Un Jour Normal

''When we talk about
the worlds problems,
we're barking up the wrong tree.
The world is perfect. Its a mess.
It has always been a mess.
We are not going to change it.
Our job is to straighten out
our own lives.''
J. Cambpell

Well I suppose I should start writing about the everyday life, the mundane buzz that goes overlooked during the busy schedule of stage. As I finish week 5, I'm getting feelings of routine and comfort, and I'm seeing myself much less surprised by occurences considered foreign by American standards. The day begins at 6am, waking up either to an armageddon of the appendix, or the apocolypse of the animals outside my room. After a half-awake pilgrammage halfway around the house to the holy latrine (pun intended) I return to my room to either catch another 30 min of rest, or begin reading/homework. At 6:45 I really get up and do a quick yoga set and head into the house for tea and baguette with Papa. My room is about 8'x30', quite spacious, formerly a storage room on the side of the house sharing a wall with mama's bedroom, but with its own entrance. The tea is chickory with condensed milk and citronella freshly clipped from the, for lack of a better word, garden.

At 7:45 I rush back to my room, brush my teeth, and head out with my bike to Cocotiers, the school for Health and Environment sectors. We start each day with a heavy dose of French language class, followed with a few hours of technical training. So far, I have learned how to present the 3 food groups of Benin, how to teach a nutritous diet to those who don't speak French, breast feeding, gardening, composting, family planning, and malaria treatement. Tomorrow we will be giving our 3rd presentation au village, this time on contraception. The presentations we give are called sensibilizations, fitting name for how easy they should be, and how difficult they are to say or communicate to a group that only speaks a local language.

We get a repos (break) from 12:30-3:00 where I get fuled up back home with some pate, sauce, and poisson, and get to take a sieste as well. From 3-7 its back at it with cross culture and technical seminars. If there is time after class before the sun goes down (there are very few street lights) most of us frequent the buvette for some beers bin frappé to discuss the difficulties of the day. After that, its a bike ride home through the difficult sandy streets for dinner.

Again, its sauce, a mixture of cooked tomatoes and onions, fish, and either pate noir and crin crin (a snot consistent condiment made from cooked plants) cous cous, or rice. And of course, dessert. Either a delicious pineapple or an orange.

I must interrupt my day to ask why the oranges are treated the way they are. Very common here, oranges are sold almost everywhere you look in Porto-Novo. But, they have been altered, or 'prepared' if you will. Before an orange is ready for the consumer, someone must neatly carve off half of the rind so that it looks like a small white pumpkin. Then the consumer gets to attempt to peel the orange the same way as before, but since the rind is half as thick, the task becomes twice as difficult. If anyone can tell me why the act of making an orange ready to eat is made 3 times as long here, I'm all ears. Absolutley infuriating.

After getting my ass handed to me by Papa at Adji (an African game with 2 rows of 6 places containing 4 pieces each), I retire around 10pm to my room where I take a refreshingly cold bucket shower and read/write till 11 or so. And thats it! The typical day in stage from Mon-Sat.

The first few weeks here I remember everything being so foreign and different, and now its funny to look back. My stomach has normalized, the language is improving rapidly, and I am feeling much more at ease here. I hardly even hear the constant cries of Yovo from every child.

Though things are good, I am eagerly waiting to finish stage and begin my life at post. I have heard so much about the North, and it has only made me more ready to see my home, and beging working instead of training. I am also longing for some free time, since my book list is expanding rapidly! They tell us that we will have more free time than we can handle at post. The first 3 months is considered community integration time, and you are encouraged to do nothing more than spend time in the community and not leave the village. Almost any project that is started during this time fails (and same goes almost for the entire first year) due to a lack of understanding by the volunteer, and a lack of trust/need by the village. So at least 3 months of solid shooting the shit.

Its funny as we approach 40 years of PC in Benin, and not much has changed. I'm not going to blam this on PC, or any one thing for that matter, but if you signed up to lower infant mortality rates or malnutrition stats, you're in it for the wrong reasons. At least your reasons are not in order (see beginning quote). The most important thing that most volunteers get out of their time is a greater understanding of themselves, African culture, and the several great friendships they make with local people. Nonetheless, it intrigues us all deeply why countries still struggle and can't seem to get up on two feet. I am working on an answer to that, but perhaps its better explained in the book I am currently reading titled, Africa Doesn't Matter by Giles Bolton. The more I think about it, the more I think Campbell was right. You can aid all you want, and don't get me wrong, it can help, but nothing willimprove until the change within eachperson happens, and that begins by teaching everyone about the gift of critical thinking and problem solving. The desire must be inside.