Since today marks the 365th (real day, I screwed up somewhere along the line with my dates) day I figured I should look back and note a few things that I’ve been thinking about:
Things I’m proud of:
- Being able to buy most of my groceries in local language
- Having at least one photographer use the accounting I taught my group
- Setting up an accounting for semi-literates group
- Having the chance to start a penpal program with Ms. Mills’ classes at BHS
- Being able to negotiate prices with relative ease and not blowing up when someone is trying to hike up the price cause I’m ‘white’
- Teaching Burrito to be a good dog
- Reading approximately forty-four books in country
- Trying my best to be myself around PCVs and Beninese
- Being able to cook almost anything with the most random tools
- Learning how to sew some pretty good stuff
Things I’m not proud of:
- watching over four or five tv series (usually within a two week or less window)
- watching the most amount of movies I’ve ever seen in a one year period (this is pretty shocking because while working I was watching at least four dvds a month and tried to watch a movie/tv show every night with the streaming movies on Netflix)
- the way I taught Burrito how to be a good dog…
- how okay I am with being grungy, sweating profusely, and being a ‘volunteer’ (I suppose)
- smoking cigarettes even when I’m not drinking
- the amount of times where I’ve dreaded wanting to go outside of my safe haven (my home) and into the world outside my house
- not appreciating, to the fullest extent, when my mom calls me to check on how I’m doing (I’m really sorry about this mom!)
Things that still confuse me:
- Why do people tell me, ‘Je vien’ (I’m coming) when it could mean 10 minutes, 5 hours, or the next day?
- ‘Petite monie’ (or change, in English) is so hard to come by, how is it that something like a supermarket doesn’t have change?
- Why do people care so much about the appearance of their bike, motorcycle, or car? My bike is so filthy people give me the stare of death as they see me riding by, almost like it is blasphemous of me to be doing that to such a nice piece of equipment.
- Why is efficiency trumped by old habits? For example, there are no such things as lines at the post office. Usually I benefit from this because the post office man likes me (I don’t know why), but if I quietly wait behind someone else, there will, without fail, be someone who just walks right up and demands the post worker’s attention. Same thing happens at the bank (even in Cotonou), the airport trying to get to Benin, etc.
- How is hissing at someone more effective than calling out that person’s name?
- Why do people I don’t know hiss at me and tell me to come over to them when they have nothing important to say to me?
- How even rich, educated people will ask for money because I am a Yovo
- Why is a SED volunteer placed in my village/town to help the artisans?
Things that are no longer confusing:
- Why most babies at the age of two have trouble walking
- Why most women who have had at least two children have insanely sagging breasts
- Why people call us, ‘Yovo’, ‘le blanc’, or some other local name for ‘us’
- Why some people here suffer from severe gap tooth
- How to tell when someone is trying to shaft you the price for something
- How people can enjoy food such as pâte, acassa (fermented pâte), fried small fish, buille (fermented semi-cooked pâte), gumbo sauce (sauce made from okra), and other Beninese dishes (I love them all!)
- What it means when someone takes their hand, raises their fingers to their mouth, and brings the hand down onto the other, and than spreads both hands while shrugging the shoulders
- How PCVs survive and what they do
On an unrelated note, I have recently acquired a very cool piece of equipment! Let me first show you a picture of what it is:
Things I’m proud of:
- Being able to buy most of my groceries in local language
- Having at least one photographer use the accounting I taught my group
- Setting up an accounting for semi-literates group
- Having the chance to start a penpal program with Ms. Mills’ classes at BHS
- Being able to negotiate prices with relative ease and not blowing up when someone is trying to hike up the price cause I’m ‘white’
- Teaching Burrito to be a good dog
- Reading approximately forty-four books in country
- Trying my best to be myself around PCVs and Beninese
- Being able to cook almost anything with the most random tools
- Learning how to sew some pretty good stuff
Things I’m not proud of:
- watching over four or five tv series (usually within a two week or less window)
- watching the most amount of movies I’ve ever seen in a one year period (this is pretty shocking because while working I was watching at least four dvds a month and tried to watch a movie/tv show every night with the streaming movies on Netflix)
- the way I taught Burrito how to be a good dog…
- how okay I am with being grungy, sweating profusely, and being a ‘volunteer’ (I suppose)
- smoking cigarettes even when I’m not drinking
- the amount of times where I’ve dreaded wanting to go outside of my safe haven (my home) and into the world outside my house
- not appreciating, to the fullest extent, when my mom calls me to check on how I’m doing (I’m really sorry about this mom!)
Things that still confuse me:
- Why do people tell me, ‘Je vien’ (I’m coming) when it could mean 10 minutes, 5 hours, or the next day?
- ‘Petite monie’ (or change, in English) is so hard to come by, how is it that something like a supermarket doesn’t have change?
- Why do people care so much about the appearance of their bike, motorcycle, or car? My bike is so filthy people give me the stare of death as they see me riding by, almost like it is blasphemous of me to be doing that to such a nice piece of equipment.
- Why is efficiency trumped by old habits? For example, there are no such things as lines at the post office. Usually I benefit from this because the post office man likes me (I don’t know why), but if I quietly wait behind someone else, there will, without fail, be someone who just walks right up and demands the post worker’s attention. Same thing happens at the bank (even in Cotonou), the airport trying to get to Benin, etc.
- How is hissing at someone more effective than calling out that person’s name?
- Why do people I don’t know hiss at me and tell me to come over to them when they have nothing important to say to me?
- How even rich, educated people will ask for money because I am a Yovo
- Why is a SED volunteer placed in my village/town to help the artisans?
Things that are no longer confusing:
- Why most babies at the age of two have trouble walking
- Why most women who have had at least two children have insanely sagging breasts
- Why people call us, ‘Yovo’, ‘le blanc’, or some other local name for ‘us’
- Why some people here suffer from severe gap tooth
- How to tell when someone is trying to shaft you the price for something
- How people can enjoy food such as pâte, acassa (fermented pâte), fried small fish, buille (fermented semi-cooked pâte), gumbo sauce (sauce made from okra), and other Beninese dishes (I love them all!)
- What it means when someone takes their hand, raises their fingers to their mouth, and brings the hand down onto the other, and than spreads both hands while shrugging the shoulders
- How PCVs survive and what they do
On an unrelated note, I have recently acquired a very cool piece of equipment! Let me first show you a picture of what it is:
A stick with nails… Great! 
Hmmm… why am I destroying my house? 
This was all over my house. But honestly, with concrete floors this isn’t too hard to get rid of. :P
Yeah, it is a pull-up bar. I was wondering how the mason was planning on installing this piece of wood. Turns out the way they punch windows and make new doorways is taking a mini-sledgehammer and a pick and pounding the shit out of the wall! Awesome. My house was an insane mess afterwards, but hey, now I have a pull-up bar! Total materials needed? Wood, nails, cement, and water. Total cost for everything? 2,700 CFA which is approximately 6 bucks… the labor for punching the holes in the walls and cementing it again was 1,000 CFA… 2 bucks?!?! WoWoWoWowWoWoW! 
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