Moving on to 2nd year status!

 

 

      It is the day after July 4^th, and the beginning of my somewhat official status of being a 2^nd year volunteer. Granted I have not actually been in Benin yet for a year (that officially happens July 20^th), but the new set of trainees came in last night. Which makes me and my fellow PSL 20 volunteers (as those of us are called who started our service last July), part of the old hags in town. Which is really strange to me on many levels. It means that, potentially, I am supposed to know what is going on and have it all figured it out, right? Well, I definitely have to say I understand why the Peace Corps is more than a two year commitment. Only now, at this point of almost hitting the one year mark, do I feel like I am really getting into my groove and understanding more and more both my intentions, goals, community rhythm, people, culture, etc. I can’t tell you how excited I am for next year and being in my community, finally (hopefully) getting involved with more projects I am really excited about, fine tuning current projects, and most importantly, improving my teaching ability two fold. This year of teaching was kind of like a trial run on so many accounts, and I learned so many ways that I will attempt to be better. So things are looking up.

      I realize July 4^th also means I have not written since mid May! Aaah. So some catch up is readily due.

      The rest of May consisted of more teaching and “Examen Blancs” (Blank Exams), which is the practice test for the two big exams of secondary school here in Benin, the BEPC and BAC. Those entering the “seconde” level must take the BEPC, and those entering “Terminale” (last year of secondary school) must take the BAC. Thus, I was “surveying” (proctoring) these texts, just like I do for “devoirs” (midterms/finals).

      During May, I also began the process of attempting to get eyeglasses for my students for next year. There are so many of my students who I think are lost half the time in class, and who I also know for a fact cannot see the board, and who all suffer in school as a result. I was inspired to begin this process by a TEFL volunteer a year ahead of me, who worked with her local Lyon’s Club to take part in an optometry evaluation of her students and who was able to provide eyeglasses for them as well. Thus, I began the process of talking to the local Lyon’s club near me in Lakossa, who seemed very interested in the project, and have been corresponding with a doctor associated with the Lyon’s club in France who could potentially coordinate this “medical mission” (as they call it) with me to provide eyeglasses to my students.  I have just realized this seems to not be a health priority for my community, which is completely understandable because of the expenses involved and other more pertinent health priorities, but I will do what I can to improve their chances in school, as they already have so many obstacles blocking them. Therefore, I am keeping my fingers crossed that within the span of the year, I can see this project through.

      May also included more fun cooking times in village. Krystal, my neighbor, got really excited one weekend about wanting to teach me how to cook/prepare “pâte”, which is one of the other big staple foods here. I have already described the party where we all made “yam pilé”, my favorite Beninese dish, but pâte is something else all together. There are many different kinds of pâte – there is “noir” (black), “pâte rouge” (red), “pâte blanche” (white) . Pate is made from cornmeal, and is kind of like grits but more gelatinous, and a finer consistency. Or so I have been told by some PCV’s from the southern USA. I would not say “pâte” is one of my favorite dishes here, but if it is made with the right sauce and type of spice, it can be very good. So Krystel and I went shopping at the market for all the necessary ingredients on market day, and spent a wonderful afternoon and evening cooking and stirring and laughing, and eating. Mama got visibly disappointed at me because I could not continue eating. It is rude here not to eat all you are served, but sometimes the portions are so incredibly huge that one physically cannot take anymore. But I pushed my limits and ate the most pâte I ever hope to eat again! Maybe in time I will grow to love this meal…

            The end of May also coincided with “Fête des meres” (Mother’s Day) here, which is a different day than in the United States, and I think coincides more along the lines when Europe celebrates it, though I cannot be sure. Anyways, that morning I joined my neighbors Flo Flo, Maso and Nana (their grandmother) to Catholic church for early morning services, and then spent the rest of the day enjoying the wonderful company of literally all my neighbor kids. It was so wonderful and cute. They all wanted to borrow my crayons and paper to make cards, I assumed for their mothers. But in fact all of them made drawings for me, with “Tante” (as they say it – TAN-TEY, literally in French meaning Aunt, and what all my neighbors call me). I know it sounds trite, but I was touched. And then Flo-Flo, and Krystel (the “older girls”, haha) and I drew together and had a great little bonding afternoon. So a fun fête for all!

            So as May wound into June, things began settling down a bit more. The Azovè girls soccer team my postmate Allison and I were involved with doing began to dwindle down for the year as the school year lingered on and everyone grew tried, and erratic numbers of girls have been showing up to practices. We decided to somewhat start anew for next year. We definitely hope to have many of the same girls that were involved this year, that would be ideal, but we would like to change many things; this year was definitely a learning process of good and bad tactics at this type of community project. We hope to hold competitions to attract girls who are truly interested in both having fun and being serious, garner more community and school involvement, be better prepared to play at a stronger level (hopefully with the great uniforms, shoes, shin guards, and balls that my parents are awesomely bringing from the states), and more team say in how it progresses. My personal hope is that we can be at a level similar to that of Dogbo’s women’s team – but we will just have to see what happens!

            Speaking of young girls, I did see something that really disturbed me one random day walking in Azove with Krystel. I saw a girl that had been in my class right at the beginning of the school year in October or November, that I remember kicking out for the day because she would not pay attention, continued to always talk, and was one of the only girls who gave me intense attitude and lack of respect. I specifically remember throwing the magazine she was reading in the middle of class out the window. And then after that, I never saw her again. And then walking one day in town, I saw her…pregnant. We greeted each other quickly but cordially, but I was in shock.  I cannot even begin to describe the flood of guilt I feel. The way I would have reacted to her now in class would have been much different. I almost feel responsible for what happened. Although maybe that is unreasonable. As others have said, she might have quit school because she was pregnant. Or had other things going on. However, I continue to feel a little bit responsible for not handing the situation better, even though at the time, I felt like it was fine considering the obstacles in class. But the guilt remains, especially because of my sincere interest in girl’s education and opportunities. But I guess it was a learning opportunity. But a hard one for me to handle.

            After the two weeks of “Examan Blancs” (Blank Exams, as I explained earlier), I think I finished the school year with a bang! As I would find out later after asking a ridiculous amount of times, “devoirs” (final exams) did not happen until right before the end of June, with English devoirs on the 18^th, so I still had plenty of time to teach more English before the end of the school year. I stayed really busy with “rattrapages” (make up classes) for classes I had missed because of trainings, and was even able to do an Environment awareness class with Sheena with my 5ieme’s, my friend and Environmental Action volunteer from Klikame. This has definitely inspired me to try to bring more volunteers and guest speakers in to my classes to coordinate their English learning with other education, as well as due an even better job during my own lesson planning of always intertwining it with something more to learn than the superficial level of English. Just one of my many goals.

            During one of our many AP (Animation Pedagogiue/teacher meetings) that has gotten to the point, unfortunately, of being useless as a result of the head of the English department never showing up, I had a very interesting conversation with my “homologue” (counterpart) – thankfully, my colleagues and I continue to learn a lot from each other by just interacting, even though the productivity of our meetings is often useless. We were talking about the U.S. presidency campaign, and Hillary, and women running for President, and he was saying how a single women running for President in Benin, in his president, would not be accepted because people, essentially, would consider the women to “free” and as he said, would wonder how the women was “meeting her needs”, if you get my drift.  For a single man of course, this would not be an issue because of the double standard of expectations, marriage, singledom, etc. Although angered by the situation at first, talking more about it, I feel that the same type of thing would be present in the United States. I think it would be a much different situation for a single woman to run for President of the U.S. than for a single man. So I guess inequalities are present everywhere. Truly . We also discussed the difference between the expectations of uneducated and educated women to be married in general. He said an uneducated woman would probably be expected to be with a man/married by late teen’s, where as a woman with more education/university degree might have leeway till mid 20’s. Men of course have plenty of time. So I think this comparison is similar to the U.S, with maybe a 10 year leeway for women. Just interesting comparisons. He did say that he supports women in political power because he feels that government would be less corrupt…and the interesting exchanges continue….

            This year of teaching has opened my eyes to many things. The way students learn in this country. The improvements that communities and schools are trying to make with the educational system. And the difficulties that remain. A few of the challenges, amongst many, that remain, I think is the lack of teacher training. This is not to say on any level that   I am in any way a better teacher than any of the teachers at my school. I just realize with some teachers, there are some things that I just take for granted that I know from my own training, or my own education growing up. For example, a very smart girl that I tutor, who used to be one of my students, realize was understanding nothing that was going on because the current teacher is only really targeting the students in his class who happen to have the text books. The majority (almost all) of the students cannot afford to copy the textbooks, so teachers must make every effort to write texts and all presentation on the board or on khaki paper to copy. But I guess he does not do this, so she did not know what was going on. So frustrating. And there are the teachers who never show up to teach, but their students must take the final exams anyways. And that is fair? The whole situation itself is not fair – teachers are over worked and underpaid and most really do not want to be teaching. The government is trying to provide more contracts to teachers this year to improve job security, but there is still so much to be done. I hope to maybe work on teacher training with my teachers next year, or at least have productive teacher meetings (even without the head of the department, I am determined!) so we can support each other. I really would love to convince my “homologue” (counterpart) to have observation days, etc. I think with enough determination we can try to convince others it is a good idea. Because we would just be benefiting each other.

            Something cool that has happened recently with me and my immediate community is that I am trying to do a small little “English club” with the local “menusiers” (carpenters) who I have befriended and who I hang out with a ton outside of my concession. We have only met once so far, but it is real fun, and I think many of them appreciate a learning setting as they are usually not in one. They are a mix of illiterate and literate men mostly, and a mix of many levels of English. One of them, who is definitely the best at English, but actually dropped out of school in 4ieme, was taught by a Peace Corps volunteer for English the two years before that (6ieme and 5ieme), so it is cool to see the effectiveness of what PCV’s are doing. Who knows how sustainable English is, but it’s cool to see some of it sticks…

            I have also found this AWESOME restaurant, about a 10 minute walk from my house that just opened, that serves amazing Yam Pile! It is called “Les Marmites Des Collines”. So exciting! It is SO difficult to find good, if any, yam pile in the South of Benin, and to have an awesome restaurant with two wonderful women running it right around the corner is super fantastic. Anyone who visits – this is one of the first places I am taking you! It is also nice to have, besides the buvette Chez Mao I often frequent for “sucreries” (sodas), and beer, a restaurant where I am truly welcome.

            June also included a two day training in Cotonou for me for something called PSN (Peer Support Network) which is a network of volunteers that work as a support system for PCV’s in Benin. And it meant saying “au revoir” (goodbye) to Aaron, a Peace Corps Volunteer in Djakatomey, only about 15km away from me. But the Mono-Couffo region should be getting a few (4 or 5) new volunteers in the region, so that will be something to look forward to. 

            I also went up north to Parakou for a GAD (Gender and Development – this is the sector of PC Benin that the auction money went to for the GAD Small Projects Fund) meeting for GAD “elections”, and it looks like next year I will be the Finance Chair for the GAD committee. The GAD committee consists of the GAD coordinator, who is this year a 3^rd year volunteer, the Publications Chair, the Scholarship Girls Chair, and the Finance Chair. My job will consist of helping evaluate grant proposals by volunteers that are submitted to the GAD Small Projects fund, helping keep track of the amount of money is in the GAD fund as a whole, and hopefully work on organizing past projects so volunteers do not have to “reinvent the wheel”. Every month I will be doing evaluations, so I should be staying busy. I am really looking forward to being involved in the committee and being involved with the committee just devoted to gender issues! During the GAD meeting weekend in Parakou, my friends and I also had a great time at the “chouk marshe” (chouk market – chouk is a big, local, Beninese drink that has a distinct flavor similar to miso soup, strangely enough), where we went from chouk stand to chouk stand drinking the local brew from different Mama’s. I have not found anything like this in the south of Benin, but apparently it is a northern Benin regular social gathering for the Beninese. Really fun.

            My friend Megan (who is posted up North) came to my post for a week after that which was awesome – although this was her second time, it really gave me an opportunity for me to show her bits of my life at post that had developed since she came the first time. And instilled my pride of Azove J

            Finally, the last few weeks have unfortunately included a substantial amount of time away from post, as a result of some great projects in other parts of the country that I have been involved with. June 22-28 was Camp GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) here in south Benin, which is a girls leadership camp done in many countries of the Peace Corps. I brought two girls from Azove. Krystal, my awesome and determined 12 year old neighbor, and Agnes, a shining student in one of my 6ieme classes. The Camp GLOW consisted of about 50 girls from secondary school in southern Benin (there was a Camp GLOW up north too), and about 12 Peace Corps Volunteers. Camp GLOW was a week of regular “camp stuff” – sports, songs, dance parties, fireworks, crafts, theater  etc, but with the primary focus on sessions in education, health, women’s roles, nutrition, and the list goes on. The sessions were led by a combination of Peace Corps Volunteers, Tutrices (Beninese women role models working the camp as well, who were mostly teachers), and outside Beninese guest speakers. I have to say Camp GLOW was really fun. It was an opportunity to give girls, mostly very intelligent, bright, ambitious girls to play, to learn, to bond, etc. I would say from what I have observed that the majority of time, girls do not really have the time to ever just “play” and have a week to themselves like this, so it was a really great thing to be a part of. I as well as a few other volunteers will probably be heading it up next year, and I truly think it is really worthwhile. 

            After Camp GLOW, a few of us went immediately to a town called Ketou in eastern Benin to take part teaching in an English Camp the TEFL volunteer had organized there. At Ketou Summer School, I taught 4ieme, which is one of the levels I will be teaching next year. It was also a cool opportunity to see a part of the country I had never seen before, and catch up on a few seasons of “Sex and the City”. Haha. We gotta relax sometime.

            Finally, July 4^th, many of us were in Cotonou to introduce the new trainees into Benin – making me realize once again how time has flown by. As they approached us all in the buses, I seriously had butterflies realizing the change of positions as a volunteer that was about to occur. It was surreal. In many ways, the whole experience here is surreal.

            Ghana in a few weeks, parents visit, and Senegal! The excitement never ends!