Travelogue

First, my apologies for not posting for so long. The holidays, my safari trip, in-service training and a bout of intestinal parasites have all conspired to keep me away from the internet for much longer than I anticipated. I am on the mend and things are on the upswing here in Cotonou. For me, things are settling into a routine, so there is less that seems “exciting” to write about. For you, of course, that is far less apparent; so my silence can be misinterpreted as something more ominous. Rest assured that all is well here and I am OK.

Second, I want to say an ENORMOUS “Thank You!” to everyone for the packages, cards, letters, emails and all the other demonstrations of love and support you sent my way over the holidays. I got some before I began my travels and some didn’t arrive until I returned, but all were received very gratefully. It was difficult to hold onto the spirit of the holidays in the African heat, but it helped to have a copy of “A Child’s Christmas in Wales” to bring it all back. (Thank you, Julie!)

So let me begin with a bit of a travelogue. I left Cotonou on the 22nd of December for my first real trip into Benin. First stop was the village of Tchaourou (CHA-roo) where my new good friends Steve and Jaren are posted. It also happens to be the hometown of the President of Benin, Dr. Thomas Boni Yayi. As a result, Tchaourou is a really nice town. It has facilities that you would expect in a much larger city, including excellent drainage and garbage collection. Steve and Jaren live right on the outskirts, a stone’s throw from the president’s compound. (They actually met him on their first day in town. He was doing a walkabout and saw two white people walking toward him and stopped to greet them.) I spent two very relaxed days there sitting under the mango tree, drinking cold beer and eating grilled meat. Steve had the metal fabrication shop across the road make him an oil drum-sized grill and we christened it very well.

From there I went north to Parakou (PAIR-a-koo), which is the 2nd largest city in Benin. PC has a workstation there and that’s where I spent Christmas. There were a few other volunteers there but not nearly as many as I expected, so it was pretty chill. We made curry and stir-fry and had movie night on the workstation DVD player. The next day I left for Natitingou to meet up with the safari crew. There ended up being eight of us and unfortunately the guide had wrecked his 4x4 a few days earlier. He managed to find a vehicle, but only half the seats were on the outside, so some people had a not-so-clear view. It was still pretty awesome.

Parc Pendjari was not what I expected. I assumed it would be much more developed and commercial than it turned out to be. With the exception of the hotel where we stayed, which itself was fairly basic, the only other structures inside the park were a couple of viewing platforms that had been erected near some watering areas. Those and the roads were the only signs of human presence in the park. For the most part, the wildlife ignored us and went about their normal routines. We saw pretty much everything EXCEPT cats. No lions, no cheetahs but just about everything else: elephants, hippos, buffalos, more antelope (and the like) than you could count, crocodiles, baboons and other primates, a python (sorry, no pics), a tortoise and a ton of amazing birds. Pendjari contains areas of all the different climates and topographies of Benin. There are savannah-like plains, there are more dry desert-like areas, there are areas of tropical vegetation along the northern border (up against the Niger River), so you get both an abundance and a variety of wildlife. It was fascinating to move through all of these areas over the course of a single day. A selection of the best pictures is available at the link below.

http://washington.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2225413&l=1eb76&id=10713384

The highlight of the trip was probably the buffalo stampede. Early on the morning of the second day we headed out toward the river hoping to see buffalos and/or the lions that sometimes feed on them. As we followed the road around a curve in the river there was a herd of at least a hundred buffalo just off the road to our right. We stopped the truck as a few of them looked around and saw us. They weren’t very happy about it. After a few seconds they were all looking our direction and some were moving toward us. Then they started charging toward us and all the others followed. When they were about 20 yards away our guide blew the horn on the truck and they swung away from us and stampeded across the road in front of us, coming to rest again in a field about 50 yards away. I actually have about a minute worth of video from my digital camera of them turning away and running across the road. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to transfer it off of the memory card yet, but I’m working on it.

The other really adventurous part was trying to put eight people into one hotel room. And when I say room what I mean is a large rondavel – a round hut with a conical peaked roof containing one large bed and a sink. Needless to say, several of us got to test out our sleeping pads and air mattresses. But, hey, it was all part of the bonding experience that is Peace Corps.

I spent New Year’s back in Cotonou with a few other volunteers – very low key – and shortly thereafter started feeling ill whenever I ate. This is not all that uncommon around here so I did nothing at first. Cycles of relative wellness and illness lasting a couple of days each became routine as we got into the middle of January. Our in-service training (IST) was scheduled to start on the 21st in Parakou and I had made big plans for a birthday bash in Tchaourou (which is on the way from Cotonou to Parakou) for Saturday the 19th. About 15 PCVs from all over Benin – mostly my stage-mates, but some other folks, too – descended on Tchaourou for grilled meat, wood-fired pizza and much beer. A fine time was had by all. That was also the last day before I got really sick.

I won’t disgust you with the details, but suffice it to say that I had an intestinal parasite that made my life both uncomfortable and difficult. It wasn’t real great for my companions, either. Luckily the PC Medical Officer was in Parakou for the first day of our training and was able to diagnose my malady and arrange for the correct medication before she left town. So now, happily, I am much better now and back to my daily routine which is not much different from that of many of you. I will say more about that in my next update, which will be MUCH sooner than this one – I promise.

PC Update #9/Life in Cotonou

Well, things here in Cotonou oscillate wildly between the seemingly normal and the utterly surreal. If I were in almost any other setting, it would feel like I’d simply found a new job doing consulting on international development projects; something not outside the realm of possibility for someone with a Masters degree in Public Administration. But here I am in Benin riding to work every morning on the back of a zemi, living in a house where I have to go outside to get to my kitchen, making about $260/month and arguing with the marché mommas over a dime for a kilo of potatoes. (I really need to get out of the habit of converting everything to $$) At the same time, I have an internet connection in my office so I am totally caught up on the terrible fire in the tunnel in California and the latest setbacks for the Huskies and Seahawks. I have a DVD player in my laptop (Glad I brought that!) so I can watch the latest pirated movies from Nigeria (the latest Harry Potter is already on DVD here) or try to watch episodes of Heroes online (slow connections often make that impossible). So, yeah, plausibly normal activities if I weren’t living in one of the poorest countries on earth.

Coming here, I thought the cultural adjustment was going to mean getting used to living without all of the conveniences and gadgets of modern life. Little did I know that it would actually mean learning how to live WITH most of them in a place where very few people have access to that kind of thing. PC does a great job of preparing you to live without, but they make no provision for people who end up having to live with. It’s a very different kind of challenge. In many ways it makes living and working here harder, rather than easier. Like trying to convince your neighbors you don’t actually have any extra money to help them buy their medication when they see you carrying a laptop to work every morning… (Happened to me just this morning.)

So obviously life as a PCV isn’t exactly what I had anticipated before I came over here. I feel a little guilty because I live in a real house with indoor plumbing, electricity 24/7 (more or less), and internet access at work – hardly like a PCV at all. Many, if not most, of my peers here in Benin live at least au village, if not en brousse, with no plumbing, spotty if any electricity and little or no access to media or news of any kind. At the same time, though, living and working in Cotonou isn’t all fun and games. The PC salary doesn’t go nearly as far in Cotonou as it does living in a village. While I’m struggling to make my salary last through the month (actually we get paid quarterly, which makes it even more difficult), there have recently been volunteers en brousee who have banked up to $2000 during their service, because living out there is so cheap. They can literally eat for a week on what I pay for food in a couple of days. Also, most of my fellow volunteers moved into houses that were previously occupied by other PCVs, which were already furnished when they got there. I came to a brand new post, into a new house (at least new to PC) with absolutely no furniture at all. Right now I have a double bed, which I ordered from my host papa in Azové (he’s a carpenter), a single bed which is currently functioning as my couch (the mattress is PC issue, the frame was donated to me by another volunteer), a coffee table (also donated), a work table in my “office” and a table in the kitchen where my gas stove is located (both made for me here in Cotonou since I moved in). It’s pretty bare. I have no storage space, either in the house itself or out in the kitchen; no hooks to hang anything on; no shelves and nothing on the walls. Luckily I have windows, so it doesn’t actually look like a prison cell, and I have some ventilation…oh, and I have a stand-up fan.

I am getting creative in the kitchen, however. The other night I made “Cheesy Tuna Mac” – basically Mac n’ Cheese with Tuna (Thank you, Mom!). Of course we don’t have the blue box from Kraft, so I had to improvise a little. I melted several wedges of la Vache qui Rit (literally, the Laughing Cow – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Laughing_Cow – a brand of processed cheese popular all over the world) to make the cheese sauce then added that to the noodles and finally stirred in the tuna and a little piment (zesty!). I also made “Fajita Fried Rice” last week. My next adventure is going to be some kind of chicken with peanut sauce…Bon appetit!

Plans are afoot for a Christmas safari. There is a rule in PC/Benin that new volunteers can’t be away from their posts overnight during their first 3 months of service. Our three months expires on Dec. 21st, so we’re planning a safari for the week after Christmas. There is a big national park in the northwest of the country called Pendjari that boasts all of the “Big 5” (Lion, Leopard, Elephant, Rhino and Buffalo) plus cheetahs, jackals and hyenas, baboons and tons of other wildlife. The only thing they don’t have there are giraffes, which I’ve seen in South Africa. I’m especially keen to see cheetahs in the wild. Their habitat is steadily declining and huge efforts are being made in some areas to preserve some range for wild cheetahs to survive. Parc Pendjari is the only designated cheetah preserve in West Africa. [Check out the Cheetah Conservation Fund or Earthwatch Institute if you want to come to Africa to help cheetahs.] We’re planning our trip for Dec. 27-29, with a travel day on either side to get to and from the park. So I’ll basically be gone for the entire week between Christmas and New Year’s Day. I’ll try to figure out how to post pictures on my blog before then.