Peace Corps Update #8

Wednesday, September 26, 2007, 08:00 hours

Bon matin!

I am now officially a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV). Actually, I have been for a few days, but it has been a very busy few days. We came down to Cotonou on Thursday for “shopping” and administrivia, and had a huge party Thursday night. I think the last revelers got to bed about 3:30 am (which is about what time I hit the sack). Oh, I also saw my house for the first time on Thursday, but it was still being renovated so there wasn’t much to see. Then Friday we went to the Ambassador’s house for the swearing-in ceremony and lunch after. Our facilitators got the time wrong so we had to wait outside the compound for an hour-and-a-half until they got the security arrangements straightened out. Despite that, the ceremony was cool and the food after was great! Later that same day (no rest for the weary) we all had to return to our respective training sites (Azove) to collect all our stuff and have our final goodbyes with the host families. So I spent Saturday driving around the commune with the whole family in tow, saluer-ing (that’s franglais) all of the various brothers, cousins, uncles, and everyone else I met while in Azove. Fun, but tiring. I gave papa a bottle of Amarula as a gift and also a full 12-yard piece of tissue for clothes for the fam. They were very touched. Saturday night was spent cleaning the volunteer house and making a last big meal together. The first of us left for post on Sunday morning. I spent most of the day helping people load their taxis and giving out big hugs. I left for Cotonou Monday morning.

As I write this, I just woke up from my second night in my house in Cotonou. The first night was miserable. No fan in the house, so if I wanted to keep cool, I had to leave the windows open. But also no mosquito net, so if I left the windows open I was at much higher risk for things like…oh, malaria! So I had to choose between getting eaten alive or boiling in a pool of my own sweat. Gotta love Africa! Ultimately, I left some windows open and tried to cover up as best I could with a sheet so as to stay relatively cool and relatively protected; neither of which actually came to pass. I got more mosquito bites in one night than I had in the entire nine weeks in Azove AND woke up on a mattress soggy with sweat. At least that was only one night; last night was much better. I bought a new mattress to go in my double-sized bed frame, bought an extra large mosquito net to fit over my big bed – and installed it before bedtime – and bought a fan to keep me comfortable. Needless to say, last night was a major improvement.

Unfortunately, the bed frame and mattress together cost me about two-thirds of my move-in allowance, so the bed is the only piece of furniture in the house at the moment. The house is pretty nice. It’s in a horseshoe shaped compound with three units. The proprietor lives in the big one at the back, her father (grandfather?) lives on the right and I live on the left. I have a big front room which will serve as living room on one side and dining area on the other. Then behind that is about the same amount of space divided into two rooms – my bedroom on the right and the office/guest room on the left. Behind my room is the bathroom (with sink, mirror, overhead shower and toilet; realizing that many volunteers have a hole in the ground and a bucket) which also has a door to the covered courtyard in the back. Across the courtyard and behind the office is the kitchen, but there is no door directly from the house to the kitchen. You have to go outside into the courtyard and then into the kitchen. This is fairly common in Africa, but is unfamiliar to most westerners. It’s all about the smoke from the cooking fires. Luckily, I have a gas stove – kind of like a camp stove – with two burners and a warmer and two bottles of gas (thank you, Peace Corps), so smoke isn’t really a problem.

I’ve been getting to know the neighborhood, too. I live not far from a place called l’Etoile Rouge (literally, the Red Star). It’s a gigantic roundabout at the intersection of two of the major roads in Cotonou. In the center is a huge monument in the shape of a red star, dedicated to the workers who built the city. Not surprisingly, it’s a remnant of the socialist regime of the 70s and 80s in Benin. Etoile Rouge is also a center for many small vendors who have their stalls either on the roundabout or on the streets that emanate from it. I got my mattress, my fan, an extension cord, and a kilo of potatoes all from vendors there yesterday. There’s a woman and her daughter who have a stand just at the end of my block who sell beignets and other forms of delicious fried dough every evening. I think I’m going to suggest coating them with sugar (they don’t do that here for some reason) and seeing if they can get a better price for them. After all, I am in small enterprise development.

This brings me to an interesting, and frustrating, aspect of the Beninese way of life. The Beninese are hard-working, industrious and often quite entrepreneurial people. But they are not innovative so much as they are imitative. I have both seen this in practice and been told as much by some of our Beninese facilitators. So if someone wants to go into business for himself (or herself) they will look around and see what other people are doing and if it looks like someone is being successful at something, they’ll do that, too. But if you suggest that they try something new or different, they are likely to listen patiently and then not do it. Thus, my hesitancy about the beignet ladies. Even if they could get a better price for sugar-coated beignets, they probably wouldn’t do it because no one else is doing it. This insistence on only doing what is already working is one of the things that makes change here SO slow and SO difficult. And it is definitely one of the obstacles I’m going to have to confront in my work. This project is going to take the Beninese system – economic, commercial, and judicial – into areas where it has never ventured. So I think it is going to be essential to get the powers that be to talk with people and perhaps even visit places where these kinds of programs are already running and demonstrating success. It is happening in other countries in West Africa, so it would not be prohibitively expensive and if it meant that those in charge came away with the sense that this is something worth duplicating it would be more than worth it.

I’m very anxious about starting my work. I’m starting on Monday and I’m very much afraid that they view me as some kind of miracle worker; like I’m going to walk in and fix all their problems, do all their work and magically meet all their deadlines. At this point I still only have about the 10,000 ft. view of what they’re doing. I’m going to need at least a week or two to get into the nitty-gritty of where they are, what’s been done, what needs doing, in what order and by when. And even once I’m up to speed, Randy – the American in charge of MCA-Benin – made it clear when we met during my site visit that my role is NOT to do their work for them. I’m supposed to be a mentor/teacher/facilitator to assist and guide them in doing the work properly, so that it is up to the necessary standard and the project continues to move toward fruition. He explicitly told me that I’m not responsible for meeting their deadlines. I’m not at all sure that they have the same understanding. I’m just afraid it will be awkward getting everyone to the same page, especially in my broken French. Ah well, du courage!

So I guess if I’m going to make dinner tonight I’d better go find some spices and some mushrooms. Just another little adventure within the grand adventure that is Peace Corps. At least Peace Corps/Benin has produced a cookbook so volunteers won’t run out of ideas for things to eat. No more plain white starch with sauce for me!