The World Changes Every Day

For the next two years, I will be living in a two-room cement house with a tin roof, in a village of 8,000 with no electricity or running water. There are no paved roads in my entire commune (the Beninese equivalent of a county). Get out your detailed maps of Benin, and draw a big star with my name on it on…Peounga, Kalale Commune, Borgou District! In case your map doesn’t include that level of detail, my site is located in northeastern Benin. We learned our sites on Friday, and based on my info packet it seems like Peace Corps has given me my dream post. Here’s a summary of what Peounga’s like and what I’ll (theoretically) be doing there: Agriculture and Environment The area around Peounga is prominently agricultural – main crops are cotton, corn, and sorghum. Cattle herding/raising is equally important. My site is very close to a large national forest (the Three Rivers Forest) as well. The northeast of Benin is predominantly flat savannah, drier than the south. Temperature-wi...

When I was little, “dress-up” was one of my favorite games.  I didn’t have the mass-produced, cheap satin Disney princess dresses; instead, all my dress-up costumes were real clothes that we got from thrift stores, hand-me-downs, or other sources.  There was a black-and-white former prom dress that I remember, several folky outfits that served for “little house on the prairie” reenactments, striped shirts that were great for pirates…and plenty home-made costumes from Halloween.  Dress-up morphed into full-blown living room theatre as I got older, the same costumes providing scope for historical plays based on the “American Girl” series and “Ranger Rick” stories about animals sharing environmental messages.     I distinctly remember worrying that I wouldn’t like to play dress-up any more when I grew up.  If I could go back in time, I would tell little six-year-old Bethany that she has nothing to worry about – I have successfully become an ...

In one of my earlier posts, I mentioned that I’m spending the first several weeks of Peace Corps Training here in Porto Novo learning Bariba, a language spoken in Northwestern Benin. I and my classmate (another EA volunteer) are two weeks into our Bariba-learning adventure now. It’s intense – most days we have language class from 8:00-12:30 and again from 1:30-5:00, with one half-hour break in both the morning and the afternoon. Some of the time is also spent learning about cross-cultural topics. We started with greetings. This sounds like a simple enough topic, something that could probably be covered with the equivalent of “Hello, how are you?” But greetings are very, very important in Benin, even more so in the North than in the South. When I told my host father that I was learning Bariba, he said that up north I could expect to spend up to half an hour greeting someone else. Accordingly, we have learned a plethora of greetings for every occasion. There are the usual “good morn...

Flying over the Sahara First Day of Class in Cotonou!

Doucement adv gently; softly; slowly Definition courtesy of Collins French School Dictionary & Grammar Two weeks into my life as a Peace Corps trainee, two weeks into my immersion in Beninese French.  As I go about daily life, there are certain words that I hear over and over again.  The most frequent one is “Yovo,” a term for foreigner/white person – one of these days I’ll count how many times I hear it, and then maybe it will be the feature of a post.  The second most frequent word, and the one I want to focus on right now, is “doucement.”  The definition above is the official French dictionary definition, but it doesn’t come even close to summing up how versatile and well-used this word is in Benin.  If I were to write Benin’s definition of doucement, it would be something like this: Doucement adv/ phrase/ command/ exclamation Hey, watch where you’re going! I’m sorry.  Be careful.  Slow down.  Take it easy.  Don’t stress ...

I want to do my best to post a combination of informative “what’s happening in my life” posts with more thoughtful posts that give insight on aspects of Beninese culture, my evolving thoughts on my work/role here, etc.   Here’s the informative post for this time around.   I’m about two weeks into Pre-Service Training (PST in the acronym-heavy Peace Corps world).   During this training period, I’m officially a PCT (Peace Corps Trainee).   I’m living with a host family in Porto Novo, Benin’s second largest city.   My family is great!   I live with my father and mother who are both grandparent-age, and their adopted daughter who helps around the house.   Their two grown daughters are married, but live in Porto Novo and come over almost every day with their young daughters.   The oldest of these “little host sisters” is 7, and the younger two are ages 3 and 2.   I have my own room, with a large bed.   Like all Peace Corps volunteers, I ...