Post Visit

So here it is folks! My home for the next two years! Again, I can't say where it is, but I will say that it's beautiful. After meeting my homologue, I had to make it to the market at 7:30 am so I could catch a ride up to post. After cramming into a taxi with Jackie, the volunteer one town over, we headed to post. The second half of the ride was beautiful, not to mention spacious, because I was literally alone in the taxi. We actually passed one of the other taxi's on the way up, which had like 10 people fit into an 8 person vehicle, and then there I was completely alone. It was pretty funny.

Upon arrival, I noticed that the CLCAM was just next door to where I was dropped off, and since that's where I'll be working, I just walked in the front door and introduced myself. Everyone there was really friendly, and as I discovered in the following days, incredibly capable and reliable. Obviously, since this is the institution on which I'll be depending for any kind of advice for the next 2 years, I was obviously pretty excited about it.

Evan the Giant, as he's affectionately known, is the guy that I've come to replace. He's 6'7", so I think it might be a shock for the Beninese to not get a cramp in their neck when looking at me. Evan was a pretty cool guy. It didn't seem like anything really bugged him, which I suppose is the ideal attitude for a PC Volunteer. Over the next few days, we slowly made our way around the town, once in a while stopping to point out where the good places were. I got a chance to meet the Chief of Police, who took down my info and informed me to make sure I respect the traditions of the town…check. I also got to meet the king of my town, who is apparently the most powerful Yoruba king in all of Benin and Nigeria.

He has a palace and a throne, but I couldn't take a picture out of respect. When I met with him, he was extremely kind and well spoken (I guess anyone is who speaks French fluently), and he even spoke some English! After asking me if I have any questions, I kind of froze up and just repeatedly said, "I don't know" in French. He smiled and continued on in. After that, we headed to the Sacred Trash Pile (it's exactly what it sounds like). Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera on me, but I did notice while climbing it that people in my town eat a lot of escargot!

It was at first pretty overwhelming, but at one point, the other volunteer had to meet with someone and I got the opportunity to walk around by myself. Though the children probably call me Iyovo more here than in Porto Novo, it seems that adults don't do as many double takes as you walk by. I hope that I'll be able to at least have one strip in the town where everyone knows my name. So on my walk, I introduced myself to some folks, but I also stopped off at the bakery. I started talking to the women outside, who continuously asked me how my wife is doing…ha. I told them that my family is part owner of a bakery in the states. Not 2 minutes later, the owner of the bakery came out and introduced himself to me, and after a bit of me explaining, he was happy to show me around. Overall, the place looked pretty awesome, and I told him that I'd be happy to work with him on some business process management, not to mention giving him some other ideas. Either way, I have a bakery 2 blocks from my house and fresh French bread every day!

My house is simple. I was surprised to find out that I didn't have a toilet, but rather a buggy latrine. I suppose it'll just add to having that "classic" Peace Corps experience. I do have electricity though, so I will be quite content not having to set my solar charger outside every day. Overall, I'm sure I'll have to repaint…and stuff. It'll be interesting to see how I handle all of the bugs. I am at least ½ the distance that the other volunteer was from the center of town too, to it will be easy for me to head home and make myself lunch. I can't wait to start making Italian food!!! Just gotta wait until I get my slapchop….

The last thing I did before heading out of town was go to the inauguration ceremony for the handball court that the other volunteer had built. With a maximum 75% of the funding coming from the US, this is a great way for communities to get a hand up while still having to take some ownership of the project. It was great to see that Evan had another project that was outside of SED. It's nice to know that I can mix up my responsibilities while I am there as well and not be stuck with CLCAM the whole time. Overall, I am glad that Evan has paved the way for me in giving the Peace Corps a good name and putting me in contact with the right people to be able to get some valuable work done.

With that, I'll leave you all with some pictures of my trip to Ouidah, where I got to see the sacred forest and the OCEAN! It was not without a bit of a melancholy note though as we also had the honor to visit the slave trade trail where thousands of Beninese were sold off to Brazil. Ok, I'm out, and under a 1000 words!!

I'm working on the pictures, theyll be up saturday probably.

Stage and more Vodun

Pics were sparse, but the next post will be good, I took a bunch, I just have to write it. Talk to you soon!

So last week didn’t have much going on until Thursday. On Thursday, everyone in SED got a chance to go to various businesses in the neighborhood of the school to get some information on their business, and if they wanted, we’d teach them some basic accounting. And when I say basic…believe me, all you need to know how to do is arithmetic. I got to go to a little photo shop, where the guy had pictures up on the wall that I swear were at least 15 years old, and not because he’d been doing it for a while. Alfred was the owner, and he couldn’t have been older than 30. After talking to him a bit, he showed me his shop, which was about 10 feet deep, the back 5 feet of which were his studio that had a random painted city in the backdrop. His equipment consisted of an antique camera and a video recorder from the beginning of the 90’s. He had told me that he was currently saving with the CLCAM in Porto Novo, but was distressed at the fact that CLCAM wanted some sort of collateral to go along with their loans when he got the opportunity to take one out. I guess this problem is something that I should probably look into when I get to post, but I’m sure that there’s still a path for this guy if he’s really serious about improving his business. Even so, after speaking for a while, he seemed smart and willing to learn some accounting. I took care of that the next day

Accounting for the basic business is divided up into five books, or cahiers. There is the cahiers de caisse, which pretty much takes care of all transactions, then the cahier de stock, which controls stock, and the cahiers de credit which track the suppliers and buyers. I did a really basic lesson in which we just did a sample inventory and what happens to the cahiers de stock and caisse when items are purchased, created, or sold. Like I said: basic. Anyways, he got a little confused at the end, so we decided to break until a later date. I would bet that that day never comes, but at least I got a little practice for post.

After class on Friday, we had the chance to visit 2 different Vodun sites in Porto Novo. Both were pretty neat. These are some religions that have been around for a long time, but because they didn’t really have any recorded history, nobody really knows when it began. The first place we went to had this tree in the middle of the courtyard that they would worship and keep different types of festering water beneath it. Apparently, putting this water on wounds is supposed to have magical healing powers…I don’t know. Then across the courtyard from the tree was a little hut where the Fetish is kept. When I say fetish, I’m referring to what the locals consider a physical manifestation of a spirit that lives in whatever respective inanimate object they have picked. We didn’t see the fetish in this place, but to give you an idea, the Zangbeto, which is another Vodun, walks around in what looks like a giant pile of hay. As you can see in the picture, there is some sort of melted junk at each fetish part which is supposed to also have different healing powers. I still have a really hard time taking this stuff seriously.

After this site, we took a bus to the second Vodun site. The high priest, which was a really elderly man with a mouth half full of teeth. His fetish was represented by a pile of cola beans. The man sat us down on some benches right next to the small walled in hut where he kept the fetish. A whole pack of what I’m sure was children and grandchildren just stood there watching us and saying “Yovo” quietly once in a while. He told us that the fetish must be performed 5 days a week, except for Monday and Friday, which is when he needs to rest to have sex... ya it caught me off guard too. The fetish was called Thron. He never really told us where it came from, but he did tell us that its main purpose was to combat sorcery. As we finally entered to see the fetish, he told us that normally we would have to be naked when we entered, but he was willing to make an exception for us if we just took off our shoes. We happily obliged.

Upon entering the gate, we say a small walled in garden with different colored cola beans in the middle. Upon sitting down, I couldn’t help but notice that I was sitting on the same bench that naked men and women normally sit on. I felt like a cowboy ready to draw with my hand sanitizer as soon as we got outta there. The old man sat on the ground in front of us and played around with four rocks, which supposedly were supposed to tell the fetish to do something, depending on the way that they fell when he dropped them. We were all a little baffled. So after about 10 minutes of some sketchy translation, he wished us well and told us that because we had come to the fetish, we would now be blessed with whatever we wished… be it money or babies, we’d get it. Finally, he gave us some “sacred oil” to put on our faces that smelled curiously like brut, which I was quite honestly thankful for given the other options of what it could have smelled like.

The weekend was relatively uneventful after that besides picking up about 15 pounds of ground beef for burgers on Sunday. The butcher didn’t bother to put our meat in water proof bags, so the poor zemi driver got cow blood all over is crotch on the ride back, whereas I just got it on my foot.

Today, we finally met our homologues, who will be our contact in the neighborhood when we get to post. Mine is named Fakorede Kola Charles. He’s a 28 year old accountant and manager at CLCAM and quite honestly seems awesome. He’s full of energy (or so it seems), and the only flaw I can find so far is that his mind kinda wanders when I’m searching for the right words to use in French. I’m sure I’ll compensate for that at some point, so I think we’ll make a good team. He further reinforced the point that I’ll be helping with formations and making sure that the artisans in my town will be informed about the opportunities that they have to take out loans as well as save with CLCAM. I was told that I’ll be busy all the time, which by Beninese standards is kind of hard to judge. Either way, I’m sure I’ll figure it out

I have my post visit on Wednesday, so I’m fairly certain that I’ll have plenty to write about, not to mention having a plethora of pictures of my future home. I’ll be staying with the volunteer there as well, so I’ll have a great chance to see what the good and bad parts of my village are. It’s very exciting! Stage is starting to wear on me, simply because I feel as though I learn quicker just by speaking to people as opposed to being in class all day, so I’m certain that this will be a very welcomed break from the classroom. That’s all I got…take it easy!

Prayer Requests: Safety for all the stagiers as we travel to our respective posts and a safe stay as well.