October 6- Stories From My First Weeks as a Volunteer

One of the worst things about procrastinating on blog posts/ not having internet often is that it’s so hard to decide what in the world to write.  There’s so much!  I’ve been an official Peace Corps volunteer for about three weeks now.  This early part of service is focused on getting to know our communities.  I do lots of visiting people and walking around village.  The women’s gardening group I was invited to work with is getting a nice irrigation system with a solar-powered pump installed by an NGO, and they’re setting up a new garden.  We should start planting sometime this month, and when we do I will have my own plot in the garden to demonstrate growing new vegetables (like cabbage, lettuce, carrots, melons) that they don’t currently grow.  Not much gardening work going on right now, though.  I have started learning Fulani, with informal lessons twice a week and lots of opportunities to practice.  

This is my first real trip away from my post; I’m spending some time in Parakou, my regional capitol, to do banking, grocery shopping, and meet some of the other volunteers in the area.  At this point, I only have internet access once or twice a month – so sorry that I’ve been a bit out of touch. Here are a few stories about the past few weeks:

I Almost Became a TEFL Volunteer

After I’d been in post for about a week, I started to hear rumors that a volunteer was coming to our CEG (middle school) to teach English.  I was suspicious that these rumors might be about me – after all, no Peace Corps TEFL volunteers were assigned to my area.  I started to ask people where they heard this rumor.  “From the director,” they replied.  “Great” – I thought – if the director is spreading this rumor maybe I should talk to him about this.  To be fair, I had met with him earlier and offered to support the school in little ways, like helping with an English club, doing a peace corps-sponsored scholarship for one of the female students, and maybe starting a girl’s club to help girls stay in school.  We’d also talked about Environmental Education opportunities.  So maybe he’d just gotten a little over excited about me?  I dropped by his house one day, and while we were chatting tactfully asked “Oh, I’ve heard that there’s a volunteer coming to teach English.  Is there someone else coming (I knew this wasn’t the case), or are people talking about me?”  He told me that it was me, and I explained that I’m happy to help in little ways but I need to keep my schedule free to do environmental work, like gardening.  He said this was fine, and it was all cleared up.  But I still wonder if I hadn’t said anything, would someone have showed up at my house one Monday morning, saying “hurry, you’re late for class!!!!”?  

Is that Someone Beatboxing, or a Goat Sneezing?

In the compound where my house is, there are lots of goats and sheep.  Lots of them.  They basically just sit around and steal yams from children when they’re not looking, or knock the lids off of pots cooking over the fire to eat the food.  I’ve started to recognize individual ones.  There’s a three-legged sheep that lost one of it’s legs in a hunting trap (it does quite well limping around even so).  There’s at least one goat that likes to sit next to my chair when I’m reading outside and grind it’s teeth.  And one night, I heard a sound under my window that sounded exactly like someone beat boxing.  “Is that someone beat boxing, or is it a goat?”  I wondered in my half-asleep state.  I managed to identify the goat in question the next day, a black one that sneezes in rhythm.  There’s another goat that makes a sound that is exactly like someone screaming – “wuahhhh!” after every sneeze.  “sneeze.  Wuahhhh!  Sneeze. Wuahhhh!”  I have no idea why.  

“Can I See Your Knife?  The Old Lady Said You Can Have this Cat!”

For my first few weeks, there was a young woman living in my compound who speaks very good French.  But she actually lives in Kalale, the commune (county) capital, and she and her husband recently moved back home after their visit.  So now the best French speaker is in elementary school, making it a bit harder to communicate beyond greetings.  It leads to some interesting miscommunications.  The other night, while I was making dinner by headlamp, Nafisi (the elementary school girl) came to my door and I thought she said “The woman who is here visiting wants to see your knife (couteau).”  “My knife?/ Mon couteau?”  “Yes.”  “The thing that I use for cutting?”  “Yes.”  I thought this was a little weird.  Maybe she wanted to see my swiss army knife?  It’s pretty cool.  I try to keep most of my more expensive/flashy things like that hidden in my room, so I decided to go get the kitchen knife I’d bought in the market.  As I went into my room to get it, looking confused, Nafisi said “Where you are with your Dad.”  “Oh, photo, not couteau?”  “Yes.”  So I got out my photo album, and showed my pictures from home to the woman who was visiting.  We stood outside looking at them by flashlight.  Nafisi especially wanted her to see the picture of me and Dad canoeing at permanent rapids in New York.  While we were looking at the photos, I realized that a small cat was walking around us and miaowing.  “Oh, the old lady (la vieille) said that you can have this cat.”  Nafisi said.  In Benin, referring to the family’s grandmother as “la vielle” is a term of respect.  La vieille’s cat had recently had kittens, and I’d asked for one – but the kittens were still tiny babies.  This was an older kitten - maybe it was from an earlier litter?  I’d never seen it before.  But anyway, now I have a cat! 

Baby Husbands and 40-Year-Old Son-in-Laws

In Benin, people love joking about relationships.  Especially about husbands.  Here’s a typical exchange that happened when I was in Peonga for post visit, between me and two middle-aged men:[

Man # 1:  I want to give you as a wife to him.  Points to Man #2

Me: You have to ask my father first.

Man #1:  Where is your father?

Me: He’s in America.

Man #1 to Man #2 Ok.  If you give me money to buy gas for my motorcycle, I’ll go to America to talk to her father.  

Me: Good luck with the ocean.

This particular interchange was in French, so I was able to follow it – but many of the husband jokes are in Fulani.  I know the Fulani word for husband (gorko), but not much else right now.  So to me, they go somewhat like this:

Person:  gibberish gibberish blah blah husband gibberish

Me:  Hahahahaha!

Husband jokes are not confined to people my age or older.  It’s pretty common in Benin to joke about children, too.  There’s one family I visit almost every day that jokes that I’m married to Habilou, their baby boy.  Whenever I visit I spend some time holding him – as far as husbands go he’s quite nice, doesn’t bother me or ask me to do housework or anything.  On the flip side, I had a man who is at least 40 tell me he wants to marry my baby daughter if I ever have one.  So I also have a son-in-law.  Nice to know that my daughter, at least, will not be an old maid if it’s too late for me…