First Few Days of Training


Welcome one and all to my first blog post from Benin!  I’m at the Peace Corps workstation in Cotonou.  We arrived Tuesday night, and were met at the airport by a very enthusiastic welcome committee of current volunteers.  For the past two days we’ve been living at a religious retreat center, to have a few days of orientation.  It’s been intense – days packed with information sessions on safety and security, Peace Corps policies, general information about our programs, diversity in Peace Corps, peer support options… it’s all really interesting information, but a lot to absorb.

Today we were issued our mountain bikes and had our zemidjan (motorcycle taxi) lesson.  Zemis are one of the most widespread types of transportation available to volunteers here, so we are one of few countries where volunteers are permitted to ride motorcycles.  We had a group of zemi drivers come to the Peace Corps office, and we had to practice haggling for a good price and then go for a short ride in the streets around the area.  Good fun.  I wore pants; learning how to get on a motorcycle in a skirt without showing my knees is a challenge for another day.   

Tomorrow we leave for Porto Novo, a nearby city where we’ll do the rest of training.  We’ll be living in host families there, and I and another volunteer are giving a speech in French at tomorrow’s ceremony when we meet our host families.  Our training in Porto Novo will involve lots of language training, at least for the first five weeks.  I’ll be taking one of Benin’s local languages since I’ve tested out of French.  We find out which language we’ll be taking later today.  Exciting times!

So... I just spent about one and a half hours trying to upload a pretty picture from the flight over for you.  Lack of success.  So imagine a gorgeous photo of frost on the window, juxtaposed against the sands of the sahara below.  And maybe if I find better internet somewhere sometime you'll get the real photo.  So long! 









Comments

  1. AnonymousJune 29, 2012 at 8:41 AM

    Wow! My congratulations and excitement go out to you, dear open-hearted polyglot! Looking forward to the next update!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

June 15 - Why Peace Corps is Hard

A lot of you have probably heard the “Toughest Job You’ll Ever Love” slogan about Peace Corps.   I’ve been here about a year now – one year on June 27 – and have done my best to share the experience through this blog.   I think most of my posts have confirmed the “love” part of that slogan – I do love this job.   It’s a truly amazing experience.   Whenever I leave or return to my village, I ride a motorcycle along beautiful red dirt roads, through fields that are now turning green again, past herds of white cattle and groups of brightly-dressed girls and women carrying big basins of water on their heads.   Dozens of people – the girls carrying water, men working in the fields or relaxing in the shade of trees – wave and call out my name.   “Gorado!   Gorado!”   The name I’ve been given means “One who has been sent from far away to achieve a mission, and returns with a good result.”   What a vote of confidence!   I have spent much of my life daydreaming over the photos and stories o
Read more

Musings from a Bench in the Port Vila Post Office

Image
All the post cards I bought during my long wait.   Yesterday, I was working in the Peace Corps Office resource room when a friend asked if I could help her run an errand.  Another Peace Corps volunteer who is serving on Ambae had a package at the post office, and it couldn't be delivered to her on her island until the customs fees were paid.  I didn't know much about how to do this, but I was free- and so I walked to the post office downtown, stopping into stores to browse as I did. When I got to the post office, I went to the desk labeled "customs" and explained the situation - but they were confused about why I had come and not the volunteer in question, and why I didn't have an invoice for the amount I was supposed to pay.  They suggested that I try another desk, labeled "items to collect" or something like that.  Before I headed over there, I got into a conversation with a couple of men sitting on bench.  In Vanuatu "storying", or c
Read more

"Blessed are the Flexible, for they shall Never be Bent out of Shape"

Image
First day of work at World Vision! The title of this post was a motto of the Rotary Youth Exchange program, and I learned it when I was an exchange student with them in Finland the year after high school.  The phrase stuck with me in Benin, as I dealt with the infinite frustrations and challenges of my first Peace Corps service.  And now in Vanuatu, I’ve had yet another chance to experience the importance of flexibility.  The good news is, whenever I get the question about whether or not I can work in a rapidly changing/flexible work environment during future interviews, I’ll be all set! Some time ago I wrote a post about my job here in Vanuatu/ what I will be doing for work.  You may not have read that post; it was very long, and didn’t have any pretty pictures until the end.  If you did read it, disregard everything you learned from it – my situation has had some pretty major changes.  Shortly after my time on Ambrym working with fellow Peace Corps volunteer Kathleen, w
Read more