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This last Sunday marked one year in Benin for everyone in my training group. Of the 59 of us who arrived in July 2007, only about 45 have made it to this point. Fifteen of us went out for ice cream and Indian food in Cotonou last Friday. For an enormous banana split and dinner at a formal restaurant with wine, appetizers, the whole nine yards, the bill came to 8,500cfa per person…under 20 US dollars. (Now if I could only live in Benin on an American salary, that would be perfect…)
When I returned to post on Saturday, I celebrated again by making chocolate and vanilla cakes to share with my neighbors. I don’t have any oven out here, but I’ve been baking a lot recently using a Dutch oven: a large lidded pot with an empty tuna can on the bottom. I perch my cake/bread/cookie pan on top of the tuna can and put the whole setup over a low flame on my gas stove. It works very well, though I’d been having problems finding the right ingredients for baking. Real butter isn’t available at my post, and the tub margarine here that Beninese people call “butter” is disastrous in baking. It tastes like plastic and when exposed to high heat, it congeals into a sticky black mass. For the one-year anniversary baking day, I used real butter bought in Cotonou and made caramel frosting from scratch, and the cakes were amazing. (On less special occasions, I use vegetable oil instead of butter.) My neighbors were VERY happy. I’ve gotten a couple of offers to bake for payment that I’ve had to turn down since I’m prohibited from earning money as a Peace Corps volunteer. If I have to get fired sometime, though, I’d definitely like to do it for unauthorized pastry sales.
After a bombardment of start-of-summer Peace Corps activities, things have really quieted down. I got so bored last week at post, I taught myself to crochet. I bought the yarn and crochet hook from a woman in my local market. If I had been shopping for shriveled animal parts to protect myself against sorcery, no one would’ve given me a second glance, but since I was haggling for crocheting supplies, I had an audience of at least ten curious people around me by the time I was finished. There can’t be much variety in the crochet action in Benin since I’m still working to convince my friends at post that the round red thing I’m making is NOT a hat. I don’t think they’ll be convinced until they see me carrying around my new crocheted satchel in a few weeks.
Click on the picture to see it full-size.
Helping out at a computer training session:
Discussing goal-setting and decision-making with the girls:
Wearing our paper hats from the origami session:
Last week was the girls’ leadership camp in Porto Novo, the capital of Benin. About fifty girls attended, coming from all over the southern portion of Benin. I brought four of my 5eme students from my post, and I think they really enjoyed it. Two of them were girls who performed very well in my English class this last year, one was a girl who didn’t perform very well but had an excellent attitude, and the fourth was a very smart girl who seemed dedicated to doing as little work as possible at school. I hoped the camp would encourage the first two to keep working hard, and the second two to start thinking seriously about their futures. They had sessions on study skills, managing work and family, nutrition, health and sexuality, etc….plus special trips to a museum, a non-profit farm, and the National Assembly. I mostly ran errands and helped with the general running of the camp, though I did assist with the goal-setting workshop and taught one session on origami. (The girls loved folding paper hats and wore them around for the rest of the day.) The camp was funded by donors back in the U.S. – so thanks a lot!
To celebrate the Fourth of July, the American ambassador to Benin invited everyone connected to the U.S. embassy, plus all the Peace Corps staff and volunteers, to a potluck lunch at her [enormous] house [with swimming pool!] today. At least fifty people showed up, and we feasted on everything from salad to macaroni and cheese to hamburgers and hotdogs – very exotic foods for Benin. I baked a cinnamon cake with chocolate frosting at post and brought it over today. On the way back to the Peace Corps office on a motorcycle with the remains of the cake balanced on my knee, I got a lot of odd looks from Beninese people…which I think is a bit much since I regularly see Beninese people driving around on motorcycles with a goat slung over their knees and a basket of thirty chickens tied to the seat behind them.
In a matter of minutes, a plane carrying a new crop of Peace Corps trainees will arrive at the Cotonou airport. They’ll be training for the next two months at sites in and around Porto Novo – right next door to me, in other words. Current PCVs will be assisting with the training, but I won’t be one of them since I was in Paris during the trainers’ training session in March. I definitely plan to show up for their Iron Chef Benin competition, though. Since I won’t be involved in the actual training, I think I’d make a great impartial taste-tester and judge. Those who make it to the end of the training period will swear in around the fourth of September, and their swear-in celebration will also double as Peace Corps Benin’s 40th anniversary celebration. I won’t be able to make it since I’ll be visiting the U.S. at that time, but I’ve heard a rumor that the President of Benin might attend. At this rate, I’ll never meet a President of anywhere!
