SNOWPOCALYPSE!!!! Oh wait...still in Benin.

I finally dragged myself to writing another blog. Sorry it’s been so long. To be honest though, my weeks go pretty quickly. 2 Weeks after New Years I was already back in Porto Novo for our in service training. It was great to see everyone again and hear their stories. Here are some pictures of our time together.

Here in village, I have somewhat of a routine (not anything like a normal US one), but I like to think it’s healthy.

Every morning I’m woken up by either chickens, my landlord starting his 40 year old truck, or the lady who delivers bread to my house. When joining the Peace Corps, fresh baked French baguettes delivered daily to my front door was not what I had in mind when I thought of “roughing it”, but hey, I’ll take it. Breakfast is normally peanut butter baguettes with a cup of fresh brewed coffee courtesy of my French press. I guess I’m turning more French than I thought. HAW HAWW HAWWW. Eh hem, sorry, don’t know where that came from.

After breakfast, I’ll hop in the shower and then either check my emails or cruise around town on my bike accomplishing goals 2 and 3 of Peace Corps (cultural exchange). A lot of my work now consists of planning for my classes that I teach in the afternoons (I have 3 separate ones during the week), so sometimes I’m occupied with that as well. Before I know it, its noon and the entire town shuts down, so I have no choice but to come home, work out, make lunch, and study French. After lunch, I’ll either finish prepping for my class or head out to the high Sshool in the middle of the bush where I’ve started a business club. Typically I get home late, around 9 PM. I make a lazy vegetarian dinner and shuffle off to bed. *Just a clarification, I am only vegetarian because preparing meat is a pain in the butt. I still eat meat when I feel like taking 2 hours out of my life to prepare it…normally I don’t. But I do see that it’s possible.

As for the school that I’m working with, the director is an absolute rock star. Except for this guy, every director I have met has been a pompus, greedy man only interested in what I can “give” to the school or translated, where I can find them funding. This director told me “We are the poorest school in our town, but we are proud of what we have and we take care of it.” To me, that says 2 things; 1- Whatever we have, it will be well taken care of, 2- Just because we are poor doesn’t mean we don’t have dignity. Every Friday he has an activity day where all the students tidy up the school for an hour and then have their choice of soccer, handball or dance club where they either play instruments or dance their traditional Nagot or Fon dances. His is the only school that has anything like this and it’s a pretty awesome just to watch all this happening.

The business club has been an interesting experience. It is comprised of 5 teams, each making their own products. Two teams, Lion and Rabbit, are making bissape which is the Beninese equivalent of kool-aid that is made from boiling flower pedals and then mixing the syrup with sugar. Two other teams, Scorpion and Squirrel, are making cookies. The last team, Union Sodium (I don’t know), is making “I Love You” soap. All of these teams claim to have the ability to make their respective products but I have my doubts. What we have done so far is talked about some principles of marketing (Product, Place, Price, and Publicity), and currently they are working on getting all of these figured out. The following pictures are some photos of the posters they have made.

They are required to create one for literate people and one for illiterate. The literate one was easy, but they had a hard time understanding what to do for the illiterate one. I tried to explain, using a picture of the Kool-Aid man, how Kool-Aid managed to market their product to kids who may not know how to read yet. It was funny describing a pitcher who would crash through the walls of kids’ houses to pour himself into their glasses. I’m sure they were wondering how/why this would be a successful marketing campaign. Sounds more like some of the voodoo characters you see wandering around town. Anyways, since all of them had an animal for their mascot, the soap team was the only one who had to get creative.

One thing that I’ve realized since I’ve been here is how there is such a lack of creativity. For example, their teaching methods here don’t necessarily involve engagement between the teacher and the class, but more just taking notes. This doesn’t foster any sort of creativity or problem solving, which I think is one reason for such bland and repetitive ideas. Another is that there is a big lack of humanities in these schools. No music, no art, no drama. I have started to realize their value in influencing other factors of the society, and am currently toying around with the idea of starting a drama club at this school. I just need some plays…

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When I was suggesting to the students to come up with slogans for their products, I gave them some examples that they’ve seen in the country: “Get in the Moov, Get on the Coke side of life (I honestly forgot what it was in America), Be Different”. All of these use the word “soyez” in French, which is just “be”. Well anyways, after I gave this example, I let them work for 10 minutes and all of them came back with practically the same slogans “Soyez avec le bissap energetique” or “Soyez avec notre produit”. The same thing happened with their posters; designed the same way with practically the same words. So once I started talking about changing their slogans by relating it to their product name, I started to see some creativity.
The class after that, we started picking out where we’d put the posters. I asked them to draw maps of their school and then pick the top 5 spots to put an advertisement. I told them with advertisements, much like with land value, there are three things that affect its value; location, location, and location (thanks Mom). So next week, we will put these posters up and start planning out the skits and radio commercials. Finally, we’ll have a market day where they actually make sell their products for fake money and the winning team will get soft drinks. Hooray!

As for my business course that I teach twice a week at the CLCAM, things are going well. It is tough to convince people to show up to a free course. As a result, I only have about 5 students that are actually regularly coming. Being my first time teaching the course, it’s not such a bad thing because it allows me to sift through the information that the PC has given me to actually find what is useful. I should have another starting soon with tailors that will hopefully have more students. It has been interesting teaching marketing, accounting, and personal finance when in fact I never had more than a semester’s worth of education in any of those subjects. Most the time I’m just teaching common sense (and trust me, it’s needed).

So the final project that I’m working on is La Coquille. I’ve pasted in the summary of the project. A need was expressed by several influential community members that there was a need for the support of children who either don’t have the means to attend school (as an education in Benin is covered only until the end of primary school) or don’t have a guardian with enough resources to properly feed, cloth, and educate the child. Seeing how there is only one orphanage in town, exclusively for 45 girls, an NGO was formed called “La Coquille” or “The Shell” which was charged with investigating these needs and developing a plan of action. As a result, a survey was conducted by members of La Coquille of four separate high schools in the commune. These high schools were chosen with respect to their proximity to the city, as undoubtedly the needs of a student attending high school in the country would be different than a high school in the city. After the surveys were conducted for the past 4 years, it was found that an average of about 25% of students drop out of school with their main reason being that they didn’t have the money to pay for school fees and supplies. With this need identified, La Coquille, with the support of the King, the mayor’s office, and school directors, has commenced planning for the construction of a center that would strive to accommodate the needs of children in terms of school fees, supplies, and in some cases lodging and food. The center itself will ideally contain a computer lab, dormitories, a meeting hall, a cafeteria, library, stables for animal husbandry, and a small farm. The one difference between La Coquille and the traditional setup of an orphanage is that the money used to pay for students’ school fees will be given in the form of loans, which the students will be obliged to repay through the apprenticeships provided to them by La Coquille.

All money that is used to pay for student loans will be financed by the daily activities of La Coquille in the form of the sale of raised animals and crops. Though the report for sustainability has yet to be drafted, considering that a student’s annual education in Benin costs approximately $43, it would not be too difficult for these students to pay back these loans through husbandry and agriculture apprenticeships in association with La Coquille. Ways for the students to receive reductions in their respective loans would be to receive good marks in school as well as attend seminars on reproductive health, technical training with computers, and other educational sessions that would be advantageous for their common good. But make no mistake, the underlying theme of La Coquille will be that one must work in order to advance oneself (much like a chick must work to free itself from its shell which protected it for so long). Not only will the students learn valuable lessons in hard work and discipline, but they will also learn how to manage a loan and, thus, fiscal responsibility (which is one of the goals of the Peace Corps’ SED Program). The presence of the challenge that the students will face will also help to find those students who are truly passionate about their education, thus encouraging a disciplined recruitment class.

We’re currently planning a fundraiser dinner that is going to cost $40 a ticket (that’s expensive by American standards!). I figure between all the fundraisers that I’ve run with my fraternity and YoungLife, it shouldn’t be too tough to get a solid program together. Soon I’ll be posting a PCPP for this project. Though the budget hasn’t been established yet, I’m sure that I’ll be doing a lot of fundraising come April and May, hopefully having everything set in stone by early July so the center can be up and running by October when the school year starts. We’re looking to have around 30 kids who live in the center and around 100 who are supported solely for education. Though now I’m not too busy, I’m sure you can see that I will be in about 6 weeks. YIKES!

So that’s what’s up. I also got to make a presentation at the PC stakeholder’s conference in Cotonou outlining what SED volunteers do. After my speech, I was told “people thought you were French”, so I guess all this time speaking with my throat is finally starting to pay off. Here are some pics.

Life is normal (for Peace Corps standards), and I’m happy. It’s hard to believe that I’ve been here for 7 months already when my service is only 24. That means that I’m almost 1/3 done! I’ll be back in the states in a little over 6 months for Bob’s wedding (September 4th), so mark your calendars now, and find the Illini game that we are most likely to win. We’ll have another party at Uncle Fatty’s too; I’m planning on cashing in on the spam mail I keep getting from them saying that I’ve won some sort of high roller package. In 3 months I’m off to South Africa for the world cup. Here’s the schedule for my matches. GOOOOOOAAAAALLLLLLLL! Oh, and eat your heart out Tom .

Thanks for reading!

Prayer requests:
Strength for the volunteers who are struggling with their service.
Organization and cooperation we start planning the fundraising and organization of La Coquille .
Diligence in all things.

Oh ya, if you want to hear me speak French, heres a petite video I made (mainly for mom).