The World Changes Every Day

1.13.13 “People say that you got a shot to make you strong and that’s why you can run.”   I have an 11-year old friend, Alia, who tells me the rumors about me in town.   This is by far my favorite one.   Never in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine I’d be good enough at a sport to be accused of using performance-enhancing drugs.   My brother Nathan tells me that I’m just going through the rumors that all elite athletes face, and could get in touch with Lance Armstrong to tell him I know how he feels. As I’ve mentioned in a few of my work posts, I’m training for the Parakou marathon.   I really didn’t expect to run while in the Peace Corps, although I did buy a pair of trail runners from REI before leaving (my only closed toed shoes) and packed 6 pairs of socks just in case.   I’m a very off-and-on runner in the states.   I got inspired to do a half marathon with a friend after watching the Boston Marathon for the first time, but after the ha...

Mom mentioned that some more photos on the blog would be nice, so here is my February gift to all of you - the time and patience to upload these lovely photos.  A little picture of my life here in Benin.  Sorry they're a little small, but it was either that or hours, hours of upload time.  A favorite photo from a church function during training in Porto Novo.  In case you were wondering whether I stick out here in Benin... Walking to the fields in Peonga with women from my concession. The first mud stove I built, with the family I built it with/for   Helping unload a basin of water during a compost-making training in Peonga's garden Trampling corn stalks for the compost Chatting with Fulani women at Gaani, a festival in Nikki, a nearby large town My fulani outfit for Gaani fete A wild elephant I saw in a village near mine  

Holidays in Benin Happy 2013!   It’s the end of the Holiday season.   Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s in Benin were certainly memorable.   Since I haven’t written about any of the holidays yet, here’s a summary of what I did for each: Halloween was spent at the Parakou workstation with other volunteers.   Perhaps not surprisingly, I was not thinking about Halloween costumes when I packed my suitcase for Benin back in June.   But no challenge is insurmountable to the creative Peace Corps volunteer with hours to spare.   I spent several nights trying out costume ideas in my little house in village, using my camera’s self-timer function to see how each looked since I don’t have a mirror.   I settled on a fairy costume that I’m rather proud of – it was made entirely out of one tie-dyed, flowey skirt, two coat hangers, duct tape, and lots of safety pins. I gathered leaves near the workstation to pin on as a final touch.   He...

Wow, another month down – and things have actually gotten quite busy.   It’s a very new feeling.   At the beginning of this “month,” from the 15 th to the 19 th , I was in Parakou for a week of in-service training with my counterpart from village and all the rest of the Environmental Action volunteers.   One of the things we worked on was project design and management – the training was sometimes a bit tedious, but it was useful to talk about plans with my counterpart and share ideas.   It was also really fun to see what the other Environment volunteers have been up to and what their posts are like.   Not long after IST came Christmas and New Year’s, so I was out of post more often than usual.   But the weeks that I spent in post were packed with work.   Here’s what has happened: Garden Harvest time is over, so the women in my gardening group have had much more time to work on the garden.   We’ve been mainly focused on getting the garde...

  The month that it all began!    This is an exciting blog post, because a lot of the things I was thinking about and hoping to do in months one and two finally started to happen. Mud Stoves I built my first mud stove with Azara, a young mother who’s my neighbor.   I had told several people that I would build stoves for them once they collected the clay and dried grass we need, and she was the first to get the materials together.   The “clay” we use is actually the sand from termite mounds.   There are a lot of termite mounds in this area, and the sand is very strong.   I built the stove in the evening, with Azara and a young boy from her concession who I think is named Gbaguidi.   We first mixed water with the mud and broke up most of the hardened chunks, and then mixed in little bits of dried grass.   Then we found three tall rocks to place under the pot we were going to use.   The pot has to rest on three rocks, an...

  I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean Whenever one door closes, I hope one more opens Promise me that you’ll give faith a fighting chance And when you get the chance to sit it out or dance, I hope you dance.   My theme song for Peace Corps so far has been “I hope you dance” by Lee Ann Womack.   I’ve listened to it so many times on my ipod, especially when I need a little encouragement.   It doesn’t always feel easy to dance – to live all the experiences here whole-heartedly, instead of holding back and “sitting it out” every now and then.   But the rewards have been moments of amazing sweetness and inspiration. There’ve been literal chances to take this song to heart.   One of these, a favorite day in village so far, was October 23 -   the day I made about 50 francs (around ten cents) for dancing in the marketplace.   When learning about Benin, I read that although about one third of all Beni...

Two months done!   I realize I wasn’t able to post the last one until now – didn’t have internet access – so you’ll reading both at the same time.   But I’m glad I’ve started doing these 1-month “taking stock” posts.   At first I thought nothing new had been accomplished in this past month, but looking back through my journal I realize I have made a lot of progress in many ways. The Garden We still haven’t done much actual gardening work yet.   Part of it is because we’re waiting for a team from Niger to come give training to the women on how to grow plants using drip irrigation, and other topics.   Because of budget, logistics, and other issues, the team hasn’t made it down yet.   They should come any week now.   The second reason we haven’t been gardening is the season – the rainy season just ended and harvest is in full swing.   Almost every day, the women are in the fields, harvesting corn, peanuts, soy, cotton… My major victory, and...