Not so much going on here...
Its amazing how, well, normal and boring life is. In a good way. It's like home. I live my life, make food, go to work, hang out with my friends. The surroundings are different, but life is still life. I feel like I'm really hitting my stride with things and I feel really comfortable with my life here. Hope you all like the pictures of my kids! Next year, I think I am going to let them all pick out American names (now that I know there real names), I'm also laying the ground work to start a girl's club, so that girls can have a safe forum where they can talk about issues that are important to them, but can be a little taboo.
Anyway, all's well! And I'm excited for spring break when ill have some time to travel!
Love! -G
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Friday, February 19, 2010
Thursday, February 4, 2010
The New Year...
January 30, 2009
Is the Super Bowl this weekend? Or was it last? Who played? Why do I care? Who had the best commercial? I have no idea why I need to know this, but it suddenly occurred to me that I want to know- and I also have an intense craving for cream cheese bean dip.
First of all, I really want to thank all of you for your donations for Camp GLOW. I know that the economy is not the best and that extra money is always scarce after Christmas, but I really, really appreciate it, and the girls that will benefit from the camp thank you too!
Anyway, the posting of this blog (the 4th or 5th) marks the end of my longest continuous stay at post. During “lock down” (the first three months at post) I made the mistake of calling the doctors whenever any little something health-wise. If I lived further from Cotonou this would not be a problem, but because it’s only 2 hours from Cotonou they would make me come in for things that either could have waited or they could have told me what to do on the phone. So during “lock-down”, while I stayed every night at post, there were several harried and hurried trips to town, which I hate doing, FYI. It’s so much nicer to be able to even stay one night and then come back.
So the last month has been interesting. Because I spent Christmas at the Med-Unit in Cotonou, I am super broke this month. (We got paid on the 23rd, because of the holiday). So I have been doing my own laundry and hauling my own water this month (yes, I’m that broke) and I have decided that I kinda like it. Not to mention that if I pull my own well water for 2 years, my arms will look amazingly toned when I get home!
The Oweme Festival was not what I thought it was, but it was fun! For one thing, we didn’t miss class, which was a blessing. The festival lasted for 5 days (Wed-Sun), there were speeches, music and dancing and some little booths where I wished I had money to by things. Its always fun to hang out with my students too. Especially when they convince me to dance, pretty much so they can laugh at me. (I’m pretty glad that there’s no photographic evidence).
The first weekend of the New Year, I bought a new cat. My friend Kara went to the marche with me. We were at Marche Ouando in Porto-Novo, which I hate. Its too big and everybody just screams “yovo, yovo, yovo” at you. Kara decided that I was a bad person when I splashed water on a beggar with no feet because he grabbed my arm while I was opening a water bottle. (Sorry, Mom) I was just pissed off at Ouando already and being forcefully grabbed just really pushed the wrong button. So we got to the live animals section (cats, dogs, chickens, turtles) and a woman there actually TOOK my water bottle from me. I had to pry it out of her hands (I paid for cold, clean water, I’m not just gonna give it to some woman because she thinks that because I’m white I can afford it- did I mention I hate Ouando?). The lady charged me too much (1500 CFA) for a very tiny, emaciated kitten. I don’t know why I didn’t barter better, but I think it had something to do with this woman shoving tiny, starving, dehydrated kittens in my face. I asked for a girl, because boy kittens spray. Kara and I went to get some soy milk at Songhi (a kind of teaching farm that sells the best produce around, and also makes things like soy milk, honey, jam and organic soaps) and I promptly named her “Eleanor Rigby”. However, by the next day, when the kitten was less emaciated and had sprayed all my furniture, I decided it was a boy. My vet seconded this opinion. So, I renamed him Rocky Raccoon. Rocky even had rings around his tale! So we were getting along great, I spent the 10,000 CFA to get him vaccinated, and a week later, he died. Yep, that’s right, number 2. Why do the Pet Gods hate me? My vet’s reaction? “Again! What happened this time?” Glenna’s Response: “Um, he was real little?”
School has been going really well. I am finally getting the names of kids down, in large part I think because I made them all nametags out of cardstock. Not only that, but when they are working hard during work time or do something difficult (read aloud, answer a tough question) they get stickers, but I will only put stickers on their nametags. This has two awesome effects, (a) it means that they don’t loose their nametags and (b) they are really excited to participate (they love stickers). So I am finally starting to get good at names. This month has been pretty fun anyway, I got to do music vocabulary! Yay! I love music vocab! Last Thursday was a little nerve wracking for me, as my APCD (I cant remember what the acronym is but she’s the boss of all the Education volunteers, her only boss is the CD- the Country Director) came to one of my classes. The lesson I did was a Jeopardy review game as exams are next week. She really liked the lesson, but she says I use French too much in class (which is totally true, I’ve just gotten lazy, so my students have too- no worries, I quit French cold turkey in my next class and it went really well). She also talked to my worst class (that was the one she saw- they were unnaturally quiet, especially for playing a game) and I’m really glad she did. I feel like this class might be a lot easier to handle from now on.
Is the Super Bowl this weekend? Or was it last? Who played? Why do I care? Who had the best commercial? I have no idea why I need to know this, but it suddenly occurred to me that I want to know- and I also have an intense craving for cream cheese bean dip.
First of all, I really want to thank all of you for your donations for Camp GLOW. I know that the economy is not the best and that extra money is always scarce after Christmas, but I really, really appreciate it, and the girls that will benefit from the camp thank you too!
Anyway, the posting of this blog (the 4th or 5th) marks the end of my longest continuous stay at post. During “lock down” (the first three months at post) I made the mistake of calling the doctors whenever any little something health-wise. If I lived further from Cotonou this would not be a problem, but because it’s only 2 hours from Cotonou they would make me come in for things that either could have waited or they could have told me what to do on the phone. So during “lock-down”, while I stayed every night at post, there were several harried and hurried trips to town, which I hate doing, FYI. It’s so much nicer to be able to even stay one night and then come back.
So the last month has been interesting. Because I spent Christmas at the Med-Unit in Cotonou, I am super broke this month. (We got paid on the 23rd, because of the holiday). So I have been doing my own laundry and hauling my own water this month (yes, I’m that broke) and I have decided that I kinda like it. Not to mention that if I pull my own well water for 2 years, my arms will look amazingly toned when I get home!
The Oweme Festival was not what I thought it was, but it was fun! For one thing, we didn’t miss class, which was a blessing. The festival lasted for 5 days (Wed-Sun), there were speeches, music and dancing and some little booths where I wished I had money to by things. Its always fun to hang out with my students too. Especially when they convince me to dance, pretty much so they can laugh at me. (I’m pretty glad that there’s no photographic evidence).
The first weekend of the New Year, I bought a new cat. My friend Kara went to the marche with me. We were at Marche Ouando in Porto-Novo, which I hate. Its too big and everybody just screams “yovo, yovo, yovo” at you. Kara decided that I was a bad person when I splashed water on a beggar with no feet because he grabbed my arm while I was opening a water bottle. (Sorry, Mom) I was just pissed off at Ouando already and being forcefully grabbed just really pushed the wrong button. So we got to the live animals section (cats, dogs, chickens, turtles) and a woman there actually TOOK my water bottle from me. I had to pry it out of her hands (I paid for cold, clean water, I’m not just gonna give it to some woman because she thinks that because I’m white I can afford it- did I mention I hate Ouando?). The lady charged me too much (1500 CFA) for a very tiny, emaciated kitten. I don’t know why I didn’t barter better, but I think it had something to do with this woman shoving tiny, starving, dehydrated kittens in my face. I asked for a girl, because boy kittens spray. Kara and I went to get some soy milk at Songhi (a kind of teaching farm that sells the best produce around, and also makes things like soy milk, honey, jam and organic soaps) and I promptly named her “Eleanor Rigby”. However, by the next day, when the kitten was less emaciated and had sprayed all my furniture, I decided it was a boy. My vet seconded this opinion. So, I renamed him Rocky Raccoon. Rocky even had rings around his tale! So we were getting along great, I spent the 10,000 CFA to get him vaccinated, and a week later, he died. Yep, that’s right, number 2. Why do the Pet Gods hate me? My vet’s reaction? “Again! What happened this time?” Glenna’s Response: “Um, he was real little?”
School has been going really well. I am finally getting the names of kids down, in large part I think because I made them all nametags out of cardstock. Not only that, but when they are working hard during work time or do something difficult (read aloud, answer a tough question) they get stickers, but I will only put stickers on their nametags. This has two awesome effects, (a) it means that they don’t loose their nametags and (b) they are really excited to participate (they love stickers). So I am finally starting to get good at names. This month has been pretty fun anyway, I got to do music vocabulary! Yay! I love music vocab! Last Thursday was a little nerve wracking for me, as my APCD (I cant remember what the acronym is but she’s the boss of all the Education volunteers, her only boss is the CD- the Country Director) came to one of my classes. The lesson I did was a Jeopardy review game as exams are next week. She really liked the lesson, but she says I use French too much in class (which is totally true, I’ve just gotten lazy, so my students have too- no worries, I quit French cold turkey in my next class and it went really well). She also talked to my worst class (that was the one she saw- they were unnaturally quiet, especially for playing a game) and I’m really glad she did. I feel like this class might be a lot easier to handle from now on.
Friday, January 8, 2010
Camp GLOW!
Camp GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) is a really great camp for girls that PCVs have every year. Each volunteer who participates brings 1-4 girls to the camp. The whole idea behind it is that we show the girls what they can be and where they can go with an education. We run sessions on things like health and study skills, as well as just being an old-fashioned summer camp. The one for the southern region (where I am) is held in Porto Novo and I am really excited about participating so I hope everyone can donate a little!
Even $5 helps. Here is the process:
1. go to www.peacecorps.gov and click on "Donations"
2. at this point, you can search by the last name, "Hurst"(the girl who set it up), OR click on "view all volunteer projects" on the right side of the page
3. you can then search under "Benin" or "Michigan" (her home state)
4. click on the Camp GLOW PCPP. They can then read a short description of the project, see how much of the total has been raised, and make a donation.
Remember, all donations are tax deductible! Thank you everyone!
Even $5 helps. Here is the process:
1. go to www.peacecorps.gov and click on "Donations"
2. at this point, you can search by the last name, "Hurst"(the girl who set it up), OR click on "view all volunteer projects" on the right side of the page
3. you can then search under "Benin" or "Michigan" (her home state)
4. click on the Camp GLOW PCPP. They can then read a short description of the project, see how much of the total has been raised, and make a donation.
Remember, all donations are tax deductible! Thank you everyone!
Christmas and New Year
January 8, 2009
OK. So… Lots to cover since the last post I wrote. Going in reverse chronological order (like the rest of the blog)…
New school semester started and the kids are being torturous, because it’s really hot and really humid and they just got off vacation. I guess I can understand, because I tend to get all hot and irritated with them because its hot and humid and I just got off vacation. And after one week of classes, apparently next week there is another holiday, the Oweme Fete (the Festival of Oweme, the region I live in), during which my school doesn’t have class for a week.
New Years at post was really fun. My family (my neighbors) had a party and all of the extended family came, so there were lots of kids with sparklers and fireworks all over the valley at midnight and 3 chickens and a goat with this sweet kind of bread stuff called ablko and pate rouge (pate is what they usually eat and pate rouge is the stuff that they make on special occasions because its better than regular pate, like way better, because it has tomatoes and spices in it). We decorated the whole concession (thanks Mom and Dad for the lights!) with lights and streamers and balloons. I got to play with babies all day, which was pretty great!
Christmas, although it didn’t start out great, was really fun. I ended up staying at the work station because I didn’t feel like I could make it home. So I ended up staying here. I had pretty good Lasagna on Christmas Eve and a Cheeseburger on Christmas. We were also invited to swim at the Ambassador’s pool on Christmas day, so why you were all sitting in freezing rain, I was sitting poolside, reading a good book.
December 21, 2009
Sick for Real.
So I have Strep. It’s not fun at home, but it’s really not fun in Benin. I did not go to school today, which means that I didn’t give my kids their over the break homework, which means that they don’t have any over the break homework. And the trip here, harrowing at the best of times, was enough to make my cry in a taxi. Anyway, here now, started on antibiotics a few hours ago and I’m already feeling better. A fine Christmas present for me! What really is a great Christmas present is that when I did get here I had five packages waiting for me! Thanks Mom and Barb!
Love and miss you!
PS Question of the day: What is the most depressing Christmas song ever? ‘I’ll Be Home for Christmas’, ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’ or ‘Coventry Carol’?
December 12, 2009
Goodbye Sexy Sadie.
This morning I woke up at 8 am. This is very unusual, because usually Sadie, my cat, wakes me up at six so that I will get up and feed her. When I did wake up I of course went looking for my crazy cat. She was in a very strange place- under my desk, seemingly asleep. I bent to wake her up when she didn’t wake and give me a sleepy look. She was cold. Rigor Mortis had already set in. I cried. I called my friend Kara, she told me she was coming up immediately. Then I called my mom. I talked to my mom for 2 hours, in fact, until Kara got here, followed closely by Lou, fellow member of the Dead Pet Society, and Scott. Kara went with me to the vet, my friend Josef, who told me he would take care of her. He also seems to think that she ate a rat or something that had eaten poison, because she was fine last night. It was really great to have my friends here for support and just to be here today, but now that they have left my house just seems that much more lonely, sans friends and sans Sadie.
December 11, 2009
Thanksgiving! So I realize that I haven’t written about what we did on Thanksgiving, I forgot about it because I told so many people about it on the phone. Thanks for the Thanksgiving calls!! So I spent Thanksgiving in Parakou (in the North) at PSW (Personal Strategies Workshop). I know this sounds like a drag, but really, it was great. It was like a constructive bitch fest. We all got to bitch for awhile and then we got to talk about how to fix the things we were bitching about, it was amazing! We got fed well, there were showers and flush toilets and every night we got together and did amazing things. Monday we just sat at a bouvette and chatted and drank. Tuesday we had a party where we dressed up like each other. Wednesday is a blur because I stayed up til 4 making dessert. And then Thursday we had an amazing Thanksgiving! For one thing, just being with all the PSL 22 TEFLers again was really great. There aren’t any other teachers in my entire region, so I had only seen a couple of them since swear-in. Tuesday there was a communal amazing occurrence where we all drew each other’s names out of a hat and then had to dress like that person for the evening, I dressed up as Eric, complete with his actual Obama shirt, cigarette and black beard (done with magic marker, so glad that came off!). Wednesday was a prep night for Thursday, and as I was the head of Team Dessert that meant a lot of prep. Clayton, Erin and I wisely decided to make the desserts (two pumpkin pies, two apple pies and a double batch of cheese cake) the night before and then just heat them up on the Thursday while everyone else was still eating. We got out of our session at 5, got ingredients by 6 and started baking. The real kicker was that we had to make pumpkin puree by hand, which isn’t that hard but needs an oven. We did have an oven, but a teeny tiny one, so just making the pumpkin puree took 4 hours (one pumpkin at a time) and a lot of Erin‘s elbow grease. That got us to 10pm. In the interim time we had sliced apples and Clay had made some amazing butter crusts. I must mention the rolling pin. Clay started rolling out pie crusts and there were suddenly ants all over (not a totally unusual occurrence) and he couldn’t figure out where from. In the quasi delirium caused by working too late and realizing that your not even half done, he put out a feeler, “Are the ants coming from inside the rolling pin?” Me: “No Clay, they must be in the flour.” I check the flour, nope, no ants there. Clay: “No I really think they are coming from inside the rolling pin” Me: “No way, let me see.” I took the rolling pin and gave it an experimental whack against the sink, a shower of ants tumbles out. “Shit”. We then spend what seems like forever running the rolling pin under the kitchen sink (God Bless running water!) with varying degrees of hilarity, gross-out and mild hysteria. Then Clay gallantly rolls out the piecrust with a waterlogged rolling pin. The cheescake was the real dark horse of the night. Have you ever made cheesecake without sour cream and without cream cheese? I have, we used Vache Qui Rit and Crème Freshe, and then we figured out that somewhere along the line I had go really confused about math and had to sub what we were lacking in dairy products with extra pumpkin puree. (So what if it was more like a custard? It was still cheescake-ish! and it was still really good!) Then all that was left was the actual baking. While I was timing that I manically cleaned the Parakou Workstation Kitchen. If you have lived with me, you know that this is a pretty typical thing for me to start doing at 2am. Need to keep awake? Make some tea and clean/rearrange something. It’s Glenna’s Guide to Life. When things were baked and Clay had “made” some room for them in the fridge, we walked back to the place where the PSW was held. We could have stayed at the workstation, but we decided not to, I’m not really sure why. When we got there we discovered that not only were we locked out, oh no, there was also no guard at the gate to let us in (like there is supposed to be). Erin called Jamie, Jamie got a chair, I got uncomfortable bruises on the inside of my thighs. It was a fine way to start Thanksgiving. I should also mention that while we were making pastries, Team Meat was killing 3 (4?) birds, a Turkey(maybe 2), a Duck and a Pentard (that’s a Guinea Fowl, I think) and then shoving them all one inside the other, making the Beninese version of a TurDuckin, a TurDucktard, as Brandon branded it. Sarah found an egg in the Turkey, we used it in a pie. This next bit is going to be difficult for me, as I was so sleep deprived that I don’t remember so much of Thanksgiving Day (you know, the norm). And as I am totally crazy I also took responsibility for gravy. I made A LOT of gravy, but it was really freakin’ good. I can’t really take too much credit for that, because it was mostly amazing due to the duck drippings from the TurDucktard (and it was also orange). I however, feel justified in making so much because we had a crap load of mashed potatoes as well as a crap load of yam pille (pounded yams-which is the best of Beninese food), and most of it got eaten anyway. After dinner the desserts were all gone in approximately 20 minutes, as was the liter (!!!) of heavy cream that Obdin and Eric obligingly whipped up (by hand!) for me. I actually made it back shortly after 1 that night, only to find that I had lost my key (probably somewhere in the sand in the courtyard of the Workstation) and ended up staying the night with Melissa, one of the been-here-a-year volunteers, as her roommate had decided to stay the night at the workstation and then get up early to try and get into my room before the shuttle left for Cotonou at 8 Friday morning. I’m really, really glad that after no sleep I didn’t have to take a bus. Friday night I stayed in Cotonou, which was nice, and then I had Thanksgiving again on Saturday. This time I made mashed potatoes, they were really easy and the real butter in them made them amazing (see last blog post). Cotonou Thanksgiving was a potluck type thing at Mel’s apartment. Mel’s post is Cotouou so she has an apartment there, said apartment has an amazingly huge deck (huge like it’s twice the size of her apartment), which is why she gallantly volunteered it for Thanksgiving. It was much more laid-back (at least for me). However as it is still our “lockdown” (where we are supposed to stay at post for the first three months), Lu, Kara and I headed back to our posts way too early (in my opinion) so that we could make it back before nightfall. I spent all day Sunday recovering from an amazing week and my two Thanksgivings.
So two days ago I figured out how to get the BBC(it‘s only in French 3 hours a day!), this is HUGE news in the small world of Glenna, and has reminded me that Stuff Is Happening outside my village. And now I have formed opinions, and as I don’t have my usual outlet for said opinions (people who will understand me if I speak English, and a bottle of wine) my new outlet is my blog. Lucky You!
OK, so apparently there is a big UN conference on Climate Change or whatever and the focus of it seems to be giving money to the developing world so that the developing world can take care of its emerging environmental problems. Just to give my thoughts some context: 1) I live in a developing country. 2) I come from a developed country, so when I lay blame… 3) Someone’s mom sent them an article (from the Washington Post?) that mentioned Benin- to say that the Carbon Footprint of Benin is less than that of Washington D.C. 4) Having opinions here is like having opinions in a bubble. (That’s just a random thought really).
OK…here goes… I’m pretty sure that most of the pollution problems in the developing world are caused by the developed world. Case in point: Europe sends it’s old cars to places like Benin. When they don’t pass the ridiculously high (read:what everyone’s should be) emissions standards in Britain or France cars from there get sent to places like Benin where they carry a ridiculous number of goods and people for the next two decades, using gas that is so dirty that they strain it through an old cloth before putting it into a vehicle. When the cars finally die, they are cannibalized and then left to rust in a river, field, jungle etc. On the other hand, at least people here can use cars. What they cannot use- your garbage. The United States sends all of our trash to China, including very un-recyclable computer parts, and then Americans get their panties all in a twist when some of the toxins that we drag across the Pacific Ocean (none to carefully) come back in cheap plastic toys. In this case, Africa is the China of Europe, or to use standardized testing form China:United States::Africa:Europe. While I have not seen it here, before I left in my search to read everything ever published about Africa, I came across a few stories about old computer parts (especially the old, bulky glass monitors, which contain mercury) getting shipped here as well as China, complete with pictures of cute kids skipping barefoot across a trail of monitors through a field of burning microchips. While burning trash at all, much less computer trash, seemed totally barbaric to me at the time, I know that’s just what happens here. There are two ways to dispose of things here: 1) Just throw it on the ground- this is much less shocking in village, where half of everything comes wrapped in teak leaves 2) Burn it, yep everybody burns everything, it really bothers my allergies, probably because half of everyone’s trash seems to be the ubiquitous black sachets, I wonder what kind of crap that puts in the air?. So, Developed World, are you listening? STOP SENDING YOUR GARBAGE TO DEVELOPING COUNTRIES AND YOU CAN KEEP YOUR 100,000,000 EURO!
End of opinion, for today anyway.
OK. So… Lots to cover since the last post I wrote. Going in reverse chronological order (like the rest of the blog)…
New school semester started and the kids are being torturous, because it’s really hot and really humid and they just got off vacation. I guess I can understand, because I tend to get all hot and irritated with them because its hot and humid and I just got off vacation. And after one week of classes, apparently next week there is another holiday, the Oweme Fete (the Festival of Oweme, the region I live in), during which my school doesn’t have class for a week.
New Years at post was really fun. My family (my neighbors) had a party and all of the extended family came, so there were lots of kids with sparklers and fireworks all over the valley at midnight and 3 chickens and a goat with this sweet kind of bread stuff called ablko and pate rouge (pate is what they usually eat and pate rouge is the stuff that they make on special occasions because its better than regular pate, like way better, because it has tomatoes and spices in it). We decorated the whole concession (thanks Mom and Dad for the lights!) with lights and streamers and balloons. I got to play with babies all day, which was pretty great!
Christmas, although it didn’t start out great, was really fun. I ended up staying at the work station because I didn’t feel like I could make it home. So I ended up staying here. I had pretty good Lasagna on Christmas Eve and a Cheeseburger on Christmas. We were also invited to swim at the Ambassador’s pool on Christmas day, so why you were all sitting in freezing rain, I was sitting poolside, reading a good book.
December 21, 2009
Sick for Real.
So I have Strep. It’s not fun at home, but it’s really not fun in Benin. I did not go to school today, which means that I didn’t give my kids their over the break homework, which means that they don’t have any over the break homework. And the trip here, harrowing at the best of times, was enough to make my cry in a taxi. Anyway, here now, started on antibiotics a few hours ago and I’m already feeling better. A fine Christmas present for me! What really is a great Christmas present is that when I did get here I had five packages waiting for me! Thanks Mom and Barb!
Love and miss you!
PS Question of the day: What is the most depressing Christmas song ever? ‘I’ll Be Home for Christmas’, ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’ or ‘Coventry Carol’?
December 12, 2009
Goodbye Sexy Sadie.
This morning I woke up at 8 am. This is very unusual, because usually Sadie, my cat, wakes me up at six so that I will get up and feed her. When I did wake up I of course went looking for my crazy cat. She was in a very strange place- under my desk, seemingly asleep. I bent to wake her up when she didn’t wake and give me a sleepy look. She was cold. Rigor Mortis had already set in. I cried. I called my friend Kara, she told me she was coming up immediately. Then I called my mom. I talked to my mom for 2 hours, in fact, until Kara got here, followed closely by Lou, fellow member of the Dead Pet Society, and Scott. Kara went with me to the vet, my friend Josef, who told me he would take care of her. He also seems to think that she ate a rat or something that had eaten poison, because she was fine last night. It was really great to have my friends here for support and just to be here today, but now that they have left my house just seems that much more lonely, sans friends and sans Sadie.
December 11, 2009
Thanksgiving! So I realize that I haven’t written about what we did on Thanksgiving, I forgot about it because I told so many people about it on the phone. Thanks for the Thanksgiving calls!! So I spent Thanksgiving in Parakou (in the North) at PSW (Personal Strategies Workshop). I know this sounds like a drag, but really, it was great. It was like a constructive bitch fest. We all got to bitch for awhile and then we got to talk about how to fix the things we were bitching about, it was amazing! We got fed well, there were showers and flush toilets and every night we got together and did amazing things. Monday we just sat at a bouvette and chatted and drank. Tuesday we had a party where we dressed up like each other. Wednesday is a blur because I stayed up til 4 making dessert. And then Thursday we had an amazing Thanksgiving! For one thing, just being with all the PSL 22 TEFLers again was really great. There aren’t any other teachers in my entire region, so I had only seen a couple of them since swear-in. Tuesday there was a communal amazing occurrence where we all drew each other’s names out of a hat and then had to dress like that person for the evening, I dressed up as Eric, complete with his actual Obama shirt, cigarette and black beard (done with magic marker, so glad that came off!). Wednesday was a prep night for Thursday, and as I was the head of Team Dessert that meant a lot of prep. Clayton, Erin and I wisely decided to make the desserts (two pumpkin pies, two apple pies and a double batch of cheese cake) the night before and then just heat them up on the Thursday while everyone else was still eating. We got out of our session at 5, got ingredients by 6 and started baking. The real kicker was that we had to make pumpkin puree by hand, which isn’t that hard but needs an oven. We did have an oven, but a teeny tiny one, so just making the pumpkin puree took 4 hours (one pumpkin at a time) and a lot of Erin‘s elbow grease. That got us to 10pm. In the interim time we had sliced apples and Clay had made some amazing butter crusts. I must mention the rolling pin. Clay started rolling out pie crusts and there were suddenly ants all over (not a totally unusual occurrence) and he couldn’t figure out where from. In the quasi delirium caused by working too late and realizing that your not even half done, he put out a feeler, “Are the ants coming from inside the rolling pin?” Me: “No Clay, they must be in the flour.” I check the flour, nope, no ants there. Clay: “No I really think they are coming from inside the rolling pin” Me: “No way, let me see.” I took the rolling pin and gave it an experimental whack against the sink, a shower of ants tumbles out. “Shit”. We then spend what seems like forever running the rolling pin under the kitchen sink (God Bless running water!) with varying degrees of hilarity, gross-out and mild hysteria. Then Clay gallantly rolls out the piecrust with a waterlogged rolling pin. The cheescake was the real dark horse of the night. Have you ever made cheesecake without sour cream and without cream cheese? I have, we used Vache Qui Rit and Crème Freshe, and then we figured out that somewhere along the line I had go really confused about math and had to sub what we were lacking in dairy products with extra pumpkin puree. (So what if it was more like a custard? It was still cheescake-ish! and it was still really good!) Then all that was left was the actual baking. While I was timing that I manically cleaned the Parakou Workstation Kitchen. If you have lived with me, you know that this is a pretty typical thing for me to start doing at 2am. Need to keep awake? Make some tea and clean/rearrange something. It’s Glenna’s Guide to Life. When things were baked and Clay had “made” some room for them in the fridge, we walked back to the place where the PSW was held. We could have stayed at the workstation, but we decided not to, I’m not really sure why. When we got there we discovered that not only were we locked out, oh no, there was also no guard at the gate to let us in (like there is supposed to be). Erin called Jamie, Jamie got a chair, I got uncomfortable bruises on the inside of my thighs. It was a fine way to start Thanksgiving. I should also mention that while we were making pastries, Team Meat was killing 3 (4?) birds, a Turkey(maybe 2), a Duck and a Pentard (that’s a Guinea Fowl, I think) and then shoving them all one inside the other, making the Beninese version of a TurDuckin, a TurDucktard, as Brandon branded it. Sarah found an egg in the Turkey, we used it in a pie. This next bit is going to be difficult for me, as I was so sleep deprived that I don’t remember so much of Thanksgiving Day (you know, the norm). And as I am totally crazy I also took responsibility for gravy. I made A LOT of gravy, but it was really freakin’ good. I can’t really take too much credit for that, because it was mostly amazing due to the duck drippings from the TurDucktard (and it was also orange). I however, feel justified in making so much because we had a crap load of mashed potatoes as well as a crap load of yam pille (pounded yams-which is the best of Beninese food), and most of it got eaten anyway. After dinner the desserts were all gone in approximately 20 minutes, as was the liter (!!!) of heavy cream that Obdin and Eric obligingly whipped up (by hand!) for me. I actually made it back shortly after 1 that night, only to find that I had lost my key (probably somewhere in the sand in the courtyard of the Workstation) and ended up staying the night with Melissa, one of the been-here-a-year volunteers, as her roommate had decided to stay the night at the workstation and then get up early to try and get into my room before the shuttle left for Cotonou at 8 Friday morning. I’m really, really glad that after no sleep I didn’t have to take a bus. Friday night I stayed in Cotonou, which was nice, and then I had Thanksgiving again on Saturday. This time I made mashed potatoes, they were really easy and the real butter in them made them amazing (see last blog post). Cotonou Thanksgiving was a potluck type thing at Mel’s apartment. Mel’s post is Cotouou so she has an apartment there, said apartment has an amazingly huge deck (huge like it’s twice the size of her apartment), which is why she gallantly volunteered it for Thanksgiving. It was much more laid-back (at least for me). However as it is still our “lockdown” (where we are supposed to stay at post for the first three months), Lu, Kara and I headed back to our posts way too early (in my opinion) so that we could make it back before nightfall. I spent all day Sunday recovering from an amazing week and my two Thanksgivings.
So two days ago I figured out how to get the BBC(it‘s only in French 3 hours a day!), this is HUGE news in the small world of Glenna, and has reminded me that Stuff Is Happening outside my village. And now I have formed opinions, and as I don’t have my usual outlet for said opinions (people who will understand me if I speak English, and a bottle of wine) my new outlet is my blog. Lucky You!
OK, so apparently there is a big UN conference on Climate Change or whatever and the focus of it seems to be giving money to the developing world so that the developing world can take care of its emerging environmental problems. Just to give my thoughts some context: 1) I live in a developing country. 2) I come from a developed country, so when I lay blame… 3) Someone’s mom sent them an article (from the Washington Post?) that mentioned Benin- to say that the Carbon Footprint of Benin is less than that of Washington D.C. 4) Having opinions here is like having opinions in a bubble. (That’s just a random thought really).
OK…here goes… I’m pretty sure that most of the pollution problems in the developing world are caused by the developed world. Case in point: Europe sends it’s old cars to places like Benin. When they don’t pass the ridiculously high (read:what everyone’s should be) emissions standards in Britain or France cars from there get sent to places like Benin where they carry a ridiculous number of goods and people for the next two decades, using gas that is so dirty that they strain it through an old cloth before putting it into a vehicle. When the cars finally die, they are cannibalized and then left to rust in a river, field, jungle etc. On the other hand, at least people here can use cars. What they cannot use- your garbage. The United States sends all of our trash to China, including very un-recyclable computer parts, and then Americans get their panties all in a twist when some of the toxins that we drag across the Pacific Ocean (none to carefully) come back in cheap plastic toys. In this case, Africa is the China of Europe, or to use standardized testing form China:United States::Africa:Europe. While I have not seen it here, before I left in my search to read everything ever published about Africa, I came across a few stories about old computer parts (especially the old, bulky glass monitors, which contain mercury) getting shipped here as well as China, complete with pictures of cute kids skipping barefoot across a trail of monitors through a field of burning microchips. While burning trash at all, much less computer trash, seemed totally barbaric to me at the time, I know that’s just what happens here. There are two ways to dispose of things here: 1) Just throw it on the ground- this is much less shocking in village, where half of everything comes wrapped in teak leaves 2) Burn it, yep everybody burns everything, it really bothers my allergies, probably because half of everyone’s trash seems to be the ubiquitous black sachets, I wonder what kind of crap that puts in the air?. So, Developed World, are you listening? STOP SENDING YOUR GARBAGE TO DEVELOPING COUNTRIES AND YOU CAN KEEP YOUR 100,000,000 EURO!
End of opinion, for today anyway.
Friday, December 11, 2009
Eats and Drinks
Mom, as per your request- a picture of me with the kids in my concession. (I'm the white one! haha)
December 10, 2009
Water and Food
First of all, sorry. I had no idea it’s been so long since I’ve written! (hopefully the WiFi in Cotonou will be up and running Friday so that I can post this!) So here are some blog posts that have been stewing in my head for awhile. As far as recent developments, nothing much going on here except that it’s getting really hot, it so does not feel close to Christmas at all and my kids are having their first exams for my classes (*fingers crossed*). So here goes…
Waterlogged
Do you have any idea how much water you use? Really? I’m guessing not. I know that I only had a vague idea about an abstract number of gallons before I got here. But now I know (even if I know in kiloliters) I use over 200 kl a week! That’s around 100 gallons a week, just for drinking water, showering, washing dishes and washing my underwear. I don’t even do my laundry, I pay a girl to do it, so that number a lot bigger if I were to include that. I also don’t cart water all over (like from the well to my shower or from the pump to my kitchen), I pay the same girl to do that too. But even just seeing all that water carted through my house once a week is enough to make my head spin. (Side note- how strong are women’s necks here that they can cart 20 gallons of water on their head like it’s nothing?) So what do I do with my water? I cart it around some more. I don’t have running water, so I cart it from my back porch/shower area to do dishes and then I cart it back out again to dump it out. I usually dump the wash water in the concession because the chickens and the dog will usually eat the yukies and crumblies that are at the bottom. When I’m at the workstation in Cotonou, if I have some time (say while music and movies are downloading) I do the dishes there (not my dishes, you remember you communal kitchen in the college dorms? It’s like that) just for the joy of doing them with a sink. Yeah, I know, I’m weird. I also obsessively clean my house, so yeah. Can I just say for the record that I totally suck at washing my undies by hand? I can never seem to get the soap out so I end up doing 3 or 4 rinses.
Drinking water is a whole nother story. It originates from the pump (as opposed to the well, where my other water comes from). I don’t even know where the pump is, I should probably find it. Anyway, once it gets here and I pay for it, I filter it with the filter that my predecessor left me, then boil it in my biggest pot, then filter it into the filter that the Peace Corps gave me. Why filter it twice? There’s not really a need to filter the water twice (there are plenty of PCVs here that don’t filter or boil at all) I just do it because the filter that the PC gave me has a handy spigot at the bottom. It’s the stupidest thing in the world really. The doctors tell us to filter and then boil, but once you have gone through this process how are you supposed to get the water from the large pot to something you could actually drink out of, like a water bottle? So, I filter the second time so that I don’t have to dip my hand/water bottle into water that I just spent time and gas (we all have gas stoves) filtering and boiling. I do this everyday. Really, I drink that much water everyday (between 3 and 5 liters). I am also storing up some water for the day that I can’t go through this process but need water because I will inevitably get really sick at some point and not have the energy/patience/will/strength to get out of bed and make myself some water.
Cookery
Beninese food is great, in moderation. It’s full of hot peppers, gelatinous starches and sauces resembling both blood and snot. Yum! So I do most of my own cooking. I cook a lot of pasta. How I lost 30 pounds eating pasta and white bread at least once a day is up for scientific debate. I have no idea. I’m also sure that whoever invented Béchamel Sauce is bloody brilliant (and thanks Katrin for introducing me to it), you can add anything to it and make a pasta sauce. I will add anything to it: Taco Seasoning (so-so), Uncle Ben’s Ranch Dressing (good, but salty), a can of mushrooms (excellent), Herbes de Provence (also great). Beyond pasta I have made pan pizza, corn bread, chili, grilled cheese, and I plan on making more soon. I will say that it is a challenge to cook with just a 2 and a half burner gas stove, how I long for an oven! I mean, dutch ovens work great for baking, but are too small to make say, baked chicken, which all my former roommates and most of my friends know is one of my favorites. The other challenge is ingredients. I live in one of the best parts of Benin for produce and while I can get almost any type of fruit the only non-sweet produce I can get is onions, tomatoes, garlic and okra. See why I make a lot of pasta? I have also discovered that okra with vinaigrette dressing is pretty good. I can get other things, like avocado, green peppers and “jungle greens” if I can get to the market at 8 am, which is only possible on weekends, since 4 days a week I have class at that time. I really miss the American supermarket, where you can get anything that I would ever think of cooking. I also miss butter an inordinate amount. This is not helped by reading “Julie and Julia” at the moment, but the book is fun, how’s the movie? Anyway, I have a fridge at my house (which is pretty awesome) but when I try to get butter from Porto-Novo to here it always melts! (I love butter, just not melted all over the inside of my backpack) Cheese is also something I miss all the time. I eat about a wheel of Vache Qui Rit (Laughing Cow) a week, which (along with eggs) is my main source of protein. But Vache is just NOT cheese. You can get cheese here, but it’s pretty expensive, hard to get back to my house and always either Wagasi (an African cheese that’s pretty good, but doesn’t melt) or French, nothing wrong with that, except that my absolute favorite cheese is sharp Cheddar and there is absolutely none of that wandering around. Sometimes I even find myself craving Marie’s crazy good Norwegian brown cheese (mmm…creamy). There’s another thing I miss cooking with, cream, and milk. Or just drinking milk really, I do drink milk here but it’s of the powdered variety and although I do get separate sometimes and drink it straight, I mostly just cook with it and put it in my tea. Anyway I realize that talking about cooking has turned into complaining about things I don’t have here- but as an endnote I want to thank everyone who has sent me things (food things in particular), I’d be stuck with spaghetti every night if you didn’t!
Love and good eating,
Glenna
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Several Blog Posts at once! Its like Christmas, early!
This is the moon set from my back porch- you could see the moon better before I ran to get my camera ;)
This is the river-as seen from a little called a pirogue.
This is my Post Mama, in front of a beautiful sunrise over the valley.
This is Sadie, she sleeps in my mosquito net. She's so cute!
November 3, 2009
The Joys and Woes of Teaching in Benin
Woes-
1.The French System seeks to weed out the weaklings, rather than make sure everyone gets an education. Thus, when I give a quiz and 40% of my students pass, that’s totally normal.
2.My smallest class is 42, my largest is 52.
3.All the kids’s names are crazy! Some are straight-up French, which are the ones that are easy. Then there are the crazy African names, which are pronounced totally phonetically. Then there are the names that I think I know how to pronounce (Kevin, Geoffrey) that are totally NOT pronounced the way they look!
Joys-
1. The kids love to sing whatever dorky (in a good way) song I can think of and/or make up to go with my lesson. If it has motions or a dance, even better!
2. The kids are super interesting in me, which means I can do things like have them review asking questions about people “Where are you from?” etc by having them ask me any question they want- as long as its in English.
3. They have figured out that I only speak French in class when they are in trouble. Which means that the moment a French word comes out of my mouth, they are all dead silent. It’s a good trick.
4. I get to be totally goofy in class- the goofier I am the more they are interested and more likely to remember what I’m teaching them.
Both-
1. All of my classrooms only have walls on two sides, meaning that they both catch a lovely breeze, and that there is always something happening outside.
2. The kids don’t have textbooks, which means that what I write on the board becomes their textbooks. In general, I think this makes them get more out of things in class, but it also is really bad if they don’t copy things perfectly, because their copybooks aren’t correct so when they study its not correct.
Crazy Everyday Occurrences
-Chickens running through my classroom
-Dogs running through my classroom
-Rain coming in and soaking everyone, as well as erasing the board
-Rain coming down so hard on the tin roof that I just write things on the board and have the kids copy, to explain later, because nobody can hear me
-Fumes from burning garbage filling my classroom so that I have no recourse but to evacuate!
-Muddy soccer balls flying through my classroom
-The Principal coming into my class and kicking almost all (except 6) students out because they haven’t paid their school fees yet
That’s it for now… but there are sure to be more later!
October 21, 2009.
An Interesting Day All-Round
So today was one of my short days. They are nice. So I got home around 12 and had just changed out of a teaching outfit (one of the dresses I had made here, out of crazy local fabric) and two boys who are in 6th grade and I know by sight (I have 5th grade so I will have them next year- the grade numbers here go backwards) come and tell me that the Directrice (female principle) and “the other whites” want to invite me to lunch. And of course I’m all, sure, just let me change and off I go traipsing through the village. So I get there and I find out that there are indeed “les autres blanchs” and that they are a French couple who decided to retire to a small jungle/river village in Benin! Interesting right….So I stayed for lunch. They were very, very nice, which I figured out when I got used to their Frenchy-French accents and fast talking. I figured out that they had no idea that I am the 4th American to teach at the CEG (middle/high school), which honestly is really weird. I mean it’s not like the people here see a white person everyday. Its more like seeing an Oompa-Loompa, you know, that somewhere (in Loompaland) there are pleanty of Oompa-Loompas, but when one moves in next door all you and the neighbors want to talk about is those crazy Oompa-Loompas and the crazy things they do (not to mention go through their trash and scream “oomph-Loompa! Oompa-Loompa! Every time you do see them). This being the case I am really shocked that one of the other volunteers hasn’t figured out that there have been French people living here for the past 8 years. And for the record, I didn’t figure it out either- they found me.
Yesterday was also a good day. Again, it was one of my short days, and also a market day, so, of course, I went to the market. It was the market. Which is pretty sweet, but that’s a whole post in itself. Anyway a couple of weeks ago at the market I bought some popcorn. Yes, popcorn. And it was damn good! But I haven’t seen the popcorn mama since then so I decided to ask the other mamas in the vicinity of her stand where I might obtain some more popcorn. After a lot of explanation and gesticulation, because I have no idea what the word for popcorn is in French (still don’t) I figured out that here, they call popcorn “poof-poof.” Which is awesome. So I went in search of poof-poof (Wouldn’t you?) along the way I went past the mosque and a bunch of Muslim establishments, so I figured this must be the Muslim part of town. Sweet, I had been kind of wondering where the 5:30 call to prayer was coming from. Eventually I found what looked like a bouvette (a bar) with a popcorn, or poof-poof, machine displayed in the open door (I say door, but most businesses here have doors that open up all the way- so more like an open shop front). And what a popcorn machine it is! Its exactly like the one that they have at Swain’s, where my grandpa used to get my a 25 cent bag of popcorn every time we had to go in (and sometimes when we didn’t), which is, of course, why the popcorn is AMAZING! So I bought some of the incredible poof-poof and got to talking with the owners, I think. Anyway there was a youngish guy who sold me the popcorn and an older woman who was putting bisap (really good, really sweet hibiscus juice) into sachets (baggies) that sell for 25 francs. Anyway so I asked, “You sell bisap? I’ll have one of those too!” (it was really hot and I can actually drink bisap because in order to juice a dried hibiscus they have to boil them for awhile) when the guy was all, “We also sell ice cream.” ICE CREAM! What!? I didn’t ask to see the ice cream just then, because I know I would have wanted one and popcorn was enough for the day. Also, I know that if I know there is ice cream there I will go back- it’s a good day excursion. So from talking to the guy (and to the busy mama a little as well) I deduced that this amazing establishment of my dreams was not, in fact, a bouvette- which sells beer (and sometimes wine) along with suceries (soda pop) but is what he calls a “bar” which is basically where Muslims (guys, of course) can hang out like it’s a bouvette, but where there aren’t all those pesky temptations (unless you call ice cream a temptation, which I do, but Muslims don’t). As he shows me around I also find out that there is a foosball table, man those Muslims in my village really know how to party! Popcorn! Bisap! Ice Cream! Foosball! Sometimes it really sucks to be a girl here, because I know it would be absolutely culturally inaprops to hang out there with all the Muslim guys one night. But man, that would be fun! Don’t worry… I won’t actually do it!
In other news, my birthday was pretty awesome, in large part due to the fact that I got two packages (thanks Mae and Mom!) and also that I spent most of the day (a little too much actually) in Cotonou with my friend Laura. It was really great to hang out with her and also get to chat with everyone at the office, it was the most time I had thought all in English all in a row for a long time! And when I got home I had Annie’s shells and cheese (thanks again Mae) with Cherry Kool-Aid (thanks Gram!) and God decided to give me another present. You see, here, unlike in Porto-Novo, the electricity usually goes off during the day, which is pretty sweet, but also a let down. A let down because as my neighbors will tell you (they think I’m crazy) I really like to look at the starts. But even here there is quite a bit of light pollution. However, on my birthday, just as I was finishing eating my amazing mac and cheese all the power went out. It was an amazingly clear and clean night and with the view from here I could see more stars than I’ve ever seen at one time before. It was absolutely beautiful, although I did find myself wanting to know what constellations I was looking at (nudge, nudge, wink, wink if you are thinking of sending me a package!)
So long for now, I think this will get posted fairly soon!
Love, Glenna
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