October 15 - Month 1 Work Post

One month down, 23 to go.  Today is my official “one month anniversary” as a Peace Corps volunteer.  I know when I read other people’s Peace Corps blogs, I wished there was more detail on what the work of Peace Corps was actually like.  I’m going to try to write a work-related post on the 15^th of every month – each anniversary – to keep track of what I’ve done.

As I’ve mentioned before, my primary job in Peonga is to work with a women’s gardening group.  The group has been gardening for many years, but they recently received help from a partnership of SELF (an American NGO), ADF (another American NGO), and ADESKA (A Beninese NGO) to install a solar-powered pump and drip irrigation system.  Most gardening here happens in the dry season, because this is when people are free – during the rainy season they work in the fields, growing staples like corn and yams.  In past years the group had their garden near a stream, so they could water the plants.  With the new irrigation system they’ve been able to move their site to a large, flat area near the village.  The NGOs have helped them build a good metal chain-link fence around the new garden site, and the solar panels for the pump were recently installed.  The land for the new garden has also been cleared and plowed using cattle, and soon they’ll pay some youth from the community to build long raised beds – each woman will have a raised bed to plant (including me!)  Basically, there hasn’t been much actual gardening work that involves me yet.  One day I went to the garden with the women when they were trying to remove tree stumps using axes – I was “allowed” to work for about 2 minutes, borrowing one of their axes.  Another day, this past week, the women were collecting cow manure from around the village.  This will be mixed with the soil when the beds are built, as a natural fertilizer.  I spent some time helping on the manure expedition.  Other than that, I’ve been focusing on getting to know some of the group members and waiting for when it’s time to plant.  SELF/ADESKA will be organizing some training sessions for the women on topics like how to grow using drip irrigation, and I’m thinking that my role may be to help reinforce what’s taught during the trainings – since I’ll be working with the women in the garden every day.  I will be growing plants that are new to them in my plot – I’ve bought lots of seeds, for things like watermelon, muskmelon, radishes, carrots, cabbage, lettuce… The women are also very interested in learning how to prepare nutritious meals for their kids using garden veggies, so once we’ve harvested some I’ll probably organize cooking demonstrations. 

I’ve started to develop relationships with the Elementary and Middle schools in Peonga, meeting with both directors.  In the Middle school, the director has expressed interest in my helping with their English club and supporting girl’s education.  We’ve discussed having a girl’s club, and also participating in a “scholarship girl” program organized by Peace Corps that will allow me to mentor one girl from the school and help her buy school supplies.  The school year just started, so the clubs have not gotten going yet.  We’ve been working on organizing a selection committee for the scholarship girl.  The committee has to include myself, the director, two members of the parent-teacher association, and another member of the community.  Getting all these people organized sounds easier than it is – if anything, participating in the scholarship girl program is a good “low-risk” project that can teach me how things work in village and how much patience it takes to organize anything.  Once these activities get off the ground, I plan to look into ways to do Environmental education at one or both of the schools.

In our training, we were also taught how to build fuel-conserving mud stoves.  Almost everyone in my village cooks with wood, balancing their pot over the fire on three stones.  Building a simple mud stove around the pot/stones can trap much more of the heat, greatly increasing fuel efficiency. At a recent meeting with the women’s group, I mentioned mud stoves.  The women were very interested, saying that they use especially a lot of wood during harmattan, the cool windy part of the dry season that will be starting soon.  They wanted to start building stoves right away, so I took down the names of a few of them that are interested.  Tomorrow, I’ll be meeting with one of them to observe how much wood she currently uses to cook and to make plans to build my first stove at her house. 

Finally, my counterpart has talked about organizing a project to promote Moringa growing in Peonga.  Moringa is a tree that grows very quickly and has very nutritious leaves.  The leaves can be eaten fresh, or dried and powdered.  He’s already identified several interested people.  On my recent trip into Parakou, I chatted with another volunteer who’s placed with an NGO that promotes Moringa to learn how we could partner with them. 

I meant to write about what I’ve done, but there’s been a lot about what I’m going to do / hoping to do.  That’s pretty indicative of this month, and the first months in general – a lot of it is laying groundwork for work to be done later.  Offficially, the first three months are considered our community integration period.  We’re working on written “community studies” that need to be submitted in December when we have our first in-service training.  Writing all this out makes me sound very busy, but in reality most of my day is spent walking around and visiting with people, sitting at my compound reading and watching goats, lying on my cool concrete floor staring at the ceiling...  I’ve been taking informal Fulani lessons one to three times a week, and practicing a lot.  I’ve gotten good at greetings, and can ask people where they’re going and tell them where I’m going.  Every day I learn a little more.   I’ve finished seven books, and started training for the Parakou marathon in February.  

That’s month one in a nutshell – on to month two!