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October 22, 2010
C’est Deja La Rentree
It has started again! The school year. This year is looking to be good. I get to go ahead with two of my classes from last year, and I get two new classes of the same grade that I taught last year. I got a week of class in last week, but then this week all the teachers are having a training. That makes sense right? Start school and then have the training. I’m sure I will hate that kind of training when I have to go to the same kind of thing in the US, but here if I can get out of it by saying the French is too hard (which it isn’t, even if it is difficult to keep it up for 6 hours) I will! Although it was very nice to have my new post mate Katie there to commiserate with me, and also very entertaining to teach a room full of grown men the ‘Hokey Pokey’.
More updates on the school year as things actually start to happen!
September 28, 2010
I Love Having Visitors
Last week I got to have visitors! Yay! My friend Alice, who I met on Medical Evacuation, and her husband Jesse came down from Niger and stopped by to see me for a few days. I took them to see most of the cool stuff in Cotonou (I forgot the Zinzu Museum, oops) and we spent a lot of time chilling at what the volunteers all call Sunset Bar, which is a bar on the beach. It was good to be reminded of how awesome Cotonou can be, as it seems like a poor man’s Dakar to me now, but they really liked it. (At least the food!)
Then we headed to my post. During this time of the year I have the distinction of living right next to a stilt village. During the rainy season the river floods its shallow plains up to around 3 or 4 feet and the people who live on the river, fishermen and farmers who farm the rich silt deposits when the water is down, have build ingenious houses that float above the water. So I got my friend Sylvestre to rent us a boat and a guy to guide it and we went out on the river. It is really pleasant to be out in a boat on the water cruising by everyone’s houses. We even stopped at a bar in the middle of the afternoon to have a cold Coke.
The main stilt village in Benin is Ganvie, which all the TEFL volunteers went to during stage. They call it ‘The Venice of Africa’, but the thing is that it is really overrun with tourists so you get called ‘yovo’ a lot and kids follow you around asking for money. Most people don’t know that there are many stilt villages in Benin and most of them are much more pleasant and more authentic than Ganvie, you just have to come during the rainy season!
September 1, 2010
Senegal - Where Oranges Are Orange
So my big summer vacation trip this year was to Senegal. This was a big deal for me because it was the first “vacation” that I have taken- meaning the first time I have used my vacation days thus far. I chose Senegal because I really wanted to see another side of West Africa and I also wanted to see my friend Camille, who is a Peace Corps Volunteer in Senegal.
To get yonder, I decided to fly. This is always a big deal in Africa because while air travel is a little more regulated and timetabled than other forms of travel, this is still Africa and delays and cancellations are bound to happen, meaning that every African airline can be alternately called “Air Peutetre” (Maybe Air). I flew Air Ivoire, and I’m glad I didn’t have high expectations, because that means that I was pleasantly surprised when the plane was only 20 minutes late.
So anyway, I got to Senegal in one piece and was REALLY, REALLY excited to see Camille. I was mean and made Camille plan everything, which turned out great for me, because I got a great, stress-free vacation.
The first few days we spent in Dakar which is a weird mash-up of Africa and Mediterranean Europe and has a real character. We spent one day on Ile de Goree, an old Dutch slave trading post. It was really interesting to see a very well preserved Porto-Novo. It has a very European feel to it and is very colorful. We went to the slave museum and saw all thing things that you are supposed to see there, but mostly the exhibits were reading a bunch of stuff in French and instead of doing that I got distracted by the pretty view. I know a lot about slavery already, I don’t need to know it in French too. Although I thought it was interesting that they make a whole big deal out of Goree and that there weren’t really very many slaves that left from there- I mean the harbor isn’t really great for big ships and all that. Whereas in Benin, we have nothing like that left over from the slave-trading days but hundreds of thousands of slaves were sent from Ouhida and Cotonou and Porto-Novo all of which were slave trading posts owned and operated by different European Nations. Goes to show what marketing can do. The other day mostly we just wandered around Dakar and ate yummy things like ‘N’ice Cream’ and at the French Cultural Centre and it was amazing.
After Dakar we headed up to Saint Louis, the old colonial capital of Senegal and got a really great little bungalow on the beach. Unfortunately, it rained the two days we were there, but, undeterred we camped out in the shop of a silversmith. We sat there all day watched while he made us really pretty silver bracelets. He also bought us lunch, even though it was Ramadan, but he said he was “working” because being a silversmith is hard labor and the Koran says you can eat if you are working (this was his explanation).
After Saint Louis we went to Poppeungine (sp?) which is a resort town on the beach (and also a pilgrimage site because the Virgin Mary appeared there once in the 80s- Michael Jackson came). One of the Senegal volunteers lives there as an EcoTourism volunteer and he helped us rent a house with Camille’s friend Jessica and her two sisters that were visiting from the States. Unfortunately, by this time Camille was not feeling well and she didn’t really want to leave the house, so I ditched her (sorry :P ) and headed with the other girls on a long hike over the river and through the woods and into a monsoonal downpour. This little hike was amazing, unfortunately I am dumb and ended up ruining my camera in the downpour so I have no pictures L But trust me, it was amazing, even the rain that lead to us being stranded in an unfinished hotel hanging out with two of the workers was super cool. We ended up at a kind of Reggae bar/restaurant place where they gave us amazing (and hot! We were soaked!) food and then headed into the mangroves and ended a very good day with a ride on a donkey cart.
By the time we were ready to leave Camille knew something was really wrong with her so we went back to Dakar and stayed in the Med Hut there for 5 days. Camille was really apologetic about it, but I was absolutely fine with holing up for a few days to watch movies and read books in air-con comfort. That’s the life!
From there we headed to Tamba, Camille’s regional house and then to her village. It was really interesting to see another West African culture that is similar but not exactly the same as in Benin. And also to see how different volunteers live. For example, Camille lives in a hut, and I live in a house. Now, I could live in either, but why does Peace Corps vary so much from country to country? It was also just the beginning of Ramadan when I got there and while we were in Dakar and in beach towns it didn’t matter too much because those are fairly Westernized parts of Senegal, but Camille’s village is not like that. It was fun (for a day) to hid the fact that we were eating and then to break the fast with (really good) “village bread”- with just a touch of cinnamon and honey. Camille is really doing well with her Peace Corps service, as hard as I know it can be.
Mostly Senegal was super awesome because of Camille, it was so good to see someone from home. I feel like I have changed so much in the last year, and I know Camille has too, but it was good to be reminded that I am not a completely different person than I was when I left a year ago.
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