.

In preparation for the upcoming Int'l Museum Day, May 18th, we've been working on setting up an exhibit at the local university. The theme for this year is "Museums and Memory." We'll be offering some plaques about the history of slavery in Benin, the history of music, and the history of tribal communication. Interesting stuff. We're working on preparing an "itinerant exhibit" that we can easily transport to schools and social gatherings to showcase what the museum has to offer.

Mme. SEKO and I hard at work...

Online Presence

Hey everyone, I just wanted to let you know that this isn't the only blog I'm maintaining. Take a look at my other page, though you'll see that it's presently in French. Use google to translate the entire page if you want to see what we've been up to over at the music museum.

Museum of Music, Parakou

We've just started to set up our exhibit concerning ancient and modern communication methods among the various tribes in Benin. Pretty cool stuff! Anywho, enjoy. We're putting another blog for the Beninese Volunteer Corps active sometime this week, also.

...December?

Not sure what happened to November. Between amped up work, traveling, and visitors, the month seems to have slipped through my fingers in what is unfortunately going to be the probable trend for the next year.

Been souping up the workstation over the last month with fans, lights, compost piles, new security measures and, hear this, wireless internet. High speed, no less. Unfortunately I'm presently without a computer charger, so the wireless aspect is lost to me. Thus it's "same same but different" encore.

Been working a lot with the new "Institute of Fine Arts," not yet opened, which is located next to the workstation and aspires to be the largest museum of ethnomusicology this side of the Nile. It's there that we are going to celebrate at the end of our three-day Family Planning Borgou Bike Tour in February. There is toooons of work up here in Parakou, entirely different from my life last year. In short, life is ideal. As events approach, I'll provide more specific details regarding particular endeavors.

I may be asking for some financial assistance soon for a series of youth camps I want to help organize in the Spring. I'll keep all y'all updated as I find out more. Yeah, this is vague. This is vague. Sorry.

Julie Ann Clark, one my best friends from college, had the opportunity to visit Benin for two weeks last month. It was really awesome, and I took the opportunity to visit 2 places I'd been meaning to visit for a year. For the most part, we stayed in Parakou and saw some of the sites around the city, but our village sorties were memorable. She's a trooper, that one, and she's off to visit our other friends in Senegal before (hopefully) continuing on to see her old village in Mauritania. Godspeed, girl.

Will upload photos as soon as my comp's back up. Somehow, all of my electronics were recently reborn, like an early Christmas. Thus, I have a camera again for the first time in 2 months.

Happy Holidays!
-Dave

'Til I Reach the Highest Ground

The disparities between my life this year and last year are too numerous and too comprehensive to adequately impart in a blog entry. Suffice it to say, my amenities and responsibilities have undergone an exponential increase, but my community contacts have kind of taken a precipitous tumble. That being said, life is good because I can take showers without sacrificing drinking water and I can listen to music without worrying about my MP3 player dying. Doesn't seem like much, does it?

So with what do I fill my days? I have a phone that all volunteers can call if they have any inquiries. I can typically call them back free of charge, but I seem to always run out of credit well before the end of the month and end up fielding calls with my personal phone. The duty phone has been described as the "One Ring" from Lord of the Rings - it brings a lot of freedom and power, but it's also a bit of a daunting responsibility. But what isn't? I field questions, send out security updates (i.e. Travel to Niger is restricted between such and such a date), coordinate the regional shuttle, communicate with local officials, etc. etc. all with this little mobile.

It's kind of fun to work with Beninese carpenters, tailors, masons, and electricians to fix things/make improvements around the workstation. There's a new basketball hoop, a new satellite, new light fixtures, curtains, and broken glass for the perimeter "on the way." All of this is supposed to be completed within the next week or so, but I'll call it a success if two of these objectives are completed. As always, one must exercise patience in order to maintain sanity.

While the workstation takes most of my time, there's also a wealth of opportunity outside these walls. My family is supporting a couple of my best students from Kemon going to school up here in Parakou, and I've been working a lot with Ibrahim, an enterprising university student who's the head of the Beninese Volunteer Corps. We're working on expanding the program, planning this year's Borgou Bike Tour (biggest ever?), working on the big Gender and Development fundraising weekend that's coming in February, among other ventures. He's been showing me around the local branches of UN entities, as well as getting me in to see local government reps. He really is a diamond here, and I'm thankful to have him. He also has considerable ping-pong skills.

So I'm off to do some post visits of regional volunteers, but I'm also slipping in a visit to an annual Whipping Fete going on a few hours from here. As far as I know, this is the only fete of this kind, and I'll give you my appreciations in a few days. Gearing up for Halloween, too. I can't disclose what Mark and I are going as, but here's a little snippit of the conversation with the taylor.

Me: So, we want to do something a little strange. Give a brief description of what we want to do.

Taylor: You want... what? I don't understand.

Me: Here, look at this. I draw a picture of what we're trying to do.

Taylor: I need to reflect a bit. At this point he deals with two other clients while we wait patiently for his reaction.

Taylor: Ok, I'll need some time for this. I'll do one step and we'll see how you feel after that. Ok?

Seriously, Mark and I couldn't stop from laughing throughout this entire experience. Can't wait to fill all of you in next week!

-D

The City of Everyone

Welcome to Parakou, the 2nd largest city in Benin. Home to 200,000 Beninese, this city has one of the largest universities in the country, a HUGE market with tons of fresh vegetables, miles of fabric and a meat section with every type of viande found in this country (including cats).

Parakou means "La ville de tout le monde" or "The city of everyone" in Dendi, the most-heard of the dozens of languages spoken in this city. In fact, just walking through the market I get pumelled with the nasal Nagot I spoke in my last year, the puncuated Fon spoken mostly in the South, and the much smoother Dita Mari, Bariba, and Dendi spoken in the northern regions. This can be overwhelming, even for someone who's now lived here for over a year, but it's tough not to appreciate exactly how special Parakou as a whole really is.

Take, for instance, the food that's now available. There are enormous yams throughout all of the northern regions of Benin, but only since moving here have I had a steady supply of ripe tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplant, cabbage, sweet potatoes, peanut butter, green beans, carrots, and squash. The only available food last year, and this was hardly consistent, were onions, tomatoes and okra. I can thus throw together a delicious meal in a matter of minutes. Mark Sawran, a fellow Central New Yorker, and I have been taking advantage of this a few times a week.



Parakou also hosts a number of markets selling "chouk," a type of beer made from millet and drank from a callabash. We apparently have the largest chouk market in West Africa, which I guess could be extrapolated to the largest in the world. It's a great opportunity to sit with some locals who may be a little more open than in less innebriated environments. You can actually see the fermenting happening in your cup as you drink it - the center appears to be boiling. But it's actually quite decent.

Here's some volunteers in a chouk stand in Parakou on our way to watch the first U.S. game of this year's World Cup.

This is a photo of some Fulani girls selling tissue (fabric), as recorded by Christoph Herby, a fellow volunteer stationed here in Parakou.

The Fulani, or Peuhl, or Pulaar, are a nomadic tribe found all over West Africa who have a monopoly on the cow supply. They thus are the go-to people to get your hands on some milk, beef, or yogurt. There is also a meat market by Mark in a section called Guema, where you can get your hands on some select beef or goat for about 2 USD.

Honestly, this city is my favorite place in Benin. It's not the prettiest, or the biggest, nor does it supply the most amenities, but it's a great place to be able to live and work.

Malaria Dreams

So it's been awhile since I've been able to write anything even remotely detailed. Sorry. But now, due to some extenuating circumstances, I have a bit more free time with the internet. As the title suggests, I am sick with malaria. Now, this is not so uncommon among volunteers, and almost all locals contract it at some point. Rachel, the volunteer who I replaced, had it. Several volunteers in my stage had it. And now I do. It's not so bad, at least not 24/7. But when the symptoms hit, mostly at night, it's on. Sweats, shaking, strange visions, and an inability to tell the difference between actual events and those that were dreamt. I have a very vivid recollection of a volunteer giving me a recipe that involved eggs. But there was no volunteer there. Banal, yes, but you get the point.

Anyway, since sickness hasn't been consuming my life for my blogless past month, I can give you some other tidbits of information. To start, after a round of interviews, I was given the position of PCVL (PCV leader) in Parakou for the next year. What eventually led me to this decision was my lack of love for the teaching conditions in Benin. I'm a little less patient than what I think is required, although I'm told that I do a good job. There will be someone replacing me next year in Kemon, so I'll be able to visit whenever I want. I'm going to deeply miss many of the people there, but at least its not goodbye forever. The hard part will be informing them. Since I want to tell my principal first, I was planning on doing it on Monday. Fate intervened in the form of malaria and delayed the meeting, so that still is pending.

PCVLs are regional supervisors, basically. I will visit peoples' posts, address any problems/concerns, work on new site selection, and manage the workstation in Parakou. I also am required to start my own initiatives outside of the PC world. There are several volunteers who have started projects or have ideas, and there are plenty of opportunities to find work in Parakou. This will hopefully allow me to focus more on the business development aspect of the Peace Corps, but I hope to also continue teaching in the form of correspondence and English clubs at local high schools. That being said, I'm excited. Thanks to the efforts of Kyle, the present PCVL, the workstation just moved out of its rat-infested predecessor and into a newer, nicer location with a facade like that of a Swiss Chateau.

I'll try to post some pics of other things I've been doing, but I have no way to upload pictures on this desktop. :( Happy Cinco de Mayo to everyone!

And Don't Forget to Give Me Back My Black T-Shirt

Actually, I ended up with someone else’s black tee in my bag this week. I believe it belongs to one of our female volunteers. So if you’ve lost a black tee from Old Navy, it’s presently resting at Rohan’s in Parakou.

Simply put, this has been a great week. All of the PSL 22 TEFLers swarmed into Parakou for our PSW (I’m still iffy on the acronym, but it may mean Personal Strategy Workshop.) We stayed in an awesome complex called Centre Guy Riobe, ate copious amounts of delicious food, and were able to catch up and develop some new techniques to try out before the Christmas break. It was reassuring to discover that all of us are going through the same types of problems, successes, and frustrations. It isn’t easy, but there’s always a silver lining. A child’s face reveals the dawn of comprehension or, even better, a desire to learn. A fellow teacher sees me using magazine clippings and songs in class and decides that he, too, wants to cater to the students’ more creative faculties. A woman in the market hears me talking about the possibility of starting a “Savings & Loans Club” and, without my prodding, spreads the word to the rest of the vendors and bolsters support for one of my intended secondary projects. In many ways, life here is easier and more familiar than one would expect.

Take, for example, my cats. I have three. One was left for me by Rachel, and this cat has been instrumental in teaching the other two (named Yawkey and Landsdowne, after the streets surrounding Fenway Park) how to kill the random animals that live in my house. Spiders, crickets, large lizards and mice all fit into this category. I had some problems potty-training them, but I discovered that I need to refill the sand in the litter box every day in order to assure compliance. They’re picky eaters and don’t like to cuddle with me, but I hope all of this will change over the next couple of months.

Then there’s the food. I love yam pillet, which is just boiled yam pounded repeatedly until the starch is an unrecognizable gelatinous disk. You eat it with meat (usually the innards of some local animal) and peanut sauce. Sound good? It is, believe you me. I ate yams of various sorts 5 times within a 2-day period last week. The result was not pretty, but I haven’t learned my lesson; I’m anticipating the yams upon my return to Kemon ce soir. I also eat a lot of rice, beans, tomatoes, and onions, all mixed with various spices either left by Rachel or sent from home (hence my new appeal for various American spices).

It’s hard to believe I’ve already been at my post for over two months. I get along really well with my fellow volunteers, and I’m grateful that most of them ended up being much more down-to-earth than I’d anticipated. I’ll be off to Mali on the 22nd, but I hope to update my blog once more before then. I’m planning on really engulfing myself in my lesson planning over the next three weeks, so hopefully I’ll be able to report some improvements. My friend Ali Cumber is flying down from Dubai (I think) to meet up with us for a few days around New Years. Hope everyone’s Thanksgiving was to their liking. We made a Turducken with turkey, duck, and pentard, and had an enormous spread that rendered all of us relatively useless for the rest of the evening. I killed the duck, which is the first time I’ve ever “killed with the intent to eat.” Don’t hold it against me. Best wishes to you all! -Dave