More food, teacher strike

I completely forgot in my last post to mention the weirdest foods I’ve eaten since coming to Benin. Honorable mention goes to the boiled goat liver I had when I stayed with my host family during training, but the real prize goes to…macaroni and fried snails, which a friendly neighbor gave me a few weeks after I moved to my post.

Primary and secondary school Beninese teachers have been striking for higher salaries these last few weeks, so I’m one of the only teachers at my school who’s still holding class on Tuesdays through Thursdays. A Beninese colleague told me that Beninese teachers have struck around this time every year for the past five years to try to get the Beninese government to improve their working conditions. If the government and the teachers’ union can’t come to an agreement, this could go on until the end of the school year.

Also, I was recently invited by a local elementary school principal to come and visit his school and students, and I did so this last Monday. His school is one of the poorest in the area, with desks clustered under thatched coverings on poles. He and the local parents’ association want to work with me to apply for a grant to raise money for actual classroom buildings so that they can hold school during the rainy seasons. I’ll keep you all posted on how that project goes.

I’ve heard that Chicago is having a cold spell – so is Benin. My students have been coming to class bundled in sweatshirts and knit caps, shivering in the 60-degree weather.

Food!

School started again on January 7, but we got yesterday (January 10) off for Traditional Religion Day, a.k.a., the Voodoo Fete. 

School’s going well.  I’ve been giving my students colorful pencils that J. sent from the U.S. as prizes for high scores on quizes and tests, and the younger kids especially think they’re just about the coolest things they’ve ever seen.  After each prize session, I can bet on having at least one lower-scoring student stay after class to try and wheedle a pencil out of me.  (“Oh madame, you’re very nice.  You’re very intelligent.  Can you give me a pencil?”)

I’m afraid I may have picked up an intestinal parasite since my appetite has tripled since coming to Benin, and not all of that extra hunger can be explained by being in better physical shape.  (The Peace Corps doctors tested me for parasites back in November but didn’t find anything that time.)  It’s a good thing, then, that I’ve gotten to like Beninese food.  Getting used to the food here turned out to be the hardest part of adjusting since the tastes and textures are quite different from U.S. food; it was a good five months before I could enjoy most meals.  There’s a big emphasis on carbohydrates and spicy peppers in almost everything.  Dairy products other than powdered milk aren’t available at my post, and sugary food (**sniff, sniff**) is only available in the handful of large cities.  Since I’m down in the South, I get most of my protein from fish and eggs, though I’ve had to tread carefully with eggs recently since avian flu just recently arrived in Benin.  At post, I eat mostly beans and rice, spaghetti, pâte, and akassa.  Pâte is a sticky dough made from ground corn, and akassa is a fermented version of pâte.  All of the above typically come with sauce made of some variation on tomatoes, spicy peppers, and onions, though the sauce is also often made with okra or a bitter green leafy vegetable called crain-crain.  Benin does have some great fresh fruit (mango, papaya, pineapple…), but what I typically find at my post are bananas and oranges.

I started off at post cooking all my own food, but when school started, I became too busy to keep that up and have a healthy diet, so for the last few weeks, I’ve been eating with my landlady’s family instead.  I offered to pay her for the food, but she refused to take any money, so I’ve been instead helping out by buying groceries when I visit Porto Novo or Cotonou. 

All the same, I’ve found in the past few months that my nails have become more brittle and my hair is thinning a bit.  I’m not seriously worried about the hair since I doubt anyone but me would notice the difference, but I am a bit concerned about what that could mean about my vitamin intake.  I’ve spoken to other new volunteers who’ve been experiencing the same thing, and one of them suggested that it might be a side effect of the mefloquine we’ve been taking as malaria prophylaxis.  Any suggestions from friends who’ve studied nutrition?